Polish government plans referendum asking if voters want 'thousands of illegal immigrants'

VANESSA GERA
Updated Sun, August 13, 2023

A metal wall on the border between Poland and Belarus, in Jurowlany, Poland, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023. Poland’s defense minister said Saturday, that the country has increased the number of troops protecting its border with Belarus as a deterrent amid “destabilising” actions by its pro-Russian neighbour. 

(AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s ruling party wants to ask voters in a referendum whether they support accepting “thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa” as part of a European Union relocation plan, the prime minister said Sunday, as his conservative party seeks to hold onto power in an October parliamentary election.

Mateusz Morawiecki announced the referendum question in a new video published on social media. It indicated that his party, Law and Justice, is seeking to use migration in its election campaign, a tactic that helped it take power in 2015.

Poland currently hosts more than a million Ukrainian refugees, who are primarily white and Christian, but officials have long made clear that they consider Muslims and others from different cultures to be a threat to the nation’s cultural identity and security.

EU interior ministers in June endorsed a plan to share out responsibility for migrants entering Europe without authorization, the root of one of the bloc’s longest-running political crises.

The Polish government wants to hold the referendum alongside the parliamentary election, scheduled for Oct. 15. Morawiecki said that the question would say: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”

The video announcing the question includes scenes of burning cars and other street violence in Western Europe. A Black man licks a huge knife in apparent anticipation of committing a crime. Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski then says: “Do you want this to happen in Poland as well? Do you want to cease being masters of your own country?”

An opposition politician, Robert Biedron, reacted by saying the migration question is pointless because participation in the EU mechanism is not mandatory and can be replaced by other forms of shared responsibility, while Poland itself could be eligible for support or for a waiver of its contribution due to the high number of Ukrainian refugees.

Biedron, a European Parliament member for the Left party, posted on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, a letter from EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson. In it, she sets out the terms of the relocation mechanism and the grounds for seeking an exemption

.

Leaders have announced two other questions in recent days. One will ask voters for their views on privatizing state-owned enterprises and the other will ask if they support raising the retirement age, which Law and Justice lowered to 60 for women and 65 for men.

The questions are set up to depict the opposition party, Civic Platform, as a threat to the interests of Poles. The pro-business and pro-EU party, which governed from 2007 to 2015, raised the retirement age during its time in power, favored some privatization and signaled a willingness to accept a few thousand refugees before it lost power.

The video takes aim directly at Civic Platform leader Donald Tusk, a former president of the European Council. “Tusk is the greatest threat to our security, he is the greatest threat to Poland’s security,” Morawiecki says. “Let’s not let Tusk — as an envoy of the Brussels elites — demolish security in Poland.”

Europe’s asylum system collapsed eight years ago after well over a million people entered the bloc — most of them fleeing conflict in Syria — and overwhelmed reception capacities in Greece and Italy, in the process sparking one of the EU’s biggest political crises.

The 27 EU nations have bickered ever since over which countries should take responsibility for people arriving without authorization, and whether other members should be obliged to help them cope.

Initially Poland was neither an entry country nor a destination country for migrants and refugees. It became a front-line state two years ago when migrants began crossing from Belarus, something European authorities view as an effort by the Russian ally to generate turmoil in Poland and other European countries.

Poland responded by building a large wall on its border. It has recently increased its military presence on the border fearing an uptick in migration and other possible instability.

As well as disagreements over migration, Law and Justice has long been in conflict with the EU over a perception by the bloc that the Warsaw government has been eroding democratic norms.

https://youtu.be/goqj9oWFhMw?t=1

Poland's government wants to ask voters loaded questions on border security as part of election

Associated Press
Mon, August 14, 2023 


Polish servicemen attend a press conference of Poland's Minister of Defense, Mariusz Blaszczak, in Jarylowka, Poland, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023. Minister Mariusz Blaszczak on Saturday met in Jarylowka with some of the troops recently deployed with their defense equipment close to the Belarus border. 

(AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s government said Monday it wants to ask voters whether they want dismantled a recently-built border wall that blocks unauthorized migration from Belarus.

The loaded question is one of four the right-wing ruling party wants to ask in a referendum it intends to hold alongside the Oct. 15 parliamentary elections. The Law and Justice party is intent on winning an unprecedented third term in the elections.

Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on social media that the question will ask: “Do you support the pulling down of the barrier on the border on the Polish Republic with the Republic of Belarus?”

The government built the wall last year and substantially reduced the inflow of Middle East and African migrants across that border. Poland and European Union authorities view the inflow as an effort by Russia's ally Belarus to generate turmoil in Poland and other European countries.

Poland has also reinforced military troops along that border due to Belarus' hostility.

The other questions in the referendum would be about refusing to accept migrants within a EU program, refusing the privatization of state-owned enterprises and agreeing to the retirement age to be raised.

The referendum is seen as a major element in the ruling party's electoral campaign intended to discredit the opposition and rally voters around the current government’s policy. Observers say that the fact it would be held together with the elections could influence the voters' decisions.

The lawmakers are to decide this week whether the referendum will be held, but the ruling party holds narrow control of the decision-making lower house.

Critics note the referendum in not obligatory and suggest voters can ignore it. The opposition is calling for a boycott.

