Rabu, 14 April 2021
US plan to leave Afghanistan “risks civil war” - BBC News - BBC News
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2021-04-14 21:23:26Z
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Daunte Wright shooting - latest: Kim Potter’s mugshot released as ex-police officer faces manslaughter charges - The Independent
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- Daunte Wright shooting - latest: Kim Potter’s mugshot released as ex-police officer faces manslaughter charges The Independent
- Daunte Wright death: Ex-cop who fatally shot black motorist during traffic stop charged with manslaughter Sky News
- Officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright charged with manslaughter The Guardian
- MN police leader on Daunte Wright: 'If he would've just complied' Bring Me The News
- Daunte Wright rioters burn down police building and force cop Kimberly Potter to flee her home after... The Sun
- View Full coverage on Google News
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2021-04-14 20:58:18Z
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Biden speech - live: President announces all US troops will leave Afghanistan by September - The Independent
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- Biden speech - live: President announces all US troops will leave Afghanistan by September The Independent
- Afghans face pivotal moment as US prepares to 'close the book' BBC News
- Joe Biden: It's time for American troops to come home from Afghanistan Guardian News
- Trump could gain from Biden's decision to delay withdrawing from Afghanistan NBC News
- History will cast a shadow over Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan The Washington Post
- View Full coverage on Google News
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2021-04-14 20:28:11Z
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Daunte Wright death: Ex-cop who fatally shot black motorist during traffic stop charged with manslaughter - Sky News
A former police officer who fatally shot a black motorist during a traffic stop in Minnesota has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, a prosecutor has said.
The incident, which saw Daunte Wright, 20, die unfolded on Sunday just over 10 miles from where George Floyd died last year.
Kim Potter, the officer who fired the shot, resigned after 26 years in the police, as has police chief Tim Gannon.
The city of Minnesota is currently experiencing a period of high tension as Derek Chauvin stands trial for the murder of Mr Floyd.
Following Mr Wright's death, there were days of protests in the Brooklyn Center area of Minneapolis.
Potter will be charged with second-degree manslaughter, and is facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
The body camera footage of the moment Mr Wright was shot was released by Mr Gannon.
It shows Potter approaching Mr Wright as he was being arrested by another officer for an outstanding warrant.
Police say that the 20-year-old was initially pulled over for having expired number plates.
As Wright struggles with police, Potter can be heard shouting: "I'll tase you! I'll tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!" before firing a single shot from her pistol.
Protesters and Mr Wright's family have rubbished the explanation given by Mr Gannon, who said he believed that Potter drew the firearm while trying to get her Taser out.
They say there was no excuse for the shooting and the incident shows how the justice system is biased against black people.
President Joe Biden has called or a "full-blown investigation" and urged people to remain peaceful.
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2021-04-14 18:23:19Z
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Daunte Wright: Shooting of our son was no mistake, say parents - The Times
The family of a black man killed by police in a Minneapolis suburb have rejected claims that the officer shot him accidentally.
The death of Daunte Wright, 20, on Sunday has led to violence and looting this week in Brooklyn Center, in the north of the city, and 53 arrests. The officer involved, Kimberly Potter, a veteran with 26 years of service, resigned from the force yesterday, as did Tim Gannon, the local police chief.
Protesters have ignored a dusk-to-dawn curfew, throwing rocks and bags of rubbish at police. Some used leaf-blowers to repel the tear gas fired by heavily armed officers, who responded with rubber bullets and flash bombs.
Heavily armed police confronted demonstrators in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis
JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
Last night, demonstrators clashed with police outside the Brooklyn Center police station for the
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2021-04-14 08:00:00Z
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Afghans face pivotal moment as US prepares to 'close the book' - BBC News
"We need to close the book on a 20-year war," is how a US official put it when he broke the news on Tuesday that the last US troops would be out of Afghanistan by 11 September.
Two decades on, what does this "book" say about the country that some 10,000 US-led Nato forces will soon leave behind?
It's a dramatically different country than the shattered land and pariah state of the Taliban toppled in the US-led invasion of 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.
But this withdrawal window is decisive. It could accelerate a push towards peace, or a descent into violence that shreds the more open society which has been taking root - however slowly and unevenly - over the past two decades.
"The best possible outcome to expect is that this withdrawal timeline serves as a catalyst and a mechanism to pressure Afghan parties to reach a political settlement by September or face a bloody Syrian-style civil war," warns Tamim Asey, Executive Chairman of the Institute of War and Peace Studies in Kabul.
Few would have expected this last chapter of the US military mission to read like this: a triumphal Taliban poised to return to power on the battlefield or through peace talks where they hold most of the cards; much-vaunted "gains" slipping away by the day in a wave of targeted killings of the educated, active, and ambitious lifeblood of an emerging society.
