Al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri has died in Afghanistan — sources
Al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri has died in Afghanistan — sources/node/1765746/world
Al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri has died in Afghanistan — sources
Osama bin Laden, left, sits with his adviser and later successor Ayman Al-Zawahri during an interview with Dawn newspaper November 10, 2001. (AFP/File)
Al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri has died in Afghanistan — sources
Arab News spoke to several security sources in Pakistan and Afghanistan to confirm Zawahiri’s death, two said he had died
If confirmed, Zawahiri’s death opens up a leadership vacuum within Al-Qaeda as two senior commanders in line to replace him have been killed recently
Updated 21 November 2020
BAKER ATYANI & SAYED SALAHUDDIN
ISLAMABAD/KABUL: Egyptian national Ayman Al-Zawahiri, 69, has died in Afghanistan likely of natural causes, several sources in Pakistan and Afghanistan told Arab News this week, just days after reports of the Al-Qaeda leader’s passing made the rounds on social media.
Zawahiri’s last appearance was in a video message on this year’s anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
His death, if confirmed, opens up a deep leadership vacuum within Al-Qaeda as at least two senior commanders who would have been in line to replace him have been killed recently: Hamza bin Laden, a son of slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a US counter-terrorism operation, the White House announced last year; and Abu Muhamamd Al-Masri, believed to be Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, who was killed in Iran this year, according to media reports.
Arab News spoke to at least four security sources in Pakistan and Afghanistan to confirm Zawahiri’s death. Two said he had died. All spoke off the record as they were not authorized to speak to the media on the issue.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, alias Abu Muhammad Al-Masri, right, is sitting next to Hamza bin Laden, the son of slain Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, during Hamza's wedding with Al-Masri's daughter Maryam. The wedding is estimated to have been held in 2005 in Iran. (Photo courtesy: Alarabiya)
“He [Zawahiri] died last week in Ghazni,” an Al-Qaeda translator who still enjoys close ties with the group, told Arab News on Tuesday. “He died of asthma because he had no formal treatment.”
A Pakistani security official based in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan also said Zawahiri had died.
“We believe he is no longer alive,” he said, declining to be named. “We are firm that he has died of natural causes.”
A source close to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan told Arab News on Monday that the militant leader had passed away this month, November, and a limited number of followers had attended his funeral prayers.
The source did not clarify if the funeral prayers were held in absentia or offered as Zawahiri’s body was being buried.
“What we know is that he was having some breathing issues and has passed away somewhere in Afghanistan,” the Al-Qaeda source said.
A Pakistani security officer who is privy to ongoing anti-terror operations said: “We have received the same information that Zawahiri died about a month ago.”
The source declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media on the subject.
Another Pakistani source, a civilian intelligence official, said Zawahiri’s last movements were inside Afghanistan where he was known to have been in “unstable” health. But the intelligence official could not confirm if he had died.
“To my knowledge he was extremely ill and had the issue of kidney failure,” the intelligence official said. “He was unable to manage his dialysis but I still need to confirm if he has died.”
US officials told the Associated Press this week they could not confirm reports of Zawahiri’s death but the US intelligence community was aware of the news and trying to determine its credibility.
A spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security spy agency told Arab News he had not heard about Zawahiri’s death and the organization had no comment on the matter.
Arab News has not been able to independently verify the claims by its sources in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Although Al-Qaeda has been overshadowed in recent years by the rise of the Daesh group, it remains resilient and has active affiliates around the globe, a United Nations counterterrorism report issued in July concluded.
Saif Al-Adl, Al Qaeda's senior military strategist at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, January 2000. (Source: Wikipedia)
Among the top leaders of Al-Qaeda who are still at large and could succeed Zawahiri is Saif Al-Adl, who is a head of the militant group’s Shoura Council. Adl has been on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists since its inception in 2001 and the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program is offering up to $10 million for information on his location. *With contributions from Naimat Khan in Karachi and Rehmat Mehsud in Peshawar
India police seek Sikh leader, arrest separatist supporters
Singh has been on the run since the search for him began on Saturday.
