Afghanistan and Pakistan praised the new US strategy for dealing with growing violence in the two countries, saying the plan to reconcile with moderate Taliban militants was better than expected and calling a focus on using development to fight extremism “a positive change.”
US President Barack Obama announced the new strategy in hopes of reversing the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, where violence has been increasing from Taliban militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion and have been launching cross-border attacks from sanctuaries in Pakistan.
In the latest violence, a roadside bomb killed three Afghan army commandos on patrol on Saturday in eastern Paktia Province’s Gardez district, the US military said in a statement. Four other soldiers were wounded.
The violence provides cover for al-Qaeda operatives who Obama said are also holed up in Pakistan and planning attacks against the US and other countries. The overarching goal of the new strategy is to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda in the region by increasing civilian and military assistance on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
But serious questions remain, including whether the new effort will convince Pakistan to crack down on militants operating in its territory and whether the US and Afghanistan can agree on which Taliban fighters should be approached for reconciliation.
In addition to focusing on reconciliation, Afghan President Hamid Karzai praised pledges of increased and better-coordinated assistance to his country and Obama’s focus on countering militant sanctuaries in Pakistan.
“This is better than we were expecting as a matter of fact,” Karzai told a news conference.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said billions of dollars in additional civilian aid would help his government fight extremism. He promised he would not allow Pakistani territory to be used for terrorism — though he offered no new measures.
“The US presidency’s new approach represents a positive change,” Zardari said in a speech to parliament.
Karzai has long championed the idea of reconciliation with the Taliban as a key way to tamp down the growing insurgency in Afghanistan. The administration of former US president George W. Bush generally opposed the idea.
The new plan promised 4,000 additional troops to train the Afghan army, hundreds more civilian specialists to help Afghanistan rebuild and US$1.5 billion in annual civilian aid to Pakistan for the next five years.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees
RSS