Nelson Chamisa: The comeback preacher who wants to be Zimbabwe president

Shingai Nyoka - BBC News, Harare
Sun, August 13, 2023 

Nelson Chamisa

With all the drama of the Pentecostal preacher that he is, Zimbabwe's main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa can work a crowd.

He will now put that charisma to the test in the general election on 23 August when he will once again face President Emmerson Mnangagwa after losing to him in a disputed poll in 2018.

Mr Chamisa will run for the presidency under the banner of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), the party he formed last year after he was thrown out of what used to be the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

It came after a vicious power-struggle broke out in the party following the death of its founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Mr Chamisa was accused by his MDC rivals of staging a coup to wrest control of the party, and as the battle became increasingly vicious he was evicted from the party's headquarters, and lost a court battle where his claim to the leadership of the party was challenged.

It marked a low point for Mr Chamisa, but he made a comeback with the formation of the CCC. The string of victories it notched up in parliamentary by-elections was heralded by his supporters as a yellow revolution - a reference to the party colours.

On the campaign trail he has sounded optimistic about his prospects, despite saying that the political field is tilted against the CCC, with little access to state media, and an electoral commission he says is staffed by ruling party supporters.

However, President Mnangagwa has said the elections will be free and fair.
'A formidable opposition'

The 45-year-old's campaign has focused on his relative youth, with supporters chanting the Shona language slogan "ngaapinde hake mukomana" meaning "let the boy in".

But it remains to be seen if he can defeat 80-year-old Mr Mnangagwa, known as the "crocodile", who has been in politics longer than Mr Chamisa has been alive.

Still hugely popular among urban and youth voters, Mr Chamisa is credited with transitioning into his own brand of opposition politics in the last two years and creating an identity divorced from the man he regards as his mentor, Mr Tsvangirai.

"Creating a formidable opposition in a short period of time has been his greatest victory," says political scientist Alexander Rusero,

Like the late Mr Tsvangirai, being the face of the opposition has made him a target. Mr Chamisa says 63 meetings have either been banned by police or disrupted - potentially a preview of the upcoming elections.

Mr Chamisa suffered a fractured skull when beaten up in a crackdown on the opposition in 2007

Moreover, members of his party have been arrested and convicted in what Mr Chamisa describes as fabricated charges aimed at weakening the CCC.

He says he has faced threats to his life, which have made him extremely cautious and mistrustful - including escaping an alleged assassination attempt in 2022 when his convoy came under attack during by-election campaigns. He also suffered a cracked skull during a clampdown on the opposition in 2007.

He has previously told the BBC that he rarely eats at public events, for fear of getting poisoned.

'Strategic ambiguity'

An ordained church pastor who graduated from Living Waters Theological Seminary in 2016 and a practising lawyer, Mr Chamisa's social media timeline is filled with political commentary and biblical references in almost equal measure.

His almost Baptist-like charisma has served him well on the campaign stage, but some say it has come at the expense of substantive policy and a coherent political game-plan.

The CCC follows what Mr Chamisa calls "strategic ambiguity". It has not held an elective congress, and has not unveiled its party structures or constitution. It prefers to call itself a broad-based citizens' movement, rather than a political party.

"Our [by-election] wins shows that it is organised and is not a one-man band," according to CCC spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere.

But some of his former supporters, among them social media influencers, are increasingly frustrated.

Mr Rusero believes that Mr Chamisa appears to be intimidated by the ruling party, opting to confront them on "social media, with bible verses and misplaced optimism", instead of in real life.

He thinks the opposition candidate has missed opportunities to wage a robust campaign in the face of allegations of rampant government corruption and public discontent at the spiralling cost of living. President Mnangagwa has previously promised a zero tolerance approach to graft.

In 2018, in his characteristic way, Mr Chamisa told the BBC that he was a young man trying to bring about alternative politics on the African continent and that he wanted to replace strong men with strong institutions.

It was a reference to the personality cult that had developed around former President Robert Mugabe, a common phenomenon in Zimbabwean politics.

He too has not been a stranger to controversy. During the last presidential campaign, he boasted he had met Rwandan President Paul Kagame and been central in crafting a digital strategy that had been key to Rwanda's economic success.

However, Mr Kagame rebuffed this, tweeting that he had no clue who Mr Chamisa was and had never even had a discussion with him.

He has also been labelled as sexist after telling voters he would marry off his then-18-year-old sister to President Mnangagwa if his rival only won 5% of the vote in the 2018 election.

He later said it was just "political banter that I used to illustrate that even if I promised to give him my most prized possession, he would still not be able to defeat us in a free and fair election".

In the 23 August poll, Mr Chamisa is hoping to emulate the victory of long-time Zambian underdog Hakainde Hichilem, who lost every presidential election since 2006, until he finally won in 2021.

But it is unclear whether Mr Chamisa has enough resources and support to win, especially when the playing field is tilted in favour of Mr Mnangagwa, whose Zanu-PF party has maintained a tight grip on power since independence in 1980.

However, he remains the hope for millions of Zimbabweans who believe that it is time for younger people to lead the nation.