Updated 9 min 46 sec ago
AP
New Delhi: Indian police are searching for a separatist leader who has revived calls for an independent Sikh homeland, stirring fears of violence in northwestern Punjab state where there’s a history of bloody insurgency.
Police have accused Amritpal Singh, a 30-year-old preacher, and his aides of creating discord in the state, which is haunted by the memories of an armed insurgency in the 1980s for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. The insurgency had prompted a controversial military operation by the Indian government that killed thousands of people, according to official estimates.
Authorities have deployed thousands of paramilitary soldiers to the state and suspended mobile internet services in some areas to prevent unrest, Sukhchain Singh Gill, the inspector general of police for Punjab, said Wednesday. He said police have so far arrested 154 supporters of Singh and seized 10 guns and ammunition.
Singh has been on the run since the search for him began on Saturday.
Singh, who has said he supports the Khalistan movement, captured national attention in February when hundreds of his supporters stormed a police station in Punjab with swords and guns to demand the release of a jailed aide.
Very little is known about Singh, who for years drove a truck in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. He emerged in 2022 in Punjab and began leading marches calling for protecting rights of Sikhs who account for about 1.7 percent of India’s population.
His speeches have become increasingly popular among supporters of the Khalistan movement, which is banned in India. Officials see it and affiliated groups as a national security threat. Even though the movement has waned over the years, it still has some support in Punjab and beyond — including in countries like Canada and the United Kingdom, which are home to a sizable Sikh diaspora.
On Sunday, supporters of the movement pulled down the Indian flag at the country’s high commission in London and smashed the building’s window in a show of anger against the move to arrest Singh. India’s Foreign Ministry denounced the incident and summoned the UK’s deputy high commissioner in New Delhi to protest what it called the breach of security at the embassy in London.
On Wednesday, police removed temporary security barricades outside the British High Commission in New Delhi, news agency Press Trust of India reported. There was no immediate comment from the police or the government whether it was in retaliation to the incident in London.
The supporters of the Khalistan movement also vandalized the Indian Consulate in San Francisco on Monday.
Singh claims to draw inspiration from Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a Sikh militant leader accused by the Indian government of leading an armed insurgency for Khalistan. Bhindranwale and his supporters were killed in 1984 when the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine in the Sikh religion.
Singh also heads Waris Punjab De, or Punjab’s Heirs, an organization that was part of a massive campaign to mobilize farmers against controversial agriculture reforms being pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The legislation triggered a year of protests that began in 2020, as farmers — most of them Sikhs from Punjab state — camped on the outskirts of New Delhi through a harsh winter and devastating coronavirus surge. The protests ended after Modi’s government withdrew the legislation in November 2021.
Waris Punjab De was founded by Deep Sidhu, an Indian actor who died in 2022 in a traffic accident.
Eager young Albanians risk everything for new future in UK
UK interior minister Suella Braverman has described the arrivals as an ‘invasion on our southern coast’ — words that Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama blasted as a ‘crazy narrative’
Britain is attractive to Albanians because it has a better economy and higher-paying jobs than neighboring countries such as Greece or Italy
Updated 42 min 1 sec ago
AP
BAJRAM CURRI, Albania: Monika Mulaj’s son was in his second year of college in Albania, studying to become a mechanical engineer, when he resolved to make a daring change: He told his parents he would leave his lifelong home for a new future in Britain.
“We had tried to fulfil all his requests, for books and clothing, food and a bit of entertaining. But he was still dissatisfied,” said Mulaj, a high school teacher in the northeastern town of Bajram Curri, which is in one of the country’s poorest regions.
Five years later, her now 25-year-old son is working two jobs in Britain and hardly thinks of returning to his homeland. “Albania is in regress,” he complains to his mother.
His path has been shared in recent years by thousands of young Albanians who have crossed the English Channel in small boats or inflatable dinghies to seek work in the UK. Their odyssey reflects the country’s anemic economy and a younger generation’s longing for fresh opportunities.
