‘These stories are important’: Durham memorial to honor people NC plantation enslaved.






Charlie Innis
Mon, June 21, 2021

Ricky Hart grazed the crevices in the chimney’s rough, red bricks with his fingertips.

The small indentations were left by enslaved Black people who lived in the Stagville Plantation, a historic site roughly 10 miles north of downtown Durham.

To mold and fire bricks, and to build a chimney that has lasted over 150 years, you had to be skilled, Hart said.


“That’s significant. They let you know, that’s been there for a very, very long time,” he said.

Hart spoke beside the Holman slave quarters in Horton Grove, where four houses built for enslaved families before the Civil War remain standing, including the home where his ancestors once lived.

At the Stagville Plantation, at least 900 enslaved people worked against their will for the Bennehan-Cameron family. At over 30,000 acres of land, it was one of the largest plantations in North Carolina.

Now, a group of residents are planning a memorial in downtown Durham to honor those once enslaved at the Stagville Plantation.

Among the Stagville Memorial Project’s organizers and supporters are descendants of enslaved families, including Hart and community members in Braggtown, and Vanessa Hines, a former member of the city’s Racial Equity Task Force.

The memorial would go in front of the old Durham County courthouse at 200 E. Main St., near where protesters tore down a Confederate statue in 2017.

The artist selection and design process could begin this winter, according to the project’s tentative timeline.
Stagville Memorial Project

Hines proposed the public art project to the Durham County Board of Commissioners this month.

Organizers want to expand who gets included in the story of Durham’s beginnings, raise awareness about the Historic Stagville site, and bring its descendants together for a common purpose, she said.

It’s also for people who aren’t from Durham, but know they are descended from enslaved people in other parts of the country, she said.

“It’s for people like me to have a place to go to in the town that I’m living in to remember my own ancestors, and to think about them and to think about the legacy that I am living, and how I am showing up for them in my daily life,” she said. “I think that it can speak to people in the African diaspora in that way.”

“And then it’s also for white people,” she added. “To have something that is out there that is inviting them also to ponder how these legacies are still showing up.”

The East Main Street location is a short walk away from the county jail and the new Durham County Courthouse.

Since the summer of 2019, Hines has met with residents of the Braggtown community south of the former plantation to talk about the memorial project in coffee shops, people’s homes, and in Zoom conferences during the pandemic. They hope to design, install, and unveil the memorial by Juneteenth next year, according to the project’s proposal. The estimated budget is $237,000.

The county commissioners expressed unanimous support for the project.

“There are so many Black people that don’t even remember their history, because of the way in which we were brought to this country,” Commissioners Chair Brenda Howerton said during a meeting with Hines.

“I think about the movie that I’ve been watching, ‘Tulsa,’ and what happened there,” she added. “So, it’s a hard history, but it is our history.”
Memory and oral history

Georie Bryant’s great, great grandfather Will Holman was enslaved on the Stagville plantation. After emancipation, Holman’s son and his wife were prominent tobacco farmers in the area, Bryant said.

He said the key part of a memorial is in the word: memory.

“I think it’s super important that we do remember, as cities are being overturned in many places across the country right now, the individuals who lay the groundwork for those places to be,” said Bryant, a community organizer and chef. “Especially when you’re talking about places where African Americans could feel safe in the South.”

“That’s not by happenstance, a lot of people fought very hard for that to even be a reality,” he added.

Standing in front of his ancestors’ former home at the Historic Stagville site, Hart remembered a time when his father showed him the plantation.

“And we’d sit on the porch and he would smoke his pipe, and he’d sit there and tell me, he says, ‘Son, look out as far as you can see. All of that was tobacco.’

“You go on the western part of it, on this side,” he continued. “That was corn and other stuff, vegetables.”

Hart pointed to a short stump in front of the house that was partly concealed by grass. His father told him it had been a large tree that was over 100 years old. His great aunt had told his father about the tree, Hart said.

“They let him know that, ‘Hey, it was some slaves that was hung from that tree,’” he said. “’And they was not permitted to take them down.’”
Survival and resistance

That so much of the Stagville plantation’s architecture still stands is a testament to the expertise of the enslaved people who built it, Hart said.

“Whether it was dealing with the livestock, whether it was butchering, curing the meat, planting, everybody had their skill set,” he said. “Just like it is today.”

Vera Cecelski, a historian and the site manager for Stagville, said skilled craftsmen and artisans were among the enslaved people on the plantation.

“One way that that helps shift our understanding of the institution of slavery is that it helps us understand the ways that families, like the families that owned this plantation, profited not just from the physical labor of enslaved people, but from the minds, the skills, expertise and knowledge of enslaved people,” she said.

Cecelski guides visitors on tours through the former plantation, where she shares individual stories about enslaved people, drawn from surviving records, and talks about the craftsmanship of the buildings.

The essence of their work, she said, is about engaging with how the history of slavery has been remembered, mis-remembered, and obscured since 1863, the year of the emancipation proclamation.

“That is history, that for a very long time as a nation, we have been refusing to look in the eyes, and to hold honestly and truthfully and fully and complexly with us,” she said.

All of the site’s programming strives to tell the stories of enslaved people through their perspectives. On a guided tour, visitors can step into different rooms in the Holman house and imagine the kinds of conversations families had about freedom and survival, she said.

“Those are places where people might have been strategizing together about how to resist,” she said. “How to sabotage work, how to fight back, how to escape from their houses for a few hours at night to trade, or barter, or pass information, or visit somebody they loved.”

Historic Stagville is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Call the site at 919-620-0120 to schedule a guided tour.

Shuttered NC plantation ‘whitewashed’ history, protesters say




Shuttered NC plantation ‘whitewashed’ history, protesters say

Joe Marusak
Sun, June 20, 2021

Despite the closed gate at Historic Latta Plantation on Saturday, Karla Jensen, Christian Cano, Isabella Patterson and Richard Lu joined a few dozen other Carolinians to denounce the way the living history museum promoted a since-canceled Juneteenth event.

“There’s been a lot of history erasure, and we’re here to point out that history involves all colors,” Patterson, a 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student, told The Charlotte Observer.

Patterson held a placard that read, “Hands off our History.”

Saturday was Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Latta Plantation event canceled

Controversy surrounded Historic Latta Plantation this month over the site’s planned event, pegged to Juneteenth. The event’s promotional material promised to tell the story of “white refugees” and defeated Confederate soldiers. Latta Plantation’s manager later defended the event and said his intent was never to glorify white supremacy or slavery.

