Archives for August 2021

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s autocratic leader Aleksandar Vucic challenged Twitter on Tuesday to close his account like it did with Donald Trump’s, after several media outlets under his control were labeled state-affiliated by the social media site.

“I can’t wait for them (Twitter) to close my account so I become another Trump in the world,” Vucic said.

Twitter in January deleted the account of the former U.S. president because of the risk of further incitement of violence after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 after he lost the presidential election.

Twitter has defined state-affiliated media as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

“Who should they cooperate with, tycoons, thieves and criminals?” Vucic asked. “It is most normal that they cooperate with the government.”

He said the Twitter label is nothing but “censorship.”

Vucic, a former ultranationalist, has kept a tight grip on Serbia’s mass media since he came to power 10 years ago.

Serbia’s pro-government outlets, including the state TV, regularly blast the few remaining independent media in Serbia, claiming they are controlled by corrupt opposition figures or Western embassies.

Vucic congratulated all the media that have received such a Twitter label on their accounts, saying they are “spreading the freedom-loving ideas.”

Besides Serbia, the labels also appear on numerous Twitter accounts around the world, including the U.S., China, France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Copyright
© 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Multiple federal agencies that operated in Afghanistan and worked with Afghan citizens have been hastily purging their websites, removing articles and photos that could endanger the Afghan civilians who interacted with them and now fear retribution from the Taliban.

The online scrubbing campaign appeared to begin late last week when it became clear that the Afghan security forces had completely collapsed and the Taliban would take over the country far faster than even the most alarmist official predictions. The concern is that the Taliban or its supporters would search the websites and identify Afghans who had worked with the Americans or merely benefited from their services.

State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the department was advising personnel to search for and remove social media and website content featuring civilians because the safety of Afghan contacts “is of utmost importance” to the government.

“State Department policy is to only remove content in exceptional situations like this one. In doing so, department personnel are following records retention requirements,” Price said.

The U.S. Agency for International Development said in a statement the agencies who operated in Afghanistan began clearing the websites last Friday — one day after the decision was made to send U.S. military to secure the Kabul airport as the capital collapsed.

“Given the security situation in Afghanistan, and out of an abundance of caution for the safety of our staff, partners, and beneficiaries, we are reviewing USAID public websites and social media to archive content that could pose a risk to certain individuals and groups,” the agency said in an email to The Associated Press.

An official with the Agriculture Department said a similar scrubbing effort was underway there. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not cleared to speak on the issue.

An Associated Press review of the USDA website revealed at least seven different links to Afghanistan-related press releases or blog posts that, when clicked on, defaulted to a page declaring “Access denied: You are not authorized to access this page.”

While much attention has focused on protecting Afghan interpreters and others who worked with the U.S. military, soldiers were only a portion of the U.S. personnel who operated in Afghanistan over the last two decades.

Organizations, including USAID, elements of the Agriculture Department and others, began arriving in Afghanistan as early as 2002, within months of the toppling of the previous Taliban government, focused on developing the country’s infrastructure, educational and agriculture sectors.

As recently as June, USAID announced the U.S. was providing more than $266 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help Afghans. Total humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan totaled more than $543 million since fiscal year 2020, according to the USAID press announcement.

The money brought the total U.S. humanitarian assistance to nearly $3.9 billion since 2002, the release said.

In some of the now-disabled Agriculture Department posts viewed by The Associated Press, several, but not all, contained details that would clearly be viewed by the Taliban as proof of collaboration, such as names and photos of Afghan agricultural specialists and governmental officials who visited the U.S. on multiple USDA-sponsored delegations or fellowships.

Others were more innocuous, such as an article about Minnesota farmers donating more than 2,500 bushels of soybean seeds to their Afghan counterparts. The fact that they have also been scrubbed from the site possibly indicates the level of caution being used —or simply that whole sections of Afghan-related material were hastily deleted in large batches.

One scrubbed article makes it clear that even while the American military was deployed across the country, Afghan civilians and government officials were in danger of retaliation for the most low-level associations with the U.S. government.

It recounts in detail the USDA’s working relationship with the members of an regional agricultural authority in a province near Kabul. USDA helped coordinate a shura (townhall meeting) between the council members and local farmers. The article, which includes a photo of the meeting, notes more than 250 farmers showed up despite insurgent threats of “violence against any farmer or government official planning to attend the meeting or work with USDA.”

The author praises the government officials “who risk their safety each day to bring progress and opportunity to their fellow Afghans.”

Copyright
© 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban vowed Tuesday to respect women’s rights, forgive those who fought them and ensure Afghanistan does not become a haven for terrorists as part of a publicity blitz aimed at reassuring world powers and a fearful population.

Following a lightning offensive across Afghanistan that saw many cities fall to the insurgents without a fight, the Taliban have sought to portray themselves as more moderate than when they imposed a strict form of Islamic rule in the late 1990s. But many Afghans remain skeptical — and thousands have raced to the airport, desperate to flee the country.

Older generations remember the Taliban’s previous rule, when they largely confined women to their homes, banned television and music, and held public executions. A U.S.-led invasion drove them from power months after the 9/11 attacks, which al-Qaida had orchestrated from Afghanistan while being sheltered by the Taliban.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s longtime spokesman, emerged from the shadows Tuesday in his first-ever public appearance to address those concerns at a news conference.

He promised the Taliban would honor women’s rights within the norms of Islamic law, without elaborating. The Taliban have encouraged women to return to work and have allowed girls to return to school, handing out Islamic headscarves at the door. A female news anchor interviewed a Taliban official Monday in a TV studio.

The treatment of women varies widely across the Muslim world and sometimes even within the same country, with rural areas tending to be far more conservative. Some Muslim countries, including neighboring Pakistan, have had female prime ministers, while ultraconservative Saudi Arabia only recently allowed women to drive.

Mujahid also said the Taliban would not allow Afghanistan to be used as a base for attacking other countries, as it was in the years before 9/11. That assurance was part of a 2020 peace deal reached between the Taliban and the Trump administration that paved the way for the American withdrawal.

The Pentagon said U.S. commanders are communicating with the Taliban as they work to evacuate thousands of people through Kabul’s international airport. It said the Taliban have taken no hostile actions there.

Mujahid reiterated that the Taliban have offered full amnesty to Afghans who worked for the U.S. and the Western-backed government, saying “nobody will go to their doors to ask why they helped.” He said private media should “remain independent” but that journalists “should not work against national values.”

Kabul, the capital, has remained calm as the Taliban patrol its streets. But many remain fearful after prisons and armories emptied out during the insurgents’ sweep across the country.

Kabul residents say groups of armed men have been going door-to-door seeking out individuals who worked with the ousted government and security forces, but it was unclear if the gunmen were Taliban or criminals posing as militants. Mujahid blamed the security breakdown on the former government, saying the Taliban only entered Kabul in order to restore law and order after the police melted away.

A broadcaster in Afghanistan said she was hiding at a relative’s house, too frightened to return home much less go to work. She said she and other women do not believe the Taliban have changed their ways. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety.

A group of women wearing Islamic headscarves demonstrated briefly in Kabul, holding signs demanding the Taliban not “eliminate women” from public life.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. and other governments will not simply take the Taliban at their word when it comes to women’s rights.

“Like I’ve said all along, this is not about trust. This is about verify,” Sullivan said at a White House briefing. “And we’ll see what the Taliban end up doing in the days and weeks ahead, and when I say we, I mean the entire international community.”

Whatever their true intentions, the Taliban have an interest in projecting moderation to prevent the international community from isolating their government, as it did in the 1990s.

The European Union said it was suspending development assistance to Afghanistan until the political situation is more clear but that it would consider boosting humanitarian aid.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the Taliban must respect U.N. Security Council resolutions and human rights to earn access to some 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in development funds earmarked through 2024.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Britain might provide up to 10% more humanitarian aid, but the the Taliban would not get any money previously earmarked for security.

