Rekha Basu: Afghan native's help to U.S. 'overwhelmingly unimpeachable,' yet we'd turn him over to Taliban

Zalmay Niazy of Iowa Falls helped interpret for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But after six years in Iowa, his plea for asylum has been denied for a ludicrous reason as the law allows.

Rekha Basu
Des Moines Register



From Afghan translator to small-town Iowa handyman


If you’re not convinced we need to revamp U.S. laws on who gets to enter, work, live and find legal sanctuary in this country, look at the crisis facing Afghan-born Iowa Falls resident Zalmay Niazy. His plight sharply illustrates how our decisions to wage war thousands of miles away can endanger allies' lives at the other end. And it cries out for fixing the fact that service to our nation by foreigners living under terrorism is too often punished rather than rewarded.

Niazy, who goes by Zee, was born to professional parents, and educated in private schools to serve as an English-language interpreter. During “Operation Enduring Freedom” — the Bush administration’s military response in Afghanistan and elsewhere to the Sept. 11 attacks — he interpreted for our forces. Beginning at age 19 in 2007, he spent three years helping them fight the Taliban by scanning radio signals, writing up reports on their internal communications, and translating for coalition forces. That put him in life-threatening situations and led to injuries and threats from the Taliban, which also killed his uncle, his Des Moines lawyer says.


Zee later got other employment, which led to his attending a conference in Washington, D.C. in 2015. While here, he applied for political asylum under a program created especially for foreign interpreters for U.S. military. He learned the Taliban was tracking him abroad with threats and his parents feared he’d be killed if he returned home.

Political asylum is selectively awarded to foreign nationals who can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in their homelands based on their political affiliation or membership in a marginalized group. Applicants are allowed to stay in the U.S. while awaiting a decision. In Zee’s case, that took four years to come, from the time he was granted an interview after appealing for Sen. Chuck Grassley’s intervention at a 2017 town hall.

In the meantime, Zee created and runs a handyman business, and he bought and renovated a home.

Yet last month the Department of Homeland Security denied him asylum, for a reason so unfair it’s almost laughable. As his lawyer Keith Herting tells it: “When he was 9, the Taliban came to his home. They threatened to burn his house down if he didn’t give them food, (so) his mom gave him bread to take to the fighters.” In his interview with Homeland Security officials, Zee told about that incident in answer to a question on whether he had ever had direct contact with the Taliban.

They used it against him, claiming it showed he’d been “providing material support to terrorists.” They also said he had shown no real threat of persecution, he said in a June 10 interview on Iowa Public Radio’s "River to River":

“I said, ‘I fought this group. How can I be engaged in their activities?’”

The material-support statute, elements of which were in the 1990 Immigration and Nationality Act signed by Bill Clinton, were barely invoked until passage of the 2001 USA Patriot Act. It makes it illegal to provide assistance to any group the U.S. government considers a foreign terrorist organization. But the precedent-setting asylum denial came in 2018 under the Trump administration, after Trump had campaigned pledging to use it more broadly. “In the Matter of A.C.M.” involved a Salvadoran woman who was enslaved by a paramilitary group and escaped, says Herting:

“The Department of Justice said while she was enslaved, she cooked and cleaned for the terrorists,” concluding she provided them material support, he said. That concept has since been applied in a number of other cases, as documented by the New Yorker magazine.

“His story is so overwhelmingly unimpeachable,” said Herting of Zee, “that I would hope there would be some decency or rationality. But I haven’t seen a ton of evidence to suggest that exists.”

More:Basu column: An Iowa City 'Documented Dreamer' tells a U.S. House panel about her plight, shared by 200,000 others

Herting challenges Grassley's contention that he can do nothing because it’s a law. The senator can push to change the law, he says.

Zee will appear June 28 before an immigration appeals court in Omaha to plead his case. A GoFundMe account has been set up for his legal fees.

More broadly, Congress must immediately set about getting rid of or modifying the material support law. That, by the way, doesn’t apply to domestic terrorist groups revealing its underlying bias. Donald Trump leaned on it to ban travel from Muslim countries. He also made asylum the only grounds for foreigners presenting at the border to seek permission to stay, and reduced the number of refugees permitted in annually. Some of his moves have been relaxed under Joe Biden, but there’s much more work to do on immigration law.

In a pointed CNN commentary about Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Central America to address the issues that prompt people to leave their countries, Mari Aponte, a former ambassador to El Salvador, wrote:

“The enforcement-first immigration strategy has failed us in the past. Instead of a heated rhetoric that paints immigrants as dangerous, we need real, evidence-based solutions that get at the heart of why migrants leave their homes and make the trek to the U.S.”

That would surely apply to Zalmay Niazy, whose home country the U.S. has had its fingers all over for decades. Now we're pulling out, leaving many who supported us at risk of reprisals from the Taliban. If his plight matters to you, stand up and support Zee’s claim for asylum, and ask Grassley and Sen. Joni Ernst to do the same — and then change the law.

Commentary
America Shall Be Judged By How We Leave Afghanistan — By Allies, Foes, and History
By Sen. Angus King (I-MAINE)

Tue Jun 22 2021 03:00 AM

With the help of an interpreter, Cpl. Devon Sanderfield, a squad leader with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, speaks with a villager in the town of Changwalok, Afghanistan. (Cpl. Zachary Nola, Marine Corps). (U.S. Marines)

In less than three months, the United States will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan, ending our engagement in the longest war our nation has ever fought.

Over the course of nearly 20 years, war in Afghanistan cost thousands of American lives — but that number would undoubtedly have been higher without the support and sacrifice of tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who served as interpreters, translators, and guides for our military personnel or provided additional aid to the U.S. government. These Afghan citizens helped the United States at great personal risk — and in return, relied on us for protection. As the United States winds down its military operations in Afghanistan, our moral and strategic responsibility to protect them is more important than ever.

To recognize the service of our Afghan allies, in 2006 the U.S. created a special immigrant visa (SIV) program for those who assisted in America’s military efforts. The program has already issued tens of thousands of visas to Afghan nationals who aided the U.S. and their families. But now, as our military presence draws down and with the Taliban waiting in the wings, there is a backlog of about 18,000 Afghan nationals waiting for their SIV applications to be processed. This slowdown won’t just be an inconvenience; continued delays could very well be a death sentence for those who put their lives on the line to help the United States.

The moral necessity of protecting our Afghan friends from the Taliban and extremist threat is obvious: America made a commitment to protect those who worked with us, and we, as a nation, must live up to that commitment. Inaction would also create a national security risk — because if America’s moral leadership is degraded and our word is devalued, then who on earth would stand beside us in foreign theaters in the future? We absolutely cannot send a signal to current and future allies and partners that when the going gets tough, the United States abandons its friends.

Unfortunately, we’re running out of time. The United States is less than 90 days away from withdrawing the last of our troops; in contrast, a recent report from the Departments of State and Homeland Security estimate that the average processing of an SIV application takes 996 days — roughly the difference between three months and three years. This is a full-fledged emergency, and the Biden administration cannot settle for business as usual.

We need to cut down on this nearly 1,000 day wait, while still prioritizing homeland security through a sound vetting process. The most effective way we can safely fulfill America’s commitment is by speeding up our existing efforts to process SIVs and expanding the number of visas available for eligible applicants. To its credit, the administration is working cut down on this wait time by drastically increasing the amount of staff responsible for reviewing these applications. We can also simplify or streamline the paperwork needed, given the exigent circumstances, to further expedite the process.

While a larger staff, fewer forms, and more visas would make a real dent in the outstanding backlog, we know that the large number of outstanding applications and challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic make it all but impossible to complete this process by the time U.S. forces are fully withdrawn. This poses a severe problem in a land-locked country like Afghanistan – because once American forces are out, a return rescue mission, most likely conducted by air, becomes increasingly difficult. Given the timeframe and the obstacles, it is obvious that we cannot rule out any feasible solution that gets our partners to safety sooner rather than later.

Fortunately, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Beyond the procedural changes that we could be making, there are also historical precedents for contingency plans that bring our wartime allies to a safe location, while ensuring that the State Department and interagency has time to do its diligence on each applicant. Following the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnamese citizens who had worked with the United States during the conflict were initially relocated to Guam, before the large majority were eventually resettled in the U.S. This sort of ‘waystation’ — whether it be a U.S. territory, a location in the region, or another possibility — meets our moral obligations and our national security concerns. With less than 3 months before withdrawal, the administration should be looking seriously at this idea.

An extension of this approach could be to work with the NATO nations who fought beside us to also address this challenge. Just as our NATO allies continue to play an important part in the War in Afghanistan and the withdrawal, they also relied upon the contributions of Afghan nationals. As the administration continues to explore options, it can and should consult with NATO allies to see if these nations could temporarily house or relocate some percentage of these visa applicants.

The best solutions are not fully clear yet — but what is clear is that time is running out to fulfill America’s duty to our friends. Nations are judged by the manner and care with which they leave the field of battle — not just by future foes and prospective allies, but also by the eyes of history. The world is watching to see what we do — or don’t do — for our Afghan allies in this life-or-death moment. Inaction is unacceptable; I urge the administration to redouble our efforts before it is too late.

Senator Angus King (I-Maine) serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he Chairs the Senate Strategic Forces Subcommittee, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In addition to also serving on the Energy and Natural Resources, and the Rules Committee, King is the Co-Chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, an initiative tasked by the 2019 NDAA with crafting the United States’ 21st century cyberdefense posture as hacks and attacks become a weapon of choice of rogue nations and criminals worldwide.

Editor’s note: This is an op-ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.

Junkyard of empires: Afghans sift through leftovers of US occupation



 

Junkyard of empires: Afghans sift through leftovers of US occupationThe Pentagon is vacating Bagram air base as part of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and tons of civilian equipment is being scrapped

Anne Chaon and Mushtaq Mojaddidi
Tue, June 22, 2021, 9:26 PM·4 min read


Squatting in the dust by the main road to Afghanistan's biggest air base, Mir Salam sifts through a pile of broken electronics in front of him, salvaged from departing US troops.

All around are heaps of junk and scrapped equipment -- ranging from telephones and thermos flasks to computer keyboards and printer cartridges.

"This is what the Americans do," the 40-year-old told AFP. "They destroy absolutely everything."




The Pentagon is vacating Bagram air base as part of its plan to withdraw all forces by this year's 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, and it could be completed by the end of the month.

Military gear is being taken home, or given to Afghan security forces, but tons of civilian equipment must be left behind.

The result is a booming scrap business that is making money for some, but leaving many resentful.

"They blow it up or are burning it," says Salam of the equipment being discarded.

"There were lots of new things in this base -- enough to rebuild Afghanistan 20 times -- but they destroyed everything."

For two decades, Bagram served as the nerve centre for US operations in Afghanistan.

A sprawling mini-city visited by hundreds of thousands of service members and contractors, it boasted swimming pools, cinemas and spas -- and even a boardwalk featuring fast-food outlets such as Burger King and Pizza Hut.

It also has a prison that held thousands of Taliban and jihadist inmates over the years.

Bagram was built by the United States for its Afghan ally during the Cold War in the 1950s as a bulwark against the Soviet Union in the north.

Ironically, it became the staging point for the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979, and the Red Army expanded it significantly during their near decade-long occupation.

When Moscow pulled out, it became central to the raging civil war -- it was reported that at one point the Taliban controlled one end of the three-kilometre (two-mile) runway and the opposition Northern Alliance the other

- Nothing goes to waste -

In recent months, Bagram has come under rocket attacks claimed by the jihadist Islamic State.

If the Taliban capture the base, it would be a significant step -- perhaps even the decisive one -- towards seizing control of Kabul itself.

Salam pays 1,000 afghanis ($12) a month to rent a modest fenced plot on the Bagram road, where he stores base scrap that he searches for nuggets to sell to specialised dealers.

The road to the base is lined with dozens of similar enterprises -- some ramshackle, but others featuring imposing warehouses with armed guards.

The big players have contracts to remove the scrapped equipment, which they cherry-pick for items that can be repaired.

Anything they don't use is left for smaller dealers such as Salam.

Cables are stripped for copper, circuit boards broken down for rare-earth metals, and aluminium collected to be smelted into ingots.

Nothing goes to waste, says Haji Noor Rahman, another scrap merchant.

"Anything re-usable, people buy it," he told AFP.

His warehouse is like a department store for scrap, with the floor covered by an astonishing array of items -- broken chairs, busted TV screens, rusting gym equipment, an electronic piano keyboard, artificial Christmas trees and other festive decorations.

First aid kits have been gutted, spilling bandages and IV bags.

Picking through the selection is Abdul Basir, who came from Kabul with a friend and snapped up six warped metal doors for around 8,000 afghanis.

Elsewhere, a young man unearthed a pair of branded shoes that still appeared to have a few miles left on them.

Another browser bought a teddy bear and a mini rugby ball

- 'Pessimistic' future -

It isn't just equipment that will be left behind when the Americans pull out -- Bagram is surrounded by satellite communities that rely on the base for employment.

