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Al-Shabab fighters seize central Somali town, displacing thousands

Rédaction Africanews with Reuters — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 22:11:01 +0000

Al-Shabab insurgents have seized the town of Tardo in Somalia’s central Hiiran region, according to a military official.

Tardo is a key crossroads between larger urban centres. The town fell on Sunday after Al-Shabab combatants drove out government-allied clan fighters, Major Mohamed Abdullahi told Reuters.

Somali lawmaker Dahir Amin said at least 12,500 familieshave fled Tardo and the nearby town of Muqokori, which Al-Shabab captured last week.

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Source: https://www.africanews.com/2025/07/14/al-shabab-fighters-seize-central-somali-town-displacing-thousands/

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Biden admin releases 11 Yemeni detainees with suspected al Qaeda ties from Guantanamo Bay — including two alleged former bin Laden bodyguards

Victor Nava | New York Post — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 23:51:56 +0000

The Pentagon announced Monday that it has released 11 Yemeni detainees with suspected ties to al Qaeda from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.

The detainees, none of whom have been charged with a crime, will be resettled in Oman as the Biden administration moves to wind down operations at the notorious detention facility.

“Although different processes, each of the Yemeni detainees underwent a thorough, interagency review by career professionals who unanimously determined all detainees as transfer eligible consistent with the national security interests of the United States,” the Department of Defense said in a statement.

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Source: https://nypost.com/2025/01/06/us-news/biden-admin-releases-11-yemeni-detainees-from-guantanamo-bay/

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Jihadist Attacks In Mali Capital Spark Condemnation, Questions

AFP - Agence France Presse — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 03:06:32 +0000

West African bloc ECOWAS on Wednesday strongly condemned jihadist attacks which a day earlier hit the Malian capital where locals voiced concern and questions remained about the rare and deadly strike.

An Al-Qaeda-linked group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the attack in Bamako against highly sensitive targets, including a military police training centre and the military airport.

The operation was the first of its kind in years and was a forceful blow to the ruling junta, experts say.

The Malian capital is normally spared the sort of attacks that occur almost daily in some parts of the West African country.

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Source: https://www.barrons.com/news/jihadist-attacks-in-mali-capital-spark-condemnation-questions-da350887

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US air strike said to kill 13 al Shabaab militants in Somalia

Reuters — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 21:49:55 +0000

Aug 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. military on Sunday said it believed it had killed 13 al Shabaab fighters in southern Somalia in what it called a “collective self-defense airstrike” at the request of the Somali government.

The Somali government and allied forces began a campaign a year ago to that has pushed al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked group, out of parts of the center of the country, although the group continues to carry out major attacks.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said it had conducted an air strike on Saturday against al Shabaab near Seiera, about 45 km (28 miles) northwest of Kismayo, at the government’s request.

“The collective self-defense airstrike was conducted in the early morning hours of Aug. 26, in support of Somali National Army forces who were engaged by” al Shabaab, AFRICOM said in a statement.

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Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/us-air-strike-said-kill-13-al-shabaab-militants-somalia-2023-08-27/

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“Never Forgotten” 9/11 Tribute

Dansonn Beats — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 13:54:03 +0000

The post “Never Forgotten” 9/11 Tribute first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Never Forget – We remember 9/11

ABC13 Houston — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 13:51:17 +0000

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Biden’s standing among Americans nosedives in wake of rocky Afghanistan exit, COVID surge

Paul Steinhauser — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 14:57:56 +0000

As Labor Day marks the traditional close to summer, President Biden’s poll numbers are taking a hit.

Facing a barrage of bipartisan criticism for weeks over his handling of the turbulent U.S. withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan, and with a surge in new COVID cases due to the spread across the country this summer of the highly infectious delta variant, the president’s approval ratings are slipping.

As Labor Day marks the traditional close to summer, President Biden’s poll numbers are taking a hit.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING ON THE AFGHANISTAN EXI

Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low to mid 50s since taking office in late January. But his numbers started sliding last month, as the crisis in Afghanistan dominated media coverage and mask mandates started returning in certain spots across the country as coronavirus cases rose.

The president stands at 45%-49% approval/disapproval in an average of the latest surveys compiled by RealClearPolitics, and at 46%-48% in a compilation by the polling and analysis website FiveThirtyEight.

