Some Alberta businesses struggle to find workers, cite lack of applicants in survey

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Other hurdles include competition from other employers, candidates lacking qualifications

CBC News · Posted: Aug 13, 2021

Some businesses are having a tough time finding and hanging on to qualified workers. (Laura Meader/CBC)

Jordan Sorrenti says Paddy's Barbecue & Brewery, his southeast Calgary business, was booming before COVID-19 hit.

Now that many restrictions have been lifted, customers are flocking back — but staff are not, and those who have come to work aren't sticking around.

"One fellow just gave his notice over the weekend," Sorrenti told CBC News.

"Thank god he gave me two weeks. But he's going to work in manufacturing, so he's getting right out of food service after 15 years."

Some employees in the service industry are afraid of another shutdown if they return to work, Sorrenti said, so for now, they are finding and relying on other options.

Jordan Sorrenti said Paddy's Barbecue & Brewery, his business just off Macleod Trail in Calgary, was booming before the pandemic hit. (Google Earth)

And according to a recent survey conducted by the Business Council of Alberta, Sorrenti's experience is likely not specific to the hospitality sector.

"About half of those businesses are telling us that they're having at least a moderate or significant difficulty in finding workers," Mike Holden, the vice-president of policy and chief economist for the Business Council of Alberta, told the Calgary Eyeopener on Friday.

Holden said employers throughout Alberta — in sectors such as technology, agriculture, energy services and hospitality tourism — are reporting barriers in hiring qualified staff. It's everyone from tradespeople to senior-level positions.

"Those industries are having a particularly hard time," Holden said. "But it really is across the board and across the province."

Lack of applicants a top hiring barrier among respondents

The survey received responses from 487 businesses of varying sizes across the province, and was conducted from June 24 to July 9.

It was distributed through the Business Council of Alberta, Alberta Chambers of Commerce and Chartered Professionals in Human Resources of Alberta, and designed with the Government of Alberta.

It aimed to help understand the experiences of Alberta businesses in relation to their hiring needs.

Additionally, it sought to identify any hiring challenges businesses are currently experiencing.

A lack of applicants was identified among respondents as the largest recruitment barrier, followed by a lack of technical skills and competition from other employers. (The Strategic Council)

Twenty per cent of respondents identified a lack of applicants as their largest barrier for recruitment — strange, Holden said, for a province with a relatively high July unemployment rate of 8.5 per cent.

Competition from other employers, and a lack of technical skills or qualifications in prospective hires, tied with 14 per cent each.

"A skills-mismatch is an issue that could be contributing to this problem," Holden said.

"So, the kinds of skills that employers are looking for today aren't necessarily the ones that other applicants have."

A bigger impact

Vince O'Gorman, the CEO of the Calgary-based tech company Vog App Developers, said the tech company is experiencing a labour shortage that is related, in part, to a lack of skills.

It's not an Alberta-specific issue for his industry, he said — but it is one that could be worsened by the pandemic.

Calgary-based Vog App Developers would like to hire as many as 50 people over the next six months or so, CEO Vince O'Gorman says. (Vog/Facebook)

"It's labour shortages everywhere for skilled developers, and in finding that developer that meets the criteria of what that company is looking for," O'Gorman said.

"People that are going to post-secondary to learn, they had to do … remote learning, which probably impacted them a little bit on their knowledge, as well as the gap in what they were receiving versus going into the universities.

"I think we're going to, I guess, see a bigger impact in the next two years."

The pandemic

The pandemic is likely also playing a role in other ways, Holden said.

Some businesses are trying to bring people back to work who might want to stay remote, while some families could be struggling to access child care.

Others might be re-evaluating their careers entirely.

"I think that because of the pandemic, there's a whole range of issues that are all contributing to this, where labour markets are really in turmoil," Holden said.

"Part of it is, you know, whether people want to continue on the career track that they're on right now. They've had, maybe, some time to think about it during COVID and decide that maybe they want to try a new path."

Companies considering perks

As a result of the hiring shortage, 65 per cent of businesses who responded to the survey said they planned to provide flexible work hours or arrangements to attract talent.

Meanwhile, 33 per cent of respondents said they are planning on increasing wages to hire more people, and 24 per cent said they would expand benefits.

