Israeli Army Dismisses Two Officers over Death of Elderly Palestinian
Arab World
Asharq Al-Awsat
Israeli soldiers walk during clashes with Palestinians in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank December 10, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
Israel's military said on Monday it was dismissing two officers and would reprimand a battalion commander over the death of an elderly Palestinian earlier this month that it said resulted from "a moral failure and poor decision-making." Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad, 78, who was also a US national, was found dead after being detained by Israeli troops in Jiljilya village in the occupied West Bank on Jan. 12. A Palestinian autopsy found As'ad, who had pre-existing heart conditions, had suffered sudden cardiac arrest caused by the stress of being manhandled. The military at the time said As'ad was alive when the soldiers left him, Reuters reported. In a summary of its investigation on Monday, the military said it found that As'ad had refused to cooperate with troops operating in the area and that "his hands were tied and he was gagged for a short time." After being detained for half an hour, As'ad and three others were released. "The soldiers did not identify signs of distress or other suspicious signs concerning As'ad’s health. The soldiers assessed that As'ad was asleep and did not try to wake him," according the military statement. "The investigation concluded that the incident was a grave and unfortunate event, resulting from a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers," it said. A core value of the Israeli military - to protect human life - had been violated, it said. "It was further determined that there was no use of violence during the incident apart from when Assad was apprehended after refusing to cooperate," it said. "The soldiers failed in their obligations by leaving Assad lying on the floor without the required treatment and without reporting the incident back to their commanders." After the autopsy, a US embassy spokesman in Jerusalem said it was "deeply saddened" by As'ad's death and it supported "a thorough investigation into the circumstances of the incident." Palestinian leaders have called for the soldiers involved to be prosecuted in an international court. As'ad was a former Milwaukee, Wisconsin, resident who lived in the United States for decades and returned to the West Bank 10 years ago, his brother told Reuters. Israeli military police were carrying out their own criminal investigation, whose findings will be submitted to the Military Advocate Corps for a legal review and determinations, the military said.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3448661/israeli-army-dismisses-two-officers-over-death-elderly-palestinian
This Poll Shows Just How Much Trouble Democrats Are In
Opinion
Christopher Caldwell
Christopher Caldwell -
According to the Gallup organization, 47 percent of Americans now identify with the Republican Party and 42 percent with the Democrats. That sounds ho-hum: one party doing a tad better than the other. But the Gallup numbers may portend a political earthquake. Republicans seldom lead on measures of party identification, even when they are doing spectacularly well in other respects. Since Gallup began tallying party identification in 1991, Democrats have averaged a four-point lead. Republicans did lead in the first year the poll was taken — the year of the first Iraq war. But since then, even when Republicans rack up midterm wins at the voting booth — the year after 9/11, for instance, or in the aftermath of the unpopular Obamacare bill eight years later — they tend to run roughly even with or behind Democrats. Between 2016 and 2020 the Democratic advantage swelled to between five and six points. When Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump a year ago, Democrats held a 49-to-40 advantage. From nine points up to five points down in less than a year — it is one of the most drastic reversals of party fortune that Gallup has ever recorded. The data analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows a parallel collapse in Mr. Biden’s own popularity. He entered office with higher approval (55 percent) than Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush did, but has since tumbled to 42 percent, lower than any president at this stage in his tenure except his immediate predecessor, according to data that go back to World War II. How did Democrats get into so much trouble so quick? Inherited trends, including Covid-19, deficits and geostrategic overreach, are partly to blame. So is poor policymaking on issues like the economic stimulus. But the heart of the problem lies elsewhere. Democrats are telling a story about America — about the depth and pervasiveness of racism, and about the existential dangers of Mr. Trump — that a great many Americans, even a great many would-be Democrats, do not buy. From the start Mr. Biden faced complex managerial challenges. He has always had a weak hold on the coalition of Democratic interest groups that won him the election, and he has had to acquiesce in some of their policy preferences. He has liberalized many of the immigration rules he inherited from Mr. Trump, suspending construction on a border wall and opening asylum procedures to victims of domestic violence. The result abroad has been hope: In September, a wave of mostly Haitian migrants large enough to fill a medium-size American town — about 14,000 people — arrived at the Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas. American voters have been less pleased. Mr. Biden’s approval on immigration, according to a recent CBS News poll, is 36 percent. Mr. Biden has also done little to counter the skepticism toward police forces that simmers in some Democratic circles. In light of high and rising murder rates, this is poorly viewed. Philadelphia, Austin, Milwaukee, Columbus and St. Paul all set homicide records last year. The president’s approval on crime is 39 percent. And while Americans may be largely happy to have left the Afghanistan war behind, the shambolic retreat of the nation’s armed forces last summer is another story. Mr. Biden’s Afghanistan approval: 38 percent. Mr. Biden insisted that the country “go big” on a new $1.9 trillion “rescue” package in the spring, even after Larry Summers, Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, warned that such a stimulus could produce inflation. Now inflation is at 7 percent, the highest since early in the Reagan administration. Mr. Biden’s approval on the economy is at 38 percent. But even more harmful to Democrats has been the fallout from pandemic lockdowns. Mr. Biden didn’t invent them, but he is suffering from them more than Mr. Trump did. That is because Covid-19 has opened a window on schools — and exposed Democrats as being on the wrong side of issues that many voters are passionate and even emotional about. Democrats are the party of teachers’ unions, whose interest in school closures has clashed with that of working parents throughout the Covid-19 crisis. They are the party that backs the teaching of contentious race dogmas (sometimes called critical race theory, whether rightly or wrongly) to impressionable children. And they are the party that has overhauled or abolished competitive public school examinations in New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Northern Virginia because of the racial composition (usually disproportionately Asian) of the resulting student bodies. These issues are especially salient because they concern the heart of Democrats’ public philosophy. Roughly since the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, Democrats have been telling a story about the country that focuses way too much on race and way too much on Donald Trump. The various iterations of the voting-rights bill known as the For the People Act are a case in point. Holding the presidency, both houses of Congress and the most influential parts of the media, Democrats have monopolized the political argument for a year now. If there were a solid case that the bill really was an emergency project to protect democracy, rather than the partisan wish list that its opponents claimed, it would have triumphed by now. When Mr. Biden told an Atlanta crowd this month that those who opposed this bill were on the same side as Alabama’s segregationist Governor George Wallace and the Confederacy’s President Jefferson Davis, he was arguably combining the condescension of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “deplorables” remark