Witnesses are reporting a large number of civilians were killed in the Kunduz Province of northern Afghanistan Monday, following an attack by the Afghan military. The attack hit a mosque attached to a religious school, and at least 70 people were killed. Graduating students at the mosque event before the Afghan military bombed themReportedly, the attack came during a large ceremony to recognize graduates of the school and to appoint new mullahs for the religious school. Around 1,000 people were in attendance, and there was speculation that some local Taliban figures were present.
The district governor, Nasruddin Saadi, said that there were armed militants present at the religious event, and that this was the reason security forces decided to attack. This was apparently done irrespective of civilian danger.
The Afghan Defense Ministry told a totally different story, in keeping with their attempts to manage the narrative on big events. The ministry insists the mosque rally wasn’t religious in nature, and that it was Taliban forces massing for a sneak attack.
Despite a number of small children and other obvious civilians being slain, the Defense Ministry insisted everyone killed was a terrorist. They also insisted that only 21 people were killed, despite everyone else reporting at least 70.
In his first major foreign-policy speech as U.S. president, Joe Biden declared to the world that America was back. The international sigh of relief was almost audible amid hopes that former President Donald Trump’s disruptive style was a relic. Biden has pursued an ambitious agenda to repair alliances and forge new ones, curb corruption, arrest democratic backsliding, and tackle climate change, all while managing the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian threats to Ukraine, and escalating tensions with China. It hasn’t all been plain sailing. The decision to withdraw remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan precipitated the collapse of the country’s government and chaos in Kabul as hundreds of thousands of people fled the Taliban. Plans to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia, at the expense of Canberra’s submarine deal with Paris, soured trans-Atlantic relations. Ahead of the anniversary of Biden’s inauguration, Foreign Policy ’s Amy Mackinnon spoke with one of t
Dear Friends and Colleagues, I thought you would be interested in reading George's remarks he delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this evening. Best regards, Michael Vachon George Soros Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland January 25, 2018 The current moment in history Good evening. It has become something of an annual Davos tradition for me to give an overview of the current state of the world. I was planning half an hour for my remarks and half an hour for questions, but my speech has turned out to be closer to an hour. I attribute this to the severity of the problems confronting us. After I’ve finished, I’ll open it up for your comments and questions. So prepare yourselves. *** I find the current moment in history rather painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of dictatorships and mafia states, exemplified by Putin’s Russia, are on the rise. In the United States, President Trump would
Comments
Post a Comment