A Tunisian man died in a hospital Saturday after setting himself on fire, witnesses and medics said, days after another burned himself alive to protest living conditions.Both acts recall the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the street seller whose suicide by fire on Dec. 17, 2010, launched Tunisia’s revolution that in turn sparked the Arab Spring that toppled several autocratic leaders in the region.On Saturday, a 35-year-old man “set himself on fire on Habib Bourguiba Avenue” in the center of Tunis, the civil defense told AFP.The man, whose motives are still unknown, “suffered third-degree burns and was rushed to hospital,” a civil defense spokesperson added.Local media including state television later reported that he had died of his injuries.A witness, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the man had arrived at the iconic avenue in central Tunis accompanied by a younger man and tried to attract the attention of some journalists who were present there.The man then doused himself with flammable material that he set on fire with a lighter, the witness said.Police set up barricades in the area, and an AFP reporter saw a pair of burned shoes behind them shortly after the incident.Last week a young man wounded in the 2011 revolution burned himself alive after the government failed to provide compensation, his family said.Neji Hefiane, 26, died in a hospital on the southern outskirts of Tunis on Sept. 4 after having set himself alight in front of his family, his father said.Hefiane suffered gunshot wounds to the head during anti-regime protests in the early days of the revolution, according to his family, and although he was on an official list of people entitled to government aid, he received no compensation.”It was the injustice and marginalization he suffered that pushed my son to kill himself,” his father, Bechir Hefiane, said on Monday.He said he wrote to President Kais Saied explaining his son’s case and asking him to intervene on behalf of the struggling family that lives in a working-class Tunis district.”We’ve got no reply, even after my son’s death,” he added.
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Month: September 2021
Abimael Guzmán, Head of Shining Path Insurgency, Dies in Peru
Abimael Guzmán, the leader of the brutal Shining Path insurgency in Peru who was captured in 1992, died on Saturday in a military hospital after an illness, the Peruvian government said. Guzmán, 86, died after suffering from an infection, Justice Minister Aníbal Torres said. Guzmán, a former philosophy professor, launched an insurgency against the state in 1980 and presided over numerous car bombings and assassinations in the years that followed. After his capture, he was sentenced in life in prison for terrorism and other crimes. President Pedro Castillo tweeted that Guzmán was responsible for taking countless lives. “Our position condemning terrorism is firm and unwavering. Only in democracy will we build a Peru of justice and development for our people,” Castillo said. Guzmán preached a messianic vision of a classless Maoist utopia based on pure communism, considering himself the “Fourth Sword of Marxism” after Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Mao Zedong. He advocated a peasant revolution in which rebels would first gain control of the countryside and then advance to the cities. Guzmán’s movement declared armed struggle on the eve of Peru’s presidential elections in May 1980, the first democratic vote after 12 years of military rule. Prison built for himThroughout the 1980s, the man known to his followers as Presidente Gonzalo built up an organization that grew to 10,000 armed fighters before his capture inside a Lima safehouse by a special intelligence group of the Peruvian police backed by the United States. Since then, he was housed in a military prison on the shores of the Pacific that was built to hold him. By the time Guzmán called for peace talks a year after his arrest, guerrilla violence had claimed tens of thousands of lives in Peru, displaced at least 600,000 people and caused an estimated $22 billion in damage. A truth commission in 2003 blamed the Shining Path for more than half of nearly 70,000 estimated deaths and disappearances caused by various rebel groups and brutal government counterinsurgency efforts between 1980 and 2000. Yet it lived on in a political movement formed by Guzmán’s followers that sought amnesty for all “political prisoners,” including the Shining Path founder. The Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Right failed, however, to register as a political party in 2012 in the face of fierce opposition from Peruvians with bitter memories of the destruction brought by the Shining Path. In its songs and slogans, the Shining Path celebrated bloodletting, describing death as necessary to “irrigate” the revolution. Its militants bombed electrical towers, bridges and factories in the countryside, assassinated mayors and massacred villagers. In the insurgency’s later years, they targeted civilians in Lima with indiscriminate bombings. The Shining Path was severely weakened after Guzmán’s capture and his later calls for peace talks. Small bands of rebels have nevertheless remained active in remote valleys, producing cocaine and protecting drug runners.
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Afghanistan, 20 Years After September 11 Attacks
Twenty years after the United States and NATO ousted them from power, the Taliban are back. But as VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports, the country they are trying to rule now is filled with a youthful population that is significantly more educated and aware.
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Afghanistan, 20 Years After the September 11 Attacks
Twenty-four-year-old Tamana Zaryab Paryani is too young to remember the last Taliban rule, from 1996-2001, but she recalls the horror stories her mother told her.
“My mother said Taliban were a terrorist group … it was a brutal time. They used to stone people to death,” Paryani told VOA in a WhatsApp call from Kabul, where she and nearly 20 other women are regularly protesting in the streets against the very group her mother warned her about.
“Our agenda is to get our rights, the right to education and work, freedom of expression, the right of women to be part of the Cabinet, to have equal rights for women and men,” the political science student said.
Unlike the tens of thousands who left the country since the Taliban takeover on August 15, Paryani wants to stay and fight. She said she also refuses to believe the Taliban of 2021 are different from the Taliban of 2001.
“They don’t have a single woman in their Cabinet. They will never change. They are still beating up women and harassing them. And when we protest, they beat us up too,” she said.
Some of her sentiments are shared by the international community.
“Those who hoped for, and urged for, inclusivity will be disappointed. There are no women in the names [of Cabinet members] listed. There are no non-Taliban members, no figures from the past government, nor leaders of minority groups. Instead, it contains many of the same figures who were part of the Taliban leadership from 1996 to 2001,” Deborah Lyons, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, told the Security Council on Thursday.
Still, Lyons and other diplomats dealing with the Taliban think the new reality is still taking shape and there is space for the international community to make a difference.Taliban fighters patrol on vehicles along a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 2, 2021.The Taliban have said they need and want international assistance in running the country and, according to Lyons, have asked for “patience and even advice as they attempt to transition from a military insurgency to a government.”
They have also promised they would respect human rights and the rights of women under Islam. And while the Taliban Cabinet looks much like it did in the 1990s, the country it intends to run looks much different.
When Wadir Safi, a law professor, arrived in Kabul in 2002 after living in Australia during the Taliban regime, the city did not have any of the high-rise buildings, bright lights, or the plethora of wedding halls and restaurants that mark its landscape today.
“Slowly by 2010, the face of Kabul changed,” he said.
The country’s population nearly doubled over the last 20 years, from 21.61 million in 2001 to more than 38 million, according to World Bank estimates.
The gross domestic product that was $2.46 billion in 2001 has now grown to nearly $20 billion, according to a website called Trading Economics that gathers official data for 196 countries.
The per capita income has grown from $330 to $549; official exports increased from $166 million in 2000 to $776.73 million in 2020, and official imports increased from $2.45 billion in 2003 to $6.5 billion in 2020. These figures to not include unofficial trade through smuggling.
Under the Taliban, almost no girls and few boys went to school. The universities and institutions that existed before the Taliban takeover in 1996 were left devastated by years of war starting with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.Schoolgirls attend class in Herat, Afghanistan. Aug. 17, 2021, following the Taliban stunning takeover of the country. Now, the future of their education is uncertain.UNESCO estimated that over the next two decades, Afghanistan lost an estimated 20,000 experts and academics. After the fall of Taliban in 2001, with help of international community, things started to change.
By 2017, 46% of Afghan girls and 66% of Afghan boys were attending primary schools, according to Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey conducted by the country’s Central Statistics Organization. Half of those girls and most of those boys went on to receive a secondary education. The national youth literacy rate in people ages 15-24 climbed to 53%.
Last year, according to an Afghan Ministry of Education report, enrollment in regular schools reached 9,710,824, of which 38% were girls.
Of the 4,385 Afghans who enrolled in vocational training centers, half were female.
When Safi started teaching in Kabul university in 2002, the students were terrified. The girls, many of whom returned to college after the fall of the Taliban, would wear a burqa and were afraid to show their faces.
By the time he retired in 2017, he said things had drastically changed.
“It seemed like you were in a university in Europe. The girls and boys sat together in classes,” he said.Male and female students, separated by a curtain, attend class under new classroom rules at Avicenna University in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 6, 2021, in this picture obtained by Reuters from social media.Those changes in attitudes were reflected in the explosive growth of mainstream and social media in Afghanistan.
From no local free press under the Taliban, the country developed more than 100 newspapers, 170 radio stations, and multiple news and entertainment television channels, according to Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. One sixth of Afghanistan’s population is active on social media.
The Afghan constitution, adopted in 2004, promises equal rights to men and women. The Taliban have called that constitution un-Islamic and are expected to change it.
In the last 20 years, Afghanistan developed a thriving community of artists, including females. An artists’ collective called the ArtLords, formed in 2014, took it upon itself to convert Kabul, a city full of blast walls, into the “street art capital of the world.”
Over the next six years, the group turned Kabul’s gray concrete walls into canvasses for their murals, depicting everything from schoolchildren to a Japanese aid worker who dedicated his life to Afghanistan to the historic Doha deal between the Taliban and the U.S. that led to the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country. According to its website, the collective has painted more than 2,100 murals.A mural promoting gender equality is seen in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 4, 2021, as a woman passes by it. It will likely be replaced with black and white messages celebrating the Taliban and their ideology. (WANA News Agency via Reuters)Apart from “transforming the aggressive face of Kabul,” the collective also aimed to create “social transformation and behavioral change through employing the soft power of art.”
That soft power is being wiped from Kabul’s walls and replaced with black and white messages celebrating the Taliban and their ideology.
But women like Paryani have vowed that they would not be wiped away like murals.
“We don’t have an option. Our rights are being taken from us. We have to protest,” she said.
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Pope Travels to Hungary, Slovakia in First Post-surgery Trip
Pope Francis travels to Hungary and Slovakia Sunday on his first foreign trip since undergoing surgery in July. He will meet Hungarian officials during a very short visit to Budapest, and preside over the closing mass of a eucharistic congress. Francis then travels to Slovakia, where he is expected to visit three cities before returning to the Vatican on Wednesday. Francis will spend just seven hours in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, where he will be closing the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress. The visit to Hungary and Slovakia, the 34th abroad of this papacy, is his first foreign trip since the 84-year-old pontiff underwent intestinal surgery just two months ago.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the visit is intended to be a “spiritual journey.” It starts with the Christian rite of Holy Communion and ends with prayers and celebration of Our Lady of Sorrows, Slovakia’s patron saint, who is believed to watch over Slavic lands wounded by totalitarianism.
Francis asked for prayers for his pilgrimage to the heart of Europe, where he is expected to address issues that affect the entire continent.
These will be days marked by adoration and prayer in the heart of Europe, the pope said, thanking those who helped prepare this visit. The pope sent greetings to those waiting to meet with him and said he was looking forward to this visit.
The Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See, Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, told Vatican Radio that the people of Hungary view the pope’s presence in Budapest as “a real gift.”
Francis will meet with the country’s top authorities, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Observers and Catholic media have noted that the brevity of his stay in Hungary compared to Slovakia is likely due to the differences that exist between the pope and the nationalist and anti-immigrant policies of the prime minister.
The pope’s meeting with Orban will take place before the closing mass of the Eucharistic Congress, a gathering of clergy, monks, nuns and lay people, in Budapest’s Heroes Square.
After the Sunday afternoon mass, Francis will travel to Bratislava, where he will stay until Wednesday, while visiting three other cities in Slovakia. He will meet with the country’s authorities, the Jewish community and the Roma population in the town of Kosice.
The pope will celebrate two open air masses in Slovakia. The leadership in this country is also against uncontrolled immigration but their opposition has not been quite as strong and vocal as in Hungary.
This four-day pilgrimage will test the pope’s strength following his recent surgery. Bruni said no special measures have been adopted, except the usual caution for a papal trip. He said there is always a doctor and nurses in the papal entourage.
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WFP: Afghans Resorting to Extreme Measures to Keep Hunger at Bay
The World Food Program warns acute hunger is deepening in Afghanistan and families are resorting to extreme measures to find something to eat and keep their children from starving. Randomized phone surveys carried out between August 21 and September 5 in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces found that 93% of households do not have enough to eat. World Food Program deputy regional director, Anthea Webb, says many families are teetering on the verge of absolute destitution and are employing negative coping measures to survive. “Those are things like skipping meals or preferring to give food to children instead of adults, or limiting portion sizes to make food last longer have almost doubled. So, now there are three out of four Afghan families employing at least one if not more of those approaches,” Webb said. Food insecurity was widespread prior to the takeover of the country by Taliban militants on August 15. Before that date, the WFP phone surveys that got underway June 17, found 81% of households were short of food. The survey found a marked deterioration in food security after August 15, following the collapse of the Afghan government and Taliban seizure of the capital Kabul.The WFP reports 14 million people are going hungry, including 2 million malnourished children in need of special nutritional feeding to survive. The country’s economy is in shambles. People are out of work and do not have money to buy food. Webb said a major concern is to pre-position food for millions of people before winter sets in. She said it is now a race against time to deliver lifesaving assistance to the Afghan people who need it the most before roads are cut off by snow. “We need to be reaching 9 million people per month by November, if we are to meet our planned target of 14 million by the end of the year. We have appealed for $200 million, and a number of countries have come forward with offers of help. But we are quite literally begging and borrowing to avoid food stocks running out in October,” Webb said. The WFP has managed to assist 6.4 million Afghans this year. Webb says it has provided nutrient-dense foods to nearly 600,000 people across the country since mid-August, including meals for tens of thousands of children and mothers. With support of the international community, Webb said the WFP will be able to purchase and transport food to strategic locations before it is too late.