But O'Gorman said companies are also having to showcase what they have to offer beyond salaries.

"You have got to sell the culture, you got to sell what they're going to be doing in the future, the growth opportunities," O'Gorman said.

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Forty-four per cent of respondents said they would be offering more skills training — and Holden said this piece is critical.

"I think that what needs to change and what we need to really work on is making sure … that businesses have access to people who have the skills that they're looking for," Holden said.

"Retraining and making sure that people are aware of the opportunities that are out there, and are able to easily and inexpensively access the skills training that they need to be able to get to these jobs."

O'Gorman agreed.

"If the workers don't exist out there, make them yourself," he said.

---

With files from Andrew Brown, Elissa Carpenter and the Calgary Eyeopener.

Owen Sound Green Hydrogen Company Gets Grant From Gas Industry

Claire McCormack

Aug 14, 2021 | 6:10 AM

Image from Company Website

Owen Sound based company Hydrogen Optimized has received a grant from Canada’s natural gas industry association to advance large-scale green hydrogen technology.

The $300,000 grant from the Natural Gas Innovation Fund (NGIF) is intended to support a $900,000 project to demonstrate the company’s patented RuggedCell water electrolyser in large-scale Green Hydrogen production under solar panel, simulated wind turbine and intermittent electrical grid conditions.

Hydrogen Optimized President and CEO Andrew T.B. Stuart says in a statment, “The funding will help us obtain critical data on the performance of RuggedCell electrolysers in conjunction with unstable renewable electricity sources and, ultimately, to achieve our goal of driving down the cost of producing Green Hydrogen at scale. It will also help us support the work of Canada’s natural gas industry to reduce the carbon emissions intensity of natural gas.” 

John Adams, President and CEO of NGIF Capital Corporation says, “Next-generation hydrogen technologies including Hydrogen Optimized’s high-current water electrolyser can enable the production of hydrogen that can be blended with natural gas and ultimately lower its emissions profile.”

A release adds, green hydrogen when reacted with CO2, can produce renewable natural gas (RNG) through the methanation process.

Hydrogen Optimized’s production systems are targeted to major industrial, chemical, utility and energy end users.

NGIF Industry Grants fund startups developing solutions to environmental and other challenges facing Canada’s natural gas sector.

Orna Mulcahy: Time for more wooly thinking on sustainability

As fashion houses race to produce lab-grown, sustainable fabrics, Irish wool is forgotten

Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 01:01

Orna MulcahyIRISH TIMES

 6

Wool is plentiful, renewable, beautiful to wear and breathable, but it’s almost extinct as a fashion fabric in Ireland. Photograph: iStock

 

Fashion houses are in a race to produce a whole new wardrobe of lab-grown fabrics to help clothe the world more sustainably, from handbags made from mushroom fibre to sneakers spun from pineapple skins. It sounds exciting but it’s not fooling Greta Thunberg.

This week, the climate activist used a Vogue cover photograph of herself to hammer fast-fashion producers, accusing them of misleading consumers with feel-good labelling while continuing to harm the planet.

In an Instagram post highlighting the cover, Thunberg said: “Many are making it look as if the fashion industry are starting to take responsibility, by spending fantasy amounts on campaigns where they portray themselves as ‘ethical’, ‘green’, ‘climate neutral’ and ‘fair’. But let’s be clear: this is almost never anything but pure greenwashing. You cannot mass-produce fashion or consume ‘sustainably’ as the world is shaped today.”

Shoppers are seeking out brands that claim to do better and there has been a corresponding rise in labels promising planet-friendly alternatives to mainstream fashion

Thunberg appears on the cover of Vogue Scandinavia’s inaugural issue, wrapped in the folds of a dusty rose trench coat. Inside, she reveals that she hasn’t bought a new item of clothing for three years and even that was second-hand. Hardly music to the ears of Vogue advertisers who are coming under increased consumer scrutiny for their role in the climate crisis.

A recent report from consulting firm McKinsey entitled Fashion on Climate, shows that the fashion and textiles sector was responsible for a colossal level of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 – 2.1 metric tons, about four per cent of the global total and more than the output of Germany, France and the UK combined. To reach targets set in the Paris Agreement the industry would need to cut its emissions by almost half by 2030 but it hasn’t a hope.     