Evacuation flights resumed after being suspended on Monday, when thousands of people rushed the airport. In shocking scenes captured on video, some clung to a plane as it took off and then fell to their deaths. At least seven people died in the airport chaos, U.S. officials said.

On Tuesday, the Taliban entered the civilian half of the airport, firing into the air to drive out around 500 people there, said an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief journalists.

The Taliban appeared to be trying to control the crowd rather than prevent people from leaving. A video circulating online showed the Taliban supervising the orderly departure of dozens of foreigners.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul, now operating from the military side of the airport, urged Americans to register online for evacuation but not to come to the airport before being contacted.

The German Foreign Ministry said a first German military transport plane landed in Kabul but took off with only seven people on board due to the chaos. Another left later with 125 people.

U.S. President Joe Biden has defended his decision to end America’s longest war, blaming the rapid Taliban takeover on Afghanistan’s Western-backed government and security forces. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg echoed that assessment, while saying the alliance must investigate the flaws in its efforts to train the Afghan military.

Talks continued Tuesday between the Taliban and several Afghan politicians, including former President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, who once headed the country’s negotiating council. The Taliban have said they want to form an “inclusive, Islamic government.”

The talks focused on how a Taliban-dominated government would operate given the changes in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, rather than just dividing up ministries, officials with knowledge of the negotiations said on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks.

A top Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrived in Kandahar on Tuesday night from Qatar, potentially signaling a deal is close at hand.

The vice president of the ousted government, meanwhile, tweeted that he was the country’s “legitimate” caretaker president. Amrullah Saleh said that under the constitution, he should be in charge because President Ashraf Ghani has fled the country.

___

Faiez reported from Istanbul, Gannon from Guelph, Canada, and Krauss from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Tameem Akhgar in Istanbul, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Pan Pylas in London, and Aya Batrawy in Dubai contributed to this report.

Copyright
© 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. economy has been permanently changed by the COVID pandemic and it is important that the central bank adapt to those changes.

“We’re not simply going back to the economy that we had before the pandemic,” Powell said at a Fed virtual town hall for educators and students. “We need to watch carefully as the economy continues to get through the pandemic and try to understand the ways that the economy has changed and what the implications are for our policy.”

Powell said that, while it is not yet clear if the delta variant of COVID will have further impact on the economy, the country has already seen significant changes since the pandemic began shutting the country down in March 2020.

Those changes range from the increase in remote work, to restaurants offering more take-out meals, to real estate agents learning to show homes virtually, he noted. Many companies have already made large investments in technology to adapt to the challenges that the pandemic has presented.

“It seems a near certainty that there will be substantially more remote work going forward,” Powell said. “That’s going to change the nature of work and the way work gets done.”

Powell said the heavy investment by companies in new technology means there will be more jobs in the future associated with maintaining that technology but also potential job losses in industries focused on in-person contact. He said some of those industries may be moving to an “automated, no-contact model.”

This trend is already showing up in the jobs data, with the recovery slower in industries that rely on public interaction, such as travel, leisure and hospitality. Those are jobs disproportionately held by women and people of color and typically pay lower wages, Powell noted.

“It may be that some of these people will have a harder time finding their way back into the workforce without more education and training,” he said. He said there are millions of people who have lost service sector jobs and remain out of work and need to be supported. “That’s a part of the recovery that’s far from complete.” he said.

Speaking to the audience of students and educators, Powell said the pandemic could turn out to be an historical inflection point that will allow the current generation of students to turn the lessons learned into “profound tools of change.”

Students who have lived through the pandemic will see the world differently, he said.

“You have seen a world upended, but you have also seen a world that is rapidly changing — sometimes more in one week than some of us have experienced over the course of decades,” he said.

“This is an extraordinary time and I believe that it will result in an extraordinary generation,” Powell said.

At the town hall is an event started by Ben Bernanke, one of Powell’s predecessors as Fed chairman, and continued by former Fed Chair and now Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. It seeks to highlight the importance of classes in economics.

Copyright
© 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.