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UNHCR: Cameroon Refugee Needs Increasing, Means Limited
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says Cameroon continues to be one of the world’s most neglected displacement crises, with refugee needs increasing far more quickly than are available resources. The central African country is home to about 500,000 refugees, most of them having fled the troubled Central African Republic and Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria.
Raouf Mazou, the UNHCR’s assistant high commissioner for operations, says that this week he met with humanitarian agencies and Cameroonian government officials, including Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, to look for ways to reinforce humanitarian actions to help displaced persons and refugees.
In August, countries surrounding Lake Chad reported an increase in the number of people displaced in Chad, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Niger.
Cameroon said at least 1,500 former Boko Haram militants have arrived on its northern border with Nigeria since May, when the Islamist group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, was declared killed.
Cameroon also reported that more than 40 villages were razed and 10,000 citizens fled northern Cameroon to Chad after a violent conflict between herders and fishers in August.
Mazou visited Cameroon’s Far North region on the border with Nigeria and Chad, where he met with representatives of some 4,000 displaced people in the northern border village of Zamai. Mazou said they desperately need civil registration documents so they can integrate into their new communities.
“If there is one thing that is essential, it is the issue of civil registration. They kept on repeating the same thing, they kept on saying our children are here, they cannot go to school. When we asked, ‘Why can’t they go to school?’ one of the key reasons why [is that] we [displaced persons] don’t have documents for them [displaced children]. Of course, there is also the issue of the cost. Even if primary education is free, people do have to pay an amount of money, but the issue of documentation for them is absolutely crucial,” Mazou said.
Speaking to local media, including Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV, Mazou said there are more than a million displaced Cameroonians in the country.
The UNHCR says Cameroon, with a population of 26 million, is also home to about 500,000 refugees and asylum-seekers.
Among the refugees, 120,000 are Nigerian citizens fleeing Boko Haram terrorism, and 321,000 are fleeing violence caused by the political tensions in the Central African Republic. Cameroon says other refugees are from Chad, Senegal, Mali and Niger.
Xavier Bourgois, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Cameroon, says the agency has limited means to help people seeking refuge.
He said the UNHCR has only 44% of the $100 million it needs to provide emergency humanitarian services for refugees and displaced Cameroonians and to assist host communities that share their already stretched resources with displaced people.
In February, Cameroon said 5,000 of the 120,000 Nigerians, mostly women and children, who fled across the border fleeing from Boko Haram terrorists have agreed to voluntarily return to Nigeria. The UNHCR says about 4,500 Nigerians have returned. Those remaining are still worried about their security should they return to Nigeria.
Several thousand Central African Republic refugees have also returned to their home country. Cameroon says a majority are still scared of insecurity and violence after the December general elections there.
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Spanish TV Apologizes for Racist Comment About Black Madrid Player
Spain’s state television on Friday condemned a racist comment made by a guest sports commentator during the presentation of Real Madrid player Eduardo Camavinga.
During Wednesday’s presentation of Camavinga, analyst Lorena González was heard off camera saying “this guy is blacker than his suit.”
The 18-year-old Camavinga, a French player born in Angola, is Black.
Spanish broadcaster RTVE said González’s comments “showed a lack of respect and are inappropriate for a public television channel” while it apologized “to the player and laments and firmly condemns the denigrating comments.”
González, a regular guest on RTVE’s sports talk show “Estudio Estadio,” issued a statement on social media “to offer my sincerest apologies to anyone who felt offended.”
“My comment, which was made without malice or disrespect toward the player, was however unfortunate,” she wrote. “It was a comparison that I could have made about any person of any color. But I understand and feel that in this sensitive time we are going through, even though I also believe that things are becoming too radicalized and politicized, the media has an even bigger responsibility to help the fight against racism and any form of unjust inequality.”
The network said it was investigating the incident “and would take the appropriate action.”
Camavinga joined Madrid on a six-year contract from Rennes. He made his debut for France’s senior team last September.