Read more about politics in Zimbabwe:

What you need to know about Zimbabwe's elections

New party, same fears of dirty tricks in Zimbabwe vote

How Zimbabwe is still haunted by Robert Mugabe

Emmerson Mnangagwa - the 'crocodile' who snapped back

Is it easier to poke fun after Mugabe?

10 numbers that tell the story of Zimbabwe

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Lebanon Christian cleric urges state control of weapons after clash

Reuters
Sun, August 13, 2023

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's top Christian cleric called for state control over weapons on Sunday, days after a deadly clash between Christian villagers and the heavily armed group Hezbollah over an overturned truck of ammunition.

A Hezbollah member and a Christian resident were killed in Wednesday's exchange of fire in the village of Kahaleh, near Beirut, which began when a Hezbollah truck carrying ammunition turned over while driving through the area.

It was the deadliest confrontation between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Lebanese who oppose it since clashes in Beirut two years ago, further rocking the stability of a country already suffering deep political and economic crises.

In his sermon on Sunday, cleric Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai called for "all parties" and other elements of the country "to unite under the banner of the state, especially regarding the use of weapons".

"It is not possible to live on one land with more than one state, more than one legitimate army, more than one authority, and more than one sovereignty," Rai said, in an apparent reference to Hezbollah's arsenal.

Hezbollah, founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982, is Lebanon's most powerful group. Its arsenal has long been a point of conflict in Lebanon, where its opponents accuse the group of undermining the state.

Lebanon has been suffering a four-year-long financial collapse that has marked its most destabilising episode since the 1975-90 civil war. It was caused by decades of corruption and profligate spending by ruling politicians.

(Reporting by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Ecuador was calm and peaceful. Now hitmen, kidnappers and robbers walk the streets

REGINA GARCIA CANO
Sun, August 13, 2023 


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 A soldier monitors vehicle traffic on the National Unity Bridge that connects the town of Duran with the Guayaquil, Ecuador, July 20, 2023. Guayaquil is the epicenter of violence. About a third of this year’s violent deaths took place in what is Ecuador’s second-largest city and home to the main commercial port, as well as a large prison complex. 

(AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa, File)

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — Belen Diaz was walking home from college one evening when a motorcycle carrying two men made a menacing U-turn.

Terrified that she was about to be robbed for the eighth time in three years, the teaching student banged on a cab window until the driver drove her home. Diaz got away safe, but there was an unrelated fatal shooting the next day outside her gated community of two-story homes on the edge of the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil.

Ecuador was one of the calmest countries in Latin America until about three years ago. Today, criminals prowl relatively wealthy and working-class neighborhoods alike: professional hitmen, kidnappers, extortionists and thousands of thieves and robbers. Mexican and Colombian cartels have settled into coastal cities like Guayaquil and grabbed chunks of the trade shipping hundreds of millions of dollars of cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru to countries overseas.

One of the candidates in a special Aug. 20 presidential election had a famously tough stance on organized crime and corruption. Fernando Villavicencio was fatally shot in broad daylight Wednesday despite a security detail that included police and bodyguards.

“No one is safe from the insecurity in the country,” Anthony Garcia, who packs shrimp, said after the Villavicencio assassination. “We are at the hands of drug trafficking, of evil in its entirety.”

The country’s National Police tallied 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the 2,042 reported during the same period in 2022. That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the country’s highest in history and double the total in 2021.

The causes are complex. All, though, revolve around cocaine.

Cartel-aided gangs are battling for control of the streets, prisons and drug routes to the Pacific. Dwindling state coffers, political infighting, corruption and soaring debts created funding gaps in social and law-enforcement programs. The COVID-19 pandemic turned hungry children and unemployed adults into easy recruits for criminal groups.

Criminals are increasingly demanding payments from businesses and terming the fee a “vacuna” — vaccine — as in immunity from crime.

“COVID came and went and left us vaccines, but a different type of vaccines,” said Holbach Muñeton, president of the National Federation of Provincial Chambers of Tourism of Ecuador.

Shopping and dining is a different experience these days. Convenience stores, auto part shops and pharmacies have floor-to-ceiling metal bars that prevent customers from entering from the sidewalk. Malls have metal detectors at the entrances. The bars and restaurants that survived the pandemic have fewer tables and close early.

Reports of robberies have soared. Data from the National Police show 31,485 cases were reported last year, about 11,000 more than in 2020.

Garcia, the 26-year-old shrimp packer, has been robbed twice this year. Thieves in Guayaquil stole his phone one time during his morning commute. Another time, he was robbed after he went out to have a couple of drinks.

Restaurant owner Carlos Barrezueta said there are spots in Guayaquil where sales have dropped to a tenth of what they once were.

Ecuadorian authorities attribute the unprecedented violence to a power vacuum triggered by the killing in December 2020 of Jorge Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL,” the leader of Los Choneros. Founded in the 1990s, the group is the country’s largest and most feared gang. Members carry out contract killings, run extortion operations, move and sell drugs, and are the law inside prisons.

Los Choneros and the similar groups Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones have been fighting over territory and control, including within detention facilities, where at least 400 inmates have died since 2021. The gangs have links to cartels from Colombia and Mexico, including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation groups.

“Since the year 2000, we had already seen the Mexican cartels here,” said Rob Peralta, a former member of a National Police intelligence unit. “But definitely, in recent years, these criminal groups have garnered more influence here through local gangs, which they empowered, and today they have more weapons than the police themselves.”

Outgunned, unprepared and underpaid, law-enforcement officers don’t dare enter parts of crime-ridden neighborhoods or the wings of some prisons, where dismembered bodies, as well as high-caliber weapons, grenades, belt feeders and drugs, have been found when the government deploys the military and additional police after vicious riots.

Guayaquil is the epicenter of violence. About a third of this year’s violent deaths took place in Ecuador’s second-largest city, home to the country's main commercial port and a large prison complex.

Built on flat land at the end of the Andes, the city stretches along the brown Amazonian waters of the Guayas River, with only a few tall buildings, and homes and small businesses such as pharmacies dominating the landscape.

The province of Guayas, which includes Guayaquil, is the country’s most populous with about 4.5 million people. In the first half of the year, the province saw 976 business robberies, according to National Police data, just 12 short of last year’s total.

In Socio Vivienda, a sprawling public housing neighborhood, shop owners, pedestrians, police — everyone — talks in whispers. Their eyes bounce around as if someone is watching them 24/7.

The neighborhood’s police station is surrounded by bags of dirt placed as protection after a shootout earlier this year. Save for a handful of officers chatting by the door, the building looks abandoned.

Police officers across the country walk around with outdated bulletproof vests, and a shortage of ammunition was not addressed until recently. People in some neighborhoods have pitched in to buy gasoline for police cars.

Muñeton said the tourism industry in Guayaquil recently arranged for a private university to let police officers use its dorms because their barracks have leaking roofs and lack air conditioning.

Stray bullets are now everyone’s concern. One pierced the door of the home of 12-year-old Daniel Mosquera on July 19 and hit him in the back. His mother, Caterina Aguirre, said he lost a kidney and the ability to move from the waist down.

But unlike many mothers of gun violence victims in other countries, Aguirre, 29, said she is not demanding punishment for the perpetrators. She prefers “divine justice” and only wants better health care for her son. That’s common even among the nonreligious, as nobody wants to attract additional attention.

Indeed, fear and distrust have tinged the warmth and politeness characteristic of Ecuadorian society.

People constantly look behind their backs, and some, like Diaz, have come up with elaborate plans to avoid being victimized.

Diaz, who is studying to one day become a college professor, carries two cellphones. She never uses one of them, but has downloaded apps to make it look like her everyday phone. She plans to hand thieves that one next time she is robbed. She does not go out in the evenings or dare download dating apps.

“We don’t know who we’re friends with anymore,” Diaz, 32, said. “I’m going to stay single forever. I can’t go dating on these weird apps. I mean, imagine, they could kidnap me! Life is not what it used to be.”

MONDAY'S DON'T SUCK

 

(195) I Don't Like Mondays - YouTube

BIDEN'S BIGGEST BLUNDER

The Taliban are entrenched in Afghanistan after 2 years of rule. Women and girls pay the price

HE FOLLOWED TRUMPS PLAN

RIAZAT BUTT
Sun, August 13, 2023 


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Taliban fighters celebrate one year since they seized the Afghan capital, Kabul, in front of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban have settled in as rulers of Afghanistan, two years after they seized power as U.S. and NATO forces withdrew from the country following two decades of war.

The Taliban face no significant opposition that could topple them. They have avoided internal divisions by falling in line behind their ideologically unbending leader. They have kept a struggling economy afloat, in part by holding investment talks with capital-rich regional countries, even as the international community withholds formal recognition. They have improved domestic security through crackdowns on armed groups such as the Islamic State, and say they are fighting corruption and opium production.

But it’s their slew of bans on Afghan girls and women that dominated the Taliban’s second year in charge. They barred them from parks, gyms, universities, and jobs at nongovernmental groups and the United Nations – all in the space of a few months – allegedly because they weren’t wearing proper hijab — the Islamic head covering — or violated gender segregation rules. These orders followed a previous ban, issued in the first year of Taliban rule, on girls going to school beyond sixth grade.

Here is a closer look at Taliban rule and where they are headed.

WHY DID THEY EXCLUDE WOMEN FROM HIGHER EDUCATION, MOST JOBS AND PUBLIC SPACES?

The Taliban say they are committed to implementing their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in Afghanistan. This leaves no space for anything they think is foreign or secular, such as women working or studying. It’s what drove them in the late 1990s, when they first seized power in Afghanistan, and it propels them now, ever since they took control again on Aug. 15, 2021.

Their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has praised the changes imposed since the takeover, claiming life improved for Afghan women after foreign troops left and the hijab became mandatory again.

WHAT WAS THE RESPONSE TO THESE BANS?

Foreign governments, rights groups, and global bodies condemned the restrictions. The U.N. said they were a major obstacle to the Taliban gaining international recognition as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Overseas aid is drying up as major donors stop their funding, pulled in different directions by other crises and worried their money might fall into Taliban hands.

The lack of funds, as well as the exclusion of Afghan women from delivering essential humanitarian services, is hitting the population hard, pushing more people into poverty.