“To tell the story of these freedmen would be pointless if the stories of others were not included. Many of you may not like this but, their lives were intertwined, the stories of massa, the Confederate soldiers, the overseer, the displaced white families,” said Ian Campbell in the June 12 statement, which has since been blocked from view as Latta Plantation’s website has been made private.

He went on to say, “I, Ian Campbell, as an American man of African descent and the new site manager at Historic Latta Plantation, will lift the veil of ignorance.”

NC plantation: No apology, slams mayor and other critics of Juneteenth event promo

But the event description didn’t acknowledge the significance of June 19 and called those who were enslaved “former bondsmen,” without any mention of the 250 years Black people were forced into slavery in the United States. Instead, it inaccurately minimized an unnamed slaveowner to an “overseer” and referred to him as “massa,” the Observer previously reported.

On Thursday, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation officials said the plantation was closed until further notice.

Park and Recreation Director W. Lee Jones said his department will evaluate “the best path forward for Latta Plantation and its programming” over several months.

The department wants to ensure that the site is used “in an appropriate, forward-thinking manner,” Jones said.

Earlier in the week, Jones told county commissioners he was concerned about summer programs training children to be like “young Confederate soldiers” and “Southern belles.”

Jones also said the county wouldn’t renew its contract with plantation, which ends June 30.
Living history museum under scrutiny

Protesters on Saturday said more change is needed at the living history museum and farm that offers year-round educational and school programs.

Stephanie Gardner, a 48-year-old from Charlotte who participated in Saturday’s protest, called the plantation’s literature “a Confederate whitewash.”

“My concern is, (the plantation grounds on Sample Road) should be held sacred for the Black descendants of those who were enslaved here, or those closest to them,” she said.

Cano, a 54-year-old who grew up in Texas and lives in Charlotte, held a “Latinx for Black Lives” poster.

“It’s important that we stand up to this,” he said. “When we stay silent, injustices happen.”

Kari Giles, who is white, drove from Fort Mill.

“Stop! White Washing Black History,” her placard read.

“This is not a day for me to celebrate,” the 44-year-old said, “but how I can support my Black neighbors.”
‘Time we showed them respect’

Karla Jensen, 70, of Charlotte, said what the plantation did “was just morally wrong.”

She held a placard that said: “Listen to Black Voices.”

“This country was built on the backs of Black people,” Jensen said. “It’s time we showed them the respect they deserve.”
Activist led protest

Civil rights activist Kass Ottley, founder/CEO of Seeking Justice Charlotte, planned Saturday’s peaceful protest when the plantation’s Juneteenth event was still a go for that night.

She said it was important to still show up, and put word out on social media.

The gathering in part celebrated how public reaction led to the cancellation of the plantation event, Ottley said.

“We’re out here celebrating,” she said. “We shut down the event.”

The protest also highlighted how more needs to be done at the plantation, she said, for example, inclusion of Black people on the board of Latta Place Inc., the nonprofit whose mission is to preserve the circa-1800s plantation.

“We need to stay on top of the county commissioners and the city, so we have a voice at the table,” she said.

The plantation, for instance, needs to tell the stories of “the slaves who worked here in bondage,” Ottley said.

“At some point, we’ve got to take a stand,” she said. “How are we telling the generations about racism and coming together if we’re lying about it?"

IMPROVES STUDENT GRADES

Critical race theory sparks activism in students

Jerusha Osberg Conner, Professor of Education, Villanova University
Mon, June 21, 2021

Youth organizers tend to outperform their peers in school.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Critical race theory – an academic framework that holds that racism is embedded in society – has become the subject of an intense debate about how issues of race should or shouldn’t be taught in schools.

Largely missing in the debate is evidence of how exposure to critical race theory actually affects students.

As a researcher who specializes in youth activism, I have conducted research on and with youth organizing groups in which critical race theory is a core component of the political education. Eighty-two percent of youth organizing groups regularly offer political education, which involves a critical examination of social issues, usually through workshops and group discussions.

My research – along with that of other scholars – points to three important outcomes for young people who are taught critical race theory as part of youth organizing.

1. Ignites passion

A little Black girl on a street holds a sign that reads 'Power to my people!!'

First, research shows that learning to apply a critical race theoretical perspective and think critically about society do not fuel a sense of divisiveness among youth, as some politicians have suggested.

Instead, I have found that doing so can ignite passion in youths to work collaboratively to bring about social change aimed at equity.

In my research, I have observed that when youth organizers learn how power and privilege are reproduced from one generation to the next through racialized policies like redlining or discrimination in housing, funding school districts on the basis of property taxes, which favors wealthier school districts, and tracking students into different academic levels, they often become inspired to take action to redress unfair conditions.

Many of the low-income youth organizers of color I have studied come to realize that most of their struggles in life are not their fault. They develop hope that reform is possible, if only policymakers and the public embrace more equitable policies. And so they set to work devising and advocating for such policies.

In one youth organizing group colleagues and I have studied, students teach one another a model called “the spiral of oppression.”

This framework helps young people understand how societal oppression of groups of people, such as racial minorities, spirals as individuals from those groups internalize oppression and begin to act on the negative stereotypes they have internalized. These actions, in turn, lead to further oppression, such as greater police surveillance, supervision and state violence as the spiral continues.

Across years, participants repeatedly told me how empowering it was to learn this framework. It helped them to make sense of what they saw happening in their communities. More significantly, it prompted them to consider how they could disrupt the spiral, both individually and collectively. Rather than seeing themselves through the binary lens of victim or oppressor, they adopted identities as change agents, committed to institutional and societal reform.

2. Improves academics

Second, research shows youth organizers become more academically successful in school as they progress through organizing.

For example, in one study, I found that two-thirds of the actively involved youth organizers in Philadelphia’s lowest-performing schools significantly improved their grade-point averages.

Similarly, other scholars have found that youth organizers are more likely than their peers to report that they received mostly A and B grades in high school, and they go on to attend four-year colleges at higher rates. Ironically, research shows that while youth organizing helps young people become more aware of inequities within and across schools, it can also make them less alienated in school and more committed to academics.

3. Lifelong benefits

Third, the benefits of being exposed to critical theory through youth organizing do not end in high school or college. My research has shown that formative experiences in youth organizing can shape the choices individuals make in their professional and civic lives as adults.

Alumni explain how the values and dispositions cultivated in organizing led them not only to adopt pro-social careers as, for example, educators or counselors, but also to find ways to continue to participate constructively in the civic life of their communities as young adults.