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With More Doses, Uganda Takes Vaccination Drive to Markets
At a taxi stand by a bustling market in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, traders simply cross a road or two, get a shot in the arm and rush back to their work.Until this week, vaccination centers were based mostly in hospitals in this East African country that faced a brutal COVID-19 surge earlier this year.Now, more than a dozen tented sites have been set up in busy areas to make it easier to get inoculated in Kampala as health authorities team up with the Red Cross to administer more than 120,000 doses that will expire at the end of September.“All of this we could have done earlier, but we were not assured of availability of vaccines,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, who leads a team of scientists advising authorities on the pandemic response, speaking of vaccination spots in downtown areas. “Right now, we are receiving more vaccines and we have to deploy them as much as possible.”In addition to the 128,000 AstraZeneca doses donated by Norway at the end of August, the United Kingdom last month donated nearly 300,000 doses. China recently donated 300,000 doses of its Sinovac vaccine, and on Monday a batch of 647,000 Moderna doses donated by the United States arrived in Uganda.Suddenly Uganda must accelerate its vaccination drive. The country has sometimes struggled with hesitancy as some question the safety of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is no longer in use in Norway because of concerns over unusual blood clots in a small number of people who received it.Africa has fully vaccinated just 3.1% of its 1.3 billion people, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health officials across Africa have complained loudly of vaccine inequality and what they see as hoarding in some rich countries. Soon hundreds of millions of vaccine doses will be delivered to Africa through donations of excess doses by wealthy nations or purchases by the African Union.Africa is aiming to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by the end of 2022, a steep target given the global demand for doses. The African Union, representing the continent’s 54 countries, has ordered 400 million Johnson & Johnson doses, but the distribution of those doses will be spread out over 12 months because there simply isn’t enough supply.A nurse administers a coronavirus vaccination at Kisenyi Health Center in downtown Kampala, Uganda, Sept. 8, 2021.COVAX, the U.N.-backed program which aims to get vaccines to the neediest people in the world, said this week that its efforts continue “to be hampered by export bans, the prioritization of bilateral deals by manufacturers and countries, ongoing challenges in scaling up production by some key producers, and delays in filing for regulatory approval.”Uganda, a country of more than 44 million people, has recorded more than 120,000 cases of COVID-19, including just over 3,000 deaths, according to official figures. The country has given 1.65 million shots, but only about 400,000 people have received two doses, according to Wayengera. Uganda’s target is to fully vaccinate up to 5 million of the most vulnerable, including nurses and teachers, as soon as possible.At the Red Cross tent in downtown Kampala, demand for the jabs was high. By late afternoon only 30 of 150 doses remained, and some who arrived later were told to come back the next day.“I came here on a sure deal, but it hasn’t happened,” said trader Sulaiman Mivule after a nurse told him he was too late for a shot that day. “I will come back tomorrow. It’s easy for me here because I work in this area.”Asked why he was so eager to get his first shot, he said, “They are telling us that there could be a third wave. If it comes when we are very vaccinated, maybe it will not hurt us so much. Prevention is better than cure.”Mivule and others who spoke to the AP said they didn’t want to go to vaccination sites at hospitals because of they expected to find crowds there.Bernard Ssembatya said he had been driving by when he spotted the Red Cross’s white tent and went in for a jab on the spur of the moment. Afterward, he texted his friends about the opportunity.“I was getting demoralized by going to health centers,” he said. “You see a lot of people there and you don’t even want to try to enter.”Yet, despite enthusiasm among many, some still walked away without getting a shot when they were told their preferred vaccine was not yet available.The one-shot J&J vaccine, still unavailable in Uganda, is frequently asked for, said Jacinta Twinomujuni, a nurse with the Kampala Capital City Authority who monitored the scene.“I tell them, of course, that we don’t have it,” she said. “And they say, ‘OK, let’s wait for it.’”
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Pakistan Airline Denies Plans to Resume Flights to Kabul Monday
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) said Saturday it was “keen to restart” commercial flights from Islamabad to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, but no final decision has been made.
A spokesman for the national carrier, Abdullah Hafeez, told VOA that media reports suggesting the flight operation would resume from Monday are not correct. He explained that some entities in the Afghan capital have contacted and requested PIA to run charter flights, prompting the airline to seek permission do that.
“We had actually applied for a charter flight permission to Kabul that was taken up by media and they actually said PIA is now resuming its regular flight operation from Sept 13, which is not the case,” Hafeez clarified.
He said “certain arrangements” have to be in place before the flight operation could actually resume and those arrangements have not yet been made.” Hafeez did not elaborate further.
Meanwhile, officials said Saturday that a third flight carrying relief assistance from the Pakistani government landed in Afghanistan.Pakistan’s relief assistance in food and medicines delivered to provincial authorities of Khost for the people of Khost @SMQureshiPTI @fawadchaudhry @ForeignOfficePk @FMPublicDiploPK @PakinAfg pic.twitter.com/3doY2V3DZl— Mansoor Ahmad Khan (@ambmansoorkhan) September 11, 2021Kabul’s international airport was severely damaged during a chaotic emergency evacuation of more than 120,000 people, including American and Western nationals, that ended with the withdrawal of US forces just before midnight local time on August 30.
The Taliban, who regained power in Kabul on August 15, have been scrambling to get the airport operating again with technical assistance from Qatar and the UAE. An Afghan airline resumed domestic flights last week.
Qatar Airways has operated charter flights out of Kabul this week, carrying more than 250 foreign nationals. The passengers, including dozens of Americans, were unable to catch the chaotic emergency airlifts to leave the country.