Forty-four percent of Americans questioned in an ABC News/Washington Post poll released this weekend said they approved of the job Biden’s doing in the White House, down six points from June. Just over half of those polled (51%) gave the president a thumbs-down on how he’s handling his duties, a jump of nine points from June.

WITH BIDEN’S POLL NUMBERS DROPPING, DEMOCRATS WORRY AFGHANISTAN EXIT MAY IMPACT 2022 MIDTERMS

Gary Langer, the longtime director of polling at ABC News, highlighted that in data dating back to the Harry Truman administration, “only two presidents have had a lower approval rating at this point in their terms: Donald Trump, at 37% in August 2017, and Gerald Ford, also 37%, in March 1975.”

The ABC News/Washington Post poll, conducted Aug. 29-Sept 1, is among the latest national surveys to indicate that the rocky exit from Afghanistan, ending a two-decade U.S. military presence in the war-torn Central Asian country, is taking a toll on the president’s political standing.

The poll’s release followed by a day an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist national survey that indicated Biden at 43%-51%, the president’s lowest approval in Marist polling since taking office. The president stood at 46%-48% in an Ipsos national survey conducted Sept. 1-2.

TRUMP TAKES AIM AT BIDEN OVER AFGHANISTAN IN WHAT MIGHT BE THE FIRST TV AD OF THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Marist Poll director Lee Miringoff highlighted last week that “the end of this chapter of American involvement in Afghanistan has taken a significant toll on Biden’s standing with Americans.”

Similar to the Marist poll, the drop in Biden’s overall approval rating in the ABC News/Washington Post survey was fueled by a 14-point plunge in support among independents since late June and a significant slip among Democrats, from 94% approval to 86%. Republican disapproval of Biden – at 89% – was little changed from June.

Biden has been pilloried for his handling of the hastily organized evacuation efforts in Afghanistan. While the president has repeatedly declared the withdrawal and evacuation a success – the U.S. airlifted roughly 120,000 people, including more than 5,500 Americans, after the fall of Kabul through the end of August – he’s been accused by Republicans and some Democrats for underestimating the Taliban and overestimating the strength of the now-collapsed, U.S.-backed Afghan government and military.

Biden’s approval of handling the situation in Afghanistan stood at 30%-60% in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. Among the vast majority of Americans questioned in the survey who supported the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, by a two-to-one margin they disapproved of the way the president handled the withdrawal.

AMERICA’S TOP GENERAL’S TERRORISM WARNING FOLLOWING U.S. AFGHANISTAN EXIT

And with serious concerns that ISIS or al Qaeda may use the war-torn Central Asian country as a platform to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland or U.S. forces overseas, 44% say the withdrawal made America less safe from terrorism. Just eight percent said the U.S. is safer as a result of the Afghanistan exit.

Biden touted his foreign policy prowess and his competence in running an administration as he challenged former President Trump in the 2020 election. And while the chaotic exit from Afghanistan is the major culprit in the president’s approval rating plunge, it’s not the only issue that’s fueling the fall.

One of the issues that vaulted Biden to the presidency was the coronavirus, the worst pandemic to sweep the globe in a century. Biden vowed to do what Trump seemingly couldn’t do – get COVID cases under control, bring back a sense of normalcy to Americans and boost an economy that was severely battered by the pandemic.

But the late-summer COVID surge due to the Delta variant is another gut punch to the president. Biden’s approval rating on handling the coronavirus in the new ABC News/Washington Post poll stands at 52%-41%. The president’s approval is down 10 points from June, when Biden stood at 62%-31%.

And with rising consumer prices this summer raising economic concerns, the president has also seen his approval on the economy slip, from 52%-41% in an ABC News/Washington Post poll in April to 45%-49%. The poll was conducted before Friday’s dismal unemployment report, which was another key indicator that the spread of the delta variant is hampering the economic recovery.

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/biden-apos-standing-among-americans-105217356.html

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Afghanistan’s collapse leaves allies questioning U.S. resolve on other fronts

Liz Sly - Washington Post — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 06:20:43 +0000

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby listens to a question about Afghanistan at a briefing on Aug. 13, 2021. (Susan Walsh/AP)

LONDON — The Taliban’s stunningly swift advances across Afghanistan have sparked global alarm, reviving doubts about the credibility of U.S. foreign policy promises and drawing harsh criticisms even from some of the United States’ closest allies.

As Taliban fighters entered Kabul and the United States scrambled to evacuate its citizens, concerns grew that the unfolding chaos could create a haven for terrorists, unleash a major humanitarian disaster and trigger a new refugee exodus.

U.S. allies complain that they were not fully consulted on a policy decision that potentially puts their own national security interests at risk — in contravention of President Biden’s promises to recommit to global engagement.

And many around the world are wondering whether they could rely on the United States to fulfill long-standing security commitments stretching from Europe to East Asia.

Whatever happened to ‘America is back’?” said Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Defense Committee in the British Parliament, citing Biden’s foreign policy promise to rebuild alliances and restore U.S. prestige damaged during the Trump administration.

Hubris to humiliation: America’s warrior class struggles to make sense of what happened

“People are bewildered that after two decades of this big, high-tech power intervening, they are withdrawing and effectively handing the country back to the people we went in to defeat,” Ellwood said. “This is the irony. How can you say America is back when we’re being defeated by an insurgency armed with no more than [rocket-propelled grenades], land mines and AK-47s?”

Afghans wait in long lines for hours on Aug. 14 at the passport office in Kabul. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

As much as its military capabilities, the United States’ decades-old role as a defender of democracies and freedoms is again in jeopardy, said Rory Stewart, who was Britain’s minister for international development in the Conservative government of Theresa May. “The Western democracy that seemed to be the inspiration for the world, the beacon for the world, is turning its back,” Stewart said.

Britain has voiced some of the bluntest criticisms of the pullout, which is unusual for a country that regards itself as the United States’ closest ally. Britain made the biggest contribution to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and suffered the highest number of casualties after the United States.

In comments Friday, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace predicted civil war and the return of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization whose attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, prompted the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan.

“I feel this was not the right time or decision to make,” he told Sky News. “Of course al-Qaeda will probably come back, and certainly it would like that kind of breeding ground.”

“Strategically, it causes a lot of problems, and as an international community, it’s very difficult . . . what we’re seeing today,” he added.

Rivals of the United States also have expressed dismay. Among them is China, which fears that the ascent of an extremist Islamist government on its western border will foster unrest in the adjoining province of Xinjiang, where Beijing has waged sweeping crackdowns on the Uyghur population that have been denounced by the West.

The Taliban is already reimposing its rules

Washington “bears an unavoidable responsibility for the current situation in Afghanistan,” Col. Wu Qian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense, said earlier this month. “It cannot leave and shed the burden on regional countries.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected criticisms that the withdrawal damages U.S. credibility. He said staying mired in a conflict that is not in the “national interest” would do far more damage.

“Most of our strategic competitors around the world would like nothing better than for us to remain in Afghanistan for another year, five years, 10 years, and have those resources dedicated to being in the midst of a civil war,” Blinken told CNN. “It’s simply not in our interest.”

But the manner and implementation of the withdrawal has left allies feeling betrayed, said Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations. Germany’s government, which withdrew its troops in June and is evacuating its embassy, has refrained from overt criticism of the U.S. withdrawal.

Nonetheless, some German officials and lawmakers are seething at Washington’s failure to consult coalition partners such as Berlin, Clüver Ashbrook said. Germany is particularly concerned about the potential for an exodus of Afghan refugees similar to the influx of 2015, when more than 1 million migrants, spurred largely by the war in Syria, surged into Europe, with many headed for Germany.

“The Biden administration came to office promising an open exchange, a transparent exchange with its allies. They said the transatlantic relationship would be pivotal,” she said. “As it is, they’re playing lip service to the transatlantic relationship and still believe European allies should fall into line with U.S. priorities.”

Europe’s deportations of Afghans grind to a halt as Taliban overruns country

“We’re back to the transatlantic relationship of old, where the Americans dictate everything. . . . ‘Yes we want to partner with you, but in reality, we want to be able to tell you what to do and when,’ ” she added.

The United States’ Arab allies, which have long counted on the U.S. military to come to their aid in the event of an attack by Iran, also have faced questions over whether they will be able to rely on the United States.

“What’s happening in Afghanistan is raising alarm bells everywhere,” said Riad Kahwaji, who heads the Inegma security consultancy in the United Arab Emirates, which hosts one of the biggest American military contingents in the Middle East.

“The U.S.’s credibility as an ally has been in question for a while,” he said. “We see Russia fighting all the way to protect the Assad regime [in Syria], and now the Americans are pulling out and leaving a big chaos in Afghanistan.”