Other researchers have turned up similar results. In one large-scale study in California, researchers found that as adults, former youth organizers are far more likely than their peers to have volunteered, worked on an issue affecting their community, participated in civic organizations and registered to vote. These results raise the question: Could such outcomes become more widespread if schools adopted some of the principles and curricular frameworks of youth organizing, including critical race theory?

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.]

As the debate over critical race theory and its place in schools rages on, it is important that the discourse be grounded in evidence.

Studies of youth organizing show that when taught well, the analytical tools of critical race theory can support valuable long-term educational, professional, civic and political outcomes.

These outcomes are most pronounced for low-income youth of color. When politicians advance legislation to block the use of critical race theory in schools, they may actually be blocking an important means of fostering outcomes that would make America’s democracy more robust and vibrant than it would otherwise be.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jerusha Osberg Conner, Villanova University.

Read more:

Summer reading: 5 books for young people that deal with race


3 things schools should teach about America’s history of white supremacy

Jerusha Osberg Conner has re.ceived funding from the Surdna Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the New Ventures Fund, and the League of Conservation Voters

Educators face fines, harassment over critical race theory



Russell Contreras
AXIOS
Sun, June 20, 2021, 5:00 AM


Elementary school teachers, administrators and college professors are facing fines, physical threats, and fear of firing because of an organized push from the right to remove classroom discussions of systemic racism.

Why it matters: Moves to ban critical race theory are raising free speech concerns amid an absence of consistent parameters about what teachings are in or out of bounds.

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Driving the news: So far, 21 states have introduced proposals to limit lessons about racism and history.


The Alabama State Department of Education recently announced it would seek to prohibit critical race theory in public schools.


The Kansas Board of Regents recently asked its six universities — including the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, and Wichita State University — to produce a list of courses that include critical race theory, following pressure from a Republican state senator.


Iowa State's provost decided not to sign off on the new university diversity requirement, pending a review of how the state's new ban on critical race theory would impact that requirement.


A task force looking into claims of critical race theory “indoctrination" in Idaho schools is seeking records from the Boise School District— a move critics say is aimed at intimidating teachers.

Educators say they have been subjected to harassment at school board meetings, and college professor candidates have been asked about their views on critical race theory in job interviews.

The intrigue: Citizens for Renewing America, a group led by a White House budget director under former President Trump, offers activists model legislation to craft bans in their states.


It says that equity, intersectionality, social justice, and "woke" terms are racist ideas and falsely claims that critical race theory teaches that "one race or sex is superior to another race or sex."


The proposal also calls for firing educators who continue to teach about systemic racism.

Reality check: Critical race theory, a concept developed in the 1970s, holds that racism is ingrained in our society and comes from how the nation formed.


It says that policies and practices in areas from law to education to banking contribute to persistent racial inequalities and are designed to conserve white supremacy.

What they're saying: "The Alabama State Board of Education believes the United States of America is not an inherently racist country, and that the state of Alabama is not an inherently racist state,” according to a draft resolution by the board to ban critical race theory.

Yes, but: Alabama, a former state in the Confederacy, was home to some of the most violent episodes of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s.


Four Black girls were killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, and civil rights activist John Lewis, who would go on to make his mark as member of Congress until his death last year, was severely beaten in Selma.

The bottom line: Educators and writers of color say banning critical race theory is really an attempt to sugarcoat U.S. history.


"The current infrastructure of oppression was built on silence, and built on willful ignorance and built on a purposeful erasing of history," Baratunde Thurston, How To Citizen podcast host and author of How to Be Black, told Axios.


"I think this is such a deliberate tactic at erasing our history...the history of black and Hispanic folks. This has always been a tactic of white supremacy," said Edgar Villanueva, author of Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance.


Educators say they fear they might not be able to discuss Juneteenth -- even after President Biden signed a bill last week making the day a national holiday.

Don't forget: After 21 American prisoners of war refused to be repatriated to the U.S. following the Korean War, states in the 1950s began requiring U.S. history in public schools to fight future "brainwashing" by Communist countries.


The U.S. history and social studies classes in the Cold War era were taught to reinforce nationalism and romanticize Founding Fathers while downplaying slavery and the extermination of Native Americans.

'We'll all be dead by June': Jared Kushner lashed out at a health official after hearing about mask shipments, according to a new book

Oma Seddiq
Mon, June 21, 2021

Jared Kushner. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Kushner reportedly grew so frustrated about mask shipments last year that he threw a pen at the wall.

"You f---ing moron," Kushner reportedly said to a health official. "We'll all be dead by June."

The Washington Post said the scene was detailed in a forthcoming book by two Post reporters.

Jared Kushner lashed out at a public-health official when he learned in late March 2020 that millions of masks wouldn't arrive in the US until June, a forthcoming book says, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

"You f---ing moron," Kushner reportedly said to Robert Kadlec, then an assistant secretary of health and human services, who had purchased 600 million masks as coronavirus infections spiked across the country. "We'll all be dead by June."

The Post said the scene was described in "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History," a book by its reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta set to be published later this month.

Kushner grew so frustrated that he threw his pen at the wall, the book says, according to the report. At the time, he had taken on greater responsibilities as senior advisor to President Donald Trump, playing an influential role in the White House's COVID-19 response.

The Post reported that the book detailed many more chaotic moments of the Trump administration's coronavirus response, including a time when another Trump aide blew up at Kadlec.

Upset at the administration's rollout of the antiviral treatment remdesivir, Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, reportedly shouted at Kadlec in a phone call, "I'm going to fire your a-- if you can't fix this!"

The reporters wrote that the handling of the pandemic had turned the Trump administration into "a toxic environment in which no matter where you turned, someone was ready to rip your head off or threatening to fire you," according to The Post.

The book is also said to describe an instance in February 2020 when Trump asked officials in the Situation Room whether people with COVID-19 could be sent to Guantánamo Bay.

"Don't we have an island that we own?" Trump reportedly said. "What about Guantánamo?" The idea shocked the officials, who dismissed it, the book reportedly says.

‘Testing is killing me!’ Trump feared Covid

numbers would doom his re-election, new

book claims

Nathan Place
Mon, June 21, 2021

Then-US President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at the BOK Center, 20 June, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Getty Images)

While president, Donald Trump reportedly yelled at aides to shut down testing for Covid-19 in the United States, fearing the growing number of infections and deaths due to the virus would cost him his re-election.

“Testing is killing me!” he allegedly yelled at Alex Azar, who was secretary of Health and Human Services at the time. “I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?”