"The withdrawal of American troops will have a bad impact on the economy of the country and that of Bagram," district governor Lalah Shrin Raoufi told AFP, adding he was pessimistic for the future.

"Their presence here has provided jobs for thousands and thousands of Afghans," he said, ranging from mechanics to bakers.

"I met the employees of a company that provided basic food... they are afraid of losing their jobs."

Raoufi said everything is being done to take charge of the base and its security when the last US forces leave.

"We are working with the police, the army and the NDS (intelligence services)," he said.

"We have started to recruit soldiers... We will take those who meet the criteria."

Meanwhile, the clear-out continues.

"They came to rebuild our country but now they are destroying it," says Bagram resident Mohammad Amin, looking over a pile of scrap.

"They could have given us all this."

ach-mam/fox/jds/gle/qan

JUST LIKE AFTER RUSSIA LEFT

Militias in Afghanistan’s north are taking up the fight against the Taliban

BY PAMELA CONSTABLE AND EZZATULLAH MEHRDAD•

 THE WASHINGTON POST • JUNE 22, 2021

KABUL — A sweeping Taliban offensive across northern Afghanistan, unchecked by overstretched government forces, has triggered a sudden resurgence of anti-Taliban militias in half a dozen provinces, raising concerns that the country could plunge into a prolonged civil war.

President Ashraf Ghani, scheduled to visit Washington on Friday to meet with President Joe Biden amid growing concerns here about the withdrawal of U.S. forces, has endorsed the sudden call to arms by former ethnic rival groups and shaken up his top security team, in hopes of stemming the Taliban onslaught and calming public panic.

In a meeting Monday with influential former anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban militia leaders, Ghani called on them to create a “united front” and support the Afghan security forces to “strengthen peace” and “safeguard the republic system.” The Taliban rejects the current democratic governing system and seeks to install an Islamic one.

During a separate ceremony, the newly appointed acting defense minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, called on “my patriots and people everywhere to stand alongside their security and defense forces.” He said the government is “ready to provide them with all equipment and resources.”


The Ghani government hopes the added support will shore up the beleaguered national defense forces, which have struggled to send reinforcements and supplies to troops facing repeated Taliban attacks.

But the prospect of unleashing a hodgepodge of rogue warriors to repel their old enemies also raises the specter of civil war, a state of violent anarchy that Afghans remember all too well from the 1990s. And although the armed groups have pledged to coordinate with government forces, it is also possible that effort could unravel into confused, competing clashes among purported allies.

“The surge in militias is a recipe for disaster and a repetition of a dark history,” said Tamim Asey, chairman of the Institute of War and Peace Studies in Kabul. “It will enlarge ethnic fault lines and undercut government legitimacy.” He said that relying on the militias is a “poison pill” that might give Ghani short-term relief but will ultimately “kill his administration.”

Atta Mohammed Noor, a northern warlord and former governor, posted a tweet Monday calling for a “national mobilization” of former anti-Soviet groups to fight Taliban aggression. He called on all northern factions to “stand alongside” state forces, and in a separate Facebook post he asked their leaders to join in the fight without creating separate “islands of power.”

In the past several days, fighting has been reported in nine provinces across the north, and armed militias or civilian groups have formed to repel the insurgents, often fighting alongside state forces. All are loyal to local leaders from minority Tajik, Uzbek or other ethnic groups that have no love for Ghani, a member of the dominant ethnic Pashtun group based in southern Afghanistan.

In Kunduz province, a strategic area near the northern border with Tajikistan, several officials there said Tuesday that insurgents were fighting against local forces inside the provincial capital city and were either attacking or in control of most rural districts. They also seized a dry port on the border. The Taliban has tried several times in the past to take over Kunduz city and held it briefly in 2015. If the group was to take over the city, it would be a major turning point in the 20-year conflict.

“The city is under attack,” said Ghulam Rabani, a member of the provincial council, reached in Kunduz city on Tuesday evening. He said that local fighters and government forces were defending the city and had recaptured one rural district but that “all others are now ruled by the Taliban.”


Since May, the Taliban has seized more than 50 of Afghanistan’s 370 districts. On Tuesday, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, told the U.N. Security Council that many of those districts surround provincial capitals, suggesting that the insurgents are “positioning themselves to try and take those capitals once foreign forces are fully withdrawn.” Across the nation, scattered fighting has been reported this week in 20 provinces.

The Taliban, historically based in the parched southern region that includes Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces, has repeatedly tried to capture major cities there in the past several years. The group’s attacks in the north have greatly intensified in recent months, taking advantage of the relative lack of government forces. At the same time, Taliban peace talks with Afghan leaders in Qatar have stalled.

The most significant confrontation this week has come in Mazar-e Sharif, the country’s fourth-largest city and the capital of Balkh province, long impregnable to Taliban threats. Insurgents breached the city Monday and were pushed back by a mix of local militias and national forces, but area residents remained frightened, and the insurgents posed for videos just outside the city gates.

“People here have enjoyed a peaceful life for 20 years. Now they are very worried,” said Mohammad Afzal Hadid, head of the Balkh provincial council, noting that seven districts in the province had fallen to the Taliban in the past month. “Government forces lost morale. Bases were falling one after another.” He said that public fear had died down after local militia members came to reinforce government troops, and that hundreds more were preparing to join the fight.

A former Balkh council member, Mohammad Khairandesh, dismissed concerns about the private militias going rogue, saying they were now defending the state rather than themselves. The public, he added, accepts them as a lesser evil. “People now prefer militias over the Taliban,” he said. Without their help, he said, “there is a possibility that Mazar may fall.”

In Baghlan province, where the Taliban captured six districts in the past three weeks, officials blamed poor management and leadership of government forces but said that former militia members are preparing to fight. One provincial council member, Ferozuddin Aimaq, said people are “mobilizing to support government forces” but will “rise up against the Taliban if the government collapses.”

Ahmad Zia Massoud, a former vice president and younger brother of the slain anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, posted a Facebook message Tuesday calling on “all political leaders” in the country to “join the front lines alongside the people and public uprising forces.”

Meanwhile, on the front lines of Baghlan’s Tala Barfak district, Naimatullah Pajwalk, the district chief, spent Tuesday shoring up checkpoints. He said the area had been attacked five times by insurgents in the past 10 days.

“It is chaos, but here the people and the forces are mobilized,” he said. “The Taliban are trying hard to capture this district because it would give them connections to other provinces.”

Pajwalk said that the attackers had Humvees and heavy weapons seized from surrendering government troops, and that they had spread false rumors that he and other officials had fled.