Clüver Ashbrook said Biden’s plan to build an alliance of democracies to counter the influence of China and Russia is also in doubt, now that the West will no longer maintain a significant presence in Central Asia.

For China and Russia, there is opportunity as well as concern in the departure of U.S. troops. Both Moscow and Beijing have hosted Taliban delegations in recent weeks in an attempt to pave the way for a post-American future in the region.

The humiliating conclusion of the two-decade U.S. venture into Afghanistan will aid their efforts to persuade many governments to seek out relationships elsewhere, analysts say.

In a commentary directed at Hong Kong, China’s state-run Global Times cited Afghanistan in a signal to democracy activists not to heed repeated American promises to “stand by” Hong Kong.

“It has been proven repeatedly that whomever U.S. politicians claim to stand with will face bad luck, plunge into social unrest and suffer severe consequences,” the commentary said.

Russia has been struck by the speed of the unraveling of the U.S.-installed government in Kabul, said Fyodor Lukyanov, the chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and editor in chief of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs.

The decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which ended in 1989, is widely remembered as a failure, one that leaves Russia in no mood to reengage too closely with Afghanistan, he said.

But at least, Lukyanov noted, the government left behind by the Soviets survived for three years after the withdrawal of Red Army forces.

“We believe our failure was big, but it seems the Americans achieved an even bigger failure,” he said.

John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.

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Taliban insurgents take Kandahar, Herat as US plans to evacuate Americans from embassy in Kabul

Lucas Y. Tomlinson , Edmund DeMarche | Fox News — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 14:28:22 +0000

The insurgents have taken more than a dozen provincial capitals in recent days and now control more than two-thirds of the country.

Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan on Friday seized Kandahar and Herat—the country’s second and third largest cities, hours after Fox News confirmed that the U.S. military will help evacuate Americans from the embassy in Kabul.

The insurgents have taken more than a dozen provincial capitals in recent days and now control more than two-thirds of the country just weeks before the U.S. plans to withdraw its last troops.

The New York Times reported that just three major cities in the country are still under the government’s control and Taliban fighters are “well-positioned to attack Kabul.” The paper also pointed out that the capture of Kandahar is a symbolic victory for the Taliban because it is where the insurgency started back in the 1990s.

Thousands of Afghans have fled their homes amid fears the Taliban will again impose a brutal, repressive government, all but eliminating women’s rights and conducting public executions.

The plans to evacuate the Americans were briefed to President Biden earlier Thursday in order to get his approval, one official added. The military will evacuate “thousands” of American citizens and Afghan interpreters from Kabul.

“Things are moving,” one official said.

The Taliban’s advance has attracted the attention of the United Kingdom.

Ben Wallace, the U.K. defense minister, said in an interview Friday that his forces could make a return to Afghanistan if there is a resurgence of Al Qaeda and the country becomes a hotbed for terrorism that threatens the West, a report said.

“I’m going to leave every option open. If the Taliban have a message from last time, you start hosting Al Qaeda, you start attacking the West, or countries like that, we could come back.”

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The Taliban have captured another three provincial capitals in southern Afghanistan, including in Helmand, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the past two decades, as the insurgents press a lightning offensive that is gradually encircling the capital.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Lucas Y. Tomlinson is a Pentagon correspondent for Fox News Channel. Follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/taliban-takes-kandahar?test=38861ea43380e1402f1c90f21546ad4b

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Things look grim in Afghanistan, even with US airpower. In 21 days, they could be much worse

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 12:47:45 +0000

(CNN) Many thought it would happen like this. But to see it so fast, so stark, brings no comfort in the prediction. The last six days have brought Afghanistan to arguably the most perilous place in the last two decades.

At least six Afghan provincial capitals have fallen to the Taliban, including the major city of Kunduz, while another, Ghazni, is in peril. The US project and its Afghan allies have never seen territory fall to the Taliban so fast.

But there’s been another casualty: the hope that the Taliban could be left to rage in rural Afghanistan, where they have more support, but be kept out of the cities, has for the most part evaporated.

Are these changes irreversible? Usually, the answer would be a swift “no,” with US airpower sweeping in, and the insurgency being pushed out by pinpoint strikes from above and Afghan commandos on the ground. But it is harder to use airpower when fighting for cities brimming with civilians. And Afghan security forces — or at least their reliable commandos — are a limited asset. It must be hard for Afghanistan’s generals to know which fires to put out.

