Democracy gone Astray: Monday, September 25, 2023

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Monday, September 25, 2023

Will the Taliban roll back two decades of public health progress in Afghanistan?

Since the Taliban retook Kabul this past Sunday, observers around the world have worried about what the religious group’s control will mean for Afghanistan’s women, its internal security, its education system, its religious minorities, and its citizens who aided the coalition occupation over the past two decades.

But relatively little attention has been paid to what the Taliban victory will mean for one of the nation’s biggest accomplishments: the sharp decline in child and maternal mortality over the past two decades.

The U.S. is sending thousands of troops to help evacuate a number of civilians from the American Embassy in Kabul, the State Department confirmed on Thursday, a move that comes as the Taliban are marching across Afghanistan and capturing key cities at surprising speed.

Although U.S. officials insisted that the embassy remained open and that the move did not amount to an abandonment of the country, it was an ominous sign of how quickly Afghanistan appears to be unraveling in the wake of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of combat troops and amid flailing peace negotiations.

It is early morning in Charkint, in the northern Balkh province of Afghanistan, but a meeting with the governor is already well under way to urgently assess the safety of the 30,000 people she represents. Salima Mazari has been in the job for just over three years, and for her, fighting the Taliban is nothing new, but since July she has been meeting with the commanders of her security forces every day as the Islamist militants’ attacks across the country increase.

As one of only three female district governors in Afghanistan, Mazari has attracted attention simply by being a woman in charge. What sets the 40-year-old apart, particularly amid the recent wave of Taliban violence, is her hands-on military leadership. “Sometimes I’m in the office in Charkint, and other times I have to pick up a gun and join the battle,” she says.

The US has said it is up to Afghan security forces to defend the country after Taliban militants captured a sixth provincial capital, along with border towns and trade routes.

Fighting in Afghanistan’s long-running conflict has escalated dramatically since May, when the US-led military coalition began the final stage of a withdrawal set to be completed before the end of the month.

Afghanistan IDPs recount escape to Kabul as Taliban tightens grip

Kabul, Afghanistan – Samia gathered her seven children, packed a few clothes and left her home in Takhar for the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the middle of the night.

All day on Saturday, her family had been hearing that the Taliban were about to take the neighbouring province of Kunduz and would soon begin their march towards Taluqan, the capital of Takhar.

By Sunday evening, the Taliban had hung their black-on-white flag in both capitals, but by then Samia was already on the road to Kabul.

The Taliban has captured the city of Sheberghan, the second Afghan provincial capital to fall to the armed group in less than 24 hours, the city’s deputy governor said.

Qader Malia, the deputy governor of Sheberghan in Jawzjan province, said on Saturday that government forces and officials had retreated to the airport on the outskirts of the northern Afghan city, where they were preparing to defend themselves.

“The city has unfortunately fallen completely,” Malia told the AFP news agency. “The [government] forces and officials have retreated to the airport.”

Taliban fighters have assassinated the Afghanistan government’s top media and information officer in the capital, Kabul, the group’s spokesman and Afghan officials said.

The killing on Friday of Dawa Khan Minapal, the head of the government media and information centre, came days after the Taliban warned it would target senior administration officials in retaliation for increased air raids.

Israeli authorities have inspected the offices of the surveillance outfit NSO Group in response to the Pegasus project investigation into abuses of the company’s spyware by several government clients.

Officials from the defence ministry visited the company’s offices near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, at the same time as the defence minister, Benny Gantz, arrived for a pre-arranged visit to Paris in which the Pegasus revelations were discussed with his French counterpart.

Kandahar, Afghanistan – Last week, Kawsar Sama and her family packed their belongings and got on a flight to the capital city of Kabul. For the 21-year-old and her family, life in the southern city of Kandahar had become dangerous as the Taliban has pushed into the districts surrounding Afghanistan’s second-largest city in recent weeks.

“It’s too risky for people to send their children to school. You’d only go to the market if you absolutely had to, and even then, so many of the stores would be shut. Life had stopped,” Sama said from her family’s temporary home in Kabul.

Emboldened by the withdrawal of US troops, they now control all key cities in the country, including Kabul.

Rapid advance in recent days

The Taliban took some areas from government by force. In other areas, the Afghan National Army withdrew without a shot being fired.

Although renewed clashes had been going on for several weeks, from 6 August the Taliban made a more rapid advance across the country, as they took control of provincial cities.

Kabul, Afghanistan – The Taliban leadership has reiterated that they want a “political settlement” to the Afghan conflict, but the swift military gains made by the group has alarmed experts and residents, who say they intend to capture power militarily.

Earlier this week, a top US military general issued a stern warning about the trajectory of the Afghan war a month before the complete withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley said on Wednesday the Taliban has “strategic momentum”. He did not rule out a complete Taliban takeover.