“We are under immense pressure,” he said, “but we will stay with our people until the last drop of blood.”

The Washington Post’s Sharif Hassan contributed to this report.

Attacked and Vulnerable, Some Afghans Are Forming Their Own Armies

David Zucchino and Fatima Faizi
Tue, June 22, 2021

People perform a funeral ceremony on May 9, 2021, for a girl killed in powerful explosions outside a high school in a predominantly Hazara neighborhood in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Kiana Hayeri/The New York Times)

KABUL, Afghanistan — The slaughter of students, mostly teenagers, at a tutoring center. The deaths of young athletes in a suicide bombing at a wrestling club. Mothers shot dead with newborns in their arms.

These relentless killings of Hazaras, a persecuted minority in Afghanistan, finally proved too much to bear for Zulfiqar Omid, a Hazara leader in the central part of the country.

In April, Omid began mobilizing armed men into militias to defend Hazara areas against the Taliban and the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan. He said he now commands 800 armed men at seven staging areas mustered into what he calls “self-protection groups.”

“Hazaras get killed in cities and on highways, but the government doesn’t protect them,” Omid said. “Enough is enough. We have to protect ourselves.”

As U.S. and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, and talks falter between the Taliban and the American-backed government, ethnic groups across the country have formed militias or say they plan to arm themselves. The rush to raise fighters and weapons evokes the mujahedeen wars of the early 1990s, when rival militias killed thousands of civilians and left sections of Kabul in ruins.

A concerted and determined militia movement, even if nominally aligned with Afghan security forces, could fracture the unsteady government of President Ashraf Ghani and once again divide the country into fiefs ruled by warlords. Yet these makeshift armies may eventually serve as the last line of defense as security force bases and outposts steadily collapse in the face of a fierce onslaught of attacks by the Taliban.

Since the U.S. troop withdrawal was announced in April, regional strongmen have posted videos on social media showing armed men hoisting assault rifles and vowing to fight the Taliban. Some militia leaders fear the flagging peace talks in Doha, Qatar, will collapse after foreign troops depart and the Taliban will intensify an all-out assault to capture provincial capitals and lay siege to Kabul.

“For the first time in 20 years, power brokers are speaking publicly about mobilizing armed men,” the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research group in Kabul, wrote in a June 4 report.

Hazaras have the most to fear from a return to power by the Taliban, which massacred thousands of the predominantly Shiite group when the Sunni Muslim militants governed most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The Taliban consider Hazaras heretics.

The most prominent Hazara militia commander is Abdul Ghani Alipur, whose militiamen in Wardak province, a mountainous area that borders Kabul, have clashed with government forces. Alipur had been implicated in the shooting down of a military helicopter in March. In an interview, he denied any involvement, although an aide said at the time that Alipur’s militiamen had shot at the aircraft.

“If we don’t stand up and defend ourselves, history will repeat itself and we will be massacred like during the time of Abdul Rahman Khan,” Alipur said, referring to the Pashtun “Iron Emir” who ruled in the late 19th century, massacring and enslaving Hazaras. Afghan folklore says he displayed towers built from severed Hazara heads.

“They forced us to pick up guns,” Alipur said of the government, which has failed to protect Hazaras. “We must carry guns to protect ourselves.”

Over the past two decades, Hazaras have built thriving communities in west Kabul and in Hazarajat, their mountainous homeland in central Afghanistan. But with no militias of their own, they have been vulnerable to attack.

Hazara demands for an army escalated after up to 69 schoolgirls were killed in a bombing in Kabul on May 8. Less than a month later, three public transport minivans were bombed in Kabul’s Hazara neighborhoods, killing 18 civilians, most of them Hazara. Among them was a journalist and her mother, the police said. Since 2016, at least 766 Hazara have been killed in the capital alone in 23 attacks, according to New York Times data.

“Tajik have weapons, Pashtuns are armed,” said Arif Rahmani, a Hazara member of parliament. “We Hazaras must also have a system to protect ourselves.”

Mahdi Raskih, another Hazara member of parliament, said he had counted 35 major attacks against Hazaras in recent years — a campaign of genocide, he said. He said he had lost patience with government promises of protection for Hazara schools, mosques and social centers.

“If they can’t provide security, be honest and admit it,” Raskih said. “People believe the government feels no responsibility for them, so our people must pick up guns and fight.”

Hazara soldiers, police and intelligence officers have quit or have been forced out of the security forces because of discrimination, Raskih said, providing militias with a valuable source of trained men. Many Hazara politicians, including Ghani’s second vice president, Sarwar Danesh, have called on the government to stop what they call a genocide of Hazaras. Hundreds of Hazaras have taken to Twitter, at #StopHazarasGenocide, to demand government protection.

Even as some Hazaras mobilize, some Tajik and Uzbek groups never completely disbanded the militias that helped U.S. forces topple the Taliban in 2001. Other ethnic commanders have recently begun forming militias as the Taliban continue to overrun government bases and outposts.

Many of these power brokers are locked in an enduring struggle with the Ghani administration, vying for control, while trying to gain the upper hand in a post-withdrawal Afghanistan.

Nationally, one prominent leader to maintain a militia is Ahmad Massoud, 32, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a charismatic commander of the Northern Alliance that helped U.S. forces rout the Taliban in late 2001.

Ahmad Massoud has assembled a coalition of militias in northern Afghanistan. Calling his armed uprising the Second Resistance, Massoud is purportedly backed by a few thousand fighters and about a dozen aging militia commanders who fought the Taliban and the Soviets.

Some Afghan leaders say Massoud is too inexperienced to effectively lead an armed movement. But some Western leaders view him as a valuable source of intelligence on al-Qaida and Islamic State groups inside Afghanistan.

Elsewhere, the roll call of regional leaders who appear to be mobilizing reads like a who’s who of the country’s civil war in the 1990s. But their forces are nowhere near as commanding now.

Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a brutal Uzbek strongman, has long maintained a private army of thousands from his base in Jowzjan province. Dostum, who has been accused of war crimes and sodomizing an Uzbek rival with an assault rifle, would nonetheless be a central figure in any armed uprising against the Taliban.

Another power broker whose actions are being watched closely, Atta Muhammad Noor, is a former warlord and commanding figure in Balkh province, which includes Afghanistan’s commercial hub, Mazar-i-Sharif. He said Tuesday that he would mobilize his militia forces alongside government troops to try to retake territory that had fallen to the Taliban in recent days after the insurgents’ rapid offensive in the north.