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At Least 1 Dead, 10 Missing in Landslide Near Mexico City
A section of mountain on the outskirts of Mexico City gave way Friday, plunging rocks the size of small homes onto a densely populated neighborhood and leaving at least one person dead and 10 others missing.Firefighters scaled a three-story pile of rocks that appeared to be resting on houses in Tlalnepantla, which is part of Mexico state. The state surrounds the capital on three sides.As rescuers climbed the immense pile of debris, they occasionally raised their fists in the air, the familiar signal for silence to listen for people trapped below. Firefighters and volunteers formed bucket brigades to pass 19-liter containers of smaller debris away as they excavated.“In this moment our priority is focused on rescuing the people who unfortunately were surprised at the site of the incident,” said Tlalnepantla Mayor Raciel Pérez Cruz in a video message.Authorities had evacuated surrounding homes and asked people to avoid the area so rescuers could work.Rescuers carried a body on a stretcher covered with a sheet past AP journalists. The Mexico state Civil Defense agency said in a statement that at least 10 people were reported missing.Among the volunteers were 30-year-old construction worker Martin Carmona, 30, and his 14-year-old son. “They organized us in a chain to take out buckets of sand, stone and rubble,” Carmona said. “A coworker lives there. He has a wife and two young children under the debris.”Carmona and his son arrived to the pile before government rescuers and his friend was already there digging for his wife and kids.Neighbors began to complain that they need more help and organization.Carmona said rescuers heard children, but after two hours of removing debris, authorities told volunteers to leave the area. Only relatives stayed to help the rescuers.A boulder that plunged from a mountainside rests among homes in Tlalnepantla, on the outskirts of Mexico City, when a mountain gave way on Sept. 10, 2021.Search dogs clambered over the rubble with their handlers.Ana Luisa Borges, 39, said she lives just three houses down from those hit by the landslide.“It thundered horribly,” she said of the sound of the slide. “I grabbed my youngest son and ran out (of the house). Then came a very big cloud of dust.” Fortunately, her other four children were in school.“There are a number of houses there,” she said of the slide area. “There was a building, but they tell us there are people there and children. I saw one person come out with head injury.”Borges said they have been warned that another rock could come down and that she didn’t know where they were going to sleep tonight.“They’ve only told us that we have to leave (our homes),” she said.Tlalnepantla officials announced they were opening several shelters for displaced residents.The neighborhood is a heap of jumbled houses climbing the mountainside, many with corrugated tin roofs, separated in places by just a steep staircase.One massive boulder stopped against a two-story house barely its equal, knocking out the front wall and spilling the home’s contents into the street. A path of destruction traced uphill.Boulders that plunged from a mountainside rests among homes in Tlalnepantla, on the outskirts of Mexico City, when a mountain gave way on Sept. 10, 2021.Maximinio Andrade, who lives with his parents and siblings — 14 family members in all — near the slide walked down the steep street pushing a flat-screen television on a hand cart. He had not been home at the time of the landslide but feared thieves would enter now that the surrounding homes had been evacuated.“They’ve already started stealing from the destroyed homes,” he said.National Guard troops and rescue teams carrying lengths of rope made their way through narrow streets.Images from the area showed a segment of the steep, green side of the peak known as Chiquihuite sheared off above a field of giant rubble with closely packed homes remaining on either side.Mexico state Gov. Alfredo del Mazo said via Twitter that local, state and federal authorities were coordinating to secure the zone in case of more slides and to remove rubble to locate possible victims.The landslide follows days of heavy rain in central Mexico and a 7.0-magnitude earthquake Tuesday night near Acapulco that shook buildings 320 kilometers away in Mexico City.While visiting the scene later Friday, Del Mazo said authorities believe four homes were destroyed in the landslide and another 80 were evacuated as a precaution.“It’s likely the earthquake and the intense rain we have had in recent days have affected (the area) and for this came the landslide and the breakup of the mountain,” he said.