As the debate continues over the origins of the coronavirus, a heated political battle is taking place over virus research carried out in China using US funds.

It's linked to the unproven theory that the virus could have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where it was first detected.

A report released by Republican lawmakers cites "ample evidence" that the lab was working to modify coronaviruses to infect humans and calls for a bipartisan investigation into its origins.

Israel’s government is reportedly setting up a task force to manage the fallout from Pegasus project revelations about the use of spying tools sold to authoritarian governments by the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group.

A team including representatives from the defence ministry, ministry of justice, foreign ministry, military intelligence and the Mossad, the national intelligence agency, is poised to conduct an investigation into whether “policy changes” are needed regarding sensitive cyber exports, several Israeli media outlets reported on Tuesday night, quoting unnamed officials.

The Biden administration will begin evacuating thousands of Afghans who worked for the US government later this month, ahead of an August 31 deadline for the end of US military operations in Afghanistan.

Current and former Afghan translators, interpreters, and others who have worked with the US government in Afghanistan are facing deadly danger as the US drawdown continues and the Taliban reclaims territory once controlled by Afghan and coalition forces.

Havana, Cuba – The Cuban government held a massive rally in the early hours of Saturday morning on Havana’s Malecon, the city’s famed corniche, at the end of a week of unrest that spurred a slew of international criticism.

Crowds for the “Act of Revolutionary Reaffirmation” rally in the Cuban capital, which the government said numbered 100,000, arrived before the sun rose and spilled onto the highway near the United States embassy. Other rallies were held across the country.

The Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhunzada has said he “strenuously favours” a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan even as the group launched a sweeping offensive across the nation.

The announcement on Sunday comes as representatives of the Afghan government and Taliban armed fighters sat down for a new round of talks in Doha over the weekend, stirring hopes that the long-stalled peace talks were being resuscitated.

The ransomware hacker gang REvil’s websites are offline, about a week and a half after the group’s cyberattack on IT software vendor Kaseya allowed the criminals to breach hundreds of companies around the world.

As of Tuesday morning, the group’s public website, the dark-web portal that facilitated its ransom negotiations with victims and the site that victims used to pay those ransoms were offline.

In addition to REvil’s websites, “all of their infrastructure” used to control their hacking operations is also dark, said Allan Liska, an intelligence analyst who tracks ransomware for the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

The Taliban says it has captured the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak along the frontier with Pakistan, continuing sweeping gains made since foreign forces stepped up their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Afghan interior ministry on Wednesday, however, insisted the armed group’s attack had been repelled and government forces had control.

But Pakistani authorities confirmed to Al Jazeera that they have sealed their side of the country’s border crossing with Afghanistan at the Chaman-Spin Boldak frontier.

Taliban fighters have seized control of a key district in western Afghanistan that includes an important border crossing with Iran, Afghan security officials said, as the armed group continues its rapid military advances around the country.

In the last week, the Taliban has overrun areas bordering five countries – Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, China and Pakistan – as foreign forces end their 20-year intervention and the domestic security situation deteriorates.

The Taliban fought their way into the centre of a key western Afghan city on Wednesday and accepted the surrender of senior security officials, as militants and Afghan government representatives met in Iran for negotiations.

Insurgents attacked Qala-i-Naw, the capital of Badghis province, overnight and seized the provincial headquarters of the police and the intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), before being pushed back by special forces.

The Taliban’s rapid advance through northern Afghanistan continued on Sunday with more than a dozen districts falling to the militants, as Britain entered the final days of its two-decade deployment to Afghanistan.

More than 300 members of the Afghan security forces fled across the border into Tajikistan to escape the militants, and Badakhshan and Takhar provinces are now largely under Taliban control, beyond the respective regional capitals.

Demonstrations against the Palestinian Authority (PA) are growing across the West Bank after the death in custody of one of President Mahmoud Abbas’s biggest critics.

Several hundred people took to the streets of Ramallah, Hebron and Bethlehem for the fifth consecutive day on Monday to protest against the treatment of Nizar Banat, a social and political activist, who died during an arrest by the authority’s forces in Hebron on 24 June.

Former President Donald Trump is bronzed, rested and politically bloodthirsty.

Having spent months in semi-retirement after his election loss in 2020, Trump is set this weekend to kick off a series of political events. Aides and confidants say the goal is to boost his standing in anticipation of a possible future run and to scratch that never-soothed itch he has for publicity. But it’s also to exact some revenge.

VIENNA (AP) — Top diplomats said Sunday that further progress had been made at talks between Iran and global powers to try to restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was abandoned by the Trump administration. They said it was now up to the governments involved in the negotiations to make political decisions.

It was the first official meeting since Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief won a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election last week.