In 2018, only 300 people reached Britain by crossing the channel in small boats. The number rose to 45,000 in 2022, in part because of arrivals from Albania, a country in southern Europe that is negotiating for membership in the European Union.
Other migrants were from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Unlike many countries that fuel migration, Albania is considered safe by UK officials.
Britain is attractive to Albanians because it has a better economy and higher-paying jobs than neighboring countries such as Greece or Italy. Many Albanians also have family ties in the UK. Birmingham, for instance, has a large immigrant population from the Albanian town of Kukes, on the border with Kosovo.
The deputy mayor of Bajram Curri, Abedin Kernaja, said young people leave because of low wages and the difficulty of building “a comfortable family life.” His two sons are in the UK
Xhemile Tafaj, who owns a restaurant on a scenic plateau outside town, said “young people have no money to follow school, no job to work, no revenue at all.”
In such an environment, “only old men have remained and soon there will be empty houses,” Tafaj said.
Northeastern Albania is known for its natural Alpine beauty and green sloping landscape. The region is also famous for chestnuts, blueberries, blackberries and medicinal plants, as well as wool carpets and other handmade goods.
But those products offer scant job opportunities. The only jobs are at town halls, schools and hospitals, plus a few more at cafes and restaurants.
Petrit Lleshi, who owns a motel in Kukes, has struggled to find waiters for two years.
“I would not blame a 25-year-old leaving because of the low salaries here,” Lleshi said. “What our country offers is not enough to build a proper life.”
Few migrants seek a visa. They generally pay smugglers 5,000 to 20,000 euros ($5,300 to $21,200) for the dangerous, illegal crossing.
Many migrants undertake the trip with the expectation of a secure job, only to find after arriving in the UK that they must work in cannabis-growing houses for up to two years to pay back the trafficking money, according to reports by Albanian news outlets.
The steady stream of migrants has provoked clashes between British and Albanian leaders in recent months.
UK interior minister Suella Braverman has described the arrivals as an “invasion on our southern coast” — words that Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama blasted as a “crazy narrative” and an attempt to cover up for the UK’s failed border policies.
Albania also publicly protested what it called a “verbal lynching” by another UK official who made comments about Albanian immigrants. Rama accused the new UK Cabinet of scapegoating Albanians because it “has gone down a blind alley with its new policy resulting from Brexit.”
Rama was is in London Thursday for talks on immigration with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and accused UK officials of “singling out” Albanians for political purposes. “It has been a very, very disgraceful moment for British politics,” he told the BBC.
Sunak’s spokesman has said the UK welcomes and values Albanian migrants who come to the country legally, but that large numbers making illegal boat journeys to the UK are straining the asylum system.
In a statement after the meeting, Sunak and Rama welcomed progress to date following a taskforce action on organized crime and new UK guidance designating Albania a safe country, with around 800 migrants returning to Albania since December.
They also decided to create a joint team to assess Albania’s prison capacity until the end of April “with a view to returning all eligible Albanian nationals in the UK prison system.”
Rama has argued that easing visa requirements would help reduce the number of people arriving illegally.
In response to the spike in migration, some agencies are investing in programs that aim to offer opportunities to both countries — jobs for eager Albanians and a supply of remote workers for businesses in the UK
Elias Mazloum of Albania’s Social Development Investment group said that immigration is “a cancer.”
“We are offering chemotherapy after a lot of morphine used so far only has delayed immigration,” he said.
Under his project, 10 companies in Ireland will employ 10 young Albanians to work remotely in an apprenticeship paying 500 euros ($530) per month in the first year. Participants get a certificate from Ireland’s Digital Marketing Institute and then are hired remotely for 1,000 euros ($1,060) per month.
The vision is for the project to help establish a remote-work ecosystem in the region.
“Albania, and in particular the northeast region, has the advantage of working from a blank canvas” to attract digital nomads and encourage its young people to stay, said Declan Droney, a business trainer and consultant in Galway, in the west of Ireland.
