KABUL: Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani rejected on Sunday resignations tendered a day earlier by three senior security officials, the government said.
The resignations from Defence Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami and Interior Minister Wais Barmak, as well as Masoom Stanekzai, the head of the National Directorate of Security, were submitted on Saturday hours after National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar quit.
Government spokesman Haroon Chakansuri said in a statement Ghani had asked the three officials to continue with their duties and "work towards the betterment of the security situation".
Two senior interior ministry officials said the security officials had cited policy differences with the government amid deteriorating security as the main reason for resigning.
However, Ghani rejected the resignations and instead instructed them to find ways to prevent fresh attacks by militant groups.
Heavy fighting between Taliban insurgents, as well as other militant groups, and security forces has raged across Afghanistan this year. There have also been suicide attacks in Kabul and other major cities.
Authorities have been bracing for more attacks with parliamentary elections due on Oct. 20. The scale of the violence has shocked government officials, who are facing bitter criticism over their handling of the war.
Afghanistan president rejects resignation of three top security officials
Afghanistan president rejects resignation of three top security officials
- Ghani had asked the three officials to continue with their duties and “work toward the betterment of the security situation”
- The ministers of defense and interior, as well as a senior security chief, sent their resignations to the president’s palace
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