Israel's Prime Minister has said the international community should "wake up" to the election of Iran's next president, Ebrahim Raisi.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Iran's "regime of brutal hangmen" wants nuclear weapons - something Iran has repeatedly denied.

Ebrahim Raisi was declared the winner of Iran's presidential election on Saturday.

A US aircraft carrier group led by the USS Ronald Reagan has entered the South China Sea as part of a routine mission, the US Navy said, at a time of rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, which claims most of the disputed waterway.

The carrier is being accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh and the guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey, the US Navy said on Tuesday.

China frequently objects to US military missions in the South China Sea, saying they do not help promote peace or stability, and the latest mission comes after China condemned the Group of Seven (G7) nations for a statement criticising Beijing over a range of issues.

Taliban says people who worked for foreign forces in Afghanistan will be safe as long as they show “remorse” and should not leave the war-ravaged country.

“They shall not be in any danger on our part… None should currently desert the country,” a statement released by the armed group said on Monday.

“The Islamic Emirate would like to inform all the above people that they should show remorse for their past actions and must not engage in such activities in the future that amount to treason against Islam and the country.”

“It is with a heavy heart that Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir confirms an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented by the Kamloops Indian Residential School. This past weekend, with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light — the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.”

So begins an announcement released Thursday by the office of the Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, also called the Kamloops Indian Band.

The U.S. national security community is monitoring two Iranian naval vessels whose ultimate destination may be Venezuela, according to three people familiar with the situation, in what would be a provocative move at a tense moment in U.S.-Iran relations.

An Iranian frigate and the Makran, a former oil tanker that was converted to a floating forward staging base, have been heading south along the east coast of Africa, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.

Voters in government-held parts of Syria are heading to the polls to cast ballots in an election that is set to cement a fourth term for Bashar al-Assad – but is dismissed by the opposition and Western powers as a farce.

Wednesday’s presidential vote is the second since the beginning of Syria’s uprising-turned-war a decade ago, a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to leave the country. In 2014, al-Assad won nearly 89 percent of the vote.

Russia’s and China’s leaders announced the beginning of a series of joint nuclear energy projects on Monday, and touted the planned construction of several Chinese nuclear power plants with Russian technology.

The Associated Press reported that China’s state media company CCTV broadcast a joint videoconference between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who announced the joint construction of two Russian nuclear reactors at China’s Tianwan and Xudapu power facilities.

A $55m (£39m) deal struck by the government of Sierra Leone with China to build an industrial fishing harbour on 100 hectares (250 acres) of beach and protected rainforest has been criticised as “a catastrophic human and ecological disaster” by conservationists, landowners and rights groups.

The gold and black sands of Black Johnson beach fringe the African nation’s Western Area Peninsula national park, home to endangered species including the duiker antelope and pangolins. The waters are rich in sardines, barracuda and grouper, caught by local fishermen who produce 70% of the fish for the domestic market.

Palestinians have slammed social media companies for shutting down their personal accounts and censoring content about attacks on residents and activists by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

Over the past week, residents of Sheikh Jarrah, as well as Palestinian and international solidarity activists, have attended nightly vigils to support the Palestinian families under threat of forced displacement.

LONDON — G7 foreign ministers urged Beijing to refrain from ramping up “tensions” in the East and South China Seas, amid concern about open conflict with Taiwan.

In a strongly-worded communique issued after two days of face-to-face meetings in London, foreign ministers from the group of advanced economies called on China “to participate constructively in the rules-based international system.”

David Sassoli did not draft the EU’s sanctions against Russia. He hasn’t set foot in Moscow during his time as European Parliament president. And officials close to him say he wasn’t planning to go there any time soon.

Yet last Friday, Sassoli was banned from entering Russia, included on a list of eight senior European officials that Moscow issued.

Some of the names made sense. European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová, for instance, has led the EU’s campaign against Russian disinformation.

“If I don’t steal your home, someone else will steal it,” was the answer given by an Israeli settler to Muna al-Kurd, a young Palestinian woman who accused him of stealing her home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in the occupied East Jerusalem.

The dialogue, captured on video by Palestinian activist Tamer Maqalda on Saturday, shows 23-year-old al-Kurd confronting the settler in the garden of her family home.

In the video, al-Kurd is heard telling the settler in English: “Jacob, you know that this is not your home.”

An increasingly powerful China is challenging the world order, acting “more repressively” at home and “more aggressively” overseas as it tests its growing influence, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, in an interview on US television.

“What we’ve witnessed over the last several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact,” Blinken said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday.

MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors on Monday suspended the activities of Alexei Navalny’s political organization ahead of a court ruling that could see the Kremlin critic’s movement branded “extremist.”

Documents shared by Navalny’s legal team state that his organization will not be allowed to publish material online, hold gatherings or participate in elections.

The Israeli military has carried out strikes targeting Hamas positions in the besieged Gaza Strip as evening clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians continued in Jerusalem.