with a kind of anti-white race-baiting. That is electorally dangerous. Democrats lost white non-college-educated voters by 25 points in the last election, and there is no guarantee that the margin will not get wider. But this may not even be the party’s biggest miscalculation when it comes to demographics. Minorities do not seem to like the Democrats’ racialized approach any more than whites do. The political scientist Ruy Teixeira, who has written extensively about Hispanic abandonment of Democrats, notes that 84 percent of nonwhites support the photo-ID requirements for voting that the Democrats’ voting-rights reforms would ban. In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, a recent Wall Street Journal poll found that Mr. Biden would beat Mr. Trump among Hispanics — but only by a point (44-to-43), not by the nearly 30-point margin he enjoyed back then. This is not the triumph for false consciousness that it might appear to disappointed activists. Democrats have been led astray by their Trump obsession. They have misunderstood what the former president represented to voting Americans. Mr. Trump tapped into smoldering grievances against various information-economy elites and managers. There is no reason that ethnic-minority voters wouldn’t share some of those grievances. Voters of any background might, for instance, be appalled by Mr. Trump’s whipping up of his followers on Jan. 6, 2021. But they might consider the intervention of info-tech billionaires in the 2020 election to be a larger potential threat to our democracy. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan gave upward of $400 million to the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life to help local governments organize elections under Covid-19 conditions. Their gift roughly equaled the amount of federal funding designated for that purpose in the 2020 CARES Act. It is hard to imagine that anyone worried about the role of private wealth in prisons or military logistics or public schools would welcome such a role in elections. Whether this says anything about the presidential election of 2024 is unclear. For the time being, the Republican product against which the Democratic product is being measured does not include Mr. Trump. That could be a sign that, should he return to a position of prominence, the country’s party preferences will revert to their traditional pattern of Democratic advantage. On the other hand, it could be a warning to all parties. Perhaps sympathy with populist discontent was actually tamped down by the public’s repugnance for Mr. Trump as a person. We may yet underestimate the discontent itself. The New York Times
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3448656/christopher-caldwell/poll-shows-just-how-much-trouble-democrats-are
The question is on everyone’s lips. Will President Vladimir Putin go to war against Ukraine? To judge by Russia’s propaganda machine, where media moguls are predicting a victory “in 48 hours,” the answer is an emphatic yes. Yet the truth is more complex. While Mr. Putin undoubtedly regards Ukraine as little more than a Russian province, as he argued in a lengthy pseudo-historical treatise in July, it’s far from clear his aim was war. Outright conflict — as opposed to sudden swoops, covert operations or hybrid warfare — isn’t really Mr. Putin’s style. It’s probable that the troop buildup in November was an attempt to force the West to relinquish any claims over Ukraine. That would be a great P.R. victory at minimal cost. But the West called his bluff. In the past week especially, the United States and NATO have taken a markedly sharper tone when discussing Russia — and have, more important, sent military hardware across Eastern Europe and put troops on standby. The message is clear: If Russia won’t de-escalate, then neither will the West. Instead of trapping the United States, Mr. Putin has trapped himself. Caught between armed conflict and a humiliating retreat, he is now seeing his room for maneuver dwindling to nothing. He could invade and risk defeat, or he could pull back and have nothing to show for his brinkmanship. What happens next is unknown. But one thing is clear: Mr. Putin’s gamble has failed. It may not seem obvious that the Kremlin, which has steadily amassed over 100,000 soldiers at the Ukrainian border since November, was not aiming at war. But the reasons to believe that Russia will pull back from an invasion are many. For one thing, Mr. Putin — whose instinctive cautiousness I’ve observed at close quarters for two decades — has a record of withdrawing at the first sign of real conflict. When Russian mercenaries were killed by US troops in Syria in 2018, for example, he had the perfect opportunity to retaliate. Instead, Russia denied the slaughter ever took place. Likewise, when Turkish drones struck down Russian mercenaries and equipment in Libya and Syria, there wasn’t a peep of acknowledgment either. In fact, it seems that Mr. Putin was so conscious of Turkey’s might that he didn’t dare to join forces with Armenia when, in September 2020, its territory was attacked by Turkish-backed Azerbaijan. And after triumphantly sending in his troops to Kazakhstan for an indefinite time, Mr. Putin started to withdraw them very soon after Russia’s foreign minister took a call from his Chinese counterpart. Tellingly, Russia’s major successful military operations under Mr. Putin — the defeat of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 — happened when the West was looking the other way. In both cases, the world was caught unawares and Russia could complete its designs without the threat of armed international opposition. That is not the case now. What’s more, there are no internal reasons for pursuing a war. Yes, Mr. Putin’s ratings are down and prices are up, but there’s no major domestic unrest and elections are two years away. Mr. Putin doesn’t require an expansionist escapade to either shore up his rule or distract the population from its troubles. War is a big red button that can be pushed only once. Right now, there’s no need. And then there’s the main reason: Russia would not be assured of victory. The Ukrainian Army is much improved, having upscaled its equipment and preparations for a ground invasion, and the Russian troops deployed near the border are most likely insufficient to conquer the country. Because of its sheer bulk, the Russian Army might be able to advance: Quantity has a quality of its own, as Stalin reportedly said. But it would surely come at the cost of catastrophic losses in human life. If he had little intention of invading, why did Mr. Putin raise the stakes so high? The answer is simple: Afghanistan. The West’s disastrous withdrawal from the country in August signaled the United States’ waning appetite for entanglement abroad. Emboldened, Mr. Putin clearly decided it was a good time to press his case for a revision of the post-Cold War order. Without the usual bargaining chips — no sound economy, no superior weapons, no fanatical followers — he fell back on unpredictability. The more irrational his behavior, went the thinking, the more likely the United States would accept his demands. Those demands, published in mock-treaty form in December, were in many cases absurd. The call for NATO to withdraw its troops from members in Eastern Europe, for example, would never be met. The core request — that NATO deny membership to Ukraine — was silly in a different way. There was no chance of Ukraine becoming a member any time soon, ultimatum or not. But that was Mr. Putin’s point: By demanding something that was already happening, Mr. Putin aimed to claim a victory over the West. But instead of submitting, the United States went the other way and began arming Ukraine. On Wednesday, it formally responded to Mr. Putin’s demands: While we don’t know the exact terms of the reply, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made clear that there will be no concessions. So Mr. Putin is stuck. His options are limited. He can demand the West stop its military supplies. He might vent his frustrations on the opposition, all the while seeking to portray Russia as victim of the nefarious West. Or he could test the waters with a deniable provocation undertaken by supposedly private Russian citizens, those Mr. Putin once called “coal miners and tractor drivers.” That may be a small way to save face, but it could easily spill out of control. The risk of outright war is enormous. There is, perhaps, one certainty to hold on to: Mr. Putin will never start a war he’s likely to lose. So the only way to ensure peace is to guarantee that in a military confrontation, Mr. Putin would never win. The New York Times
