Afghanistan US departure plan criticized by Putin

Concerned about potential security threats for Russia, Vladimir Putin speaks out about the debacle U.S. President Joe Biden has allowed to happen in Afghanistan. Putin says the U.S. withdrawal, and the chaos that is erupting, could embolden militants to strike out at Russia and its allies in Central Asia. The Associated Press has the story:

Putin assures the world press that Russia has no intentions of interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized the United States and its allies for leaving Afghanistan in chaos that raises potential security threats for Russia and its allies in Central Asia.

Addressing Tuesday’s meeting of the main Kremlin party, United Russia, Putin noted that militants could use the turmoil to destabilize the ex-Soviet Central Asian nations bordering Afghanistan.

“There is a danger that terrorists and different groups that found a refuge in Afghanistan will use the chaos left by our Western colleagues and try to launch an expansion into neighboring countries,” Putin said. “That will pose a direct threat to our country and its allies.”

At the same time, Putin noted that Moscow has learned the lessons of the 10-year Soviet war in Afghanistan and will stay away from turmoil in Afghanistan.

“We have drawn the necessary lessons,” Putin said. “We don’t have any intention to interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs and, moreover, let our military forces be drawn into the all-against-all conflict.”

He added that a possible rise in drug trafficking and the exacerbation of problems with migration could also pose threats to Russia.

Moscow, which fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with the Soviet troops’ withdrawal in 1989, has made a diplomatic comeback as a mediator over the past few years, reaching out to the Taliban and other feuding Afghan factions.

MORE ON THE CRISIS IN AFGHANISTAN:

— At-risk Afghans fearing Taliban hunker down, wait to leave

— G-7 grapples with Afghanistan, an afterthought not long ago

— UN rights chief warns of abuses amid Taliban’s Afghan blitz

— Taliban takeover prompts fears of a resurgent al-Qaida

— US troops surge evacuations out of Kabul but threats persist

HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

BERLIN — The German military says it is concerned by the growing risk of attacks by the Islamic State group in Kabul.

Germany’s top military commander, Gen. Eberhard Zorn, told reporters Tuesday that “the threat has further increased.”

“We have signals both from American sources as well as our own assessment, that there is an increase of (IS) suicide bombers (slipping) into the city,” he said.

“That’s increasing and leads to heightened precautions,” he added.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said she takes seriously the Taliban threat not to allow any foreign troops to remain beyond Aug. 31.

“I think one needs to take very, very seriously the announcement that they won’t agree to a further delay,” she said. She added the threat could also be an attempt by the group to “drive up the price” in negotiations with foreign officials.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The Dutch military is halting shooting exercises at one of its firing ranges because the facility will be used to house Afghans evacuated from Kabul.

The Defense Ministry said Tuesday that shooting training at the Harskamp military base is suspended until further notice.

The first Afghan evacuees are expected to arrive later Tuesday in Harskamp, a large military base in the forests of the Veluwe region of the central Netherlands.

Military exercises are continuing near the first Dutch army base opened to house Afghan evacuees, in a northern village, but shooting has been suspended there, too.

The military says that evacuees will hear almost nothing of the exercises at the base in the northern village of Zoutcamp.

The Defense Ministry has opened three barracks to evacuees. So far, around 1,000 people have been brought to two accommodation centers, which are already nearly full.

The Harskamp base will house a further 800 Afghans.

A Taliban spokesman says the U.S. must complete its evacuation of people from Afghanistan by the Aug. 31 date the Biden administration set for the withdrawal of all American troops.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday his group will accept “no extensions” to the deadline. He says life is returning to normal in the country but chaos at the airport remains a problem. Many Afghans are desperate to flee the Taliban takeover of the country.

Mujahid says he is “not aware” of any meeting between the Taliban and the CIA, but he did not deny that such a meeting took place. An official says the director of the U.S. agency met with the Taliban’s top political leader in Kabul on Monday.

ANKARA, Turkey — Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says Turkey has so far evacuated 1,404 people from Afghanistan — 1,061 of them Turkish nationals and 343 nationals of “various countries.”

“Because of our (troops’) presence at the airport, many countries, international organizations or NGOs have asked our help in evacuating their personnel,” Cavusoglu told reporters Tuesday. “We have been providing assistance to them together with the United States and Britain.”

Cavusoglu said that there were some 4,500 Turkish nationals in Afghanistan but only around 200 are still waiting to be evacuated.

“We have contacted each one of them. … An important number of them said they did not want to return,” Cavusoglu said, explaining that they included people who had businesses or jobs in Afghanistan or were married to Afghans.

“We of course, respect their decision but we have also made the necessary suggestions and warnings,” he said.

ROME — Italy’s foreign minister is warning allies against concentrating on blaming the U.S. administration for the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense commissions on Tuesday that while such finger-pointing “is coming into fashion” in European public opinion, it risks weakening the traditionally solid trans-Atlantic alliance. Those engaged in assigning blame should “be aware that if this alliance ends, there is no other” to replace it, Di Maio said.

“After the Americans leave Kabul airport — the date hypothesized for now is at the end of the month — it won’t be in any case possible, not for us, nor for any country in the Alliance, to maintain any kind of presence” in Afghanistan, Di Maio said.

Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini told lawmakers that so far 2,659 Afghan citizens, about a third of them children, have been evacuated by Italy. Another 1,000 people were waiting inside the airport for flights to Italy.

Italy is using its current leadership of the G-20 grouping to involve world powers, especially China and Russia, to try to build consensus on strategy toward Afghanistan.

The rapidly unfolding crisis in Afghanistan has forced Italy to suspend aid cooperation agreements. But “we don’t intend to interrupt humanitarian aid” where conditions permit, Di Maio said. He said assistance would be funneled through the International Red Cross and U.N. agencies, especially for women and other vulnerable people.

At the request of the United States, Italy is also allowing temporary transit of evacuees on U.S. flights through military bases in Sicily and northern Italy.

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Russia’s foreign minister says he opposes the placement of any U.S. military forces in countries neighboring Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the country and its subsequent takeover by the Taliban.

Speaking at a press conference in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, Sergei Lavrov said the presence of U.S. soldiers in Central Asian countries bordering Afghanistan would create instability in the region, and make those countries a “target” for potential attacks.

“This is not the right way to preserve stability in those countries,” Lavrov said.

HELSINKI — Finland says it has now evacuated over 200 people from Afghanistan, including permanent staff and locally hired employees working for the Nordic country’s embassy in Kabul with their families.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto tweeted on Tuesday that Finland’s most recent evacuation on Monday included also 40 persons from the European Union delegations in Afghanistan.

He said that the majority of those evacuated from Afghanistan were women and children, and that the evacuation effort was continuing this week.

On Friday, Finland sent a few dozen of its special unit soldiers to Afghanistan to help safeguard evacuations at the airport in Kabul.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto urged the international community in a speech in Helsinki on Tuesday to take notice of “the acute human distress” unfolding in Afghanistan. He expressed concerns over the situation of women and girls and “other groups in a vulnerable position” in the country, including locally hired employees of foreign embassies.

“We have a specific responsibility for the security of the locally hired people who have enabled our (Finland’s) own operations in Afghanistan over the past years,” the Finnish head of state said.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea says it has sent three military aircraft to Afghanistan and an unspecified nearby country to evacuate Afghans who worked for its embassy in Kabul and other South Korean-run facilities.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday did not confirm how many people will be evacuated. On Sunday, Song Young-gil, lawmaker and leader of South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party, said the Seoul government should evacuate some 400 Afghans who were involved in South Korean rebuilding projects in Afghanistan.

Apart from embassy staff and their families, the South Korean planes will pick up Afghans who worked for a South Korean-run hospital at the U.S. military’s Bagram Airfield before the facility closed in 2015 and a South Korean-run job training center, the ministry said.

BERLIN — A German army officer trying to help Afghans at risk from the Taliban to flee their country has launched a blistering attack on Germany’s evacuation efforts.

Cpt. Marcus Grotian told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that he was “overwhelmed by disbelief at the way Germany’s governing parties and politicians disregarded warnings” about the Taliban advance and accused Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office of failing to step in when needed.

Grotian, who heads a network of volunteers trying to help locals who worked for German institutions in Afghanistan, said some 6,000 Afghans are still waiting to be evacuated and many likely won’t make it.

“There will be many, too many human tragedies to come,” he said. “That’s absolutely clear.”

Grotian accused German officials of creating a dysfunctional bureaucracy that is making incomprehensible decisions about who can board evacuation flights and who can’t.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a person who was never on a list is let through, sometimes a person who has been on our lists or those of the military command for six weeks is still turned away,” he said.