WHAT ARE LIVING CONDITIONS LIKE IN AFGHANISTAN?

Nearly 80% of the previous, Western-backed Afghan government’s budget came from the international community. That money — now largely cut off — financed hospitals, schools, factories and government ministries. The COVID-19 pandemic, medical shortages, climate change and malnutrition have made life more desperate for Afghans. Aid agencies have stepped into the breach to provide basic services like health care.

Afghanistan is struggling with its third consecutive year of drought-like conditions, the ongoing collapse in families’ income, and restrictions on international banking. It’s also still suffering from decades of war and natural disasters.

HOW IS THE ECONOMY DOING?

The World Bank said last month that the local currency, the afghani, gained value against major currencies. Customers can withdraw more money from individual deposits made before August 2021 and most civil servants are being paid. The World Bank described revenue collection as “healthy” and said most basic items remained available, although demand is low.

The Taliban have held investment talks with countries in the region, including China and Kazakhstan. They want sanctions removed and billions of dollars in frozen funds to be released, saying these measures will alleviate the suffering of Afghans. But the international community will only take such steps once the Taliban take certain actions, including lifting restrictions on women and girls.

HOW LIKELY ARE THE TALIBAN TO CHANGE DIRECTION?

It's largely up to the Taliban leader, Akhundzada. The cleric counts like-minded government ministers and Islamic scholars among his circle. He is behind the decrees on women and girls. His edicts, framed in the language of Islamic law, are absolute. The bans will only be lifted if Akhundzada orders it. Some Taliban figures have spoken out against the way decisions are made, and there has been disagreement about the bans on women and girls. But the Taliban’s chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid slammed these reports as propaganda.

“The secret of their success is that they are united,” Abdul Salam Zaeef, who served as the Taliban envoy to Pakistan when they ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, said. “If someone expresses his opinion or his thoughts, it doesn't mean someone is against the leadership or will go to another side," said Zaeef who spent several years at the Guantanamo Bay detention center after the 2001 U.S. invasion. "Disagreements are put in front of the emir (Akhundzada) and he decides. They follow his word.”

WHAT ABOUT INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION?

Aid officials say the Taliban view recognition as an entitlement, not something to be negotiated. The officials also cite high-level meetings with powerful states like China and Russia as signs that the Taliban are building bilateral relations in their own way. Qatar’s prime minister met Akhundzada in the southwestern Afghan city of Kandahar in June, the first-such publicly known meeting between the supreme leader and a foreign official.

Even though the Taliban are officially isolated on the global stage, they appear to have enough interactions and engagement for ties with countries to inch toward normalization. Cooperation with the Taliban on narcotics, refugees and counter-terrorism is of interest globally, including to the West. Countries like China, Russia and neighboring Pakistan want an end to sanctions.

“The political interactions are such that no country in the region is thinking of bringing Afghanistan under their power or control,” said Zaeef. He said the Taliban's foreign outreach is hampered by blacklists preventing officials from traveling, and by lacking common ground with the rest of the world.

WHAT OPPOSITION IS THERE TO THE TALIBAN?

There’s no armed or political opposition with enough domestic or foreign support to topple the Taliban. A fighting force resisting Taliban rule from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul is being violently purged. Public protests are rare.

The Islamic State has struck high-profile targets in deadly bombings, including two government ministries, but the militants lack fighters, money and other resources to wage a major offensive against the Taliban.

INSIGHT-Palestinian gunmen say they're fighting for Jenin, not foreign backers

Sun, August 13, 2023 
By Ali Sawafta, James Mackenzie and Suleiman Al-Khalidi

JENIN, West Bank, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Sitting in a bullet-scarred building in the city of Jenin, two fighters from Islamic Jihad - a militant group funded by Iran - celebrated what they said was a victory for Palestinians over the biggest Israeli operation in the West Bank in decades.

Israeli commanders said the two-day incursion in Jenin last month succeeded in seizing weapons and smashing infrastructure used by fighters funded by Iran, who use a crowded refugee camp - where thousands live packed into an area of less than half a square kilometre - as a base to attack and kill Israelis.

Israel's National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said on Aug. 7 that Iran was trying to "draw a ring around our neck" through militant groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas in the West Bank and its proxy Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.

While the fighters make no secret of the fact money comes from Iran, for them, the battle is a local one, fuelled by anger over the Israeli occupation, and they show no interest in the broader geopolitical issues, according to dozens of conversations with fighters and sympathisers in Jenin.

"We are sons of Jenin," said one of the Islamic Jihad fighters, who identified himself as Abu Salah. A thin, bearded 36-year-old, dressed in black athletic gear and trainers, he said fighters felt they had no alternative. "We are surrounded and we are under siege. We have no choice but to fight."

"It's true that Islamic Jihad is the main faction but the more important thing is that we are sons of Jenin," he said, sitting amid chunks of masonry and burned-out cooking gas canisters used as improvised bombs during the Israeli incursion.

Islamic Jihad is a Palestinian faction sworn to destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state.

"Our goal is close to Islamic Jihad but the motivation is from Jenin," the fighter said.