In fact, McKinsey estimates the industry’s greenhouse gas emission levels will likely rise to about 2.7 billion tons instead. Meanwhile, the United Nations has issued a Fashion Charter for Climate Action, exhorting fashion houses and textile producers to urgently commit to cutting carbon emissions.

Shoppers are taking note and seeking out brands that claim to do better and there has been a corresponding rise in labels promising planet-friendly alternatives to mainstream fashion. Over the past five years the number of labels describing themselves as sustainable has more than quadrupled among online retailers in the United States and UK, according to a report in the Financial Times.

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How can one tell if they are genuine? The website goodonyou.eco is a useful resource with information on more than 2,000 brands and interesting content such as “Eight Ethical Alternatives to Primark” and “How Ethical is COS”? (Not very, but it is trying.)

High street outlets such as M&S and H&M are using more organic and recycled, and even vintage, fabrics while the major fashion conglomerates are investing heavily in alternative fabrics in an effort to move away from resource-heavy production fabrics such as cotton and silk.

Eco-clothing pioneer Patagonia is coming up with even more exotic and unusual fabrics for its outdoor wear. Years ago I felt quite the warrior buying one of its fleece jackets made from recycled plastic bottles. That’s old-hat now with ingredients such as dried coffee grounds and squid suckers being fashioned into fabric.

Just as one day we may snack on insects instead of crisps, so could we be wearing tracksuit bottoms spun from seaweed, underwear made from, who knows, recycled Amazon cartons, and shoes magicked up from vats of apple skins and cores.

Once it’s been produced, polyester keeps on polluting, but it is cheap and fast-fashion brands continue to pump it out

But even as Hermes toils away on a new “leather” made from agriculture waste (unspecified) and H&M experiments with a “silk” created from spent orange skins, the predominate fabric being spun across the industry is polyester

Where once the very word would have sent shivers down a fashionista’s spine, evoking visions of Hyacinth Bucket in one of her pleated frocks, today the synthetic fabric is everywhere, accounting for just more than half of all textile production.

Hundreds of millions of barrels of oil are used each year to manufacture the stuff and efforts to recycle it have not reached any scale. Once it’s been produced, polyester keeps on polluting as, during washing, it sheds micro plastic particles that make their way into the ocean. But it is cheap, and fast-fashion brands continue to pump it out with abandon.

Meanwhile, prices for a vastly superior, natural and easily renewable fabric continue to plummet. Irish wool has a part to play in slow fashion but it would take a monumental effort on the part of the Government, producers and consumers to make it happen.

The world is hungry for wool, but the lighter, finer varieties grown in Australia and New Zealand are more prized, while the fleece of Ireland’s three million sheep, according to The Irish Times fashion editor Deirdre McQuillan in a recent article, “is considered waste and worthless because farmers breed sheep for meat and not for wool”. Irish wool is now valued at an average price of 20 cent per kg, according to Teagasc, down from about 70 pence per lb in the 1980s.

Wool is plentiful, renewable, beautiful to wear and breathable, but it’s almost extinct as a fashion fabric in Ireland

Some years ago Prince Charles, despairing of the low price of British wool, encouraged fashion leaders and farmers to do something about it. The Campaign for Wool was launched with elaborate PR stunts such as grassing over Savile Row and letting a flock of Merino sheep loose on it, and burying two garments, one wool and one polyester, in the ground for six months to see what would happen. HRH himself buried the garments, using a silver shovel

A half-year later when they were exhumed, according to Vogue director Nicholas Coleridge, “the wool jersey had all but disappeared with a few fat worms digesting the final strands.” The synthetic one was intact. “You could have put it through the washing machine and worn it again.”

The thought that the ground beneath our feet is filled with Penneys polyester that will live forever is depressing. Wool, by contrast, is plentiful, renewable, beautiful to wear, and breathable so it doesn’t need frequent washing. But it’s almost extinct as a fashion fabric in Ireland.

I’m not suggesting a return to the time of báinín costumes and hairy jumpers that would rarely get a wash, but it would be good to see a well-funded campaign to promote Irish wool. Green Party Minister of State Pippa Hackett, who is a sheep farmer, will shortly report to Government on the findings of a group set up to consider alternative uses for our fleeces. Let’s hope there’s some innovative ideas we can all wear.