A British project in Kukes supports small and midsize businesses in tourism and agriculture and will open a school teaching different professions.
The Albanian government has also offered incentives. Young couples who launch a small business will be exempt from taxes for up to three years, and couples who return from the UK will receive 5,000 euros ($5,300).
Mazloum’s organization has negotiated with Vodafone Albania to offer free high-speed Internet to remote workers.
“The eyes cannot get enough from the beauty of this place — the food, the fresh air. This added to very hospitable people, ambitious youth who like to work hard,” Mazloum said. “Imagine if you give a little hope to the people here, what they could make this place.”
Special report: Testimonies of freed Ukrainians reveal horrors of war and captivity
Capt. Oleksandr Demchenko, taken captive in May 2022 in Mariupol, recounted his experience of 127 days of incarceration
Lyudmila Huseynova, a former safety engineer in Donetsk, waived her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual violence
Updated 7 sec ago
Nadia Al-Faour
KYIV: When the last group of Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the Azovstal steelworks surrendered to Russian forces in May 2022, it marked the end of a ferocious three-month siege of the defenders’ last stronghold in Mariupol.
Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and international volunteers were transferred to a prison colony in Russian-controlled territory, where officials insisted that they would be treated in line with international norms for prisoners of war.
Among them was Capt. Oleksandr Demchenko, an anesthetist who had been working in a makeshift basement hospital during the closing weeks of the siege. He was taken captive on May 18 during a mission to bring supplies and reinforcements to Azovstal.
“I say I have three lives,” Demchenko told Arab News in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, recalling the events — the heavy shelling and falling captive to the Russian forces — almost a year after the fall of Mariupol. “One before my capture, one during, and now the one after.”
Demchenko was among around 300 POWs (including 10 foreigners) released in a prisoner swap brokered by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkiye on Sept. 21 last year. Now slowly recovering from his ordeal, Demchenko has shared his story with Arab News.
Nadia Al-Faour is on deployment to cover the war in Ukraine. (AN photo/Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Mariupol became a symbol of some of the worst violence of the war to date. Moscow recognized the coastal city’s strategic importance as a stepping stone in building a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
The Azovstal steelworks, covering an area of about 4 square miles, including a warren of underground tunnels, became a final holdout where thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers perished in some of the most brutal urban warfare of the past century.
From his underground field hospital, Demchenko operated on wounded soldiers until the Russian onslaught finally overran Ukrainian positions. “They were throwing everything they had at us,” he said.
By that point, the Ukrainian defenders were running low on food, ammunition and medicine. “If I had half a cup of water, I’d call it a good day,” said Demchenko, recalling the privation of those final days in Azovstal.
Following their capture, the POWs were taken to Olenivka, an abandoned prison only recently reopened by the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. There, rooms made to house 150 people were crammed with 800 prisoners.
According to Demchenko, meals consisted of rotten bread and water drawn from the river. He lost 45 kilograms during his 127 days of incarceration in Olenivka, where prisoners were watched and interrogated by a rotating contingent of guards.
Demchenko said he spent his first month and a half in the prison asleep out of sheer exhaustion from the last stand at Azovstal.
“I kept my mind going, I kept making plans for the future,” he said. “My mental state was fine, but I was starting to worry that my body wouldn’t survive for long.”
Several former inmates of Olenivka, officially known as Correctional Colony No. 120, have detailed allegations of beatings, torture, forced labor, and the denial of food and medical care.
Prisoners of war (five British citizens, one Moroccan, one Swede, one Croat, and two Americans) are seen in the tarmac after arriving, following successful mediation efforts by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from Russia to King Khalid International Airport, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, September 21, 2022. (SPA)
On July 29, the prison became notorious when more than 50 Ukrainian POWs were reportedly killed in a blast that both Russia and Ukraine accuse the other of carrying out, with many of the inmates burning to death.