For over a year, there has been turmoil in the West Bank, a kidney shaped area about 100 km (60 miles) long and 50 km wide that has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since it was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Hundreds of Palestinians, mostly fighters but many civilians as well, have been killed in Israeli raids since the latest wave of violence erupted in early 2022. In the same period, dozens of Israelis have been killed in shootings, stabbings or car-ramming attacks by Palestinians.

Israeli officials repeatedly accuse Iran of funding militant groups in the West Bank as one element in a multipronged campaign that includes attacks against Israelis abroad, funding for Hezbollah and a programme to build a nuclear weapon.

Many Palestinians see the charge as a means of shifting the focus from Israel's occupation of the West Bank, and the expansion of settlement building, which most of the world considers to be illegal, especially since the election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government.

'HIT AND MISS'

Jenin, a traditional hub of Palestinian resistance to Israel, has provided a fertile arena for the interests of Iranian security officials, shadowy financiers and competing Palestinian factions to meet.

Nominally under the control of the Palestinian Authority, the body set up some 30 years ago under the Oslo peace accords, Jenin is an increasingly lawless space where PA officials sit behind the high walls of the governor's compound, unable to do much more than protest Israeli raids.

"This is an area without a government," said Mahmoud Al-Saadi, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, who has worked there for decades.

According to the Israeli military, about 25% of families there are affiliated with Islamic Jihad, which receives about 90% of its funding came from Iran, amounting to "several tens of millions of dollars" a year, an Israeli official said. Many of the Palestinian attackers who have killed Israelis in Israel and the West Bank came from the area.

Tamir Hayman, managing director of Israel's Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and a former head of Israel's military intelligence directorate, said Iran was unable to exert much direct control over what happens to its money.

"Iran is spending a lot of money in the West Bank but they aren't able to target it precisely or get terror operatives to do exactly what they want so it's a bit hit and miss," he said.

"They send in money by encouraging smugglers and smuggling through criminal gangs or whatever and have to hope that a large enough amount gets through to the Jenin camp and other places to make a difference."

Asked if Iran trains and provides monetary and other support to Islamic Jihad, Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York said in an email: "Our assistance to Palestinian resistance groups is provided upon their request. It is the international obligation of all states to empower and defend these groups against occupation and resist Israeli occupying forces."

Islamic Jihad spokesman Daoud Shehab said it was no secret the movement received Iranian support but that there was "no direct connection between Iran and what's happening in Jenin or elsewhere".

'ALWAYS WAYS'

Surveys show overwhelming public support among Palestinians for armed groups as raids have stepped up and Jewish settler attacks on Palestinian villages have become more brazen.

"If we didn't have the support of the families here, we wouldn't survive an hour," said Abu Salah.

According to a survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 71% of Palestinians support armed groups such as the Jenin Brigade, an umbrella group that includes factions like Islamic Jihad and Hamas, and the "Den of Lions" in the nearby city of Nablus.

But as Israel's relations have improved with the wealthy Gulf states that have traditionally funded the Palestinian cause, an important source of money for the militant groups has dried up. That's the gap Iran has sought to fill.

Israel's intelligence services make moving funds difficult but criminal gangs and unscrupulous businessmen - "who gain from high commissions and do not want to know why they are being paid triple" - provide an opening, said a senior Islamist official based outside the Palestinian Territories who has first hand knowledge of the mechanisms used to move money.

"There are always ways to get in support even if it can appear near impossible - they even get it from Israeli smugglers," he said.

While security officials say they have seen a recent increase in smuggling of weapons and drugs, Israeli officials and militant groups say Iranian support also comes from more sophisticated money transfers.

Sometimes the transfers involve criminals and sometimes legitimate or semi-legitimate businesses help to move funds to the West Bank, the militant sources said.

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

Typically, transfers involve legitimate foreign currency letters of credit, or orders for a variety of imported goods, usually at inflated valuations, from garments to toys to shoes and household items mainly from China, four sources familiar with the mechanism said.

"They don't ask questions but the deal is that they hand over part of that money to a respected businessman whom we deal with and who passes it over to our military operative," a senior Islamic Jihad source said.

Anywhere between a quarter to a third of the value of these transactions is passed in cash to businessmen Islamic Jihad trust and who get the money to the militant group, often using family ties to help keep the transfers covert, the source said.

Automatic rifles, such as M16s, can cost $30,000 and, in an area of chronic unemployment, regular fighters say they can earn $300 to $700 a month from the Iranian-backed group.

Much of the weaponry used by the Jenin fighters comes from Israel itself, stolen and sold on through criminal gangs, Israeli officials say. Some is smuggled across the Jordanian border, and some is improvised in local workshops.

For the young men in the camps, inspired by the posters of martyred fighters that plaster public spaces, the origin of the money that pays for the weapons is of little concern.

"It's well known that outside funds come from Islamic Jihad," said another fighter, from the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, the faction founded in the 1950s by Yasser Arafat, which now runs the Palestinian Authority.

"We don't care who brings the funds to us."