The tantrum is just one of many chronicled in an upcoming book, Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. On Monday, the Post published excerpts of the book, which chronicles the United States’ early, bungled handling of the virus.


According to the authors, Mr Azar was baffled by the former president’s outburst.

“Uh, do you mean Jared?” he allegedly replied. Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, had just taken over the national testing strategy.

Mr Trump evidently thought the whole effort was a mistake. In conversations with his aides, he appears to have been more bothered by the Covid statistics themselves – which he called “my numbers” – than on the actual illnesses and deaths they represented.

“This was gross incompetence to let CDC develop a test,” the former president reportedly told Mr Azar.

Meanwhile, members of the coronavirus task force fought with each other for dominance, aides blocked Mr Trump from firing staffers he didn’t like, and efforts to distribute masks and medicines faltered. The overall result, the book says, was a slow and “rudderless” response to the crisis.

In another disturbing episode, Mr Trump allegedly floated the idea of quarantining Covid-positive Americans at the same naval base in Guantanamo Bay where terrorism suspects are held.

According to the book, the suggestion came up during a Situation Room meeting in February 2020. At the time, most of the world’s Covid-19 cases were still outside the United States, and White House officials were debating what to do with Americans who had been infected abroad. Some suggested bringing them back into the country to receive treatment at US hospitals.

Donald Trump, reportedly, had another idea.

“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the former president allegedly asked. “What about Guantanamo?”

White House officials reportedly put the kibosh on the idea – even after Mr Trump suggested it a second time.

The Independent has reached out to Mr Trump’s company for comment, but has not yet heard back.

Exclusive: Matt Hancock kept Boris Johnson in dark over Covid vaccines success

Edward Malnick

THE TELEGRAPH

Sat, June 19, 2021

Michael Gove and Matt Hancock during the UEFA Euro 2020 match between England and Scotland at Wembley on Friday - Eamonn McCormack/UEFA via Getty Images

Matt Hancock failed to tell Boris Johnson about a major Public Health England (PHE) study showing the effectiveness of vaccines against the Indian or delta variant during a key meeting to decide whether to extend Covid restrictions, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Telegraph understands that the Health Secretary had known about the PHE data three days before the "quad" of four senior ministers, led by the Prime Minister, met last Sunday to decide whether to postpone the planned June 21 reopening until July 19.

However, multiple sources familiar with the meeting said it was not raised by Mr Hancock or discussed at all during the course of the talks.

The data was also not included in briefing papers given to Mr Johnson, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor and Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, in advance of the meeting.

The bombshell disclosure raises the possibility that the quad could have opted to press ahead with lifting the restrictions on Monday if they had been aware of the study, which showed that both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines were more effective at preventing hospitalisation with the variant than they were against previous strains.


It comes after it emerged last week that Mr Johnson had called Mr Hancock "hopeless" over his handling of the pandemic last year.

On Saturday night, senior Tories asked whether the Health Secretary had "bounced" the Prime Minister into extending the current measures.

The disclosure will fuel calls for the measures to be lifted on July 5 – the halfway point before July 19 at which Mr Johnson said the Government could decide to lift them early.

One Cabinet minister insisted there must now be a "political decision" to allow businesses to operate fully again due to concerns about severe harm being done to the economy with relatively "little benefit".

On Saturday night Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of Conservative MPs, said: "Either Matt Hancock thought this data was insignificant or he thought it should be withheld from the Prime Minister and other key ministers.

"Either way, the mind boggles at what conversation must now be necessary with the Prime Minister, and I feel confident it will be a matter of interest to my colleagues on the relevant select committees. If Matt Hancock was deliberately withholding relevant information, what was he trying to gain? Was the Prime Minister bounced?"

A Department of Health spokesman denied that Mr Hancock "bounced" the Prime Minister.

Senior ministers were said to be furious with how the decision-making process was handled. Sources close to members of the "quad" also said they were not provided with the usual explanations that accompany modelling by Sage scientists presented at the meeting, which showed that a June 21 reopening would lead to a large resurgence in hospital admissions.

A source close to the "quad" said: "They were presented with the [Sage] data without the assumptions that it was based on." Members of the quad were said to be "very annoyed". The claim was denied by other Government sources.

The Telegraph understands that Mr Hancock was briefed on the overall findings of the data on Thursday June 10, before PHE went on to send its written analysis to the Health Secretary on Saturday June 12.

On the Saturday, Mr Johnson hosted a brief virtual meeting of the quad from the G7 summit on Cornwall, ahead of the longer meeting following his return to Downing Street the next day.

However, the first notification that Number 10 received of the results was in an email to aides at around 3pm on Sunday June 13, shortly before the meeting that evening at which ministers decided to extend the restrictions.

Sources with the talks said an email sent so close to the meeting did not amount to a meaningful attempt to inform Mr Johnson of the data.

Mr Baker added: "To send an email so late in the day is an act of opposition. It's the sort of thing we do to Labour MPs before appearing in their constituencies to campaign. It's not what a Health Secretary should do to a Prime Minister."

A Government source insisted that "equivalent data" to the PHE study was shown to the quad. The "equivalent" data was said to have been drawn up by Sage's Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) and to have included similar figures to the PHE's findings on the efficacy of the vaccines.

The source said: "When the decision was made to delay, ministers knew that the vaccines work. That is why we are buying more time to get more jabs in arms."

But the PHE data, which was only made public on Monday evening after Mr Johnson announced the delay, was based on an analysis of 14,019 cases of the delta variant as recent as June 4, looking at emergency hospital admissions in England.

It was described by PHE as "hugely important findings" which "confirm that the vaccines offer significant protection against hospitalisation from the delta variant".

Real world data showed that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was 94 per cent effective against hospital admission from the variant after one dose, rising to 96 per cent after two jabs. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was found to be 71 per cent effective against hospital admission after one dose, rising to 92 per cent after two jabs.

The data showed that both vaccines are more effective at preventing hospitalisation against the variant than they had been against previous types.

Meanwhile, separate analysis by The Telegraph shows that hospital admissions in regions with the highest outbreaks of the delta variant are rising at a third of the pace of last September, while a third of hospitals in England have no Covid patients at all.

Mr Hancock also told MPs this week that people who catch the virus are now spending 20 per cent less time in hospital beds, with the average stay being cut from 10 to eight days.

A Government source said: "The reason we need more time is because of the increased transmissibility of the delta variant, not because of vaccine escape."