Russia claimed Ukraine had fired US-supplied HIMARS rockets at the prison to deliberately kill its own POWs. Ukraine denied Russia’s claims, accusing Moscow of carrying out the killings to cover up its maltreatment of prisoners.
An independent inquiry is yet to take place.
In September, rumors began circulating among inmates that they would soon be transferred. When the day finally came for the prisoners to move, Demchenko’s body had been so ravaged by malnutrition that he had been reduced to skin and bone.
Following a flight, the prisoners were transferred to a train bound for Belarus. It was during this train journey that Demchenko realized he was being freed when a man walked into the carriage and told them in Ukrainian: “Guys, it’ll be over soon.”
Upon his release, Demchenko said he immediately called his family. Instead of saying hello he greeted them with the wartime salutation: “‘Slava Ukraini’ — ‘Glory to Ukraine.’
“They asked: ‘Who is this?’” said Demchenko. “I laughed and told them: ‘Have you forgotten me so soon?’”
Since the Sept. 21 prisoner swap, exchanges have become a common feature of the war, which has dragged on for more than a year now. Some 1,863 women and men have been released since Russia launched what it called a “special military operation” on Feb. 24, 2022.
Thousands, however, remain imprisoned in conditions said to be at odds with international humanitarian law, including the Third Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs adopted in August 1949.
According to the convention, POWs must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the detaining power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a POW in its custody is prohibited, and, if it occurs, is regarded as a serious breach of the convention.
FASTFACTS
• On Sept. 21, 2022, Russia and Ukraine carried out a prisoner swap involving almost 300 people, including 10 foreigners and the commanders who led a Ukrainian defense of Mariupol.
• The swap, which involved help from Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, resulted in the release of 215 Ukrainians, most of whom were captured after the fall of Mariupol.
• The freed Ukrainians included Lt. Col. Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov battalion; his deputy, Svyatoslav Palamar; and Serhiy Volynsky, the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade.
The convention also obliges all parties to an international armed conflict to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all prisoners of war and the right to visit them wherever they are held. Russia and Ukraine are both parties to the treaty.
Senior Russian officials and diplomats have repeatedly rejected accusations of criminal violence against civilians in Ukraine, denied use of torture or other forms of maltreatment of POWs, and countered with their own allegations of war crimes.
“The special military operation takes place in accordance with the fundamental provisions of the UN Charter, which gives states the right for legitimate self-defense in the event of a threat of use of force, which we have exercised,” Sergei Kozlov, the Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, wrote in an Arab News oped in February.
“As you can see, Russia follows the true spirit of international law, not some kind of ‘rules-based order,’ arbitrarily introduced by the West and its henchmen.”
While thousands of soldiers on both sides have been taken captive since February 2022, detentions and alleged maltreatment in captivity was not reserved for military personnel alone. For many Ukrainian civilians in the east of the country, the ordeal began as far back as 2014.
Lyudmila Huseynova once worked as a safety engineer at a poultry farm in Novoazovsk in Donetsk. When Russian-backed separatists seized her town in 2014, she did not conceal her opposition.
Furthermore, Huseynova became heavily involved in helping to resettle families displaced by the fighting and took care of children in local orphanages.
“I saw the state of the children. They were starving,” Huseynova told Arab News at an apartment building in Kyiv, where she has since resettled.
“At the time there was no allocation of funds in the budget to help them as the budget was strained. I couldn’t fathom leaving them behind, so I stayed.”
Huseynova’s world was turned upside down in October 2019 when one evening, while her husband was away in Kharkiv, there came a knock on the door and a group of men barged into her home.
“I kept thinking why they were muddying the house I had just cleaned with their dirty boots,” said Huseynova.
With her hands bound and a bag placed over her head, she was put in the back of a car and driven to another location for interrogation.
“I thought it was absurd,” she said, recalling her abduction. “I have always been vocal, on and offline, for years now. They used my public Facebook posts, the Ukrainian flag in my home, my books, and accused me of being a ‘nationalist.’”