There is another, pressing complication: the United States has made it clear that 21 days from now, when the withdrawal of all international troops is complete, the airstrikes that often hold the insurgency back will stop, and air power will be used in a limited capacity to hit terror-related targets. Absent a last-minute change, this slim advantage will vanish — not that these strikes have particularly changed the direction of the past five days.

Even critics of the lackluster and fickle application of the US during its longest war should find no comfort in how the seemingly inevitable has come to pass. After 20 years, leaving was pretty much the only thing America had not tried; but it was foolish to think that something pleasant lurked under this Band-Aid as it was torn off. There was strategic courage in President Joe Biden’s acceptance that the US should not indefinitely apply just enough force to hold the Taliban back. But that’s the only real comfort many expected from his rapid, unconditional departure.

Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in Kunduz city, northern Afghanistan, on Monday.

US diplomats continue to express hope that the peace process will bear fruit. That the Taliban representatives they are talking with in Doha — an older, perhaps externally softer group of elders — intend to alter the raging march to victory of their younger fighters. Critics have scorned this hope and dubbed the negotiations a sham, while some point out it remains wise to keep the door to talks open for any occasion down the line.

Regardless of who is right, it is startling to see the US, after so long wielding extraordinary might daily in Afghanistan, reduced to pleading for a peaceful settlement. The hope the 2021 Taliban had learned — from their period in power as a pariah in the 1990s — that they need international aid to keep the country afloat, still underpins a lot of US diplomacy. That can only seem more misguided after Sunday’s rejection of any possible ceasefire by the Taliban. They seem to want victory, and little else.

So what next? This is already shaping up to be a terrifying summer for millions of Afghans. The less optimistic Afghan voices I heard during an April trip conceded they might, if the summer months went badly, lose parts of the country. They admitted they might see the Taliban return to the territory of Afghanistan and then use this partial “emirate” — as the militants like to dub the areas they control — to begin to negotiate with added legitimacy. But the cities they are pressuring, or have taken, are beginning to form a circle around Kabul.

The scene of a car bomb in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on August 4.

The capital — home to possibly as many as 6 million people, with all the money, arms and security that 20 years of billions of American dollars can buy — does not seem vulnerable to a Taliban takeover thus far. It would be a steep challenge for the insurgents to stroll into the city, caught as it is in a hilltop bowl, with the same ease with which the Northern Alliance expelled them back in 2001. But the Taliban have proven how penetrable Kabul is to them in the past week, by assassinating government spokesmen, a local official and even prison prosecutors.

Similar lurches forwards by the insurgency have paused before. It is also possible Afghan security forces will see success in the key city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, and find a bottom line that they are able to hold.

But it is the broad look of consternation and confusion from Western officials about how to respond that must give the insurgency the greatest succor. After more than a dozen years of repeating the same talking points that rested on what they thought was a flawless strategy, the West is truly unsure what to say. Plea for peace, threaten more airpower, or insist the main cities.

The sort of society that Western money bought for allied Afghans was often corrupt, unfair and at times undemocratic. Yet what comes next is palpably worse still. Warlordism risks filling the gap between government collapse and insurgent domination. The Taliban are showing their old, ugly face.

UNICEF drew attention last week to the flogging of a 12-year-old boy in Faryab by “a member of an anti-government element. There have been several reports of insurgents killing government loyal officials. The Taliban’s open, English-speaking spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, often decries such brutality. But that does not stop it happening.

At least 27 children were killed and 136 injured during the previous 72 hours in Afghanistan, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement Monday. “These atrocities are evidence of the brutal nature and scale of violence in Afghanistan which preys on already vulnerable children,” it added.

Another threat, as security collapses, is the return of the reason the US went there in the first place: terrorism. Al Qaeda are doing well, Afghan officials have told me, and there are said to be thousands of loosely affiliated foreign fighters on the battlefield.

A “24-7 hype party” is how Rita Katz, head of extremist monitoring group SITE, described al Qaeda social media channels. “In some ways, it feels like the earlier days of the Syria Civil War amid Nusra Front’s victories — except now on a completely different scale, given the Taliban’s horrifying momentum,” Katz tweeted.

History has repeated itself so many times already for Afghans, they are beyond farce now. The enduring question of the next months is whether the West — faced with the discomfort of the apparently inevitable happening — decides to change course, if it is not too late.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/09/asia/afghanistan-future-analysis-intl/index.html

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