Were the Olympics sustainable? Reports of waste suggest it's not easy being green

Apartment blocks in the Olympic Village provided the living quarters for athletes from around the world. The next challenge will be to see that none of the furnishings go to waste. | KYODO


BY PHILIP BRASOR
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Aug 14, 2021


A July 28 article in the Tokyo Shimbun reported that some 13,000 new air conditioning units had been installed in rooms built for the Olympic Village. Once the Paralympics are finished, these rooms will be remodeled for sale as condominiums and the air conditioners removed, along with 5,000 toilets and 4,000 water heaters.

According to the organizing committee, they will be returned to the company from which they were procured, presumably to be reused in new construction. However, a representative of the second-hand sales industry said that used air conditioners are notoriously difficult to redistribute due to storage and installation issues, and most usually end up being thrown away.

It’s too early for Tokyo Shimbun to follow up on this story, but it contrasts sharply with a March 25, 2019, article in the Asahi Shimbun, an Olympic sponsor, which reported that, following their use during the Olympics and Paralympics, the air conditioners would be given free to schools and various public welfare facilities. The article also said that when the organizing committee accepted bids for the air conditioners, one condition was that the sales agent had to secure places that would take the units afterward and report to the committee about where they ended up, thus complying with the International Olympic Committee’s pledge to make the Games as sustainable as possible.

Tokyo Shimbun, which is not an official sponsor, didn’t say anything about these conditions, so the part about the air conditioning units possibly being discarded sounds like something that should be studied further.

The Olympics waste story that has attracted the most attention, however, was the July 24 Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) scoop about food being thrown away. Approximately 4,000 of the 10,000 boxed meals supplied for the opening ceremony had to be trashed because the staff and volunteers they were meant for either didn’t have time to eat them or left earlier than expected. The organizing committee apologized for its incorrect estimate.

A related problem seems to be that contracts made with food vendors were not revised after the spectator ban was announced in May, so it is likely there has been a lot more food waste than that reported by TBS.

In an article for Yahoo! News, journalist Rumi Ide, who has written extensively about food waste, expanded on the TBS report, saying she had interviewed people close to the matter. She starts off by saying that the Cabinet office in charge of the Olympics admitted that a great deal of food was thrown out, but expressed little interest in finding out the reason. In May, the organizing committee was asked about the problem of food supply after the spectator ban announcement, and the committee answered that it would cancel orders for food “that can be canceled.”

However, when Ide communicated with a source close to the situation, she was told that there had been no change in the number of meals ordered after the ban was announced and that when arrangements are made for prepared food in such large amounts for big events, the idea that a certain number will be trashed is factored in.

The implication is that once an order is placed it is very difficult to change. Also, there is a lot of money involved. Food suppliers have lost tens of millions of yen due to the pandemic, so the Olympic contracts meant a lot to those lucky enough to win them. Some food company representatives complained to Ide about the government’s response, saying that had they decided against spectators much earlier, these companies might have been able to change their orders, but as it stands they will lose even more money. For one thing, they have to buy ingredients well beforehand and if they don’t use those ingredients right away, they have to be thrown out because they can’t be stored indefinitely.

Given the changing shape of the pandemic and the large number of companies and organizations involved, Olympic food waste was inevitable, but it appears there was no alternative plan to deal with the excessive food supply. An Olympics-related working group was formulated in 2016 to address sustainability matters, and Ide wonders what the group was discussing for the past five years.

A representative of the Japan Food Bank Association told Tokyo Shimbun that food loss is an international problem but that Japan in particular seems to “lack awareness,” though Tokyo Shimbun pointed out that Twitter was filled with comments about how the uneaten food for the Olympics should have been redistributed to needy people who have been struggling through the pandemic. Reportedly, the discarded box lunches packed for the opening ceremony were turned into livestock feed and biogas. The fact that there were no alternative plans in place indicates how little real thought was put into sustainability.

Since the 1990s, the IOC has made sustainability a pillar of the so-called Olympic legacy, meaning the longer-term impact the Games have on both the host city and the world. That means not only making sure the Games themselves don’t harm the environment, but that they lead to permanent changes that have a positive effect.