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Would-be Foreign Fighters Dreaming of Afghanistan
Twenty years after the al-Qaida terror group based in Afghanistan launched the Sept. 11 terror attacks against the United States, there are indications a new generation of terrorists is looking to call the country home.Seemingly encouraged by the Taliban takeover following the departure of U.S. and NATO forces, terrorists in other parts of the world are talking about making the journey, counterterrorism officials and analysts say.”There’s no doubt that the chatter is about this,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, coordinator of the United Nations team that monitors the Islamic State group, al-Qaida and the Taliban, told an online forum Friday.”There is definitely a very strong sort of sense of enthusiasm out there for Afghanistan,” he said. “The inspiration is there, people saying this is where it’s happened, this is where the U.S. has been defeated, where the West has been defeated.”Analysts, too, say talk of a new flow of terrorists to Afghanistan is picking up.”I’ve heard from a couple Southeast Asian government officials in the last 10 days or so,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Syria and Countering Terror and Extremism programs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.”One of them told me 100% of the chatter they were intercepting from known jihadist networks in their immediate region, 100% was focused on, ‘How do we get to Afghanistan?'” Lister said.”Almost all of that was focused and oriented around ISIS (the Islamic State group), not around AQ (al-Qaida) or the Taliban,” he added.U.S. officials who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence declined to comment on any specific “chatter,” but they did not minimize the potential threat.”There’s a concern,” a U.S. military official said.More broadly, U.S. officials have said they are bracing for both al-Qaida and the Islamic State group’s Afghan affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, to take advantage of the situation.”I think the nature of al-Qaida and ISIS-K is they will always attempt to find space to grow and regenerate,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a small group of reporters Thursday during a visit to Kuwait.”I think the whole (U.S. national security) community is kind of watching to see what happens and whether or not al-Qaida has the ability to regenerate in Afghanistan,” Austin added.Central Asian nations have also expressed concerns, especially about IS-Khorasan, telling Pentagon officials the group was “creating the potential for destabilization.”Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials have been paying close attention, noting IS-Khorasan has a history of being able to recruit from multiple countries in the region. Al-Qaida, IS Set to Reconstitute in Afghanistan, BeyondFear of terror revival grows as US troop withdrawThere are also doubts about the extent to which the Taliban, already aligned with al-Qaida, would be willing or capable of preventing an influx of foreign fighters, even those seeking to join with the rival Islamic State group.‘Possible’ But Unlikely: US Skeptical of Taliban Help with Counterterrorism‘Where it suits them, they’ll be aggressive,’ a US official told VOA, adding, ‘They’re not going to do it for our benefit’Complicating matters further, Afghanistan has a long history as a destination for foreign fighters.According to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, at King’s College in London, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 drew up to 20,000 foreign fighters.Even now, recent intelligence estimates from U.N. member states put the number of foreign fighters in Afghanistan at 8,000 to 10,000.@UN monitoring teams estimates 8,000-10,000 #foreignfighters still reside in #AfghanistanMost from #CentralAsia, North #Caucasus, #Pakistan & #Xiniang#ChinaMost are affiliated w/#Taliban but many support #alQaida & others #ISIS— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 3, 2021Some intelligence agencies warned that Afghanistan was already seeing a “trickle” of incoming foreign fighters earlier this year, prior to the completion of the U.S. military withdrawal.#ForeignFighters from #alQaida#ISIS in #Syria could be on the move, per @UN reportIntel suggests only “limited relocation” so far But states “concerned abt the possibility of such movement, in particular to #Afghanistan, should the environment there become more hospitable”— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) July 23, 2021Whether that trickle ever develops into more of a flow, though, remains to be seen.”I think, now, Afghanistan is a pole of attraction. … How fast that happens is another matter,” said the U.N.’s Fitton-Brown, pointing to what happened with the thousands of foreign fighters who never really left Syria and Iraq after traveling from all over the world to fight with IS until the collapse of its self-declared caliphate.”At least up until the last time we looked at this, there was still more Afghan veterans in Syria than there were Syria or Iraq veterans in Afghanistan,” he said. “In other words, the relocation effect, although it’s real, it’s probably slower than people thought it would be.”
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Taliban Allow Second Flight from Kabul
A Qatar Airways passenger flight arrived in Doha from Afghanistan Friday, the second to depart from the Kabul airport with the Taliban’s permission since the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal that ended Aug. 31. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the latest on evacuations from Afghanistan.
Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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Report: US Afghan Airstrike May Have Mistaken Aid Worker for IS Fighter
A video analysis shows the United States may have mistakenly targeted an aid worker rather than Islamic State fighters in its final strike in Afghanistan that killed 10 civilians, The New York Times said Friday. The Pentagon has said it disrupted a new attack planned by the Islamic State extremist group through a Reaper drone strike on August 29 – the day before U.S. troops ended their 20-year mission and following a devastating attack outside the airport where vast crowds rushed to leave the victorious Taliban. But Kabul resident Aimal Ahmadi earlier told AFP that the strike killed 10 civilians including his young daughter, nephews, nieces and his brother Ezmarai Ahmadi, who was driving the car that was struck after he parked. The Times, analyzing security camera footage, said the U.S. military may have been seeing Ezmarai Ahmadi and a colleague loading canisters of water, which was in short supply after the collapse of the Western-backed government, and picking up a laptop for his boss. Ezmarai Ahmadi was an electrical engineer for the California-based aid and lobbying group Nutrition and Education International and was among thousands of Afghans who had applied for resettlement in the United States, relatives said. U.S. officials say that a larger blast took place after the drone strike, showing that there were explosives in the vehicle. Probe finds no evidenceBut the Times investigation said there was no evidence of a second explosion, with only one dent on a nearby gate and no clear signs of an additional blast such as blown-out walls. Aimal Ahmadi earlier told AFP that 10 civilians were killed. U.S. officials have acknowledged three civilian deaths but argued that the hit prevented another deadly attack. Commenting on the report, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said that U.S. Central Command “continues to assess” the strike but that “no other military works harder than we do to prevent civilian casualties.” “As Chairman [Mark] Milley said, the strike was based on good intelligence, and we still believe that it prevented an imminent threat to the airport and to our men and women that were still serving at the airport,” Kirby said, referring to the top U.S. general. The Times noted that a rocket attack the following morning, claimed by the Islamic State group, was carried out from a Toyota Corolla similar to Ezmarai Ahmadi’s. More than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians have died directly from the war launched by the United States after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with casualties rising dramatically after then-President Donald Trump relaxed rules of engagement in 2017, according to a Brown University study in April.