A Department of Health spokesman said any suggestion that Mr Hancock "bounced" Mr Johnson was "categorically untrue". He added: "Information which was provided by PHE was shared across Government before the meeting. Analysis and work on the scientific paper continued over the weekend before it was published as soon as it was ready on Monday."

Analysis: Idaho awash in enough cash to address a lot of issues — or start a lot of fights

Maybe the 2022 Legislature will decide to pay for full-day kindergarten.



Kevin Richert
Fri, June 18, 2021
This story originally published June 17 at IdahoEdNews.org.

Maybe the 2022 Legislature will decide to pay for full-day kindergarten.

Or maybe not.


But if lawmakers say no, money won’t be an excuse.

Idaho’s ever-growing budget surplus is trending toward a record-shattering and mind-boggling $800 million. The big reason: Individual income tax collections are ahead of forecasts by a whopping $452.2 million. We’ll know the exact surplus sometime after June 30, when the state closes the books on the 2020-21 budget year.

Regardless, the state is awash in enough cash to address a lot of issues — or start a lot of fights.

Which is where all-day kindergarten enters the picture.

Most school districts and charter schools already offer a full day of kindergarten, but that means they have to come up with a way to pay for it. The state only covers the costs of half-day kindergarten.

The idea of state-funded full-day kindergarten is not a new one. In 2019, Gov. Brad Little’s education task force recommended funding full-day kindergarten. The Idaho School Boards Association has supported the idea for several years. In March, Republican Sen. Carl Crabtree of Grangeville and Rep. Judy Boyle of Midvale unveiled a full-day kindergarten bill.

And on Wednesday, the State Board of Education endorsed full-day kindergarten. If Little goes along with the unanimous recommendation from his State Board, the issue will come up again at the board’s August meeting.

Little is talking in general terms about what he wants to do with the surplus. In a news release last week, he pledged to “advocate for even more tax relief and strategic investments in key areas, with education topping the priority list.” Little’s staff didn’t respond to a request for details.

However, it would be shocking if Little didn’t join the push for full-day kindergarten.

Early reading has been Little’s top education priority — and maybe even his highest policy priority, period. Full-day kindergarten fits right in with Little’s goal of getting children reading by third grade.

There’s plenty of money to pay for full-day kindergarten — the Crabtree-Boyle bill pegged the cost at a maximum of $42.1 million per year. And while supporters will argue for the benefits of full-day kindergarten, and talk about building pre-reading skills and social skills, they can also make a bottom-line case. They can say state funding would provide stability, allowing districts to move the kindergarten costs off of one- or two-year supplemental property tax levies. They can also argue for equity, since state funding would get schools out of the business of charging for full-day kindergarten.

“Having to charge tuition creates access barriers,” said Quinn Perry, the ISBA’s policy and government affairs director.

Of course, there would be pushback from critics, and from one of the Statehouse’s usual suspects.

Reliably enough, the Idaho Freedom Foundation ripped full-day kindergarten earlier this week, saying the idea would yield negligible benefits that would disappear by third grade, while limiting parental choice.

“Idaho’s kids need a proven reform like school choice instead of proven failures like full-day kindergarten,” the foundation’s Anna Miller wrote Tuesday.

Sounds like another debate pitting the foundation against, more or less, every education stakeholder group in the state. Why should the 2022 legislative session be any different than 2021?

But a big surplus is kind of like a budgetary Rorschach test. Anybody can look at it and see the solution to a longstanding problem.

Rod Gramer hasn’t had time to poll his Idaho Business for Education members about the surplus. But he believes the statewide group of business leaders would support full-day kindergarten and a big push for early education. The Legislature rejected a $6 million-a-year federal early education grant this year, largely at the Freedom Foundation’s urging, but Gramer hopes 2022 would be a historic year for pre-K and kindergarten alike. “In my book, they’re the most important things we can do to improve student outcomes in Idaho.”

In addition to all-day kindergarten, the ISBA would like to see some surplus dollars go into school classified staff salaries. School districts are facing their own version of the labor shortage, when classroom paraprofessionals, bus drivers and cafeteria staff can make more money elsewhere in the labor market. “We’re losing employees too, and it’s not just educators,” Perry said.

While noting the momentum behind full-day kindergarten, state superintendent Sherri Ybarra says she’d like to see the state restore several budget line items — for classroom technology, teacher training, IT staffing and content and curriculum. She also wants help for distracts and charters, which are backfilling staffing at a cost of more than $200 million a year, putting pressure on local property taxes.


Wendy Horman, an Idaho Falls Republican who sits on the budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, clicked off several ideas for surplus dollars. The state could fund grants and scholarships for public and private school students, an idea she pushed unsuccessfully in 2021. The state could finally shift to an enrollment-based funding formula, providing money to districts that would otherwise lose money during the transition. Or lawmakers could upgrade the State Department of Education’s data management system. “It’s not very splashy, but I think it’s essential to (classroom) improvement to have accurate, real-time data.”

A surplus of money has a way of generating a surplus of ideas. So a robust budget year often has a way of translating into a rough legislative session. “Sometimes it’s harder when you have money than when you don’t have money,” Gramer said.

The Legislature is just coming off a record-setting 122-day slog of a session. A record-setting budget surplus — which just happens to coincide with an election year — could make for another long winter (and spring) around the Statehouse.

WH advisor: No strong evidence unemployment benefits are 'pulling people out of the labor force'

Denitsa Tsekova
·Reporter
Mon, June 21, 2021


One White House official is pushing back on concerns that federal unemployment benefits are causing a labor shortage.

"As the economy gets back up and running, we need to make sure that the unemployment insurance system does what it's designed to do, which is support people during periods of unemployment," Heather Boushey, a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "So far we have not seen strong evidence that this is having a significant effect of pulling people out of the labor force. People know that it's temporary."

Boushey's message comes as 25 Republican-led states and Democrat-led Louisiana have eliminated or plan to eliminate the pandemic-era jobless programs this month or early next month, well before their federal expiration in September.

In addition to the extra $300 in weekly benefits, 20 of the states also have opted out of or intend to opt out of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs. PUA provides benefits to workers like contractors who don’t otherwise qualify for regular unemployment insurance. PEUC provides additional weeks of benefits.

In those 26 states, more than 4 million workers will see their benefits slashed by at least $1,200 a month in June or early July, losing a total of $22.1 billion in benefits, according to estimates by the Century Foundation.

The expanded unemployment benefits have given workers more time to search for a job and find the right match, according to Boushey. The additional weekly benefit is "a key reason why the economy is recovering as it is now," she said.

Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Bousey talks with reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on March 24, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The unemployment rate in May was 5.8%, down from its pandemic peak of 14.8% in April 2020. Still, 7.6 million jobs have yet to be recovered for the economy to return to pre-pandemic levels.

During the pandemic, many essential workers were not protected on the job and weren't paid enough, potentially leading some to rethink their jobs or industry, according to Boushey.

"We need to make sure that workers are safe, that they are protected, and that they're paid a decent wage," she said. "People are seeing the places where they're valued and the places where perhaps they need to be valued more."

Denitsa is a writer for Yahoo Finance and Cashay, a new personal finance website. Follow her on Twitter @denitsa_tsekova

Read more:


Some workers finally have the upper hand in the job market


Workers are quitting at historic rates — and the 'leap of faith' trend may just be beginning


America has 'two completely different systems' when supporting unemployed workers

Lobster or legitimacy? A key U.S. ally embraces the West — and pays the price with China


Mahalia Dobson
Sun, June 20, 2021

Australia is stuck between a rock lobster and a hard place.

Its biggest trading partner is China, expected to become the world's biggest economy. That should be good news, but there's a catch: Canberra also craves the security and legitimacy it gets from being allied with the United States and the West.

As Beijing and Washington target each other's economic and military ambitions in a cycle of escalating tensions, some in Australia worry their country could pay the price for being caught between the two geopolitical foes.


Experts say those competing strategic interests and Canberra’s recent strategic shift toward the West are partly to blame for its yearlong trade war with Beijing — and plummeting lobster prices.

Until recently China accounted for around 96 percent of Australian exports of southern rock lobster, trade worth over half a billion U.S. dollars a year to the the antipodean nation.

But late last year, Beijing abruptly imposed a ban on lobster imports after Chinese officials claimed samples of the crustaceans contained heavy metals.

“We’re a pawn in the whole cycle of things,” said Andrew Ferguson, managing director of Ferguson Australia Group, a seafood company based in Adelaide, South Australia.

Losing the market has been devastating for his business.

“Covid has not been helpful,” he recently said by phone. “China certainly picked a good time to do this because it’s hurting us with the full strength of it.”

The lobster ban was swiftly condemned by Australians as another move in a long-running trade dispute between the two countries that has affected other major agricultural exports such as barley, wine and beef.

Strained relations have escalated to the point that Beijing has essentially suspended all but the most routine contacts between the two sides and accused Canberra of having a “Cold War mindset.” Chinese state media and the foreign ministry routinely attack Australia as adopting anti-Chinese policies at the behest of the U.S.

On Saturday the Australian government said it was lodging a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over China's imposition of anti-dumping duties on Australian wine exports.

“We are facing a conundrum of the likes of which we haven't seen in generations,” said John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University.

He said that Australia will not play down its alliance with the U.S. and is willing to tolerate economic pain at its expense, for “fear of political oblivion.”

“Historically, Australian leaders, prime ministers have sought to balance the security ties with the United States, with the trade interests with China,” he said by phone from Canberra. “But in recent times, that's become increasingly problematic.”

“The consensus has emerged that we will double down on ties with the United States and push back on threats and coercion from China.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison just spent a week in Europe on a major charm offensive, rallying allies to help ensure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region — and seeking diplomatic support for Canberra’s ongoing trade fight with Beijing.

Attending the Group of Seven meeting as a guest, he met with President Joe Biden on the sidelines and inked a major new free trade agreement with his British hosts.

Image: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison at Downing Street in London, Britain (Henry Nicholls / Reuters)

After separate meetings with Morrison in London and Paris, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron said their respective countries stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Australia.

Johnson was quick to add, however, that "nobody wants to descend into a new Cold War with China."

The G-7 also issued a statement chastising Beijing for repression of its Uyghur minority and other human rights abuses, as well as “nonmarket policies and practices” that undermine the global economy.

China, currently the world's second-largest economy, isn't part of the bloc and blistered at the criticism.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian described the G-7 statement as deliberate slander and meddling.

Ties between China and Australia have been on a downward trajectory since Canberra banned foreign political donations in 2017, then worsened when Australia banned Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies from its 5G network in 2018. But relations really plummeted last year after Morrison led calls for an international inquiry into the origins of Covid-19.

Beijing has also been angered by criticism of its actions in the South China Sea, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Image: A paddock of barley being harvested on a farm near Inverleigh, west of Melbourne, Australia (WILLIAM WEST / AFP via Getty Images)

But one of the main points of contention has been both sides' evolving national priorities and foreign policies vis-a-vis the United States.

Indeed, from Beijing’s perspective, Australia’s foreign policy has already shifted “rather dramatically” towards the U.S., according to Jane Golley, director of the Australia Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University.

“They have always maintained a strong alliance, but they have been much more vocal about that alliance and created more distance from Beijing in the last two, three, four years,” she said.

Economists argue that Canberra's willingness to align itself with Washington's China policy has had a direct impact on Australia’s trading relationship with China.

“Beijing doesn't have a problem with Australia being a U.S. security ally. What it has a problem with is when Australia uses that alliance to attack China,” said James Laurenceson, director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.

Image: Australian wine is displayed among other wines at a shop in Beijing (Noel Celis / AFP via Getty Images file)

“We’re desperate to signal to the United States that we want them to hang around,” he said. “So we go out in front on a whole heap of different issues, whether it be banning Huawei, or whether it be, you know, calling out China's actions in the South China Sea, or whether it be calling for a Covid inquiry.”

But tangling with China on policy issues is a risky business and comes with an economic cost.

China accounts for nearly 40 percent of Australia’s total exports, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Over the last 13 months, China curbed Australian beef imports and levied tariffs totaling 80 percent on barley and over 200 percent on wine imports.

The costs to Australia’s bottom line have been real: Exports to China fell by approximately $2.3 billion in U.S. dollars in 2020, according to the bureau.

The one saving grace has been China’s reliance on Australia’s iron ore, but that may only last so long.

Blaxland said that China was making an example of Australia, warning other countries of the consequences of speaking out.

“I think this is the new normal,” he said.

Exclusive: HK's Apple Daily to shut within days, says Jimmy Lai adviser

Anne Marie Roantree

REUTERS

Sun, June 20, 2021, 

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily will be forced to shut "in a matter of days" after authorities froze the company's assets under a national security law, an adviser to jailed owner Jimmy Lai told Reuters on Monday.

The closure of Apple Daily would undermine the former British colony's reputation as an open and free society and send a warning to other companies that could be accused of colluding with a foreign country, media advocacy groups said.

