The Afghan government says it has recaptured most parts of Kunduz, the northern city seized by the Taliban earlier this week, forcing the insurgents to retreat in heavy street fighting that was still underway on Thursday.
Afghan special forces launched an operation around 9 pm on Wednesday,
alongside regular soldiers and police. They were backed by coalition
airstrikes and international troops, thought to be acting in an advisory
role.
Photos on social media showed soldiers removing a Taliban flag from the city’s central square. A Taliban spokesman said its fighters were still resisting government forces in the centre and controlled most of the rest of Kunduz.
The claim and counter-claim follow three days of heavy fighting after
the Taliban seized the city on Monday, in a stunning surprise assault.
It was the first time since 2001 that the insurgents have been able to
breach a large city.
According to a security official close to the Afghan government, the US military carried out at least two airstrikes.
“By 3.30 am, our special forces were able to retake the city and
clear the city from terrorists,” said Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the
Afghan interior ministry.
“There are lots of dead bodies of Taliban in the city right now.
Hundreds of them,” he said, estimating that at least 200 militants had
been killed in the operation.
Zabihullah, a Kunduz resident living close to the main city square,
who like many Afghans prefers to use one name, said that “intense
fighting is continuing on the streets of city.”
“The situation is really critical and getting worse, and I’ve just
heard a huge explosion from a bomb near my house,” he said, speaking to
the AP over the telephone from his home.
The principal of Pakistan’s most famous school has been virtually
confined to his on-campus bungalow for a month following a bitter
falling out with the board of governors, who he says object to reforms
that allegedly cost the grandchildren of some of the most powerful men
in the country coveted places.
Agha Ghazanfar, a distinguished academic and former senior
bureaucrat, is banned by a high court order from running Aitchison
college or even walking on the extensive lawns of its vast campus in
Lahore.
He has said he is filling his time writing a “prisoner’s diary” about
the bizarre limbo he is caught up in after taking legal action against
the college’s decision in July to sack him just seven months after he
took over.
Although the Lahore high court initially overturned Ghanzanfar’s
dismissal, it later ruled that he could not do his job while legal
action grinds on – but could use his official residence.
Established by the British in 1886 to teach princelings, Aitchison
remains a bastion of the country’s elite, with many senior figures
educated in its grand buildings.
Speaking to the Guardian from his home in the school grounds,Ghazanfar
described the school as “like a microcosm of the country as a whole”,
claiming that is “rife with corruption, mismanagement and nepotism”.
He said: “Before I came I was told the biggest challenge will be
withstanding the pressure of politicians, rich businessman, people who
command huge amounts of resources because the tradition was that seats
could be purchased.”
Ghazanfar arrived in December after his long-standing predecessor
stepped down amid controversy about entrance exam results being
allegedly fudged to favour the low-scoring children of powerful alumni.
At the time the then governor of Punjab province, the former Glasgow
MP Mohammad Sarwar, had caused consternation among many alumni by pushing for a strict merit-only entry system that ignored traditional considerations of “kinship”.
North Korea
will not be deterred from plans to launch controversial long-range
missiles by the threat of further sanctions, the country’s ambassador to
the UK said in a rare public appearance.
Pyongyang insists the launches are part of a peaceful satellite
programme but the US and its allies say they are disguised ballistic
missile tests and a key component of a nuclear weapons development
scheme.
Pyongyang has hinted that it could fire one of the rockets in October to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Workers Party, a key political anniversary for the secretive nation.
Doing so would invite fresh sanctions from the west, and probably derail plans for an inter-Korean family reunion set for late October.
But ambassador Hyon Hak-bong told an audience at London’s Chatham
House that his government would consider any escalation of sanctions
“another provocation” and would not be deterred.
“We have nothing to be afraid of. We will go ahead, definitely,
surely,” Hyon said. “We are prepared to launch at any time or any
place.”
Expert analysis of recent satellite images suggest North Korea has completed upgrades
at its main Sohae satellite launch site, although analysts also say
there has been no sign of activity to suggest an imminent launch.
An aggressive Russian military intervention in Syria has placed Barack Obama’s policy for one of the world’s most devastating conflicts at a crossroads.
Russia’s military resurgence in the Middle East comes as the White
House’s own military contribution to the Syrian civil war is collapsing,
something even Obama’s former aides are acknowledging. The question now
facing Obama is whether he will cut his losses in Syria, an
intervention he has never wanted, and leave Vladimir Putin holding the bag.
Putin’s military gambit in Syria is the inverse of Obama’s. It has
been rapid where Obama’s is belated, decisive where Obama’s is
tentative, and focused where Obama’s is diffuse. What similarities exist
concern the two countries’ euphemistic description of their
involvement: Russia
is claiming an operation against the Islamic State while actually
attacking enemies of client Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US is bombing
Isis in Syria while treating the country as peripheral to a central
conflict in neighboring Iraq.
Russia’s inaugural airstrikes on Wednesday
– the culmination of a monthlong buildup in the western airbase of
Latakia – undermined days’ worth of talk from Obama and Putin about
cooperation in the conflict. Pentagon officials fumed at a call from the
Russians to ground its own warplanes even though Russia targeted an
area further west than the US bombing campaign. A day after the Pentagon
spoke about “deconflicting” air operations, it defiantly declared that it would continue its own strikes.
After Putin sent approximately 30 warplanes to Latakia, US officials publicly declared themselves confused
by Russian intentions. Putin clarified them to 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Asked if his true intentions were to bolster Assad rather than eradicate
Isis, Putin answered: “Well, you’re right.”
US officials said on Wednesday that they were still working to
determine whom the Russian strikes hit, although early indications
suggested a US-backed militant group was bombed.
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Wearing
down the US-backed Syrian militants appears easy. Gone are the
Pentagon’s 2014 assurances that it would field a 5,000-strong ground
force of Syrian “moderate” rebels by now; such comments were replaced
with a dramatic admission earlier this month that it has yielded only a handful.
Pentagon assurances about the parlous state of its Syrian proxies are
in doubt: within a week, it initially denied and then conceded that one
group provided US equipment to al-Qaida in Syria and that it has paused
the process of adding new recruits.
One reason behind the minimal enlistments is the goal of the US
project: not to fight Assad, but instead to fight Isis, which many
Syrians consider a lesser priority. Amid fierce criticism from
congressional hawks, who argue that defeating Isis means first defeating
Assad, Obama has drawn sharp limits on expanding the goal of US
involvement. He has balked at using US warplanes to patrol a “safe zone”
corridor for Syrian civilians, and thus far refrained from using air
power to protect rebel groups from Assad’s helicopter-launched barrel
bombs.
If the US approach to Syrian rebels is tentative, its approach to
Assad is rhetorical. Obama consistently calls for Assad to relinquish
power; Assad consistently declines. After reaping minimal results on
both fronts of its bifurcated policy, the administration is currently
reviewing its Syria initiatives to determine if an alternative ought to
be adopted.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, may be gesturing towards an
option. In the past several days, Kerry met with representatives of
Assad’s patrons, Russia and Iran, seemingly to determine if a brokered
endgame for the conflict is achievable. A US official, briefing on
Kerry’s Sunday meeting with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, said the
two diplomats discussed the prospects “to get back to the conversation about a way forward on a political transition”.
Speculation is rife that Obama will pivot to such a diplomatic
settlement. His speech to the United Nations on Monday included a line
about a “managed transition” in Syria to an “inclusive” post-Assad
government. It followed a provocative argument from a former White House
Syria aide endorsing a “messy compromise” that can accept deferring Assad’s ultimate fate.
The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee on Wednesday
denounced Russia’s bombing as undermining “pressure on the regime and
its supporters [that] may have finally led to a negotiated end to the
conflict”. An alternative interpretation is that Russia’s bombing aims
to strengthen Assad’s hand ahead of any such negotiation and, as a
fallback, preserve Russian influence in a post-Assad Syria. Russia may
indeed seek an end to the conflict – just one that occurs on Assad and
Moscow’s terms.
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Russian inentions and results are two different things. The country
may not be able to broker an accord at all; it may also fail at
suppressing Isis in Syria, a necessary objective for the viability of
any Russian-backed Syrian government, with or without Assad. The perils
of both objectives – a bloody quagmire – are the sources of Obama’s
hesitation in Syria. Pentagon officials cited in the Daily Beast seemed
almost relieved that the Russians would risk entangling themselves.
Yet Russian entanglement in Syria does not mean US extrication, even
if that is Obama’s goal. Putin has done nothing to indicate Russia will
battle Isis in Iraq, Obama’s relative priority, where daily US strikes
occur as well. As the Pentagon insists that the Russian air campaign
will not deter its own, Obama has yet to send a signal that Putin’s
gambit will be cover for winding down a US intervention he never wanted.
In
the leadup to a bilateral meeting between the US secretary of state,
John Kerry, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, a
journalist asks Lavrov: ‘The Pentagon has already expressed questions
for the motives and targets in Syria. Who did the Russian military
strike today?’ Lavrov dismisses statements made by the Pentagon on the
Russian strikes. He later dismisses another question from a journalist
by saying it is ‘politically incorrect for lady to address a gentleman
on her knees’
A Syrian army photographer who catalogued thousands of cases of
torture and murder in Bashar al-Assad’s prisons has spoken out for the
first time about witnessing atrocities that have been described as
crimes against humanity and led to calls for the president’s
prosecution.
The photographer, identified only by his codename Caesar, is now a
refugee in Europe and fears he will be “eliminated” for the most
damaging exposure of Syrian state violence since the uprising began in
2011, according to a book by the French journalist Garance le Caisne, extracted in the Guardian.
“I had never seen anything like it,” Caesar said. “Before the
uprising, the regime tortured prisoners to get information; now they
were torturing to kill. I saw marks left by burning candles, and once
the round mark of a stove – the sort you use to heat tea – that had
burned someone’s face and hair. Some people had deep cuts, some had
their eyes gouged out, their teeth broken, you could see traces of
lashes with those cables you use to start cars.
“There were wounds full of pus, as if they’d been left untreated for a
long time and had got infected. Sometimes the bodies were covered with
blood that looked fresh. It was clear they had died very recently.”
Caesar’s claims were first published by the Guardian
and CNN in February 2014, along with statements by three eminent
international lawyers that said his photographs, smuggled out on USB
sticks before he defected with the help of an opposition group, showed
the “systematic killing” of about 11,000 detainees in the custody of
regime security forces from March 2011 to August 2013.
The story fuelled demands that Syrian officials be investigated for
war crimes. Assad responded later that the allegations proved nothing
because the publication and authentication of Caesar’s story was
financed by the Gulf state of Qatar, which was committed, then as now,
to his overthrow.
Russia has used its UN security council veto to block any
investigation of the Syrian government in the international criminal
court or the creation of an ad hoc court for Syria. But allegations of
war crimes persist. A three-year operation
to smuggle official documents out of the country produced enough
evidence to indict Assad and 24 senior officials, according to an
international investigative commission.
Two weeks ago Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary inquiry into
alleged war crimes committed by the Syrian government between 2011 and
2013, the same period covered by Caesar’s testimony.
“Faced with these crimes that offend the human conscience, this
bureaucracy of horror, faced with this denial of the values of humanity,
it is our responsibility to act against the impunity of the assassins,”
the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said in a statement sent
to AFP.
The timing of the French move is significant because it coincides
with calls by Russia, Iran and some European countries to negotiate with
Assad because only he is capable of fighting the jihadis of Islamic
State. Britain recently softened its position by saying the Syrian
president could remain in a transitional government for six months, but
it said he would still have to face justice.
“The terrorists of Islamic State proclaim their atrocities on social
networks; the Syrian state hides its misdeeds in the silence of its
dungeons,” wrote Le Caisne. “Before Caesar, no insider had supplied
evidence of the existence of the Syrian death machine. And these photos
and documents were damning.”
Caesar believed that the Syrian security services felt
“invulnerable”. He told the author: “They can’t imagine that one day
they will be called to account for their abuses. They know that great
powers support the regime. And they never thought that these photos
would get out and be seen by the wider world.
“In fact, I wonder if the security service bosses aren’t more stupid
than we think. Busy repressing demonstrators, looting the population,
killing, they’ve forgotten that their abuses were being documented. Look
at the chemical attack on Ghouta [in August 2013, which killed 1,400
people]. Those responsible knew there would be evidence of what they had
done – yet they still fired their rockets.”
Washington has accused Moscow of throwing “gasoline on the fire” of
the Syrian civil war, rejecting Russia’s claims that its first
airstrikes in the war-torn country had targeted Islamic State terrorists.
In a dramatic escalation of the conflict in Syria, Russia
launched a series of airstrikes on Wednesday that it said were aimed at
Isis terrorists but which mainly appeared to hit less extreme groups
fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Russian gambit – the first time the country has launched major
military action outside the borders of the former Soviet Union since the
end of the cold war – came two days after the Russian president,
Vladimir Putin, spoke to the UN and called for an international coalition against terrorism to fight Isis.
Multiple reports from the ground, however, suggested the Russian
airstrikes on Wednesday had targeted groups linked to the Free Syrian
Army, the main opposition to Assad. A resident of Talbiseh in Homs said
two airstrikes primarily hit residential areas of the town, killing
about 20 people.
Ashton Carter, the US defence chief, said his understanding was also
that the Russian strikes “were in areas where there were probably not
Isil forces,” the closest that any US official went on Wednesday to
declaring that Moscow – instead of attacking Isis – had attacked the
enemies of Assad.
The veneer of cooperation that the US president, Barack Obama, and
Putin had sought to establish at the UN this week was pierced.
“Russia states an intent to fight Isil on the one hand, and to support the Bashar al-Assad
regime on the other. Fighting Isil without pursuing a parallel
political transition only risks escalating the civil war in Syria – and
with it, the very extremism and instability that Moscow claims to be
concerned about and aspire to fighting,” said Carter at an impromptu
press conference. “So that approach is tantamount … to pouring gasoline
on the fire.”
Carter stopped short of demanding an end to the airstrikes, suggesting it was not too late for Russia to change its position.
Speaking outside Moscow on Wednesday, Putin said Russia would not
“plunge head-first” into the conflict but would provide temporary air
support for a Syrian army offensive.
Russia’s defence ministry confirmed airstrikes had taken place,
claiming the targets were military and communication equipment
“belonging to the terrorists of Isis”.
A day after the Pentagon announced that Carter was establishing a
communications channel with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoygu, to “deconflict”
any overlapping airstrikes, Russian officials told US diplomats in
Baghdad that the Americans should avoid Syrian airspace during a Russian
operation of uncertain duration. US officials rejected the demand.
A US defence official said: “While we would welcome a constructive
role by Russia in this effort [to deconflict strikes], today’s demarche
hardly seems indicative of that sort of role and will in no way alter
our operations.”
He added that the strikes underscored the need for “meaningful deconfliction discussions very soon”.
Later on Wednesday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his
Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov met and announced they were launching a
new diplomatic initiative in the search for a political solution in Syria, perhaps meeting as soon as Thursday to discuss deconfliction.
They conceded that the two countries remained far apart on important
issues, such as the future of Assad, but said they had agreed on some
smaller confidence-building steps that might build momentum for broader
progress.
Neither man, however, said what those steps would be. Both said they had first to be checked with their respective capitals.
“We also agreed that it is imperative to find a solution to this
conflict and to avoid escalating it in any way and see it intensify by
forces beyond anybody’s control,” said Kerry.
Syrian rebels and opposition media outlets claimed that Russian
aircraft carried out strikes in the central provinces of Homs and Hama
that allegedly killed at least 24 people.
Activists in Hama said Russian fighter jets targeted the town of
Lataminah, north of the city. Homs Media Centre, a pro-opposition media
outlet, identified 22 individuals killed in what was described as
Russian strikes in the town of Talbiseh, in the north of the province.
It was not immediately possible to verify the claims.
Other video footage
from Hama showed warplanes that the opposition said were Russian jets,
but which were difficult to identify positively from a distance.
A commander with a Syrian rebel group known as Tajammu al-Izzah,
which operates in northern Hama and claims allegiance to the Free Syrian
Army, said his organisation’s base in the foothills of Hama had been targeted by Russian warplanes.
The group was one of the few in Syria to have received anti-tank
rockets and had regularly used them against Syrian armour. Tajammu
al-Izzah is thought to be one of a small number of opposition groups to
have been vetted by US defence teams in Turkey.
If confirmed, these attacks are an indication that Russia’s campaign
in Syria will be more expansive and will target opposition fighters
battling to topple the Assad regime, rather than focusing on Isis. Putin
has repeatedly cast Assad as part of the solution rather than part of
the problem in Syria.
The US official did not provide confirmation of the Russian targets,
but said the Russians had indicated, through a communication delivered
to the US embassy in Baghdad, that Wednesday’s strikes inaugurated a
Russian air campaign, not a one-off bombing run – the fruit of an aggressive Russian buildup centred on the airbase in Latakia that has prompted intrigue and concern in the west as to Russia’s goals.
“The US-led coalition will continue to fly missions over Iraq and
Syria as planned and in support of our international mission to degrade
and destroy Isil,” the defence official said.
The apparent geography of the strikes raises doubts that US and
Russian pilots would in fact risk a confrontation, however. The early
reports from the anti-Assad activists in Hama and Homs suggest the
strikes occurred further west than the US has ever bombed, deep into
territory where the Assad regime still maintains a tenuous hold, and
probably within range of its air defences. The US has tended not to
strike territory where Isis and Assad actively vie for control.
David Cameron, currently in Jamaica, said his evaluation of Russia’s
move would depend on the targets. “I have a clear view that if this is a
part of international action against [Isis], that appalling terrorist
death cult outfit, then that is all to the good,” said the British prime
minister.
“If, on the other hand, this is action against the Free Syrian Army
in support of Assad the dictator, then obviously that is a retrograde
step but let us see exactly what has happened.”
Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary, warned Russia that its military intervention could mean Moscow shares criminal responsibility for the regime’s use of barrel bombs against its own people.
He said Britain was still trying to confirm the targets of the airstrikes, but added:
“Now the Russians are very openly and ostentatiously there propping up
the regime, they are vulnerable to international pressure. They have a
shared responsibility. They may arguably have a legal exposure to this barrel bombing activity. Barrel bombing is criminal. It breaches international humanitarian law.”
Hammond said the impact of the Russian strikes would depend on their
targets. “These are the first Russian strikes and the targets will be
symbolic. The targets won’t have been selected by accident,” he said
shortly before a Russian-chaired session of the UN security council on
the issue.
At the session, Lavrov announced that Moscow would circulate a draft
resolution to provide a mandate for a multilateral coalition against
Isis, “based on international law”.
Russia has made clear that no military action in Syria can be legal
without the approval of the Syrian government. The US, UK and France
reject the legitimacy of the regime, in view of its role in suspected
war crimes, and argue that western airstrikes in Syria are legal under
the UN charter because they are a response to Isis sourcing attacks from
Syrian territory against an ally, Iraq.
“I would be astonished if anything came out of the meeting,” said
Hammond. “I don’t think the security council will be willing to say
anything that doesn’t involve a reference to Assad ultimately not being
part of the new Syria, and I don’t see the Russians at this stage being
able to accept that kind of language.”
The strikes came after Putin received permission from parliament
for Russian forces to act on foreign soil. The federation council,
Russia’s upper house of parliament, held a swift, closed session on
Wednesday morning in which it unanimously approved Putin’s request.
Putin said in New York that Russia would not carry out ground
operations in Syria, and his chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, emphasised
this again on Wednesday, saying the request to the federation council
referred exclusively to airstrikes.
He did not give any figures of the number of planes likely to be
involved or the number of Russian military specialists on the ground
inside Syria to back up the operation. He also insisted western bombing
raids in Syria were illegal.
“You all know well that in the territory of Syria and Iraq … a number
of countries are carrying out bombing strikes, including the United
States,” said Ivanov.
“These actions do not conform with international law. To be legal
they should be supported either by a resolution of the UN security
council, or be backed by a request from the country where the raids are
taking place.”
Ivanov said Assad had asked Russia for military assistance, making Russia’s actions legitimate.
Putin had told the UN the world should come together to fight Isis in
the same way as it joined forces to fight Hitler in the second world
war, though differences between Russia and the west over the role and
fate of Assad have always made it unlikely that a broad coalition will
emerge.
Putin spent 90 minutes in a bilateral meeting with Obama after his
speech to the UN general assembly, about half of which was spent
discussing Syria. The main disagreement was on the future role of Assad.
While Putin has characterised the Syrian president as a heroic
fighter against terrorism, Kerry reiterated again on Wednesday that “by
definition” Isis could not be defeated while Assad remained in power.