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3448651/yulia-latynina/putin-caught-trap-his-own-making
Asharq Al-Awsat
Puzzle with printed EU and UK flags is seen in this illustration taken November 13, 2019. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
The UK government will introduce new legislation allowing it to change or scrap retained European Union laws, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Monday to mark two years since Brexit. The new "Brexit Freedoms Bill" will make it easier to amend or remove what he called "outdated" EU laws that London has kept on its statute books as a "bridging measure" after leaving the bloc. It will be part of what the British leader dubbed a "major cross-government drive to reform, repeal and replace" the European laws retained and cut red tape for businesses, AFP said. "The plans we have set out today will further unleash the benefits of Brexit and ensure that businesses can spend more of their money investing, innovating and creating jobs," Johnson said in a statement. "Our new Brexit Freedoms Bill will end the special status of EU law in our legal framework and ensure that we can more easily amend or remove outdated EU law in future." The move is part of a flurry of announcements expected imminently from the government in key policy areas, as it also grapples with the growing international crisis over Russia's military build-up near Ukraine. However, critics have accused Johnson of rushing out half-baked plans and so-called "red meat" policies to shore up support among his own increasingly disgruntled Conservative MPs. That follows persistent calls for him to resign over claims of lockdown-breaching parties in Downing Street and several other recent scandals. Britain left the EU on January 31, 2020, but continued to abide by most of its rules and regulations until the start of 2021 under the terms of its withdrawal deal. Although it then left the 27-member bloc's single market and customs union, it kept many European laws on the books, pledging to change or repeal them individually post-Brexit. Meanwhile the government insists it has made "huge strides" outside the EU, striking some trade deals with countries and forging a new independent foreign policy built around a "global Britain" mantra. But it has also been beset by issues blamed on Brexit, with the increased paperwork needed causing delays and even shortages of products while some industries complain of growing labor shortages. Meanwhile special arrangements agreed for Northern Ireland, aiming to avoid a "hard" border on the island of Ireland, have proved highly contentious there and led to increased political instability.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3446811/uk-vows-brexit-freedoms-bill-scrap-eu-laws
Florida Is So Cold Iguanas Are Falling Out of Trees
Varieties
Asharq Al-Awsat
Green iguanas can weigh up to 17 pounds (7.5 kg) and measure over five feet (1.50 meters) in length. (Reuters)
The US National Weather Service Miami-South Florida warned the public on Sunday that immobilized iguanas could fall out of trees due to unusual cold temperatures across the region. "Iguanas are cold-blooded. They slow down or become immobile when temps drop into the 40s (4-9 Celsius). They may fall from trees, but they are not dead," the service said on Twitter. Temperatures in South Florida reached a low of 25 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service, and high temperatures on Sunday were expected to remain in the upper 50s to low 60s. The nation's Northeast was walloped on Saturday by a deadly winter storm that prompted several states to declare emergencies and forced the cancellation of more than 1,400 flights. Zoologist Stacey Cohen, a reptile expert at Palm Beach Zoo in Florida, explained the iguana phenomenon to television station WPBF. "Their bodies basically start to shut down where they lose their functions and so they are up in the trees on the branches sleeping and then because it gets so cold, they lose that ability to hang on and then they do fall out of trees a lot," Cohen said. Although most of the reptiles will likely survive this period of immobilization, Cohen said freezing temperatures were a threat to their survival and pointed to a cold snap in 2010 that wiped out a large number of the population. "Cold is a very, very life-threatening thing for them because they are from parts of Central and South America close to the equator where it always stays very warm," she said. Green iguanas are not native to Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They were accidentally introduced as stowaways in cargo ships and are considered an invasive species. They can weigh up to 17 pounds (7.5 kg) and measure over five feet (1.50 meters) in length. These iguanas are not the first animals to suffer the cold this winter. Hundreds of thousands of farmed fish died from thermal shock in a lagoon in northwestern Greece after a heavy snowstorm crippled the country last week.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3446696/florida-so-cold-iguanas-are-falling-out-trees
Asharq Al-Awsat
Syrian air defenses intercepted an Israeli missile barrage targeting the vicinity of Damascus. (AFP file photo)
Syrian air defenses intercepted an Israeli missile barrage targeting the vicinity of the capital Damascus, state media said early on Monday, citing a military source, reported Reuters. The source was quoted as saying that the interception resulted in some material damage. The Israeli military declined comment.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3446501/syria-intercepts-israeli-missile-barrage-targeting-damascus
It all began with the coronavirus outbreak on a Diamond Princess cruise ship back in February 2020. Nine health care workers and quarantine officers who were responding to the outbreak on the ship in Japan became infected. An official report suggested that they had most likely been infected through contact with infectious droplets and contaminated surfaces. But as an expert investigating respiratory infections, I had my doubts. These were people experienced in infection control and prevention procedures, and it was difficult to believe that not one, not two, but nine of them failed to wash their hands properly. While this was still in the very earliest days of the pandemic, it seemed possible that the coronavirus was spreading in some other way than through large droplets. Then a report revealed that a traveler from China who visited Germany spread the coronavirus to other people despite not having symptoms at the time. This report confirmed what I and colleagues helping Japan’s Ministry of Health respond to Covid-19 had speculated: That the coronavirus was being spread by people who were asymptomatic or hadn’t developed symptoms yet. At that point, we had to consider whether aerosols — tiny infectious particles or droplets suspended in the air — were playing a role in how the coronavirus was spreading. This wouldn’t be a surprise. In 2017, a World Health Organization report discussed the critical role that aerosol transmission played in the spread of the flu. Why couldn’t it be the same for Covid-19, a similar respiratory illness? Japan’s unique way of contact tracing also gave us more clues into how the virus spread. While other countries focused on prospective contact tracing, in which contact tracers identify and notify infected people’s contacts after they are infected, we used retrospective contact tracing. This is an approach where tracers identify an infected person and look back to figure out when and where that person was infected and who else might have been infected simultaneously with them. This approach turned out to be critical as we learned that the coronavirus was being spread predominantly by small numbers of infected individuals who then go on to seed super-spreading events. My research colleague Hiroshi Nishiura calculated that a majority of cases were most likely coming from infected people in closed, indoor environments. More data from public health centers in Japan confirmed that most Covid-19 clusters occurred in close-contact indoor settings, such as dinners, night clubs, karaoke bars, live music venues and gyms. This has become common knowledge now, but we knew all of this before the end of February 2020 and before the World Health Organization considered Covid-19 a pandemic. This became the basis of Japan’s strategy going forward and is ultimately what allowed Japan to have one of the