Category: World

KABUL: The Taliban’s march through northern Afghanistan gained momentum overnight with the capture of several districts from fleeing Afghan forces, several hundred of whom fled across the border into Tajikistan, officials said.

More than 300 Afghan military personnel crossed from Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province as Taliban fighters advanced towards the border, Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security said in a statement on Sunday. The Afghan troops crossed over at about 6:30pm local time on Saturday.

“Guided by the principles of humanism and good neighbourliness,” the Tajik authorities allowed the retreating Afghan government forces to cross into Tajikistan, said the statement.

Since mid-April, when US President Joe Biden announced the end to Afghanistan’s “forever war”, the Taliban has made strides throughout the country. But its most significant gains have been in the northern half of the country, a traditional stronghold of the US-allied strongmen who helped defeat them in 2001.

The Taliban now controls roughly a third of all 421 districts and district centres in Afghanistan.

Gains in northeastern Badakhshan province in recent days have mostly come to the armed group without a battle, said Mohib-ul Rahman, a provincial council member. He blamed Taliban successes on the poor morale of troops who are mostly outnumbered and lacking supplies.

“Unfortunately, the majority of the districts were left to Taliban without any fight,” said Rahman. In the last three days, 10 districts fell to Taliban, eight without a fight, he said.

Hundreds of Afghan soldiers, police and intelligence troops surrendered their military outposts and fled to the Badakhshan provincial capital of Faizabad, said Rahman.

Even as a security meeting was being held early on Sunday to plot the strengthening of the perimeter around Faizabad, some senior provincial officials were leaving the city for the Afghan capital Kabul, he said.

In late June, the Afghan government resurrected volunteer militias with a reputation of brutal violence to support the beleaguered Afghan forces but Rahman said many of the fighters in the Badakhshan districts put up only a half-hearted fight.

The Taliban also captured a key district in its former bastion of Kandahar after fierce night-time fighting with Afghan government forces, officials said on Sunday.

The fall of the Panjwai district in the southern province of Kandahar comes just two days after US and NATO forces vacated their main Bagram airbase near Kabul, from where they led operations for 20 years against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies.

KABUL: Hundreds of Taliban fighters were killed in fierce battles with government forces across several provinces of Afghanistan, officials said Saturday, as Washington announced it would finish withdrawing its troops from the country by the end of August. Washington”s announcement came after all US and NATO troops vacated their main Bagram Air Base, from where the coalition forces led operations for two decades against the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies. Over the past 24 hours, more than 300 Taliban fighters were killed in fighting with government forces, the Ministry of Defence said Saturday. Scores were killed in air strikes, including a pre-dawn assault on Saturday, in the southern province of Helmand, where the insurgents and government troops have regularly clashed. There have been fears that Afghan forces would struggle without the air support that the United States has provided. “In recent days, the Afghan air force has intensified its air strikes against the Taliban hideouts and the insurgents have suffered casualties,” Attaullah Afghan, a member of Helmand provincial council, told media. The Taliban rejected the government”s claims. Both sides often exaggerate each other”s casualties and their claims are difficult to independently verify.

ISLAMABAD: In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), people came out of their houses and staged a forceful anti-India and pro-freedom protest demonstration that resulted in clashes with the Indian troops who had martyred five youth in Rajpora area of the Pulwama district, KMS reported. Indian police used brute force and fired tear gas and shotgun pellets to stop scores of protesters from marching into the area where the cordon and search operation was conducted. The protesters chanted slogans such as “Go India, go back” and “We want freedom. ” No one was reported injured in the clashes.

PARIS: A French judge has been tasked with investigating a controversial 2016 multi-billion-dollar sale of Rafale fighter jets to India on “corruption” suspicions, the national financial prosecutors´ office (PNF) said Friday. The 7.8-billion-euro ($9.3-billion) deal for 36 planes between the Indian government and French aircraft manufacturer Dassault has long been mired in corruption allegations. The PNF had intially refused to investigate the sale, prompting French investigative website Mediapart to accuse it and the French Anti-corruption Agency of “burying” suspicions surrounding the September 2016 deal. In April, Mediapart claimed “millions of euros of hidden commissions” were given to a go-between who helped Dassault conclude the sale, of which “some… could have been given as bribes” to Indian officials. Dassault retorted that no wrong-doing was flagged in the group´s audits. After the reports, France´s Sherpa NGO, which specialises in financial crime, filed an official complaint for “corruption” and “influence peddling” among other accusations, prompting an investigating magistrate to be designated to probe the deal. Sherpa had already asked for an investigation into the deal in 2018, but the PNF took no action. In this first complaint, the NGO had denounced the fact that Dassault chose Reliance Group as its Indian partner, a conglomerate headed by billionaire Anil Ambani, who is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Dassult had intially won a contract in 2012 to supply 126 jets to India and had been negotiating with Indian aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). By March 2015, those talks had almost reached a conclusion, according to Dassault. But in April of that year, after Modi paid an official visit to France, the talks suddenly broke down to general surprise. Reliance Group, which has no experience in aeronautics, replaced HAL and finalised a new contract for 36 jets. In January 2016, at the time of the negotiations, Reliance had financed a film co-produced by Julie Gayet, the partner of Francois Hollande, who was president at the time. Sherpa believes this could constitute “influence peddling”.

WINNIPEG: Protesters have toppled statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II in the Canadian city of Winnipeg as anger grows over the discovery of the remains of hundreds of children in unmarked graves at former indigenous schools. A crowd chanted `no pride in genocide` before pulling down the statues of the monarchs. The action tool( place on Canada Day on Thursday, when traditionally celebrations take place across the country. However, many cities scrapped events this year as the scandal over the indigenous children made Canadians confront their colonial history. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the day would be `a time for reflection` Almost 1,000 unmarked graves have been found at former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan that were mainly run by the Catholic Church and funded by the government. For 165 years and as recently as 1996, the schools forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, subjecting them to malnourishment and physical and sexual abuse in what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called `cultural genocide` in 2015. In Winnipeg, a crowd cheered as Queen Victoria`s statue fell outside the Manitoba provincial legislature. Protesters, many of whom wore orange clothing, also kicked the toppled statue and danced around it. The pedestal and statue were daubed in red paint hand marks. A nearby statue of Queen Elizabeth was also pulled down. She is Canada`s current head of state, while Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901 when Canada was part of the British Empire. Protests in support of the indigenous children also took place on Thursday in Toronto, Canada`s financial hub, while a #CancelCanadaDay march in the capital Ottawa drew thousands in support of victims and survivors of the residential school system. Vigils and rallies were held across other parts of the country. Many participants wore orange clothing, which has become the symbol of the movement.