Huseynova was taken to Izolyatsia, a former art center, transformed in 2014 into a now notorious prison synonymous with allegations of torture and inhumane treatment. “The moment you enter Izolyatsia, you are oppressed as a human and as a woman,” she said.
Although she was almost 60 years old at the time, Huseynova was made to undress in front of her interrogators. “They kept the handcuffs on me, on one hand. The bag was still over my head. I was sexually abused,” she told Arab News.
“They were laughing, and from the sound of their laughter I can tell they were rather young.”
Lyudmila Huseynova, who says she was kidnapped, interrogated and sexually assaulted by Russian troops. (AN photo/Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Huseynova, whose father is Muslim, was willing to waive her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual violence in order to draw attention to the alleged crimes committed by Russian-backed rebels in Donbas prior to the invasion.
“Women are respected in Islam,” she said. “The way we were treated by our captors goes against every Muslim law on the treatment of women.”
After this ordeal was over, Huseynova was taken to a cell, which she shared with another woman. It contained a bunk bed, a toilet, windows painted black to block out the sunlight, and a lamp that was on 24/7. There was a surveillance camera in every cell.
Huseynova said prisoners were made to stand every day from the early morning until sundown and were subjected to routine humiliation. On one occasion, Huseynova said she was forced to eat wheat containing mouse excrement, much to the joy of her captors.
Later Huseynova was transferred to SIZO prison in Lutsk, where she said she was deprived of sleep. “There were lots of addicts,” she said. “The TV was on at all hours of the day.”
It was while incarcerated in SIZO that Huseynova learned of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. “I lost all hope of ever being released,” she said.
However, in October that year Huseynova was suddenly released. Rounded up with a group of other detainees, with tape placed over their eyes, she was transported by car, first to a basement cell, and then to a military airport.
“The car drove around for 7 hours almost aimlessly. When they put us in the basement, they told us we would be executed. We were given no food, no water, just one scoop of wheat.”
However, rather than killing the prisoners, their captors loaded the women onto a plane, cramming them into their seats. Huseynova said the women were told menacingly “don’t be afraid, but this will hurt a little.”
The plane then landed in Crimea, where Huseynova could see a man standing with a white flag waiting to greet them.
Months after her release and resettlement in Kyiv, Huseynova said she cannot forget the women still imprisoned and has been searching for ways to help them. “They feel forgotten,” she said. “They must know they are not so.”
Like Huseynova, Demchenko is still suffering from several health complications brought on by his captivity. He has, however, regained the weight he lost and is looking much healthier.
“Life goes on,” he said, reflecting on the past year of war, imprisonment and freedom. “I never regretted being part of the mission. Speaking as a doctor, Russia is a cancer that must be removed without anesthesia.
“The captors knew what they were doing and, even worse, they enjoyed what they were doing. I will continue my service. I will not stop until we win.”
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has accused both Russia and Ukraine of torturing prisoners of war during the conflict. The International Criminal Court is investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine going back as far as 2013. Its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, believes there is a reasonable basis to believe war crimes have been carried out and, in December 2022, said “Ukraine is a crime scene.”
Pentagon: Budget readies US for possible China confrontation
‘This is a strategy-driven budget,’ US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
The testimony comes on the heels of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow
Updated 23 March 2023
AP
WASHINGTON: The US military must be ready for possible confrontation with China, the Pentagon’s leaders said Thursday, pushing Congress to approve the Defense Department’s proposed $842 billion budget, which would modernize the force in Asia and around the world.
“This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in testimony before the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.
Pointing to increases in new technology, such as hypersonics, Austin said the budget proposes to spend more than $9 billion, a 40 percent increase over last year, to build up military capabilities in the Pacific and defend allies.
The testimony comes on the heels of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, which added to concerns that China will step up its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and increasingly threaten the West.
China’s actions, said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “are moving it down the path toward confrontation and potential conflict with its neighbors and possibly the United States.” He said deterring and preparing for war “is extraordinarily expensive, but it’s not as expensive as fighting a war. And this budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if necessary.”