lowest death rates among its peer countries. If SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus, was being spread by aerosols and people could spread the virus before they developed any symptoms, it meant that Covid-19 was largely invisible and would be extremely challenging to eliminate. Prior diseases like SARS (caused by SARS-CoV, a related virus), which causes pneumonia in most cases, made it easy to identify patients. Because this wasn’t the case with SARS-CoV-2, a strategy of containment would be too difficult, and Japan needed to figure out an approach to living with Covid-19. I suggested a basic concept: People should avoid the three C’s, which are closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings. The Japanese government shared this advice with the public in early March, and it became omnipresent. The message to avoid the three C’s was on the news, variety shows, social media and posters. “Three C’s” was even declared the buzzword of the year in Japan in 2020. Although Japan declared certain periods of the pandemic states of emergency, that equated to not much more than strongly worded warnings and some travel restrictions for residents. (Japan has prohibited foreign tourists from entering the country.) Drastic measures, such as lockdowns, were never taken because the goal was always to find ways to live with Covid-19. (Japanese law also does not allow for lockdowns, so the country could not have declared them even if we had thought them necessary.) The three C’s taught people what to avoid. How they do that may be different, depending on individual circumstances and risk tolerance. Some people may be able to stay home. Others may remain silent on crowded trains as they commute to work to avoid spread. Some people may dine out but avoid sitting immediately across from one another. Most people are likely to continue to mask. These types of behavioral cues may work better in certain social environments, and Japan has a tendency toward adherence and responding to powerful peer pressure. Not everyone may agree with preventive measures, but many are reluctant to face the disapproval of their friends and neighbors. When it comes to the numbers of cases and deaths, Japan has fared well compared to other countries. It has had about 146 deaths per million people in the pandemic so far. The United States has had about 2,590 deaths per million. Japan’s approach to Covid-19 has often been misunderstood. Some have assumed the country was either doing poorly and hiding it or doing well because of Confucian traditions of people putting community over themselves. What really happened was that science was used to create an effective strategy and a digestible message. That message — to avoid the three C’s — was actionable without being alarmist and prescribed a solution that could outlast changing circumstances. It worked because of an underlying trust between the public and pandemic responders. Our approach hasn’t been without consequences. Our economy was affected and people like service industry workers lost jobs as bars and restaurants were avoided. Some have suffered mental health challenges brought on by isolation. Going forward, the Japanese government needs to acknowledge the challenges, improve on them and work to protect the most vulnerable and underserved populations. But broadly speaking, Japan has weathered Covid-19 well. After a period of low transmission rates, the country is facing an uptick in cases because of Omicron, as are other countries. Even though over 70 percent of Japanese citizens are fully vaccinated, vaccination alone won’t be sufficient for the world to live with Covid-19. The Japanese people will need to embrace the three C’s whenever there’s a surge. This is most likely how we will continue to adapt to life with the virus. It would require a much deeper analysis to understand how anthropological, cultural and historical contexts have played into the various response measures around the world and their effectiveness. But for now, we know that an effective, science-based message has helped Japan keep deaths lower compared to the numbers in peer countries and could be an example of how to move forward in a world where Covid-19 will always be with us. The New York Times
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3446496/hitoshi-oshitani/what-japan-got-right-about-covid-19
UAE Defenses Shoot Down Houthi Ballistic Missile Fired at Emirates
Gulf
Asharq Al-Awsat
The UAE flag flies over a boat at Dubai Marina, Dubai, United Arab Emirates May 22, 2015. (Reuters)
The United Arab Emirates' Ministry of Defense announced Monday that its air defense forces had intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile launched by the terrorist Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen at the UAE. The ministry confirmed in a statement that "there were no casualties resulting from the attack and the fragments of the ballistic missile fell outside of populated areas," reported the state news agency (WAM). It added: "The UAE air defense forces and the Coalition Command had succeeded in destroying the missile launcher in Yemen after identifying locations of the sites." The ministry stressed its "full readiness to deal with any threats," adding that it will "take all necessary measures to protect the UAE from any attacks."
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3446491/uae-defenses-shoot-down-houthi-ballistic-missile-fired-emirates
Beijing Reports Highest Covid Cases since June 2020 as Olympics Loom
Sports
Asharq Al-Awsat
China will hold the Games in a strict "closed-loop" bubble as part of its zero-Covid strategy. Fabrice COFFRINI AFP
Beijing recorded its highest number of new Covid-19 cases for a year and a half on Sunday, as the Chinese capital gears up to host the Winter Olympics in five days. China will hold the Games in a strict "closed-loop" bubble as part of its zero-Covid strategy of targeted lockdowns, border restrictions and lengthy quarantines, AFP said. The approach has helped the world's second-largest economy keep the number of new infections far lower than many other countries, but it is battling local outbreaks in several cities as well as in the Olympic bubble. The upcoming Lunar New Year -- China's biggest national holiday -- presents further challenges as millions of people return to their hometowns and mingle with family and friends. Beijing's tally of 20 new cases on Sunday was the city's highest since June 2020, according to the National Health Commission (NHC). City authorities have locked down some housing compounds, while officials in Fengtai district -- where most of Sunday's infections were detected -- have begun testing around 2 million people for the virus. The Olympics bubble separates everyone involved in the Games from the wider Chinese population to curb the risk of infections leaking out. The estimated 60,000 people inside the bubble are subject to daily testing. Organizers on Saturday reported 36 cases related to the Games, bringing the total to more than 100 since the bubble was sealed on January 4. The NHC said Sunday there were 54 new local cases nationwide, as the wealthy eastern city of Hangzhou and the city of Suifenhe in northeastern Heilongjiang province emerged as potential hotspots. Chinese authorities locked down an area neighboring Beijing this week following a handful of reported cases, appearing not to publicly announce restrictions that have confined around 1.2 million people in Xiong'an New Area to their homes.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3444806/beijing-reports-highest-covid-cases-june-2020-olympics-loom
Saudi Digital Security Firm Elm Set to Raise $818 Mln in IPO
Business
Asharq Al-Awsat
Saudi Digital Security Firm Elm Set to Raise $818 Mln in IPO
Saudi Arabian digital security firm Elm is set to raise 3.07 billion riyals ($818 million) after pricing its initial public offering at the top of its indicative price range. Elm, owned by the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, said on Sunday it priced the deal at 128 riyals a share, against an indicative price of 113 to 128 riyals per share. It is selling 24 million shares in the deal. According to Reuters, Elm provides secure e-business services and information technology, as well as project support services and government project outsourcing in Saudi Arabia, its website says. Also, Saudi Arabia's bourse operator Tadawul, which also listed last year, said in December it had 50 applications from companies for IPOs this year and is considering whether to allow blank-cheque companies, known as SPACs, to list.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3444796/saudi-digital-security-firm-elm-set-raise-818-mln-ipo