One of the IOC’s conditions is that eggs supplied to the Games must not come from battery farms, where hens are kept in small cages their entire lives. The purpose is to instill a lasting awareness of animal welfare.

Last week, however, former Farm Minister Takamori Yoshikawa went on trial for allegedly taking bribes from a large egg supplier for his help in quashing animal welfare laws that would restrict the use of battery cages. Most media haven’t made the connection between Yoshikawa’s situation and the Olympics because they’ve always seen the Tokyo Games in a narrow way — as a means for Japan to show off to the world, but only for two weeks.

For rightwing culture warriors, to shed light on past conflict is to insult our history

David Olusoga

Nothing more to say on the statue wars? Events in Newcastle suggest otherwise…

The Boer war memorial in Newcastle: ‘This is not really about the young soldiers of 1900.’ Photograph: Wilf Doyle/Alamy

Sun 15 Aug 2021 08.30 BST


The problem with dishonesty is that you have to remember your most recent falsehoods to at least try to keep your story straight. In their pantomime “war against woke”, the UK’s statue defenders are incapable of remembering what they said just 12 months ago.

Last summer, when the statue of Edward Colston was toppled, those who howled in protest claimed that they were not seeking to defend the reputation of a slave trader – a man complicit in the deaths of 19,000 Africans – but were merely opposed to the destructive way in which the statue had been removed. Toppling statues, or even removing them from public display peacefully, they lectured, entailed “erasing history”.

The answer, they and the government argued, was to leave statues and monuments in place but add contextual details that made visible aspects of the past about which statues had previously been mute. This strategy – “retain and explain” – could be best achieved by attaching plaques to the pedestals on which monuments stand.
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Fast forward to 2021 and the same people seem to have forgotten that this was ever their position.

With no statue toppled since Colston’s pavement dive, the statue-philes have been forced to make the most of slim pickings. Hence the hysterical reaction to an audit of statues and monuments conducted by Newcastle city council. The council’s report found that Newcastle has no monuments with direct links to slavery and with no Colston or Cecil Rhodes to worry about, it makes only modest suggestions. These include making changes to a city centre monument to 370 men from north-east regiments who died in the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902.

Topped with a statue of Nike, the winged Greek goddess of victory, the Boer war monument has plaques at its base that list the names of men from the region who died in South Africa 120 years ago. In a statement, the council explained that its aim is to “widen public interpretation of the South African war memorial” by installing “two information panels, one to interpret the statute and the other to shed light on its local connections in the city”.

To those whose abilities of recall stretch all the way back to 2020, the council’s proposals sound very much like “retain and explain” and there is not much here to get excited about. No statues are to be removed, never mind toppled. No one is taking the knee or trying to explain how structural racism works. Marcus Rashford is not involved and the Duchess of Sussex has not chosen to fly to Newcastle and wastefully hurl avocados at the monument.

Yet in culture war Britain, even the non-story of Newcastle’s statue audit is enough to pull the hair-trigger of the anger-industrial complex. Just a few years ago, before politicians and newspapers had mastered the art of using half-forgotten colonial conflicts to whip up anger and division, a report by a heritage committee, set up by the local council of a northern city, would have struggled to win space on the pages of even the local papers. Yet with wearying predictability, the council’s proposal to provide additional historical information became national news and was caricatured as “cancelling history”.

Meanwhile, the manifest and indisputable fact that the Anglo-Boer war was, as the council called it, a “colonialist enterprise” was deliberately presented as a libel rather than a statement of fact. With similarly tedious inevitability, the report was mischaracterised as “virtue signalling” and “erasing our history”, an especially trite phrase – even in this strong field – given that all wars other than civil wars, by their nature, generate histories that are never solely “ours”.
Many people at the time regarded the conflict as a grubby war of aggression

One military historian who must have missed the “retain and explain” memo concluded that the council’s proposals had been arrived at because the monument “no longer suits the current cultural zeitgeist”. It is this threadbare, non-argument that best reveals the deep dishonesty of the pro-statue lobby.

Their repeated claim in defence of statues to mass murderers and memorials to colonial wars is that, guided by the “standards of the time”, our ancestors universally regarded empire as uncontroversial, naturally excused the violence that underwrote it and always celebrated its builders and defenders as heroes. None of that is true, particularly when it comes to the Anglo-Boer war.