In Herat province in the west, former Tajik warlord Mohammed Ismail Khan, another Northern Alliance commander who helped defeat the Taliban, recently broadcast a raucous gathering of armed men on his Facebook page.

Khan told supporters that a half-million people in Herat were poised to take up arms to “defend you and keep your city safe” — a clear signal that he intended to mobilize his militia if peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban collapsed.

Also in Herat, Kamran Alizai, a Pashtun who leads the provincial council, said he commanded a large number of armed men ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice.

If government forces were unable to hold Herat, Alizai said, “We will stand by them and fight the Taliban.”

The Afghanistan Analysts Network reported that Abdul Basir Salangi, a former militia commander and an ex-police chief in Kabul, said in a speech in January that militias were forming in the Salang district in north-central Afghanistan in case talks collapsed. “Such talk has become more blatant since the U.S. troop withdrawal announcement,” the report said.

For Hazara militias, a wild card are thousands of Hazara former fighters of the Fatemiyoun Division, trained by Iran and deployed to Syria in 2014 through 2017, ostensibly to protect Shiite Muslim religious sites from the Sunni Muslim-dominated Islamic State. Others were sent to Yemen to fight alongside Houthi rebels against the Saudi-backed government.

Many Fatemiyoun fighters have returned to Afghanistan, raising fears they will be incorporated into Hazara militias, providing Iran a proxy force inside the country. But analysts and Hazara leaders say former Fatemiyoun have been turned away because of their Iranian ties and potential prosecution by the Afghan government.

In Kabul, many Hazaras say they are ready to take up guns. Mohammad, a shopkeeper who like many Afghans goes by one name, said he crossed a ditch flowing with blood when he ran from his shop to help after explosions rocked the neighboring Sayed Ul-Shuhada high school on May 8, killing the dozens of schoolgirls as they left for home.

“I’m 24, and there have been 24 attacks in my lifetime” against Hazaras, he said.

Mohammad said several of his friends have recently joined militias led by Alipur and Omid.

“If this situation continues,” he said, “I’ll pick up a gun and kill whoever kills us.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

Elite Afghan troops were left to die in battle with Taliban, officials say

BY J.P. LAWRENCE AND AND ZUBAIR BABAKARKHAIL•

 STARS AND STRIPES • JUNE 21, 2021

 Mourners remember the life of Maj. Sohrab Azimi, an American-educated Afghan commando, in a funeral in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 19, 2021. (Afghan Ministry of Defense)

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 21 members of Afghanistan’s special forces died fighting the Taliban last week after Afghan reinforcements failed to show up when the commandos were surrounded by the enemy and pounded by mortar fire, military and government officials said.

Most of the 170 troops who were supposed to back up the elite fighters during a battle in the northern town of Dawlat Abad stayed put out of fear that the operation had been leaked to the Taliban, an Afghan military official with knowledge of the operation said.

“The army did not come, police did not come, NDS did not come,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media. NDS is the acronym for the country’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.

“The other forces betrayed the commandos,” he said.

The caskets of Afghan elite soldiers killed in a battle with the Taliban are carried during a funeral in Kabul, June 19, 2021. One of the three soldiers remembered at the funeral was Maj. Sohrab Azimi, who was trained and educated by the United States. (Afghan Ministry of Defense)

The failure to provide air and ground support to their own soldiers underscored fears that the Afghan military will struggle to hold off Taliban attacks when the U.S. completes its withdrawal from the country.

One of the soldiers who died was Maj. Sohrab Azimi, a decorated, U.S.-trained Afghan special forces officer who directed airstrikes on operations around the country. Azimi was posthumously promoted to brigadier general, a statement by the Afghan Defense Ministry said.

Azimi and the other troops were fighting to retake Dawlat Abad, a district center in Faryab province.

The battle plan, which was included in documents reviewed by Stars and Stripes, was to have 50 commandos recapture the town, after which troops from the army, police and intelligence agency would arrive to secure it and fend off counterattacks.

The special forces defeated a small Taliban force and captured the district center around 6 a.m. Wednesday, the military official said.

But a much larger Taliban unit surrounded Dawlat Abad soon afterward and shelled the commandos, destroying their Humvees with mortar fire, he said.

The trapped soldiers called for ground and air support, but neither materialized, the official said.

While 50 of the soldiers and police who were supposed to provide backup tried to reach the commandos, the large number of Taliban in the town forced them to retreat, he added.

U.S. Forces – Afghanistan declined to say whether they had received requests for air support or if they attempted to help the commandos.

Without backup, the soldiers were as good as dead, said two provincial council members for Faryab.

“How can you send only a unit of 50 commandos to an area which is under 100% control of the Taliban?” asked one of them, Abdul Ahad Elbek.


The military official and Elbek said they believe someone had informed the Taliban about the operation before it happened.

Afghan forces recaptured Dawlat Abad after the battle but pulled out soon afterward. As of Saturday, Dawlat Abad was back under Taliban control, Elbek said.

A funeral was held Saturday in Kabul for Azimi and two other soldiers who died in the fighting in Faryab.

Maj. Sohrab Azimi, a decorated Afghan special forces officer trained and educated by the U.S., looks over a valley in the northeastern province of Kapisa, Afghanistan on March 6, 2021. Azimi died fighting the Taliban in Faryab province on June 16, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)

His father, retired general Zahir Azimi, told Stars and Stripes a day earlier that unlike most of the children of Kabul’s generals and government ministers, his son had chosen to risk his life in combat to defend his country.

Images he saw of his dead son showed that he had died “fighting face-to-face with the enemy, not running,” he said.

Sorhab Azimi told Stars and Stripes in March that he believed he was deterring global terrorism by fighting in Afghanistan.

The Sunday before the attack, he sent a text message to friends, saying he was back in Kabul for some rest after battling the Taliban in Faryab for 50 days without a break.

BUY PHOTOMaj. Sohrab Azimi, a decorated Afghan special forces officer, looks over a valley in the northeastern province of Kapisa, Afghanistan, in March 6, 2021. Azimi was killed fighting the Taliban in Faryab province on June 16, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)

But three days later, he was ordered to return to the front.

“Back to Faryab,” he said in a text message before leaving for what would be his final fight.

The special forces deaths came amid reports of districts falling to the Taliban and hundreds of Afghan troops surrendering during weeks of fighting around Afghanistan. The country’s president, Ashraf Ghani, announced Saturday that he will replace his defense and interior chiefs.

Air support for Afghan troops could become a rarity once U.S.-funded contractors are gone, as foreign forces pull out of the country by a Sept. 11 deadline. It could be a matter of months before Afghanistan’s fleet is grounded due to a lack of maintenance, a report in The New York Times said Saturday.