Grotian recounted one incident earlier Tuesday in which an Afghan woman who had worked for Germany’s foreign development agency four years ago was barred from entering Kabul airport.

He said the mixed messages being sent to Afghans by German bureaucrats would likely mean some will miss other opportunities to leave the country because they are still waiting for Germany to evacuate them.

“Everyone who has worked for Germans must now be let through, because there won’t be many more chances,” said Grotian. “They’ve been rejected three times, some of them four. There may not be a fifth when the planes don’t fly anymore.”

 

PARIS — French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said an Afghan evacuated from Kabul to Paris and suspected of links to the Taliban was detained by French police on Tuesday.

The man is one of five Afghans placed under strict surveillance by France’s intelligence agency for possible links to the Taliban. The five men were required to stay in a hotel in the Paris region for a quarantine, as are all evacuees who arrive in France without having been fully vaccinated.

“One left the place where he was asked to stay” and police arrested him, Darmanin said on news broadcaster France Info.

Of the other four men, one “was obviously linked to the Taliban,” Darmanin said. “But he helped the French army a lot, the French (nationals), your fellow journalists, more than a hundred Afghans who had visas and could not get out from the embassy.” The French Embassy has served as a shelter for hundreds of people before they were transferred to the Kabul airport, where the French ambassador and a reduced staff now work.

The man admitted to belonging to the Taliban and to bearing arms at a blockade in Kabul that was under his responsibility.

Darmanin said the security checks were done in Abu Dhabi, where the French have transferred evacuees before the onward journey to Paris.

“There was no breach,” he said.

Darmanin said France has evacuated over 1,000 Afghans from Kabul over the past week, including a large majority of Afghans who worked with the French government or French groups in the country.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A second person who had been deported from Denmark to Afghanistan, and who returned to the Scandinavian country on an evacuation plane from Kabul, has been arrested.

Danish police said Tuesday on Twitter that the man faces preliminary charges of violating an entry ban. Preliminary charges are one step short of formal charges.

On Sunday, a 23-year-old man was recognized by police for being member of an outlawed criminal gang when he tried to sneak back into Denmark. He too arrived on an evacuation plane from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country.

Because of the situation in Afghanistan, Denmark is no longer deporting people to that country.

Denmark’s Defense Minister Trine Bramsen said another 50 persons have been evacuated out of Kabul. A Danish Hercules C-130 flew them out Tuesday, with Bramsen saying that so far a total of about 850 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan.

In neighboring Sweden, Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Monday evening that 55 people — mainly Swedish Embassy employees and their families — had been flown out of Kabul, bringing the total number of evacuees to 225.

WARSAW, Poland — Officials say that Poland has evacuated over 750 people from Afghanistan and a few dozen more are waiting at the Kabul airport for the air transport to Poland, but time is running out on the possibility of evacuation.

A deputy foreign minister, Marcin Przydacz, said on Tuesday that majority of those who cooperated with Poland’s diplomatic mission have been evacuated and the waiting list is getting shorter. However, there are still a number of families and mothers with children whom the authorities want to bring to Poland for security reasons, Przydacz said.

But the logistics and the conditions of the evacuation are challenging, he added.

Top government official, Michal Dworczyk, tweeted an appeal for help in locating the family of 13-year-old Fawad who got separated from his relatives during an “attempted evacuation” from Kabul. It was not immediately clear if Fawad has been brought to Poland. Fawad’s photo was posted on Dworczyk’s Twitter account.

BEIJING — China says the international community should support chances for positive developments in Afghanistan rather than impose sanctions on the Taliban.

“The international community should encourage and promote the development of the situation in Afghanistan in a positive direction, support peaceful reconstruction, improve the well-being of the people and enhance its capacity for independent development,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters at a daily briefing on Tuesday.

“Imposing sanctions and pressure at every turn cannot solve the problem and will only be counterproductive,” Wang said.

China, which shares a narrow border with Afghanistan, has seized on the ugly scenes at Kabul airport to redouble its harsh criticism of U.S. actions in the country, particularly its attempt to install a Western-style democracy. Beijing has kept open its embassy in Kabul and sought to maintain friendly relations with the Taliban.

KABUL — Afghanistan’s Hazaras, a Shiite minority, are calling on the Taliban to set up an inclusive government in which all ethnic groups would have a voice.

Shiite leader Sayed Hussain Alimi Balkhi said the country’s Shiite clerics have issued a declaration stating that a future parliament in Afghanistan should include members of different sects of Islam.