(Ali Sawafta and James Mackenzie reported from Jenin, Suleiman al-Khalidi reported from Amman; Additional reporting by Raneen Sawafta in Jenin, Maayan Lubell and Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Leila Bassam in Beirut and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; Editing by David Clarke)

Maui officials and scientists warn that after the flames flicker out, toxic particles will remain

SAM METZ and CLAIRE RUSH
Sun, August 13, 2023

Hawaii Fires

Makalea Ahhee, left, tears up while her husband, JP Mayoga, right, a chef at the Westin Maui, Kaanapali, stand on their balcony at the hotel and resort, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023, near Lahaina, Hawaii. About 200 employees are living there with their families in the resort. Officials urge tourists to avoid traveling to Maui as many hotels prepare to house evacuees and first responders on the island where a wildfire demolished a historic town and killed dozens of people. 

(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — When flames swept through western Maui, engulfing the town of Lahaina, residents saw toxic fumes spewing into the air as burning homes, pipes and cars combusted, transforming rubber, metal and plastic into poisonous, particulate matter-filled smoke.

Retired mailman and Vietnam veteran Thomas Leonard heard a boom as a propane tank at a nearby home exploded, leaving a cloud that looked like “a gigantic mushroom” in its wake.

Thirty-seven year old Mike Cicchino, who grew up on Maui, said he could tell how close the flames were based on how far away cars sounded as their gas tanks erupted. He and his family sought refuge in the ocean across a knee-high sea wall and as he helped others onto the rocks, his rib cage ached, his eyes were nearly swollen shut and he vomited.

“It was like a war,” Cicchino said.

About 46,000 residents and visitors have flown out of West Maui since the devastation became clear last week, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. Officials are now mourning the deaths of more than 90 people and preparing the island, particularly Lahaina, for a long recovery.

In addition to lives lost, property damaged and a culture forever transformed, authorities are worried about returning to some parts of the island where toxic byproducts of the fire likely remain.

Residents of some parts of the island have begun returning home, finding melted cars, flattened homes and burnt elevator shafts rising from ashy lots where apartment buildings once stood. But even in places where the destruction has begun to subside, officials are warning residents that it remains too dangerous to return and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials are surveying the area for additional hazards.

“It is not safe. It is a hazardous area and that’s why experts are here,” Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said in a news conference Saturday. “We’re not doing anybody any favors by letting them back in there quickly, just so they can get sick.”

Hawaii’s state toxicologist Diana Felton told Hawaii Public Radio that it could take weeks or months to clean up the pollutants.

Officials like Bissen and Felton have taken their cue from scientists who warn that fires — even once extinguished in a particular neighborhood or area — can leave lasting health hazards, including in the air and drinking water.

Such lasting effects could prolong recovery, compound residents’ agony and complicate the return of the island’s tourism-driven economy.

Maui water officials warned Lahaina and Kula residents not to drink running water, which may be contaminated even after boiling, and to only take short, lukewarm showers in well-ventilated rooms to avoid possible chemical vapor exposure.

Though others have returned, some residents, like JP Mayoga, are electing to stay away. Mayoga said on Sunday that he, his wife and two daughters planned to stay at the hotel where he works north of Lahaina because they worry toxic debris now covering Lahaina might negatively impact members of the family with sensitive health.

“It’s safer than it is at home right now,” he said of the hotel.

Unlike factory pollution or forest fires where scientists have a strong grasp about the kind of toxins emitted, fires like the one in Maui can leave a less unpredictable trail of destruction in their wake. As towns like Lahaina burn, propane tanks explode, pipes melt and oil spills.

“When you burn people’s belongings, vehicles and boats, we don’t necessarily have a good understanding of what those chemicals are,” said Professor Andrew Whelton, the director of Purdue University's Center for Plumbing Safety. “When much of that infrastructure burns, it’s transformed into other materials that are never meant for human contact.”

Whelton said airborne pollutants from smoke often fall to the ground and can require removal by emergency response teams to ensure they aren't kicked up and inhaled as people return to the burn areas. Melted pipes can compromise the water supply, a concern reflected in the unsafe water alert issued Friday for upper Kula and Lahaina.

Though these concerns may be less apparent than charred trees and homes, the invisible hazards can often extend beyond burned areas to wherever smoke plumes have traveled.

“If you go back into some zones even where maybe all the fires have been put out, you can then be really exposed. If there’s dust and debris kicked up, you can get it in your eyes, on your hands or you can inhale it,” Whelton added, imploring people to wear protective gear, cover their arms and legs and follow evacuation orders.

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AP writer Matt Sedensky contributed. Metz reported from Salt Lake City.

Flash drought, invasive grasses, winds, hurricane and climate change fuel Maui's devastating fires

CLAIRE RUSH, SETH BORENSTEIN and JENNIFER MCDERMOTT
Updated Thu, August 10, 2023 






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In this photo provided by Tiffany Kidder Winn, a man walks past wildfire wreckage on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. The scene at one of Maui's tourist hubs on Thursday looked like a wasteland, with homes and entire blocks reduced to ashes as firefighters as firefighters battled the deadliest blaze in the U.S. in recent years.

 (Tiffany Kidder Winn via AP)

Hawaii went from lush to bone dry and thus more fire-prone in a matter of just a few weeks — a key factor in a dangerous mix of conditions appear to have combined to make the wildfires blazing a path of destruction in Hawaii particularly damaging.