UK to Offer NATO 'Major Military Deployment' in Europe
World
Asharq Al-Awsat
Members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, volunteer military units of the Armed Forces, train close to Kyiv. — AP
Britain is preparing to offer NATO a "major" deployment of troops, weapons, warships and jets in Europe, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Saturday, to respond to rising "Russian hostility" towards Ukraine. The offer, set to be made to NATO military chiefs next week, could see London double the approximately 1,150 UK troops currently in eastern European countries and "defensive weapons" sent to Estonia, his office said. "This package would send a clear message to the Kremlin -- we will not tolerate their destabilizing activity, and we will always stand with our NATO allies in the face Russian hostility," Johnson said in a statement late Saturday. "I have ordered our Armed Forces to prepare to deploy across Europe next week, ensuring we are able to support our NATO allies on land, at sea and in the air," he added. The British leader said if Russian President Putin chose "bloodshed and destruction" in Ukraine, it would be "a tragedy for Europe". "Ukraine must be free to choose its own future," he argued. Johnson, who has been under intense political pressure for weeks following a series of scandals, said Friday he will speak to Putin in the coming days to urge de-escalation over Ukraine, AFP reported. Meanwhile, he is to visit the region next week. Relations between Russia and the West are at their lowest point since the Cold War after Moscow deployed tens of thousands of troops on the border of Ukraine. - 'Support' - Britain's foreign ministry is expected to announce the toughening of its sanctions regime on Russia in parliament Monday, to target strategic and financial interests. Meanwhile UK officials will be dispatched to Brussels, home to NATO headquarters, to finalize details of the military offer after ministers discuss the differing options also on Monday. Britain's chief of defense staff Tony Radakin, the head of the armed forces, will brief the cabinet on the situation in Ukraine the following day. The possible deployment of aircraft, warships and military specialists as well as troops and weaponry will reinforce NATO's defenses and "underpin the UK's support for Nordic and Baltic partners", according to Johnson's office. Britain already has more than 900 military personnel based in Estonia, and more than 100 are currently in Ukraine as part of a training mission started in 2015. Meanwhile a light cavalry squadron of around 150 personnel is deployed in Poland. The warship HMS Prince of Wales -- currently in the so-called "High North" European Arctic region, leading the NATO's Maritime High Readiness Force -- is on standby "to move within hours should tensions rise further," Downing Street said. On the diplomatic front, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are preparing to visit Moscow for talks with their counterparts in the coming days, it added. "They will be asked to improve relationships with President Putin's government and encourage de-escalation," Johnson's office said. Wallace is also set to travel to meet with allies in Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia next week.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3444781/uk-offer-nato-major-military-deployment-europe
Israeli President Herzog to Arrive in UAE for First Visit Sunday
Gulf
Asharq Al-Awsat
Israeli President Isaac Herzog
Israeli President Isaac Herzog left for the United Arab Emirates on Sunday on the first such visit to strengthen ties. “I will be meeting the leadership of the United Arab Emirates, at the personal invitation of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince," Herzog said. "I wish him well and I am grateful for his courage and bold leadership, carving out a peace agreement with Israel and sending a message to the entire region that peace is the only alternative for the peoples of the region." The UAE, along with Bahrain, signed US-brokered normalization agreements with Israel at the White House in 2020. Earlier in December, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett visited the UAE.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3444761/israeli-president-herzog-arrive-uae-first-visit-sunday
North Korea Test-fires Most Powerful Missile Since 2017
World
Asharq Al-Awsat
This photo provided by the North Korean government shows a ballistic missile launched from a submarine Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021, in North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
North Korea on Sunday tested its most powerful missile since 2017, ramping up the firepower for its record-breaking seventh launch this month as Seoul warned nuclear and long-range tests could be next. Pyongyang has never test-fired this many missiles in a calendar month before and last week threatened to abandon a nearly five-year-long self-imposed moratorium on testing long-range and nuclear weapons, AFP said. With peace talks with the US stalled, North Korea has doubled-down on leader Kim Jong Un's vow to modernize the regime's armed forces, flexing Pyongyang's military muscles despite biting international sanctions. South Korea said Sunday that North Korea appeared to be following a "similar pattern" to 2017 -- when tensions were last at breaking-point on the peninsula -- warning Pyongyang could soon restart nuclear and intercontinental missile tests. North Korea "has come close to destroying the moratorium declaration", South Korea's President Moon Jae-in said in a statement following an emergency meeting of Seoul's National Security Council. South Korea's military said Sunday it had "detected an intermediate-range ballistic missile fired at a lofted angle eastward towards the East Sea." A lofted trajectory involves missiles being fired at a high angle instead of out to their full range. Sunday's ballistic missile was estimated to have hit a maximum altitude of 2,000 kilometers and flown around 800 kilometers for half an hour, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. That indicated that Pyongyang may have tested its "first Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) since 2017", Joseph Dempsey, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote on Twitter. The last time Pyongyang tested a similar missile was in 2017, when the Hwasong-12 flew 787 kilometers at an apogee of just over 2,111 kilometers. Analysts said at the time that the trajectory indicated that the missile could have flown around 4,500 km if fired on a range-maximizing ballistic trajectory -- putting the US territory of Guam in range. Japan's top government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said Sunday that the ballistic missile "was one with intermediate-range or longer range." - 'Time is ripe' - Pyongyang has tested hypersonic missiles twice this month, as well as carrying out four launches of short-range ballistic and cruise missiles. Last week, leader Kim was photographed by state media inspecting an "important" munitions factory that produces "a major weapon system". "Kim has been withholding his appetite for testing and provocations," Soo Kim, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, told AFP. Now however, "the time is ripe, and North Korea's continued missile firing will only throw another wrench into Washington's already high plate of foreign policy challenges," she added. The frenzy of missiles was also aimed at reminding the world that "the Kim regime hears external discussions of its domestic weaknesses," said Leif Easley, a professor at Ewha University. "It wants to remind Washington and Seoul that trying to topple it would be too costly," he added. The string of launches in 2022 comes at a delicate time in the region, with Kim's sole major ally China set to host the Winter Olympics next month and South Korea gearing up for a presidential election in March. Domestically, North Korea is preparing to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the birth of late leader Kim Jong Il in February, as well as the 110th birthday of founder Kim Il Sung in April. With reports of soaring food prices and worsening hunger, an economically-reeling Pyongyang recently restarted cross-border trade with neighboring China. And ally Beijing, along with Russia, this month blocked the UN Security Council from imposing fresh sanctions in response to the recent tests.