He asked for freedom of religion under an Islamic government and asked that there be separate courts for Shiites that follow Jafari jurisprudence, “in accordance with the provisions of law.”

The Shiite concerns come as the Taliban negotiating team in Qatar has been was insisting on implementation of Islamic law, and specifically Hanafi laws which are a major school of Sunni jurisprudence, in the laws and the constitution of Afghanistan.

The Taliban are a Sunni militant group.

LONDON — Britain says it has evacuated 8,600 U.K. citizens and Afghans from Kabul in recent days, 2,000 of them in the last 24 hours.

But Defense Secretary Ben Wallace conceded that “we’re not going to get everybody out of the country” before the U.S.-led mission ends on Aug. 31.

Britain and other allies are pressing President Joe Biden to extend the evacuation past the end-of-the-month date agreed with the Taliban. But Wallace told Sky News it’s unlikely Biden will agree.

The government said one of the evacuees on a British plane turned out to be a person on a U.K. no-fly list. Wallace said the individual was identified on arrival in Britain was investigated and judged “not a person of interest” to security services.

BERLIN — Prominent Afghan women’s rights activist Zarifa Ghafari has arrived in Germany together with her family members.

Ghafari landed at Cologne/Bonn airport late on Monday after fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan last week.

Armin Laschet, the governor of Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state who met Ghafari, said it was important to help as many women as possible to leave Afghanistan in the coming days, Germany’s dpa news agency reported.

Ghafari became the mayor of the Afghan town of Maidan Shahr in 2018, at the age of 26.

She was a recipient of the the U.S. State Department’s 2020 International Women of Courage award. According to the State Department, she has survived at least six assassination attempts.

GENEVA — Switzerland’s foreign affairs office says a charter flight has arrived in Zurich with 219 people who were evacuated from Afghanistan on board.

The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs says the flight from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, landed early Tuesday, carrying 141 Afghans who worked with the Swiss department of development and cooperation in Afghanistan or their families and relatives.

Another 78 people from Afghanistan, Germany and Sweden were also on the flight.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that an inclusive political settlement is the best way forward for peace and stability in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover. Pakistan fully supports efforts in that direction, he added.

According to a foreign ministry statement, Shah Mahmood Qureshi made the remarks in a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, about the situation in Afghanistan.

The statement says Qureshi told Lavrov that a peaceful and stable Afghanistan was of critical importance for Pakistan and the region. It said Qureshi informed Lavrov about Pakistan’s outreach to regional countries for consultations on the challenges arising out of developments in Afghanistan.

The statement quoted Qureshi as also saying that Pakistan is facilitating the evacuation of foreigners stranded in Afghanistan. Qureshi is expected to leave for Uzbekistan later Tuesday on a visit during which he will also travel to Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran to discuss Afghan developments.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide says the evacuation deadline in Afghanistan should be extended beyond Aug. 31.

“One of a main concern is that the airport will be closed,” Eriksen Soereide told Norwegian broadcaster TV2 on Tuesday morning. “The civilian part is closed now, so we are completely dependent on the US military operation being maintained in order to be able to evacuate.”

She spoke as a plane with 157 people who had been evacuated from Afghanistan landed in Oslo. So far Norway has evacuated 374 people from Afghanistan.

“There is no guarantee that we will be able to help all Norwegian citizens who want assistance this time around,” she told Norway’s other broadcaster NRK, adding Norway will continue the evacuation as long as the airport in Kabul is open.

In neighboring Sweden, Foreign Minister Ann Linde said that she too could not guarantee that they can help all those who want to get out.

CANBERRA, Australia — Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said that Australia has helped evacuate more than 1,600 people from the Kabul airport in 17 flights since last Wednesday.

“We have achieved this by working very closely with the United States and the United Kingdom, among other nations,” Andrews told Parliament on Tuesday.

The evacuated people include Australian citizens, Afghan nationals who had worked for the Australian government during the 20-year conflict and other countries’ nationals. The Australian government has not said how many people it planned to evacuate from Afghanistan.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison had earlier said Australian and New Zealand officials had evacuated more than 650 people from the airport over Monday night.

Morrison said that five flights had left the airport in the busiest day of Australian involvement in evacuations since the Taliban took control of the country. One of the flights was a New Zealand military aircraft.

Morrison told Nine Network television that the evacuated people included Australians, New Zealanders and Afghans.

 

By The Associated Press undefined

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