Many Afghans now fear a terrible tumbling towards civil war in a conflict already described as one of the most violent in the world.
"I worry most when timelines are attached to their pullout, but not conditions," regrets an Afghan human rights activist. "The Taliban will just wait them out and won't get into substantive issues."
It's a view echoed by others.
"I wish President Biden had conditioned the troop withdrawal timeline with zero killings on the ground by all parties between May and September," reflects Orzala Nemat, director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).
But the senior administration official who briefed journalists on the pullout was adamant: "The president has judged that a conditions-based approach, which has been the approach of the past two decades, is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever."
There's also a pledge to "use our full toolkit to ensure the future that the Afghan people are seeking has the best chance of coming about".
But Washington's best bargaining chip has been its military might. The departure of all foreign troops now bolstering Afghan government forces has been the Taliban's single-minded pursuit as their fighters keep inching back, district by district, across a growing number of provinces.
There were no good options on President Joe Biden's desk when he inherited last year's US Taliban deal which committed Washington to a 1 May troop pullout in exchange for Taliban security guarantees and a vaguer commitment to reduce violence and pursue peace talks.
The security of the United States - the reason that first brought its troops in - had to be a deciding factor. And other Nato forces are expected to follow the US lead.
"This is not 2001, it is 2021," was how a senior US official replied when questioned about the continuing threat posed by groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State which still have a presence in Afghanistan.
"We judge the threat against the homeland now emanating from Afghanistan to be at a level we can address without a persistent military footprint in the country and without remaining at war with the Taliban."
"The decision was always going to come down to a broader political judgment about American interests writ large and from that perspective, the decision makes sense," says Laurel Miller, director of the Asia Programme at the International Crisis Group and a former US State Department official.
But regret quickly creeps in.
"It's a tragedy that the US didn't get serious about trying to stitch together a peace process in Afghanistan much earlier, before the thread ran out," comments Miller, who had been involved in some of the first tentative efforts exploring negotiated solutions.
Now it's the seriousness of Afghan leaders, on all sides of this conflict, which is paramount.
"The voices of the Afghan people are very clear and unified in calling for peace, justice, and the preservation of national and democratic values," emphasises Nemat of AREU. "But the political elite are still trying to maximise their share of power in a power-grabbing opportunity just like 1992."
History throws a long dark shadow in Afghanistan. Many of the same power brokers and warlords who turned their guns on each other in a frenzy of infighting after the Soviet troop pullout of 1988 have been given pride of place in a new negotiating process which has been taking shape.
There's an argument that only they have the clout to strike a deal with the Taliban. But there's also anxiety that they can't and won't speak for the Afghanistan of 2021 including victims of war crimes, women's activists, and broader civil society.
There's a jumble of peace plans from political rivals, including a grand blueprint from President Ashraf Ghani's office. A High Council for National Reconciliation has to first reconcile competing perspectives in Kabul.
As for the Taliban, they're still fixated on the US's broken pledge to pull out completely by 1 May.
"Until all foreign forces completely withdraw from our homeland, the Islamic Emirate will not participate in any conference that shall make decisions about Afghanistan," announced Taliban spokesman Dr Mohammed Naeem in a Twitter post a few hours after news of the US decision broke.
The conference in question now is a "high level and inclusive conference" hosted by Turkey, Qatar, and the United Nations, set for Istanbul on 24 April. It's a crucial piece in the Biden administration's new Afghan jigsaw. The UN is being brought centre stage as efforts are stepped up to jump-start peace talks as well as forge a consensus among regional powers, each with their own Afghan proxies.
In the Gulf state of Qatar, where teams of Taliban and Afghan government negotiators have been meeting on and off since September, some Taliban were heard using the English idiom "the ball's now in our court" in reaction to news of a delayed US pullout. They've always insisted they're in pursuit of peace.
"The Taliban leadership has shown no sign of wanting peace, and every sign of wanting to pursue a route to power through war," assesses Kate Clark, Co-Director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
The traditional "fighting season" looms amid reports of a blistering Taliban campaign in store; Afghan government forces are also braced for battle.
"Who preserves the gains of the last 20 years if there's worsening civil war or where the Taliban capture territory?" asks Clark. "Where there's conflict, freedoms evaporate; where the Taliban rule they are as authoritarian as before, and few girls go to school above primary age in Taliban-controlled areas."
Mindful of this hot button issue, the US is at pains to point it will "work with other countries using diplomatic, economic, and humanitarian tools to protect the gains made by Afghan women".