U.S. officials are in talks to keep the Afghan air force flying, the report said. The U.S. is also considering delaying its withdrawal from Bagram Airfield, one of two remaining U.S.-controlled bases in the country, The Washington Post reported.

The U.S. is conducting air combat patrols and providing support to Afghanistan from ships in the North Arabian Sea and sending surveillance aircraft to Afghanistan from nations in the Gulf region, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress earlier this month.

But he declined to address whether the U.S. will provide combat air support to Afghan forces after the U.S. withdrawal is complete.

lawrence.jp@stripes.com
Twitter: @jplawrence3

BEFORE THE TALIBAN EVEN TAKE OVER
Ban on Afghan girls singing at schools overturned by social media stir

Asyia Hamzaie
Mon, June 21, 2021,

(Asiya Hamzaie, Hasht e Subh Daily)

The protracted war in Afghanistan has fragilized the country’s entire education system. Both the quest for political power and religious extremism in the Islamic country have led to the politicisation of education, with some circles seeking to introduce ideology into the school system. Officially, the Afghan government favours girls’ access to education, but culturally, some girls still face restrictions to attend school in certain areas of the country.

While on paper the Afghan constitution guarantees gender equality, there are serious shortcomings in practice. Najiba Arian, a spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Education, said there are currently 9.7 million students in the country, 42 per cent of whom are girls. But roughly 3.7 million children do not attend school — 60 per cent of them are girls. Hardships to access the school system are worst in southern and eastern provinces, said Ms Arian, not only due to security reasons but also because of tribal and traditional customs. Most of these areas, which belong to particular ethnic groups, are controlled by the Taliban, who ruled the country in the 1990s and still oppose girls’ and women’s education, despite recent claims of change. Schools that have been built over the last 20 years are in fact getting destroyed by the armed group.

Yet facing these and other challenges have led Afghan women to fight for their rights, sometimes with successful outcomes. In 2015, the country’s Ministry of Education presented a controversial plan involving female students’ uniforms that would cover girls’ bodies with long, dark-coloured clothing, similar to that of extremist Islamist groups. Civil society activists contested the move, arguing that the dress not only promoted extremism but was also too hot to wear during summertime — which is when schools are open in the country. The Ministry of Education had to abandon the plan. In some parts of the country, where conservatism and tribal customs still prevail, girls do wear body-covering long dark dresses —which also cover their faces— despite often reaching high temperatures, making it hard for them to attend school or actually paying attention in class.

Nazo Ana High School in Nangarhar’s capital, Jalalabad, 2017 (Asiya Hamzaie, Hasht e Subh Daily)


But now the battle for gender equality in Afghanistan’s educational environment has taken a new shape, thanks to an online women’s rights movement that hopes to raise the voice of those who have been silenced for too long — the "Ma’arif [which means Education] Choir Campaign."

The campaign was born out of the outrage caused by an announcement from one of the Ministry of Education’s departments in March 2020, which forbade female students over-12 from singing in school choirs in public and in front of men. Spontaneous and leaderless protests began taking place online, due to the coronavirus pandemic, in a rather original way. More than 100 women posted videos of them singing their childhood songs on the Internet, asking why female students should be prevented from singing two decades after the fall of the Taliban rule, prompting widespread and long-lasting public support for the campaign.

Once again, the protests led the government to retreat, and the Ministry of Education finally issued a statement saying that the plan did “not reflect the official position and policy of the ministry." Wahid Omar, an adviser to the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai said, “No individual or institution is allowed to set limits for its citizens, [which is] contrary to the spirit of the country’s constitution.”


Fariha Esaar, Civil Activist and member of the Ma'arif Choir Campaign (Naseer Kawoshgar, Hasht e Subh Daily)



Earlier this year, the government tried another move, this time to merge schools with mosques during the first three years of the elementary school programme —presumably to gain influence against radical Islamists groups such as the Taliban— but it was also quickly shut down after online protests. The Minister of Education, Assadullah Hanif Balkhi, said the plan was for students to have access to education in areas without schools and that it had been misinterpreted. During the choir campaign, Fariha Esaar, one of the women activists who sang in front of a camera, said, “Both the plan to merge schools with mosques for the first three years of education and the plan to ban female students over-12 from singing in schools are efforts made to radicalize and Talibanize Afghanistan’s education system.” Now, with the withdrawal of foreign forces and the possibility of escalating civil war in the country, she added, there are serious concerns about the group’s influence in specific circles. “We can not remain silent in this regard. We will stand up and prevent the influence of extremism in the education sector. We have succeeded in this campaign, but we must have more structural plans to ensure gender equality so that political decisions don’t exclude women.”

Ghulam Dastgir Munir, an education expert, said he got suspended from his teaching position in a public school because of his heavy criticism of extremist initiatives such as educating children in mosques and banning girls from singing. According to him, the main challenge that remains ahead is that the seats and positions in the education sector are assigned not on the basis of expertise but depending on political affiliation, and that, in order to ensure gender equality and de-politicize schools, appointments must be free of political affiliation.

The Ma’aref Choir Campaign is one successful example of a civil society movement fighting for gender equality in Afghanistan. However, a long term action plan is needed to guarantee gender equality in the educational sector — one that raises female teachers rates and increases awareness among families, particularly in remote areas of the country, so that more girls can attend school.

This article is being published as part of “Towards Equality”, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 international news outlets to highlight the challenges and solutions to reach gender equality.

(Towards Equality)

Myanmar army clashes with anti-junta militia in major city

Tue, June 22, 2021,

A military handout photograph shows soldiers and police arresting people during a raid in Mandalay

The army in Myanmar's second city, Mandalay, has clashed with a local militia opposed to February's military coup.

The clashes are the first time the People's Defense Forces (PDF) have come up against the army in a major city.

The defence force is a collective name for militia groups that have sprung up in Myanmar since the coup.

Myanmar's military junta has violently put down anti-coup protests in the country, killing hundreds of civilians.

Until now, actions by the PDF have been limited to fighting in rural areas or small towns. Tuesday's clashes brought the violence to a major city, marking a new phase in the fallout from the coup.

According to local reports, troops raided a boarding school being used as a base by the militia, leading to an exchange of gunfire.


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The junta said four protesters were killed in the raid and eight arrested, and several soldiers injured. The Mandalay PDF confirmed the raid, on 54th Street in the Chan Mya Thar Si Township, in a post on social media.

The PDF said weapons were seized from inside the building and several members of the group arrested, but did not confirm whether there were any casualties.