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Brazilian Truckers’ Bolsonaro Sympathy Strike Fizzles
A protest by Brazilian truckers loyal to President Jair Bolsonaro largely fizzled out Friday, to the relief of industries that feared supply shortages.Brazil’s infrastructure minister said in a statement early Friday that there were protests along highways in three states, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Rondonia, but no roads were blocked. That compared with 16 states that had registered highway protests earlier in the week.The nation’s federal highway police said the protests “no longer present threats of partial or total blockades and are heading toward total demobilization.”Stirred up by Bolsonaro’s call to action against the Supreme Court at political rallies on Tuesday, the truck blockades gained steam on Wednesday. Earlier this week, the right-wing leader had accused the Supreme Court of preventing him from governing and called on Justice Alexandre de Moraes to step down.On Thursday, he sought to defuse the dispute and said he had told truckers to stand down, warning that if the protests continued past Sunday, it would bring about serious supply shortages.With scant rail infrastructure in Latin America’s largest country, the economy is heavily dependent on trucks and the protests threatened key export routes. A major truckers’ strike in 2018 brought activity to a standstill.Besides supporting Bolsonaro in his battle against the Supreme Court, truckers are unhappy about soaring diesel prices.Bolsonaro gained prominence in the 2018 presidential campaign with his early support for the truckers, and he has remained sympathetic to their complaints of high fuel prices.
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Afghanistan Opposition Forces Insist ‘There’s Still Hope’
Afghan forces opposed to the Taliban are insisting the fight is not over despite claims by Taliban officials that the last stronghold of the resistance is under their control.Speaking in Washington, the foreign relations chief for Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) acknowledged that the situation “isn’t as optimistic as we want it to be” after Taliban incursions into the northern Panjshir Valley, but that “there’s still hope.”“Their entrance doesn’t mean defeat,” the NRF’s Ali Nazary said Friday during a brief appearance at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy research group in Washington.”It was a tactical retreat,” he said, claiming that the NRF still controls 60% to 65% of Panjshir province.”Our fighters have retreated to the sub valleys. Our families have retreated to the sub valleys,” Nazary said. “There’s thousands of fighters right now inside Panjshir, in the neighboring districts that have the motivation and the morale to resist the Taliban and to liberate Afghanistan.”The NRF claims appeared to contradict Taliban assertions from earlier in the week that all of the Panjshir Valley was under their control and that the war for Afghanistan was over.FILE – A burned Humvee is seen along a road in Dashtak, Panjshir province, after the Taliban claimed total control over Afghanistan, saying they had won the key battle for the Panjshir Valley, Sept. 6, 2021.The NRF is led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of former Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, nicknamed the “Lion of Panjshir” for his efforts to resist Taliban rule in the 1990s.Its fighters come from the remnants of the U.S.-trained Afghan security forces and from local militias, and they suffered key losses after Taliban forces stormed the valley last week, including the deaths of spokesperson Fahim Dashti and Ahmad Massoud’s cousin, General Abdul Wadood.Still, the NRF’s Nazary on Friday remained defiant.”The short-term goal is to sustain our resistance in Afghanistan and expand,” he said. “The people have the resilience and the will to continue.”In the meantime, there also appeared to be some frustration with the Taliban in Panjshir.Massoud Vows to Fight on Despite RetreatIn an audio message on his Facebook page, resistance leader Ahmad Massoud said his forces are still present in Panjshir and will continue to fight the TalibanDespite Taliban promises to reopen roads and restore mobile phone and internet service, a number of residents said they were seeing little progress. Residents complained that telecom services were still down and that roads into the province remained blocked even as the valley faced food shortages. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem contributed to this report.
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