Many people at the time regarded the conflict as a grubby war of aggression, motivated by British ambitions to seize the gold and diamond reserves of southern Africa. Others worried, with good reason, that the war was fuelling anti-British sentiment across the world. Indeed, volunteers from numerous nations travelled to the war zone and joined the Boers’ ranks against the British.

The scorched earth policy adopted by the British in the final phase of the conflict, which entailed the imprisoning of Boer civilians in concentration camps, as they were named and described at the time, led to the deaths of around 30,000 Boer women and children. When made public, the horrors of the camps strengthened a significant anti-war movement in Britain and appalled even ardent supporters of the empire. The deaths in other British camps of around 20,000 black Africans were scarcely commented upon, by either side, in this “white man’s war”.

The statue obsessives claim to be defending the soldiers whom the Newcastle monument remembers, yet they cannot explain how pretending that the conflict in which they fell was glorious honours their memory.

But then this is not really about the young soldiers of 1900. It is about the ageing culture warriors of 2021, people so opposed to honestly examining our imperial past that they misrepresent even the most modest acts of reassessment. Like Dorian Gray, they are so fearful of uncomfortable truths that they seek to lock away history’s mirror.

The irony here is that the history that Newcastle city council aims to empower the people of my home town to better understand contains exactly the sorts of harsh realities and ugly complexities that, if properly discussed, could help awaken us from our colonial dreamtimes.

David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster

480-Million-Year-Old Spores of Early Land Plants Found in Australia

Aug 13, 2021 by News Staff / Source

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Until now, the first fossil evidence of land plants was from the Devonian period (420 million years ago). However, molecular evidence suggests an earlier origin in the Cambrian period. In a new paper in the journal Science, paleontologists described an assemblage of spore-like microfossils from Early Ordivician (480 million years ago) deposits in Australia; these spores are of intermediate morphology between confirmed land plant spores and earlier forms of uncertain relationship

Fossilized spores from the Early Ordivician deposits of Australia. Image credit: Strother & Foster, doi 10.1126/science.abj2927

“These spore-like microfossils fill in a gap of approximately 25 million years in the fossil spore record, linking well-accepted younger plant spores to older more problematic forms,” said Dr. Paul Strother, a paleobotanist in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Boston College.

Dr. Strother and his colleague, Dr. Clinton Foster from the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University, examined populations of fossil spores extracted from a rock core drilled in 1958 in northern Western Australia.

“We found a mix of fossils linking older, more problematic spore-like microfossils with younger spores that are clearly derived from land plants,” Dr. Strother said.

“This helps to bring the fossil spore record into alignment with molecular clock dates if we consider the origin of land plants as a long-term process involving the evolution of embryonic development.”

“The fossil record preserves direct evidence of the evolutionary assembly of the plant regulatory and developmental genome.”

“This process starts with the evolution of the plant spore and leads to the origin of plant tissues, organs, and eventually macroscopic, complete plants — perhaps somewhat akin to mosses living today.”

“When we consider spores as an important component of the evolution of land plants, there is no longer a gap in the fossil record between molecular dating and fossil recovery.”

“Absent that gap, we have a much clearer picture of a whole new evolutionary step: from simple cellularity to complex multicellularity.”

“As a result, researchers and the public may need to re-think how they view the origin of terrestrial plants — that pivotal advance of life from water to land.”

“We need to move away from thinking of the origin of land plants as a singularity in time, and instead integrate the fossil record into an evo-devo model of genome assembly across millions of years during the Paleozoic Era, specifically between the Cambrian and Devonian divisions within that era,” he said.

“This requires serious re-interpretation of problematic fossils that have previously been interpreted as fungi, not plants.”

_____

Paul K. Strother & Clinton Foster. 2021. A fossil record of land plant origins from charophyte algae. Science 373 (6556): 792-796; doi: 10.1126/science.abj2927

‘Abolish these companies, get rid of them’: what would it take to break up big oil?

Communities bearing the brunt of harm caused by climate change say that for too long the fossil fuel industry has prioritized profits over the public good. Illustration: Chris Burnett/The Guardian

Communities on the frontline of the climate crisis say radical solutions must be on the table – before it’s too late

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Yessenia Funes

Wed 11 Aug 2021 


Ayisha Siddiqa doesn’t want fossil fuel companies to determine her future anymore. The industry has promoted climate denial for longer than the 22-year-old has been alive. Rather than watch companies pad their profits as the world burns, Siddiqa has a radical solution in mind.