"Biden wants to get out of the Afghan war, but not Afghanistan," says Asey of the Institute of War and Peace Studies in an effort to present a brave face at this pivotal juncture.
As the US seeks to "close the book" on its longest war, Afghan minds are now sharply focused on the next chapter of their own longer war without end.
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2021-04-14 04:24:56Z
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Selasa, 13 April 2021
US says troops to leave Afghanistan by 11 September - BBC News
US President Joe Biden is set to announce that American troops will leave Afghanistan by 11 September, officials have told US media.
The US would miss a May deadline for a pull-out agreed with the Taliban by the Trump administration last year.
The new deadline would coincide with the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the US in 2001.
Mr Biden had previously said the 1 May deadline would be tough to meet.
US and Nato officials have said the Taliban, a hardline Islamist movement, have so far failed to live up to commitments to reduce violence.
The Taliban have been warned that if they attack US troops during the pull-out phase, they "will be met with a forceful response", said a senior administration official who was briefing reporters.
Mr Biden had decided a hasty withdrawal that would put US forces at risk was not a viable option, the official added.
At the same time, a review of US choices determined that now was the time to close the book on the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan to focus on more acute threats.
Mr Biden is due to make the announcement himself on Wednesday.
Boost for the Taliban?
By Secunder Kermani, Afghanistan correspondent
Many here will see this decision as a boost to the Taliban, despite it being a breach of the 1 May deadline the insurgents have insisted is adhered to. It seems unlikely they would now resume attacks on American forces given the short extension period; nevertheless, the Taliban reaction so far has been hostile.
Some in the Afghan government had hoped the new Biden administration would adopt a more "conditions-based" approach to the peace process. Instead, that has been explicitly ruled out.
The slow pace of talks between Afghan and Taliban negotiators so far suggests it will be difficult to reach a power-sharing arrangement before US troops are withdrawn. Perhaps the Taliban's desire for international legitimacy will lead them to compromise.
But many fear the Taliban will be tempted to wait out the withdrawal, and then push for outright victory or at least dominance. The Afghan government has until now remained reliant on US air strikes to help hold the insurgents back.
The Taliban said on Tuesday that it will now not attend a summit on Afghanistan's future, due to be held in Turkey later this month, until all foreign forces leave the country.
"Until all foreign forces completely withdraw from our homeland, [we] will not participate in any conference that shall make decisions about Afghanistan," Mohammad Naeem, spokesman for the Taliban office in Qatar, tweeted.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin are expected to brief Nato allies on the decision in the Belgian capital, Brussels, on Wednesday.
The United States has spent trillions of dollars and lost more than 2,000 service members since 2001 in what has been its longest war.
The deal signed in February last year said the US and its Nato allies would withdraw all troops in 14 months if the Taliban upheld its promises, including not allowing al-Qaeda or other militants to operate in areas it controlled and proceeding with national peace talks.
As a condition of starting negotiations with the Afghan government, the Taliban also demanded the release of thousands of their men in a prisoner swap.
Direct talks then began in Doha in September 2020, but a breakthrough has still not been reached.
Although the group stopped attacks on international forces as part of the historic agreement, it has continued to fight the Afghan government.
Last month, the Taliban threatened to resume hostilities against foreign troops still in the country on 1 May.
There are fears that if foreign military forces withdraw before a lasting agreement is reached, the Taliban might seize power.
The US has some 2,500 troops in the country as part of a 9,600-strong Nato mission.
US military involvement in Afghanistan
October 2001: US-led bombing of Afghanistan begins following the 11 September attacks on the United States
February 2009: Nato countries pledge to increase military and other commitments in Afghanistan after US announces dispatch of 17,000 extra troops
December 2009: US President Barack Obama decides to boost US troop numbers in Afghanistan by 30,000, bringing total to 100,000. He says US will begin withdrawing its forces by 2011
October 2014: The US and UK end their combat operations in Afghanistan
March 2015: President Obama announces his country will delay its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, following a request from President Ashraf Ghani
October 2015: President Obama announces that 9,800 US troops will remain in Afghanistan until the end of 2016, backtracking on an earlier pledge to pull all but 1,000 troops from the country
July 2016: President Obama says 8,400 US troops will remain in Afghanistan into 2017 in light of the "precarious security situation". Nato also agrees to maintain troop numbers and reiterates a funding pledge for local security forces until 2020
August 2017: US President Donald Trump says he's sending more troops to fight a resurgent Taliban
September 2019: Protracted peace talks between the Taliban and the US break down
February 2020: After months of on-off talks, the US signs a troop withdrawal agreement in Doha with the Taliban
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2021-04-13 18:16:58Z
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