Local people told the BBC that security checks were being tightened in the city in the wake of the violent exchange.

The military has previously responded to PDF attacks on soldiers with artillery and air strikes, displacing thousands of people from their homes.

Security forces have killed at least 873 protesters since the February coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners - an activist group which is monitoring the numbers. The military disputes the figure.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday called for a halt in the international flow of arms to Myanmar, and urged the military to respect the results of a November election and release political detainees, including the country's democratically-elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar's foreign ministry rejected the UN statement, saying it was "based on one-sided sweeping allegations and false assumptions".
Myanmar in profile


Myanmar, also known as Burma, became independent from Britain in 1948. For much of its modern history it has been under military rule


Restrictions began loosening from 2010 onwards, leading to free elections in 2015 and the installation of a government led by veteran opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi the following year


In 2017, Myanmar's army responded to attacks on police by Rohingya militants with a deadly crackdown, driving more than half a million Rohingya Muslims across the border into Bangladesh in what the UN later called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing"

Map of Myanmar showing Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon

Myanmar militias vow to take on army after city firefight


People walk out from a house believed to have been raided by security forces, in Mandalay

Mon, June 21, 2021,

(Reuters) -Myanmar security forces backed by Armoured vehicles clashed on Tuesday with a newly formed guerrilla group in the second biggest city Mandalay, army-run media, the militias and a witness said, resulting in at least two casualties.

Since the army seized power on Feb. 1 and removed Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government, troops have put down pro-democracy demonstrations and strikes and killed or arrested hundreds of protesters.

In response, people's defence forces have sprung up across the Southeast Asian country to take on security forces.

Until now, fighting involving lightly armed militias has been mainly in small towns and rural areas, but a group claiming to be Mandalay's new People's Defence Force said its members responded after the army raided one of its bases.

"The fight has started. There will be more fights," a militiaman identified as Captain Tun Tauk Naing said by telephone.

The sound of repeated gunfire could be heard in video footage taken by a resident in Mandalay, a hotspot for anti-coup protests.

Army-owned Myawaddy Television said on its Telegram message channel that security forces raided a house and "armed terrorists" fought back with small weapons and bombs.

It said four were killed and eight arrested and some members of the security forces were seriously hurt.

The junta typically describes its opponents as "terrorists".

Local news site Myanmar Now said about 20 soldiers conducted the raid, sparking a gunfight, and three armoured vehicles were deployed.

Another official from the militia group told the Mizzima news portal that six of its members had been arrested and two soldiers were killed.

An activist in Mandalay told Reuters he heard gunfire and saw about 10 armoured vehicles. "We are all afraid, but at least we know we have the support of the nation," he said. "Everyone in Myanmar knows the situation in Mandalay now."

A small group of demonstrators was seen rallying behind the Mandalay militias, carrying banners and making three-finger gestures symbolising resistance to military rule.

A spokesman for the junta did not answer calls seeking comment. State-run MRTV did not report the Mandalay unrest during its nightly newscast.

The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar said on Twitter that it was tracking reports of fighting in Mandalay and urgently called for a cessation of violence.

The military has used artillery and air strikes in response to guerrilla attacks on soldiers elsewhere in Myanmar, which have led to casualties on both sides and an exodus of tens of thousands of people.

The United Nations General Assembly called on Friday for a stop to the arms flow to Myanmar and urged the military to respect the outcome of a November election and release political detainees, including Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi, 76, faces multiple charges including incitement, corruption and official secrets breaches. She appeared in court for her trial on Tuesday and was in normal health, her lawyer said. Her lawyers have said the charges are baseless.

(Reporting by Reuters StaffWriting by Ed DaviesEditing by Martin Petty and Mark Heinrich)

Are carbon-sucking vacuums really the best way to curb climate change?

Mario Picazo 

Embedded content: https://players.brightcove.net/1942203455001/B1CSR9sVf_default/index.html?videoId=6257802781001

There is a growing interest in carbon sequestration projects and California’s state government is considering the installation of giant vacuums that will literally suck carbon out of the air.

This new technology has been developed by Carbon Engineering, a direct air capture company based in British Columbia. To test the grounds, they are currently working on a carbon sequestration project tailored for Occidental Petroleum in Texas.

Before spending $14 billion USD a year, and building a complex network of pipelines to transport the captured emissions underground, California Government officials want to see solid results coming from the Texas testing site.

© Provided by The Weather NetworkSmog over Los Angeles, California, USA. (Robert Landau. Corbis Documentary. Getty Images)

If vacuums end-up being installed, the goal is to lower carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, thus reducing global warming which causes climate change. California is considering installing such vacuums to reach the goal of becoming a carbon neutral state by 2045.

While greenhouse gases have been on a downward trend in the Golden State, experts are split on how best to meet the ambitious targets. Some think that at this point, meeting ambitious carbon neutrality goals will have to include technologies that remove carbon from the air.

Mark Jacobson, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Stanford, has some valuable thoughts on the implementation of this revolutionary plan.

Watch the video above to see this expert’s take on carbon-sucking vacuums.

WW3.0
Russia fires warning shots to deter U.K. warship in Black Sea

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian warship fired warning shots and a Russian warplane dropped bombs Wednesday to force a British destroyer away from an area in the Black Sea near Crimea that Russia claims as its territorial waters.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The incident marked the first time since the Cold War that Moscow has used live ammunition to deter a NATO warship, reflecting growing risks of military incidents amid soaring Russia-West tensions.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the Russian warship fired warning shots after the British missile destroyer Defender had ignored a notice against intrusion in Russia’s territorial waters. It said that a Russian Su-24 bomber also dropped four bombs ahead of the British ship to persuade it to change course. Minutes later, the British warship left the Russian waters, the ministry said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it has summoned the U.K. military attache in Moscow to protest the British destroyer’s maneuver.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense said it was aware of the reports but had no immediate comment.

HMS Defender, a Type 45 destroyer, is part of the U.K. Carrier Strike Group currently heading to the Indo-Pacific region. However, it was announced earlier this month that it would be temporarily breaking away from the group to carry out its “own set of missions” in the Black Sea.

Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a move that was not recognized by most countries in the world, gaining access to the peninsula's long Black Sea coastline. Russia has frequently chafed at NATO warships visits near Crimea, casting them as destabilizing.

NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria all are on the Black Sea, but warships from the U.S., U.K. and other NATO allies also have made increasingly frequent visits there in a show of support for Ukraine.

Speaking Wednesday just before the incident, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, sharply criticized the deployments of NATO warships near Russian waters.