“Abolish these oil companies, finish them, get rid of them, no more,” she said.


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Siddiqa’s words echo a rallying cry for climate and environmental advocates who see limited options in finding justice for the low-income and communities of color whose lives the industry have ravaged – and will continue to as the climate crisis unfolds.

Siddiqa is the founder of Polluters Out, a youth-led coalition dedicated to removing the oil and gas industry’s influence from international climate negotiations. She created the group in response to the failed COP25 climate talks in 2019, which made little progress toward curbing carbon emissions. In her mind, the major petroleum giants don’t deserve to be involved in the clean energy revolution.

“The next stop cannot be for us to let the people who previously harmed us have a seat in the new world,” she said.

For many frontline communities, the industry’s climate crimes aren’t matters of the future. They’re here. The climate denial propaganda machine, funded by big oil and gas, has left humanity with the earth spiraling into chaos: homes crushed by wildfires, loved ones dying from heat and crops withering from drought.

In the past five years, extreme weather disasters have cost the US more than $525bn, with taxpayers footing the bill, not major carbon polluters. In 2020 alone, the global price tag tied to climate change adaptation towered at $150bn. Throughout all the damage, human lives were harmed, too. Now they’re asking: when will their voices matter?

The push to hold the industry accountable for the climate emergency by breaking up powerful companies follows a string of similar movements that have bubbled up in recent years. Ideas that were once considered fringe – like defunding police departments or busting big tech – are now filtering into mainstream discourse. And as the climate crisis increases in urgency, activists are taking aim at oil and gas companies.

Communities bearing the brunt of harm caused by climate change say that for too long the fossil fuel industry has prioritized profits over the public good. During the Texas winter storm in February, for example, gas and oil giants raked in billions by selling assets for exaggerated prices as the state struggled to provide consumers with power and heat. The state knew 10 years ago that cold temperatures could threaten the grid, but it left the decision on upgrading infrastructure up to private companies. As a result of the storm and subsequent power outages, some 700 people died, according to a BuzzFeed investigation.

As the climate crisis increases in urgency, activists are taking aim at oil and gas companies

Carla Skandier, manager of the climate and energy program at the Democracy Collaborative, says groups like hers are now researching ways to end the cycle of harm through nationalizing segments of the fossil fuel industry. In the simplest terms, the process would involve the federal government buying out entire oil and gas companies to take ownership of their infrastructure and assets.

“When we talk about abolishing the fossil fuel industry, we are really talking about the urgent need for an endgame to manage the industry’s fast decline,” Skandier said.

Pro-abolition groups say this process would entail putting elected officials – not corporate executives – in charge of fossil fuel assets. The US government would slowly stop drilling or buying leases as it prioritizes lowering emissions and investing in clean energy. Nationalized ownership would allow the US to leave oil and gas reserves in the ground while simultaneously shrinking the fossil fuel company’s grip on the nation.

Such public intervention would also prevent oil companies from simply shutting down operations, laying off their workers and leaving behind devastated towns and counties, as coal companies have done, Skandier said. “We need to consider that a lot of these communities are highly dependent on fossil fuel revenues, so we need to plan how we’re going to build community wealth and diversify their economies to make sure they’re not only economically stable but resilient to climate impacts in the future.”

The US could take the land or reserves currently owned by the fossil fuel industry via eminent domain, the legal right governments have to seize land or infrastructure for the public interest. The federal government has done this before to create national parks and even to convert a private energy company in Tennessee into the now publicly owned Tennessee Valley Authority during the Great Depression.

Any movement to break up big oil, however, will inevitably face enormous headwinds. The industry benefits from being deeply ingrained within American society, and it’s expected that oil and gas interests would push back hard in courts. Nationalizing profitable industries would also take an unprecedented amount of political will, which has yet to materialize.

Law expert Sean Hecht warns that breaking up energy companies may lead to unintended ripple effects. History suggests that simply erasing a company’s existence may make it easier for them to ignore their financial responsibilities when they’ve caused harm.