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South Korea to Face Syria with World Cup Berth in Sight
Sports
Asharq Al-Awsat
The tournament's official logo for the 2022 Qatar World Cup is seen on the wall of an amphitheater, in Doha, Qatar, September 3, 2019. REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoun
South Korea's World Cup qualification hopes remain in their own hands as they prepare to take on Syria in Dubai on Tuesday, knowing victory will secure their place in Qatar after celebrations were put on hold last week. Paulo Bento's side defeated Lebanon in Thursday's matches in Group A of Asia's preliminaries and would have claimed a place at a 10th straight World Cup had the United Arab Emirates not defeated Syria the same evening. Although the UAE's 2-0 victory over the Syrians put a pause on Korean qualification, a win against Valeriu Tita's side will be enough to take the Taeguk Warriors into the finals alongside already-qualified Iran, Reuters reported. "The most important thing is that we managed to get the three points that we came here to get," Bento said after the win in Sidon, which came via a first half goal from Cho Gue-sung. "Despite the victory we are not yet in the World Cup but we are so close to qualifying." The Iranians claimed their berth at a third successive World Cup with victory over Iraq on Thursday and will face the UAE looking to extend their unbeaten run to 12 matches in qualifiers since Dragan Skocic took over as coach from Marc Wilmots. Lebanon and Iraq, fourth and fifth in Group A respectively, face off in Sidon with both still harboring hopes of a third-place finish in the group. Although the top two finishers in each of Asia's two preliminary groups advance automatically to the finals, those finishing third will go head-to-head for the right to face a South American side in a final eliminator for a place in Qatar. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, could clinch a spot at back-to-back World Cup finals at Saitama Stadium when they meet hosts Japan in the battle between the top two in Group B. Herve Renard's side lead the Samurai Blue by four points with three games remaining and would qualify if they were to defeat Hajime Moriyasu's team and third-placed Australia failed to beat Oman in Muscat. The Japanese will again be without first choice defensive pairing Takehiro Tomiyasu and Maya Yoshida because of injury, with Ko Itakura and Shogo Taniguchi likely to deputize for the duo as they did in the 2-0 win over China on Thursday. Oman, currently in fourth, must defeat Australia to have any hope of making a late push for third place in the group while China face winless Vietnam knowing their chances of staying alive in qualifying have all but ebbed away.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3444721/south-korea-face-syria-world-cup-berth-sight
China’s Zero-Covid Policy Is a Pandemic Waiting to Happen
Opinion
Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Michael T. Osterholm
Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Michael T. Osterholm -
As some 3,000 athletes, their retinues and the media converge on Beijing, the Chinese government has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent the 24th version of the Winter Olympics, which open Feb. 4, from becoming a Covid superspreading event. Though athletes and coaches will be required to be vaccinated, they will face severe restrictions. Those who receive a medical exemption from vaccination are being required to quarantine for 21 days after entering the country. Even the vaccinated will have to present two negative tests. Participants must submit to daily Covid tests and will be confined to an Olympic bubble to prevent spread to the local population. These extreme measures are in line with China’s zero-Covid policy. President Xi Jinping and his government seem to believe that the country can be sealed off until the virus is eradicated around the world. But that goal is unattainable with the highly transmissible Omicron variant and has set the nation up for disaster. The coronavirus is not going to disappear — the world will have to live with it. Making matters worse, China’s vaccines are much less effective against Omicron. And the Chinese health care system simply is not equipped to care for millions of people sickened by the virus. Yes, China has weathered the pandemic well so far. Even with about four times the population of the United States, China has had fewer than 140,000 confirmed Covid cases and fewer than 6,000 deaths since January 2020, according to the World Health Organization. A vast majority of factories continued to operate. Early in the pandemic, China added thousands of hospital beds in days. All of this seems like an enormous success when compared with the messy and often chaotic response to the virus in the United States, where more than 860,000 people have died and some 2,000 more die each day. Many hospitals are under siege. The economy has been disrupted. But this may very well be the future China is facing. Its pursuit of zero Covid will prove to be a huge mistake. The policy has left it wholly unprepared for what will become endemic Covid. Recent research shows that China’s vaccines offer limited protection against Omicron, even in protecting people from severe Covid complications and death. This means the vaccines are not providing adequate protective immunity to a citizenry that lacks natural immunity through infection. For those who become infected, China has limited outpatient medical facilities or home care. Many of those who fall ill will not be able to call a primary care physician, go to an urgent care center or get care at home. And if millions need care — even if they don’t need to be hospitalized — the hospitals will rapidly be overwhelmed. Hospitals might even become sites of superspreading events. As recent episodes in the city of Xi’an showed, Chinese hospitals fearful of the virus may deny care to those in need. Over the next few years, most people in the world, including China, are likely to be exposed to the coronavirus. With an incubation time potentially as short as three days, and many infected people being asymptomatic, the virus will spread rapidly. By the time an outbreak is identified, it will have moved to another city. We can begin to see the future in many Chinese cities, most prominently in Xi’an, more than 600 miles from Beijing. Last month, the government locked down Xi’an’s 13 million residents in response to a relatively small outbreak of the Delta variant, which is less transmissible than Omicron. This strict lockdown lasted about three weeks. There also has been spread in Tianjin, a city near Beijing. Alarmingly, epidemiological research on a sizable number of the people infected with Omicron in Tianjin found that about 95 percent of them had been fully vaccinated with the Chinese vaccines. And on Jan. 15, Chinese officials said Beijing’s first case of the Omicron variant had been found, leading to a localized lockdown and mass testing. This spread is most likely sending shudders through President Xi and the Chinese leadership. Reflexively, they are likely to clamp down harder. But a zero-Covid policy means the Chinese will always be chasing an ever moving target. And they will never win. Inevitably this will have serious economic impacts for China — and for all of us, given the country’s position in the world economy. While China remains the production capital of the world, this is unlikely to be sustainable should lockdowns ensue. Businesses outside of China are likely to become increasingly hesitant to partner with Chinese ventures when they are unable to enter the country to meet partners and inspect factories that face unpredictable closings. Declines in Chinese production would upend supply chains and the availability of goods everywhere, including in the United States. Other countries can provide a road map that China can put into action. Denmark, Germany and some other European countries, as well as Australia, have achieved strong immunity without suffering the US death rate. They used effective vaccines, made smarter decisions about when and where to impose lockdowns and protected the most vulnerable — older people and those with compromised immune systems. Community spread resulted, but it would have been inevitable, even with longer or more severe lockdowns, and it allowed those countries to build up immunity. China’s elaborate containment efforts planned for the Olympics may prevent a Covid outbreak — and we certainly hope that is the case. But a zero-Covid policy is a losing long-term strategy. The New York Times
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3444686/ezekiel-j-emanuel-and-michael-t-osterholm/china%E2%80%99s-zero-covid-policy-pandemic