Experts say climate change is increasing the likelihood of these flash droughts as well as other extreme weather events like what's playing out on the island of Maui, where dozens of people have been killed and a historic tourist town was devastated.

“It's leading to these unpredictable or unforeseen combinations that we're seeing right now and that are fueling this extreme fire weather,” said Kelsey Copes-Gerbitz, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia's faculty of forestry. “What these ... catastrophic wildfire disasters are revealing is that nowhere is immune to the issue.”

Here's a look at the Maui fires, and what's behind them:

FLASH DROUGHTS

Flash droughts are so dry and hot that the air literally sucks moisture out of the ground and plants in a vicious cycle of hotter-and-drier that often leads to wildfires. And Hawaii's situation is a textbook case, two scientists told The Associated Press.

As of May 23, none of Maui was unusually dry; by the following week it was more than half abnormally dry. By June 13 it was two-thirds either abnormally dry or in moderate drought. And this week about 83% of the island is either abnormally dry or in moderate or severe drought, according to the U.S. drought monitor.

Maui experienced a two-category increase in drought severity in just three weeks from May to June, with that rapid intensification fitting the definition of a flash drought, said Jason Otkin, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Otkin co-authored an April study that shows that flash droughts are becoming more common as Earth warms by human-caused climate change. A 2016 flash drought was connected to unusual wildfires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, he said.

Even in the past week there’s been “a quick acceleration” of that drought, said University of Virginia hydrologist Venkat Lakshmi. Flash droughts occur when the rain stops and it gets so hot that the atmosphere literally sucks moisture out of the ground and plants, making them more likely to catch fire.

“Plants are getting really, really dry,” Lakshmi said. “It's all related to water in some ways.”

“The most destructive fires usually occur during drought. If an area falls into drought quickly, that means there is a longer window of time for fires to occur,” Otkin said. “The risk for destructive fires could increase in the future if flash droughts become more common, as some studies have indicated.”

INVASIVE GRASSES

Elizabeth Pickett is the co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit that works with communities across Hawaii on wildfire prevention and mitigation. Pickett said there used to be massive tracts of land occupied by irrigated pineapples and sugar cane, and as those businesses declined and ceased, the lands were taken over by invasive, fire-prone grass species.

“The problem is at such a large scale, 26% of our state is now invaded by these grasses,” she said Thursday. “The landscape that has been invaded is steep, rocky and challenging to access. It’s a really hard landscape. You can’t just go with a lawn mower.”

When these grasses burn, they burn into the native forests, threatening endangered species, and then the forests are replaced by more grass, Pickett said.

WHAT'S FANNING THEM?

Major differences in air pressure drove unusually strong trade winds that fanned the destructive flames, according to meteorologists.

Trade winds are a normal feature of Hawaii's climate. They're caused when air moves from the high-pressure system pressure north of Hawaii — known as the North Pacific High — to the area of low pressure at the equator, to the south of the state.

But Hurricane Dora, which passed south of the islands this week, is exacerbating the low-pressure system and increasing the difference in air pressure to create “unusually strong trade winds,” said Genki Kino, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Honolulu.

Hawaii's state climatologist, Pao-Shin Chu, said he was caught off guard by the impact Dora had from roughly 500 miles (800 kilometers) away.

“Hurricane Dora is very far away from Hawaii, but you still have this fire occurrence here. So this is something we didn’t expect to see,” he said.

Strong winds, combined with low humidity and an abundance of dry vegetation that burns easily, can increase the danger of wildfire, even on a tropical island like Maui.

“If you have all of those conditions at the same time, it's often what the National Weather Service calls ‘red flag conditions,’” said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.

HOW CLIMATE CHANGE PLAYS A ROLE

“Climate change in many parts of the world is increasing vegetation dryness, in large part because temperatures are hotter,” Fleishman said. “Even if you have the same amount of precipitation, if you have higher temperatures, things dry out faster.”

Clay Trauernicht, a fire scientist at the University of Hawaii, said the wet season can spur plants like Guinea grass, a nonnative, invasive species found across parts of Maui, to grow as quickly as 6 inches (15 centimeters) a day and reach up to 10 feet (3 meters) tall. When it dries out, it creates a tinderbox that's ripe for wildfire.

“These grasslands accumulate fuels very rapidly,” Trauernicht said. “In hotter conditions and drier conditions, with variable rainfall, it's only going to exacerbate the problem.”

STRONGER HURRICANES

Climate change not only increases the fire risk by driving up temperatures, but also makes stronger hurricanes more likely. In turn, those storms could fuel stronger wind events like the one behind the Maui fires.

That's on top of other threats made worse by climate changes.

“There's an increasing trend in the intensity of hurricanes worldwide, in part because warm air holds more water," Fleishman said. “In addition to that, sea levels are rising worldwide, so you tend to get more severe flooding from the storm surge when a hurricane makes landfall.”

While climate change can’t be said to directly cause singular events, experts say, the impact extreme weather is having on communities is undeniable.

“These kinds of climate change-related disasters are really beyond the scope of things that we’re used to dealing with,” UBC’s Copes-Gerbitz said. “It’s these kind of multiple, interactive challenges that really lead to a disaster.”

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Claire Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her at @ClaireARush.