Next Digital, publisher of the top-selling 26-year-old newspaper, would hold a board meeting on Monday to discuss how to move forward after its lines of credit were frozen, the adviser, Mark Simon, said.

"Vendors tried to put money into our accounts and were rejected," he said by phone from the United States.

"We thought we'd be able to make it to the end of the month. It's just getting harder and harder. It's essentially a matter of days."

Apple Daily said on Sunday the freezing of its assets had left the liberal newspaper with cash for "a few weeks" for normal operations."

Chief Editor Ryan Law, 47, and Chief Executive Cheung Kim-hung, 59, were denied bail on Saturday after being charged with collusion with a foreign country.

Three other executives were also arrested on Thursday when 500 police officers raided the newspaper's offices, drawing condemnation from Western nations, global rights groups and the U.N. spokesperson for human rights.

Those three are still under investigation but were released from police detention.

Hong Kong and Chinese officials said press freedom cannot be used as a "shield" for those who commit crimes, and slammed the criticism as "meddling."

"WE CAN'T BANK"

In May, Reuters reported exclusively that Hong Kong's security chief had sent letters to tycoon Lai and branches of HSBC and Citibank threatening up to seven years' jail for any dealings with the billionaire's accounts in the city.

A Hong Kong-based spokesperson for Citibank said at the time the bank did not comment on individual client accounts. HSBC declined to comment.

Authorities are also prosecuting three companies related to Apple Daily for alleged collusion with a foreign country and have frozen HK$18 million ($2.3 million) of their assets.

Simon told Reuters it had now become impossible to conduct banking operations in the global financial hub.

"We can't bank. Some vendors tried to do that as a favour ... and it was rejected."

The newspaper has come under increasing pressure since owner and Beijing critic Lai, who is now in jail, was arrested under the national security law last August and has since had some of his assets frozen.

Apple Daily plans to ask the government's Security Bureau to unfreeze the assets on Monday and failing that attempt, it may look to challenge the decision in court.

Simon said some reporters had received threatening phone calls from unknown sources.

"Our staff are now just worried about personal safety," he said.

Police have said dozens of Apple Daily articles were suspected of violating the national security law, the first case in which authorities have cited media articles as potentially violating the legislation.

Simon said that based on his understanding from officers' questioning of the executives, around 100 articles were under scrutiny.

"After all this is said and done, the business community is going to look up and recognise that a man's company was gutted and stolen by a communist regime in Hong Kong," he said.

"That's a big deal."

(Reporting by Anne Marie Roantree; additional reporting by James Pomfret and Clare Jim; Editing by Stephen Coates)

We must stand with Hong Kong’s embattled journalists
Johnny Patterson
Sun, June 20, 2021

People queue up to buy the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong (AP)

First, they came for the protestors, then they came for the elected democrats, and now it is the turn of journalists. Step by step, the long arm of the national security law is suffocating free expression in Hong Kong.

Having rounded up and imprisoned a number of opposition politicians under “subversion” charges, this week the Chinese Communist Party turned its attention to Hong Kong’s free media – sending 500 national security officers to arrest the editor-in-chief and four other directors from the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, on the basis that they have “colluded with foreign political forces” by publishing articles critical of the state.

This is another milestone moment in a dark year for Hong Kong. However, it is not to say that the pro-democracy press has been immune from political pressure in the past. Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily, is already facing a National Security Law charge of his own, and the newspaper has been under an advertising embargo from most major Hong Kong businesses for more than a decade. But journalists have never been targeted under the National Security Law and their words have never before been criminalised in this way.


The contrast with events two years ago could not be starker. On 16 June 2019, up to 2 million people marched the streets of Hong Kong. In a city of 7.5 million, that is extraordinary. Slogans such as “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” and “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” rang from the rooftops and alleyways. The overwhelming cry of Hong Kong’s people was that they would stand up for their freedoms.

It was a message of defiance which Beijing found unacceptable and catalysed the current purge. China’s national security law has transformed Hong Kong by giving the government a piece of legislation which overrides all locally enshrined human rights safeguards and is so broadly defined that it can be applied to pretty much anyone in opposition.

When the law was introduced by Carrie Lam, she claimed that it would only target a “very small minority” of extreme lawbreakers. With newspaper editors following democratically-elected legislators into the dock, the mendacity of her claim is now evident. The legislation is being used to propel the city to full-blown totalitarianism.

Weeks before the protest movement broke out, I visited Hong Kong. Half of the 30 or so people I spoke with on that trip are now jailed. Most of them were either activists or legislators at the time. Their backgrounds? Lawyers, pilots, accountants, students. Idealists who just wanted to live in a free, just society.

Many of them are being denied bail as they await trial, and some have even been held in solitary confinement.

Each of those hundreds of imprisoned protesters are individuals – some of whom I am privileged to call friends – whose future looks bleak. With many of the national security law cases being escalated to the High Court, some of Hong Kong’s leading democrats now face a minimum of 10 years in jail. Their crimes? Writing news editorials or standing in primary elections. It is appallingly unjust.

Why should the suffocation of Hong Kong’s freedoms matter to us? Three reasons. First, because the UK and China signed a treaty in international law to protect Hong Kong’s freedoms. The British government has stated that Beijing is in permanent breach of the handover treaty. We have a duty to make sure that no political prisoner is forgotten, and should look to take further steps to show that there are consequences for this treaty breach, including the use of Magnitsky sanctions.

Equally importantly, every step to suffocate Hong Kong’s freedoms will convince British National Overseas passport holders – who now have the right to live in the UK – that their future might not be in Hong Kong. The government must put proper resources and preparation into the welcome package in anticipation of new arrivals.

Finally, as we watch our friends in Hong Kong see their freedoms unpicked piece by piece, it is a reminder of the value of what we take for granted.

In a statement earlier this week, Apple Daily’s journalists stood defiant: “We will continue to persist as Hongkongers and live up to the expectations so that we have no regrets to our readers and the times we are in. Though we are facing a sweeping clampdown on our publication, the staff of Apple Daily will hold fast to our duties faithfully and press on till the end to see the arrival of dawn.” We should stand with them.

Johnny Patterson is the policy director of Hong Kong Watch

Read More

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Departure of U.S. Contractors Poses Myriad Problems for Afghan Military


Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt

NEW YOPRK TIMES
Sun., June 20, 2021


An Afghan Air Force helicopter lands at Camp Shorabak, Afghanistan, May 11, 2021. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan Air Force UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, shelled while on the ground by the Taliban on Wednesday, sat helpless at a small outpost in the country’s southeast, its burning and damaged airframe displayed in a video on Twitter.