Guterres Urges Security Council to Unify Stance amid US-Russian Differences over Libya
Arab World
Washington - Ali Barada
Stephanie Williams upon her arrival in the southern Libyan city of Sebha earlier this week. (Twitter account of the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Libya)
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged on Friday the members of the Security Council to unify their stance over extending the mandate of the UN mission in Libya (UNSMIL), which ends Jan. 31, following a disagreement between the US and Russia. Moscow has demanded the UN secretary general’s special advisor on Libya, American Stephanie Williams, be replaced. The Security Council was scheduled to vote Thursday on a draft resolution prepared by Britain to extend UNSMIL’s mission until Sept. 15, after the text was amended more than once in an attempt to overcome the disagreement on many issues, including the position on the presidential and legislative elections and the mandate granted to the UN mission. The Russian side insisted on appointing a special envoy to succeed Slovakian Jan Kubis, who resigned last November, but differences within the Council prompted Guterres to name Williams as a special advisor, but who is assuming the duties of the envoy. Russia was purportedly ready to exercise its veto right to obstruct the adoption of the resolution and to submit an alternative draft-resolution, calling on the Secretary-General to appoint a new special envoy “without delay” and limit the mandate to three months, which prompted Britain to postpone the voting session to make room for further negotiations. Divisions between UN members are not a “good signal” to Libyans and “will not help Stephanie Williams” in her current role, a diplomatic source said. Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, had demanded the appointment of a new mediator in Libya, saying: “It’s important that the Secretary-General present a candidate for this position as soon as possible… The UN envoy must have sufficient experience in the framework of a mandate decided by the Security Council.” He added: “Unfortunately, we do not have such a person at the head of the mission at the moment.” In comments during his daily press briefing, UN Secretary General Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Guterres was implementing the mandate granted to him by the Security Council, calling on the Council members to show “unity and clarity.” Guterres is currently working closely with members of the Security Council in order to achieve the interests of the UN Mission in Libya as well as the interests of the Libyans, Dujarric emphasized. He continued: “The Secretary-General is extremely grateful for all the work that Stephanie Williams has done in her previous capacity... and what she continues to do on the Libyan file as special advisor. She’s done a very, very good job in [the] face of a very difficult situation.”
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3443366/guterres-urges-security-council-unify-stance-amid-us-russian-differences-over
Astronomers Detect Mysterious Object Pulsing Every 20 Minutes
Varieties
London - Asharq Al-Awsat
An artist's impression of the Cygnus X-1 system, with a so-called stellar-mass black hole orbiting a companion star some 7,200 light years from Earth. International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research/Handout via REUTERS.
Astronomers have discovered a mysterious object emitting a radio wave beam that pulsed every 20 minutes. According to The Guardian, the team behind the discovery believes the object could be a new class of slowly rotating neutron star with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. The repeating signals were detected during the first three months of 2018, but then disappeared, suggesting they were linked to a dramatic, one-off event, such as a starquake. “It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that,” said Natasha Hurley-Walker, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, who led the team that made the discovery. Despite the unusual nature of the signal, the team believes the source is likely to be a spinning object rather than a technologically advanced civilization reaching out across the cosmos. “It’s definitely not aliens,” said Hurley-Walker. The team briefly considered this possibility but ruled it out after determining that the signal – one of the brightest radio sources in the sky – was detectable across a broad spectrum of frequencies, meaning that an immense amount of energy would have been required to produce it. The object, believed to be about 4,000 light years away in the plane of the Milky Way, also matches a predicted astronomical object called an “ultra-long period magnetar,” a class of neutron star with the most powerful magnetic field of any known object in the universe. “It’s a type of slowly spinning neutron star that has been predicted to exist, theoretically. But nobody expected to directly detect one like this because we didn’t expect them to be so bright,” said Hurley-Walker. A neutron star is the dark, dense remnant left behind after a supermassive star casts off its outer material in a supernova and undergoes gravitational collapse. Reduced to the size of a small city, neutron stars initially spin incredibly quickly.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3443141/astronomers-detect-mysterious-object-pulsing-every-20-minutes
UN: Lebanon Crisis Robbing Young People of their Futures
Arab World
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat
Students leave their school in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
More than four in 10 young Lebanese over just a 12-month period, reduced spending on education to buy basic food, medicine and other essential items, and nearly a third, have been forced to stop studying altogether, a UN report said Friday. The report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) showed how the crisis is forcing young people to drop out of school and engage in ill-paid, irregular work just to survive and help feed their families. It says that 31 percent of young people are not in education, employment, or training. In fact, enrolment in educational institutions dropped from 60 percent in 2020-2021, to just 43 percent for the current academic year. Working youth have an average monthly income of about 1,600,000 Lebanese pounds (LBP), equivalent to about $64 at the black-market rate. Speaking to UNICEF, Haneen, 17, said the money she and her family receive every month, is not enough for the expenses. “Inflation is so high, and incomes haven’t matched this. Every month we have to choose a priority – rent, medicines, food. But we can never have them all”, she said. Lebanon’s crisis has led to an increase in other negative coping mechanisms besides reducing education costs. About 13 percent of families sent children under 18, out to work. Almost one in two young people reduced expenses on health, and only six out of 10 received primary health care when they needed it. Because of all this pressure, Hind, 22, told UNICEF that her outlook for the future is bleak. “For the first time in my life, I want to leave my country, I want to leave Lebanon”, she said.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3443121/un-lebanon-crisis-robbing-young-people-their-futures
Australia Wants Kanye West Fully Vaccinated Before Any Tour
Entertainment
Asharq Al-Awsat
Hip-hop artist Kanye West. Reuters
Hip-hop artist Kanye West will have to be fully vaccinated if he wants to play concerts in Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday, after media said the performer planned an Australian tour in March. The warning comes just two weeks after tennis superstar Novak Djokovic's hopes for a Grand Slam title were dashed when a court upheld the government's decision to cancel his visa over COVID-19 rules and his unvaccinated status. "The rules are you have to be fully vaccinated," Morrison told a news conference. "They apply to everybody, as people have seen most recently. It doesn't matter who you are, they are the rules. Follow the rules - you can come. You don't follow the rules, you can't." Morrison's remarks followed a report on Friday in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, citing industry sources, that said West planned to play stadium concerts in Australia in March. Representatives of West, who released his latest album, "Donda", in July, were not immediately available for comment. The vaccination status of West, a 2020 US presidential candidate, is unknown. In a 2021 interview on social media he said he had received one vaccine dose, but in a 2020 interview with business magazine Forbes, he had called getting vaccinated "the mark of the beast".