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Kentucky, pressed the defense leaders on Xi’s meeting with Putin and its impact on US competition with China, which he called “the elephant in the room.” The US, he said, is “at a crucial moment here.”
The growing alliance between China and Russia, two nuclear powers, and Xi’s overtures to Putin during the Ukraine war are “troubling,” Austin said.
He added that the US had not yet seen China provide arms to Russia, but if it does, “it would prolong the conflict and certainly broaden the conflict potentially not only in the region but globally.”
Milley, who will retire later this year, said the Defense Department must continue to modernize its forces to ensure they will be ready to fight if needed. “It is incumbent upon us to make sure we remain No. 1 at all times” to be able to deter China, he said.
Two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan eroded the military’s equipment and troop readiness, so the US has been working to replace weapons systems and give troops time to reset. It’s paid off, Milley told Congress.
“Our operational readiness rates are higher now than they have been in many, many years,” Milley said. More than 60 percent of the active force is at the highest states of readiness right now and could deploy to combat in less than 30 days, while 10 percent could deploy within 96 hours, he said.
Milley cautioned that those gains would be lost if Congress can’t pass a budget on time, because it will immediately affect training.
Members of the panel, including Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., also made it clear that while they support the ongoing US assistance to Ukraine, “the days of blank checks are over.” And they questioned the administration’s ultimate goal there.
Milley said the intent is to make sure that Ukraine remains a free and independent country with its territory intact, maintaining global security and the world order that has existing since World War II.
“If that goes out the window,” he said, “we’ll be doubling our defense budgets at that point, because that will introduce not an era of great power competition, that will begin an era of great power conflict. And that will be extraordinarily dangerous for the whole world.”
The hearing was likely one of Milley’s last in front of Congress. His four-year term as chairman — capping a 43-year military career — ends in October. While many members took the opportunity to thank him for those years of service, it was also an opportunity to press him on one of the darkest moments of his chairmanship — the loss of 13 service members to a suicide bomber at Abbey Gate during the chaotic American evacuation from Afghanistan.
Questions remain about the bombing, and Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to completely withdraw from Afghanistan in August 2021. During an intense two-week evacuation, which took place as Kabul fell to the Taliban, US forces got more than 120,000 personnel out of the country, but paid a large price in the lives of US service members and Afghans. The withdrawal also left behind many Afghans who worked with and supported US troops during the war, and efforts to get them out continue.
“I can think of no greater tragedy than what happened at Abbey Gate. And I have yet to fully reconcile myself to that entire affair,” Milley told the panel members. He called the end state, which left the Taliban in control of the country, a strategic failure.
But that “did not happen in the last 19 days or even the last 19 months. That was a 20-year war,” Milley said. “There were decisions made all along the way which culminated in what the outcome was. And there’s many many lessons to be learned.”
UK: Man charged over 2 fire attacks on people near mosques
The West Midlands Police force said Mohammed Abbkr was charged over attacks in London and Birmingham
Abbkr, a resident of Birmingham who is originally from Sudan, appeared in court in the city on Thursday
Updated 23 March 2023
AP
LONDON: British police have charged a 28-year-old man with two counts of attempted murder after men were set on fire near mosques.
The West Midlands Police force said Mohammed Abbkr was charged over attacks in London and Birmingham, central England.
Abbkr, a resident of Birmingham who is originally from Sudan, appeared in court in the city on Thursday. He wasn’t asked to enter a plea and was ordered detained until his next hearing on April 20.
Abbkr is alleged to have sprayed a substance on two men and set it alight in separate incidents — one near an Islamic center in the Ealing area of west London on Feb. 27 and another near a mosque in Birmingham on Monday.
The Birmingham victim, 70-year-old Mohammed Rayaz, remains in a hospital with severe injuries. Hashi Odowa, 82, who was attacked in Ealing, suffered severe burns to his face and arms.
Counterterrorism officers supported the investigations, but police said officers were “keeping an open mind as to any potential motivation.”