Even if it could get to the chopper to try to service it, the Afghan military would face another escalating problem: It is heavily reliant on American and other foreign contractors for repairs, maintenance, fueling, training and other jobs necessary to keep their forces operating, and those contractors are now departing along with the U.S. military, leaving a void that leaders on both sides say could be crippling to Afghan forces as they face the Taliban alone.

The problem is especially acute for the Afghan Air Force. Not only does the small but professional fleet provide air support to beleaguered troops, but it is also essential to supplying and evacuating hundreds of outposts and bases across the country — the quickly thinning line that separates government and Taliban-controlled territory.

With their ability to maintain their aircraft diminishing, Afghan pilots who fly over Taliban-held territory are finding that the condition of their aircraft upon their return is as pressing a concern as the success of their mission.

There are “a lot of problems” in the Afghan Air Force and it needs “American support,” one pilot said bluntly shortly before he flew to retrieve Afghan troops in a besieged district. His helicopter was hit with several bullets and narrowly missed a rocket-propelled grenade.

The Pentagon’s command to train, advise and assist the Afghan Air Force, known as TAAC-Air, concluded in January that no Afghan aircraft could be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months in the absence of contractor support.

“I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold on after we leave, the ability of the Afghan Air Force to fly, in particular, after we remove the support for those aircraft,” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees Afghanistan, told a Senate committee in Washington in April.

The issue is at the center of tortuous discussions among Biden administration officials, who are trying to devise workarounds for the myriad problems associated with President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all American troops — and the contractors who support them — from Afghanistan. The withdrawal is expected to be complete by early to mid-July.

Officials at the Pentagon say that one possible solution would be to transfer contracts with private companies now paid for by the United States to the Afghan government. Under such an arrangement, American and other foreign contractors would stay in Afghanistan, but they would be paid by Afghan officials in overseas aid, mainly from the United States.

That way, the Pentagon and the Afghan government could get around the terms of the deal the United States struck with the Taliban, which implies that the Americans will not have private contractors in the country after the withdrawal.

“We should encourage the Afghan government to retain or engage contractor support for the Afghan Air Force and other key logistical and operational elements of the Afghan security forces — and we should pay for that support (including private security to protect those contractors),” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an essay this past week in The New York Times.

Contractors in Afghanistan have long operated under a system that is susceptible to corruption and mismanagement. Transferring their payments through another entity — in this case the Afghan government — is bound to make the contracts even more open to charges of corruption, lawmakers and independent analysts warn.

Even if the contracts are transferred, several senior American commanders and policymakers say it is unclear how many foreign contractors will choose to keep working in Afghanistan with the American security umbrella gone or if those companies will stomach the risk.

Another idea is to relocate aircraft out of the country for any major overhauls. But that would most likely become hugely expensive, one Pentagon official said, and could end up costing American taxpayers more than they pay now to maintain the Afghan Air Force and its planes inside the country.

Maj. Robert Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email Saturday that contracts with the Afghan Air Force and its special mission wing “have been modified, and the contractors continue their support.” Lodewick said he could not identify specific contractors or provide details on how the maintenance and logistics support would be provided.

These issues, fundamental to the survival of the Afghan national security forces once the U.S. military withdraws, are still being hashed out. That they are still being addressed even as the last U.S. troops are preparing to leave speaks to the years of disconnect between the Pentagon and a succession of presidents, all of whom, at one point or another, sought a more reduced American presence in the country than officials in the military and the Defense Department.

How to deal with the contractors is just one of a number of pressing problems created by the rapid withdrawal of American troops. The CIA is struggling to ensure that it can gather intelligence about potential threats from Afghanistan once the U.S. military presence ends.

The Pentagon is still weighing how it will strike terrorist groups such as al-Qaida from afar once it no longer has troops or warplanes in Afghanistan. And the Biden administration has yet to strike deals to position troops in any nearby nations for counterterrorism operations.

The Afghan government has always relied heavily on foreign contractors and trainers. As of this spring, there were over 18,000 Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan, including 6,000 Americans, 5,000 Afghans and 7,000 from other countries, 40% of whom are responsible for logistics, maintenance or training tasks, according to John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

The Afghan security forces rely on these contractors to maintain their equipment, manage supply chains, and train their military and police to operate the advanced equipment that the United States has bought for them.

For instance, during a virtual forum this year, Sopko spoke of the challenges the Afghans were facing with maintenance work. As of December, he said, the Afghan National Army was completing just under 20% of its own maintenance work orders, well below the goal of 80% that had been set and the 51% that they completed in 2018. The Afghan National Police carried out only 12% of its own maintenance work against a target of 35%.

Since 2010, the Defense Department has appropriated over $8.5 billion to develop a capable and sustainable Afghan Air Force and its special mission wing, but American policymakers and commanders have always known that both would need continued, expensive logistics support from contractors for aircraft maintenance and maintainer training, the inspector general’s office concluded in a report in February.

Contractors currently provide 100% of the maintenance for the Afghan Air Force’s UH-60 helicopters and C-130 cargo aircraft, and a significant portion of Afghan’s light combat support aircraft, Sopko said.

Problems with contractor support were mounting well before Biden’s decision in April to withdraw all American military personnel and contractors.

An assessment last fall by the inspectors general of the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, found that worker shortages, coronavirus-related restrictions and a lack of oversight made it difficult for American military officials to hold contractors accountable to performance standards.

Coupled with reduced training time and a lack of American officials to assess Afghans’ proficiency, the assessment found that basic skills for Afghan aircrews and aircraft maintenance workers declined.

By the end of last year, the American training command reported that only 136 of the 167 aircraft in the Afghan fleet were ready for combat missions or would be after minor maintenance, a drop of 24 aircraft from the previous quarter.

Even then, Afghan aircrews overworked what planes they had, the training command found, regularly exceeding the recommended number of flying hours between scheduled maintenance checks.

Another logistical headache emerged several years ago, after U.S. lawmakers lobbied to phase out Afghanistan’s fleet of Russian-made helicopters, called MI-17s, replacing them with U.S.-made Black Hawks.

Aside from not being able to carry as much cargo at higher elevations as the MI-17s, the more complicated Black Hawks effectively reset maintenance training for Afghan mechanics. One U.S. official said it would take until the mid-2030s for the Afghans to be able to maintain the Black Hawk fleet on their own.

“This plan we have for over the horizon,” the official added, “is not going to work as effectively as we need it to.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company