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3443011/australia-wants-kanye-west-fully-vaccinated-any-tour
US Plans to Reroute $67 Mln in Aid Towards Lebanon's Army
Arab World
Asharq Al-Awsat
Lebanese army members stand near a pickup truck with a rocket launcher in Chouaya, Lebanon, August 6, 2021. REUTERS/Karamallah Daher
The United States plans to reroute $67 million of military assistance for Lebanon's armed forces to support members of the military as the country grapples with financial meltdown. According to a notification sent to Congress, the State Department intends to change the content of previously appropriated foreign military funding for Lebanon to include "livelihood support" for members of the Lebanese military, citing economic turmoil as well as social unrest. "Livelihood support for (armed forces) members will strengthen their operational readiness, mitigate absenteeism, and thus enable LAF members to continue fulfilling key security functions needed to stave off a further decline in stability," said the notification to Congress, seen by Reuters. Washington is the biggest foreign aid donor to Lebanon. US officials had pledged additional support in October. The news was praised in Washington. "It is in the United States' national security interest to help these servicemen make ends meet and continue supporting the Lebanese people, and I'm really glad to see the administration putting our security assistance dollars to Lebanon toward that goal," Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said in a statement.
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3442976/us-plans-reroute-67-mln-aid-towards-lebanons-army
Ex-government Workers Mine for Salvation in Afghan Mountains
Features
Asharq Al-Awsat
A tiny piece of emerald from Afghanistan's Mikeni Valley can be all that separates miners from extreme poverty. Mohd RASFAN AFP
In the bone-splitting chill of the Afghan mountains, Mohammad Israr Muradi digs through coarse earth spilling from the open mouth of an emerald mine. With an improvised sieve and a few splashes of water, the former police officer scours a slag heap for fragments of the green gemstone, swarmed by dozens of others vying for the same prize, AFP said. Measured in a dusty open palm, the emerald pieces, pried from the bowels of the Mikeni Valley 130 kilometers (about 80 miles) northeast of Kabul, are no bigger than peanuts. But they are just about enough to assuage total poverty in a nation mired in humanitarian catastrophe. "The emeralds we find, we sell them for 50, 80, 100 or 150 Afghanis (between 50 cents and US$1.5)," Muradi said. He was once head of the anti-terrorism police in neighboring Paryan district. Unemployed when the Taliban overran Kabul in mid-August, he initially tried his hand as a secondhand clothing salesman on the streets of the Afghan capital. "It didn't work out," said the 25-year-old. Without any source of income, he was "forced" to head for the hills. - Glimmer of hope - Echoing booms roll across the valley, 3,000 meters above sea level, as blasting teams carve out shafts crisscrossing the innards of the mountains. Locals have known about the presence of emeralds in Panjshir province for thousands of years. Systematic mining only began in the 1970s and remains largely artisanal, but the gems found here are compared to Colombian emeralds, the most sought-after on the planet. Each shaft is co-owned by several dozen partners and manned by a team of about 10 miners, digging lengths of more than 500 meters in search of glimmering veins of quartz. But the last workers to arrive at the camp are relegated to the thankless, tedious and low-paid work at the mine entrances, where rickety trolleys tip out mounds of rubble. It is a far cry from the decent job 27-year-old Gulabuddin Mohammadi previously had earning 35,000 Afghanis ($340) per month in the now defunct army. The mines are a two-hour hike from the bottom of the valley up precarious paths of grimy ice, cresting at a mud hut village supplied by donkeys and powered by petrol generators. But its far-flung location is part of the attraction for Mohammadi, a seven-year veteran who was looking for sanctuary when the army crumbled as US troops withdrew in August. Many former soldiers and police officers have come here to eke out a living while evading potential reprisals for their roles in the previous Western-backed regime. The Taliban have publicly proclaimed an amnesty, but human rights groups warn more than 100 people from those groups have been executed or "disappeared". But for the moment, the squalor of the camp seems like the greatest injustice on Mohammadi's mind. "We are treated like cattle," he sighed. "We have no real place to live, we are in tents. We have no water, no fire, no clinic if we get sick." The withered Afghan economy means he has little choice of how else to feed his 25 family members. Since their chaotic withdrawal, Western powers have frozen billions of dollars in overseas Afghan assets and aid, which propped up the country. - Return to Kabul - The mountainous redoubt of Panjshir has historically been a nest of resistance against outside forces. The anti-Soviet members mustered here in the 1980s, and anti-Taliban forces rallied among the ridges when the hardline militants first ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. But this time, the Mikeni Valley has not escaped the Taliban's touch. The province was the last to fall in September, but when Taliban soldiers arrived there was little resistance. Fighters travelled up to the mine a few days later, recalled Mohammad Riyah Nizami, a former senior Kabul police officer who worked there at the time. They examined men's hands to identify newcomers with skin not yet roughened by mine work, and rounded up 20 who were later released. "Nobody told them we were police, army or security services," said Nizami. The Taliban, it turned out, were looking for fighters mobilizing against their new government. Nizami was lucky during his time at the mine. His job, secured through a friend, was to haul a cart through the mineshafts, a posting with a 400 Afghani (almost $4) daily salary. Now he is back in Kabul, at the request of Taliban officials seeking his computer skills. Muradi is ready to do the same. The Taliban want to rebuild Afghanistan's army and police force. For years, it was his task to chase them down. Now, he says, "If they call me back to work, I will go."
from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3441511/ex-government-workers-mine-salvation-afghan-mountains