“The moves by warships of the U.S. and its allies have been clearly provocative,” Gerasimov said at an international security conference in Moscow organized by the Russian Defense Ministry. “It creates preconditions for incidents and doesn't help ease tensions in the military sphere.”

He charged that the British destroyer Dragon intruded into the Russian waters near Crimea in October, and the U.S. destroyer John McCain violated the Russian border in the Sea of Japan in November.

In April, Russia imposed restrictions on foreign navy ships' movements near Crimea until November in a move that drew strong complaints from Ukraine and the West. Russia has rejected that criticism and noted that the restrictions wouldn’t interfere with commercial shipping.

Earlier this year, Russia also beefed up its troops near the border with Ukraine and warned Ukrainian authorities against using force to reclaim control of the country's east, where a conflict with Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 14,000 people in seven years. Moscow withdrew some of its forces after sweeping maneuvers, but Ukrainian officials say that the bulk of them have remained.

___

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Vladimir Isachenkov, The Associated Press

Catholic bishops are making American Catholicism a single-issue religion

Peter Weber, Senior editor

THE WEEK
Mon, June 21, 2021, 

A cross. Illustrated | iStock, Amazon

Catholic leaders like to explain that Roman Catholicism doesn't fit comfortably in any political party, and doctrinally, that is true.

The Catholic Church has had a strong history of supporting labor movements since Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor), has taught that artificial contraception is sinful since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, condemns both abortion and capital punishment, strongly supports immigration and finding safe harbor for refugees, opposes same-sex marriage and civil unions, and encourages strong global measures to mitigate climate change. There's plenty for Democrats and Republicans to love and hate.

But the American bishops on Friday took a big step toward making the U.S. Catholic Church a one-issue denomination. That one issue, of course, is abortion. And the apparent preferred mechanism to enforce doctrinal purity on abortion, according to a majority of U.S. bishops who voted by secret ballot last week, is threatening to deny errant politicians the Eucharist. The clear genesis of this push was the election of America's second Catholic president, Joe Biden.





The bishops, gathered virtually for the spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), voted 168 to 55, with 6 abstentions, to push forward with a document on the Eucharist that, in its draft form, would encourage bishops to deny the Eucharist to Catholic political figures who support legal access to abortion.

The Vatican had publicly urged the USCCB not to take this step without finding consensus. Pope Francis, who abhors abortion, has made his views fairly clear that the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is substantively the body and blood of Jesus, is "not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak," as he wrote in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).

The pope reiterated that point on June 6. Jesus gave us the Eucharist on the night Judas, who "eats with Him, who dips the morsel in the same plate, is betraying Him," he told a crowd in St. Peter's Square. And Jesus does the same for us, the pope continued. "He knows that we need it, because the Eucharist is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners. This is why he exhorts us: 'Do not be afraid! Take and eat.'"

The U.S. bishops who support denying Democratic politicians Communion say they are doing so because having prominent Catholics, especially those involved in policy, participate in the Mass while publicly upholding the legal right to abortion gives the sense that the church sanctions or at least tolerates abortion. "There is a special obligation of those who are in leadership because of their public visibility," Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop Kevin Rhaodes, chairman of the USCCB doctrinal committee that will now write the document on the Eucharist, said after the vote.



But deploying what amounts to the Catholic nuclear option only on abortion signals that abortion is the only issue the Catholic Church really cares about.

Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, notes that nobody is accusing Biden of performing or procuring an abortion, just abiding by his oath to uphold the Constitution — which, under current Supreme Court precedent, recognizes a legal right to abortion.

Millies points to the counterexample of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), another prominent Catholic, who has declined to halt 18 executions on his watch since Pope Francis increased the church's official opposition to capital punishment. Abbott's actions are much more proximate to capital punishment than Biden's are to abortion, he said, and no bishops are calling for him to be denied Communion.

Another prominent Catholic Republican, former Attorney General Bill Barr, revived the federal death penalty after a 17-year break, then pushed through 13 executions in rapid succession. The day between the sixth and seventh executions last September, Barr was awarded the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast's Christifideles Laici (Faithful Christian Laity) Award. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 Catholic majority, but the justices allowed all those executions to proceed.

At the USCCB's 2018 spring meeting, a bishop recommended applying "canonical penalties" on Catholics who participated in the Trump administration's family separation immigration policy, Jack Jenkins recounts at Religion News Service. "The proposal did not gain traction, however, and did not trigger calls for a Eucharistic document."

With abortion, the bishops seem willing to alienate about half the U.S. church to make a political point. Because even if the bishops follow through in the November meeting and issue a document encouraging each other to bar Biden from receiving Holy Communion, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory has made clear he will not. And unless the bishops unanimously adopt the document on the Eucharist, which seems unlikely, it would need sign-off from the Vatican to take effect. That seems even less likely.

Sixty Catholic House Democrats issued a response to the USCCB's vote, laying out their vision of what supporting human life and dignity looks like and "solemnly" urging the bishops to "not move forward and deny this most holy of all sacraments, the source and the summit of the whole work of the gospel over one issue." A Pew Research survey in March found that 67 percent of U.S. Catholics believe Biden should be allowed to receive Communion regardless of his abortion politics.

"Any effort by this conference to move in support of the categorical exclusion of Catholic political leaders based on their public policy will thrust the bishops of our nation into the very heart of the toxic partisan strife, which has distorted our own political culture and crippled meaningful dialogue," Cardinal Joseph Tobin of New Jersey said during the USCCB debate.

There's also the elephant in the room: the bishops' own moral credibility.

After decades of sexual abuse facilitated by bishops came to light in 2002 and 2003, the bishops should have emerged "humbled," with "a long period of atonement and a commitment to holding themselves accountable," tweeted Fr. Jeremy Zipple, a Catholic priest and Jesuit. "Instead, they quickly pivoted to a culture war fight over gay marriage then ObamaCare," and now this, wrecking the "U.S. church's credibility."

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, also met last week, and its delegates stepped back from ramping up its cultural warfare. "Whenever the church gets in bed with politics, the church gets pregnant," outgoing SBC leader J.D. Greear said in his final presidential address. "And our offspring does not look like our Father in Heaven."

Baptists and other evangelicals, historically, have long valued the separation of church and state more than the Catholic Church, which is headquartered in its own sovereign city state and used to control European empires. But alienating one of two American political parties is bad politics, especially in a moment where the president, Supreme Court majority, and House speaker are all Catholic.

More to the point, it seems like bad flock-tending and bad religion.

In the same letter Pope Francis said the Eucharist isn't "a prize for the perfect" but "nourishment for the weak," he added of his fellow pastors: "Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems." In America, we'll see.