Afghan and international forces laid a security ring around Kabul yesterday as dignitaries traveled from around the world for the inauguration of Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's first popularly elected president.
In their biggest operation since the October election, which Karzai won in a landslide, police and troops cordoned off the route from the city's battle-scarred airport to the presidential palace, where the US-backed leader was to be sworn in today.
PHOTO: AP
Trucks and cars with license plates from beyond Kabul were turned away at the city limits. NATO armored vehicles mounted extra patrols, and US helicopters scoured the mountains that encircle the capital.
Karzai's installation will crown a three-year drive to stabilize Afghanistan since a US bombing campaign drove out the former ruling Taliban for harboring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Insurgents continue to harass US and Afghan forces across a broad swath of the south and east. US commanders say they expect to keep their force strength at about 18,000 at least until after parliamentary elections slated for the spring.
But Karzai has said the country's booming drug economy, which accounts for an estimated one-third of national income, is now a bigger threat, and will be the top priority of his fresh five-year term.
After rebels failed to make good on a threat to seriously disrupt the Oct. 9 vote, and US and Afghan officials offered many an amnesty, there is speculation that Taliban-linked figures may resurface in the new government.
However, officials remain on guard against what US commanders describe as a "strategic surprise" in the shape of a spectacular attack by militant die-hards or al-Qaeda cells on today's ceremony. Kabul has seen four deadly suicide attacks this year.
Nerves will be particularly taut because of the expected presence of a US delegation led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS