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U.S. Sending More Consular Officers To Assist Afghanistan Evacuation

U.S. Sending More Consular Officers To Assist Afghanistan Evacuation

By Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The State Department said on Thursday it was sending more consular officers to Kabul and other locations, including Qatar and Kuwait, to help with the evacuation effort from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized Kabul on Sunday.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said 6,000 fully processed people were currently at the airport in Kabul and would soon be boarding planes. He added Washington would nearly double the number of consular officers in Kabul, without disclosing how many are deployed.

A source said that White House officials told a congressional briefing on Thursday morning that the United States had evacuated 6,741 individuals, including 1,792 American citizens and legal permanent residents, from Kabul.

The source, who listened to the teleconference, quoted the briefers as saying that the "biggest bottleneck" was getting evacuees through crowds mobbing Kabul airport gates.

"The department is sending consular staffing teams to Qatar and Kuwait to assist with the transit effort and we're preparing teams to surge to other processing locations as well," Price said.

Once the consular capacity in Kabul is doubled, he said the State Department believes it will have the number of officers needed to process individuals and fill flights. The Pentagon has said its aim is to evacuate between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day.

The United States "significantly expanded" overnight the number of American citizens, locally employed staff, Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and other vulnerable Afghans eligible for departure, Price said, adding that about 20 flights would leave Kabul on Thursday night.

Thousands of people have desperately tried to get past Taliban roadblocks and U.S. troops to reach the airport. On Thursday, the Taliban urged crowds of Afghans waiting outside it to return home, saying they did not want to hurt anyone, a day after firing at protesters and killing three.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Peter Cooney)

New Arab Coalition Coming Together To Intervene In Libya

New Arab Coalition Coming Together To Intervene In Libya

By Tom Hussain,McClatchy Foreign Staff (TNS)

ISLAMABAD — Three years after the toppling of Moammar Gadhafi, the military chiefs of seven Arab countries are expected to meet in Cairo next week to discuss whether they should intervene in Libya, which is split between two governments, controlled by rival militias, and home now to a blossoming Islamic State affiliate.

Analysts of Middle Eastern affairs said the meeting is likely to increase outside support for Khalifa Hifter, a former Gadhafi general who defected to the United States in the late 1980s and returned to Libya during the 2011 uprising that ended in Gadhafi’s death.

Hifter, who had expected to lead the creation of a new Libyan army after Gadhafi’s fall but was sidelined by the country’s political rivalries, launched an assault last year on what he said were radical Islamist groups that had taken control of much of Libya in the past three years. Libya is now divided between two main factions, one known as Operation Dignity, which is allied with Hifter and based in Tobruk, near the Egyptian border, and another called Libya Dawn, which is based in Tripoli and is backed by several militia factions.

The civil war anarchy has left room for the Islamic State to organize. It now controls Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte. In January, it posted a video of what it said were 21 Egyptian workers being beheaded on a Libyan beach.

Ayham Kamel, director for the Middle East and North Africa for the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk advisory firm, said he doubted that the seven countries meeting May 18 in Cairo will agree to send troops to Libya. But increased military support for Hifter’s forces could provide an important edge in what has been the long-running stalemate between the Tobruk government, which the United States and the European Union recognize, and the Tripoli one, which has won a ruling in favor of its legitimacy from the country’s supreme court.

Kamel said supporting Hifter would be the easiest route for the Arab countries, rather than becoming involved in U.N.-sponsored peace talks that have made little progress in months of trying.

Next week’s gathering in Cairo was first reported by the U.S. publication Defense News, which said that participants include seven of the 10 Arab countries that have intervened in Yemen.

But the Libya meeting is a separate initiative pushed by Egypt, which borders Libya on the east. Saudi Arabia is the prime mover behind the Yemen campaign.
The countries sending representatives to Egypt include Jordan and Sudan and four members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. All seven nations are members of the Saudi-led coalition currently opposing Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Notably, the gathering in Egypt excludes another Gulf Cooperation Council member, Qatar, which supports the Libyan Dawn administration in Tripoli.

Theodore Karasik, a Saudi-focused analyst based in the United Arab Emirates, called the Cairo meeting part of a “grand experiment in Arab-led coalitions” that “will illustrate how different theaters of the Middle East and North Africa are viewed in functional strategic and tactical direction.”

He noted that the one item of interest to analysts as the Yemen and Libya situations play out is “who is politically willing or excluded from operations.”

The May 18 meeting would follow up discussions last month by Arab League military chiefs in Cairo, which were attended by the Tobruk government’s armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Abdul Razzaq Nadhuri.

Since then, the UAE has delivered five Russian-built Mi-35 Hind helicopters. Additional Russian anti-tank and armor-piercing weapons and munitions will soon be delivered, Defense News reported.

Parallel to the military initiative, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said last week it would host a forum in late May of Libyan tribal leaders supportive of the Tobruk-based government to “unify the Libyan people” and “to give a necessary boost toward political dialogue.”

(Hussain is a McClatchy special correspondent.) (c)2015 McClatchy Washington Bureau, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

AFP Photo/Abdullah Doma

Taliban Release Video Of U.S. Soldier’s Handover

Taliban Release Video Of U.S. Soldier’s Handover

Kabul (AFP) – The Taliban released Wednesday footage of the dramatic moments when a cadre of gun-toting militants handed over army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl to U.S. forces after five years in captivity.

“Don’t return to Afghanistan again. Next time, nobody will release you,” one of the insurgents is heard telling Bergdahl in the 17-minute video.

It shows a U.S. military helicopter landing in a valley, kicking up small clouds of dust as a jittery-looking Bergdahl waits just a few feet away flanked by militants clutching a white flag.

After a brief exchange of handshakes between insurgents and U.S. soldiers, Bergdahl — wearing a white salwar kameez and a scarf over his shoulders — moves unsteadily towards the helicopter. The entire exchange lasts about one minute.

Bergdahl — the only U.S. soldier held by the Taliban after being captured in Afghanistan — was freed on Saturday in exchange for five senior Taliban militants detained at Guantanamo Bay in a deal brokered by Qatar.

His release has evoked sharp criticism from some U.S. politicians, who fear they could return to the battlefield and pose a threat to Americans abroad.

It has also provoked revulsion among Afghans in those parts of the country traditionally opposed to the Islamists.

The Taliban video, entitled “Ceremony of the American soldier exchange”, at one point also displays the words “Don’t Come Back to Afghanistan” superimposed over footage of Bergdahl.

A male voiceover in the video — laced with emotive religious music and chants of “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) — said the exchange occurred in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.

“The Americans contacted us and asked us where was a good place to meet. We contacted tribal elders to come and join us, because we do not trust them (Americans),” the voiceover said.

“I congratulate all the mujahideen for this victory.”

In response to the video, U.S. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said: “We have no reason to doubt the video’s authenticity, but we are reviewing it.”

“Regardless, we know the transfer was peaceful and successful, and our focus remains on getting Sgt. Bergdahl the care he needs,” Kirby said in a statement.

Bergdahl is now being treated at a U.S. military facility in Germany.

The authenticity of the video emailed to media organizations by Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid could not be independently verified by AFP.

But the video is characteristic of a well-oiled Taliban propaganda machine, observers say.

Once seen as uneducated thugs, the Taliban — ousted from power in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 — have evolved into a media-savvy force adept at exploiting the power of mass communication.

“In addition to showing the scene of handover, the video presents a ‘victory’ narrative of the Taliban,” said Borhan Osman, an analyst at the Kabul-based think-tank Afghan Analysts Network (AAN).

“It frequently shows the scenes of the five leaders exchanged for Bowe while arriving in Qatar. The scenes of the men receiving a hero’s welcome… would stir up excitement and boost the morale of the fighters and supporters of the movement.”

U.S. defense officials have previously said dozens of U.S. special forces troops backed up by helicopters were sent for the handover.

“Fortunately, no shots were fired,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday. “There was no violence. It went as well as we not only had expected and planned, but I think as well as it could have.”

The U.S. military’s top officer General Martin Dempsey said Tuesday that Bergdahl may be disciplined if the army holds him guilty of misconduct, after claims from members of his unit that he had been captured in 2009 after abandoning his post.

Photo: Al-Emara via AFP