Palestinian news agency Maan said Israeli army tanks near the fortified fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel launched attacks towards the enclave on Saturday. No injuries were reported.

The Israeli army said it hit underground infrastructure and rocket launchers in Gaza “in response to rockets fired at Israel throughout the night”.

Ukraine said Friday that more must be done to ease tensions in the eastern part of the country after Russia withdrew its troops following a military buildup on its side of the border.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement that the troop drawdown was welcome but did little to curb ongoing violence between Ukraine’s military and pro-Russia separatists in the Donbass region.

The future looked unspeakably grim for Alexei Navalny’s supporters before this week’s protests. Their charismatic leader was in prison and by his doctors’ accounts near death while the Kremlin was threatening to outlaw his entire movement. Sensing a looming apocalypse, one aide dubbed the protest: “The final battle between normal people and absolute evil.”

What followed was surprisingly normal: a core of tens of thousands of Navalny supporters rallied near the Kremlin, waving mobile phone torches and chanting “Putin is a thief!” The police stood back in Moscow (there was a violent crackdown in St Petersburg). For an evening, the crowd roved the streets of the capital at will.

After weeks of tension over a build-up of Russian troops close to Ukraine's border, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered a number of units in the area back to their bases.

The EU estimated that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers had amassed near the border as well as in Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014.

Speaking in Crimea, Mr Shoigu said units on exercise would return to base.

Russian police rounded up nearly 1,800 protesters on Wednesday, according to a monitoring group, as supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny took to the streets to participate in rallies sparked by reports of his failing health in prison.

Allies of President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken opponent, who began a hunger strike three weeks ago over his alleged mistreatment by prison authorities, fear he could soon die and have demanded he is given proper medical care.

JERUSALEM — A missile launched from Syria was fired into southern Israel early Thursday, setting off air raid sirens near the country’s top-secret nuclear reactor, the Israeli military said. In response, it said it attacked the missile launcher and air-defense systems in neighboring Syria.

The incident, marking the most serious violence between Israel and Syria in years, pointed to likely Iranian involvement. Iran, which maintains troops and proxies in Syria, has accused Israel of a series of attacks on its nuclear facilities, including sabotage at its Natanz nuclear facility on April 11, and vowed revenge. It also threatened to complicate U.S.-led attempts to revive the international nuclear deal with Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the West not to cross a "red line" with Russia, saying such a move would trigger an "asymmetrical, rapid and harsh" response.

The warning came in his annual state of the nation address, amid heightened tension with the West over Ukraine and jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny.

Mr Putin said Western powers were constantly trying to "pick on" Russia.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine simmered on Wednesday, as Moscow accused Kyiv and NATO of continuing military preparations amid heightened concern over possible hostilities in the conflict-stricken Donbas region.

Russia’s foreign ministry called on Ukraine and the transatlantic security alliance, which counts Kyiv as an ally, to refrain from actions that could lead to escalation, Russia’s RIA news agency reported.

Kyiv and Moscow have traded blame over increasing clashes in the Donbas, where Ukrainian troops have battled Russian-backed separatist forces since the rebels seized a swath of territory there in April 2014.

PRAGUE — The Czech Republic’s dramatic accusation that Russian intelligence agents were responsible for a deadly 2014 warehouse blast is threatening to destabilize relations between the two countries.

Already, the Czech government has announced it is expelling 18 Russian diplomats over the incident, which left two people dead. But more broadly, the country is showing hesitancy about some plans that would have brought the two countries closer.

Popular Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny could be just days from death following mysterious pains and a hunger strike in a notorious prison, his supporters warned Saturday.

“Alexei is dying ... it’s a question of days,” Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on Facebook.

“It’s totally, totally unfair, and totally inappropriate,” President Joe Biden told reporters Saturday when asked about Navalny’s situation.

The head of a doctors alliance posted the results of Navalny’s blood tests on Twitter, saying they indicate kidney damage that could lead to heart failure, Bloomberg reported.

Navalny, 44, returned to his home country in January after he was treated in a German hospital for nerve-agent poisoning, believed by American intelligence to have been carried out by Russia’s Federal Security Service.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Saturday that Russia briefly detained one of its diplomats in St Petersburg, marking the latest instance of tension between the two countries.

According to Reuters, Oleksandr Sosoniuk was detained shortly after a meeting with a Russian citizen, with Russia accusing the Ukrainian official of attempting to get classified information from Russian databases.

Ukraine’s foreign minister has accused Russia of flagrantly threatening Ukraine with destruction as fears continue to rise over a possible escalation of hostilities in the country’s conflict-stricken east.

Fighting has intensified in recent weeks in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Lugansk regions, where government forces have battled Russian-backed separatists since April 2014 after the rebels seized a swath of territory there.