Hecht, the co-executive director of UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, saw this firsthand in Los Angeles, where he lives. When the Department of Justice shut down Exide Technologies in 2015 for illegally poisoning neighborhoods with lead for decades, the company filed for bankruptcy and left taxpayers to foot the cleanup bill.


ExxonMobil lobbyists filmed saying oil giant’s support for carbon tax a PR ploy

“An industry disappearing doesn’t mean that that industry is going to necessarily be accountable, and sometimes it’s the opposite of that,” Hecht said. “It creates a sense of justice but doesn’t materially help the conditions in communities.”

A company simply signing a check may not help either, said Kyle Whyte, a professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, who also serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. That won’t eliminate the root cause of the issue: companies responsible for driving the climate crisis are also stripping communities of the social, cultural and political capital to decide what happens to their homes and bodies.

“Justice would mean a world where, for example, Native people and tribes are no longer in a dependency relationship with industries,” Whyte said. “There’s no dollar amount that could be spent in a community right now that would actually replace decades and generations of violations against self-determination.”

There’s no cookie-cutter approach to rectifying what communities have inherited from big oil. And even if calls to break up the fossil fuel industry sound improbable in the current political climate, activists hope the conversation will expand the realm of possibilities for leaders to take action on climate change. For Siddiqa, any solution must also incorporate international players as well.

“We vote for our world leaders,” Siddiqa said. “They represent us. If they are actively refusing to represent us, then their position is in question.”

Siddiqa wants to see a cultural shift – a moment of political reimagination. She knows business as usual won’t stop the climate crisis – perhaps neither will the end of oil and gas – but she says it’s a good start.

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

AFGHAN NEWS

The fall of Kabul: why didn’t the Americans leave ten years ago?

by ALI MIRAJ| @ALIMIRAJUK


Taliban advance (Str/Xinhua)


On 8 July President Joe Biden was questioned at a press conference about the assessment of his own intelligence experts that the Afghan government would most likely collapse. Biden denied it outright. Yet just a few weeks later the Taliban has taken 20 of the 34 provincial capitals including Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. On Friday it was thought that it could conquer Kabul in a couple of months. Now, on Sunday, the Taliban are on the outskirts of the capital. President Ashraf Ghani is reported to have fled Kabul, apparently for Tajikistan. After over $1 trillion spent by the US and the loss of more than 2,400 American and 450 British service personnel, many are questioning what this loss of blood and treasure was for.

The withdrawal of US troops was agreed in principle last year by the then US President, Donald Trump, after talks with the Taliban at Doha, in which assurances were given that it would no longer provide a safe haven for terrorists. That decision is now being implemented by his successor Joe Biden, much to the chagrin of his political supporters and opponents alike. Condemnation has come thick and fast. Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood, who chair the Foreign Affairs and Defence select committees respectively and are both former army officers, lament that the US has made an egregious strategic error by vacating the field. Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, has openly stated that that he does not agree with the US decision and that a redeployment of troops could be required to prevent the country becoming a breeding ground for terrorism, a proposition which has been firmly rejected by Downing Street. The reality of the UK ’ s military impotence without the umbrella of American military support is stark.

The fundamental question is, however, not whether the US was right to pull out its forces after 20 years, but why it did not do so a decade ago. The Bush administration ’ s initial rationale for the invasion of Afghanistan was clear, in marked contrast to the premise offered for the scandalous misadventure in Iraq. After 9/11, the worst atrocity committed on US territory since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, which resulted in almost 3,000 civilians being killed, the US was not simply going sit on its 

It demanded that Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, who masterminded the attack on the Twin Towers and was being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, be handed over. The Taliban — who are ethnically Pashtun and adhere to a strict code of honour in which the hospitality and the protection of guests is sacrosanct and to be paid for with one’s life if necessary — refused to give him up. The US invaded, principally with the support of its key ally the UK, and toppled the Taliban government in short order. It was in May 2011, in an operation authorised by the then President Barack Obama, that bin Laden was found to be hiding in a house in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad and killed by US Special Forces. That would have been the optimal time to exit Afghanistan, with the core aim of the mission accomplished.

But hubris is seductive and the Americans succumbed to it. It is with good reason that Afghanistan, which has been the epicentre of great power struggles for centuries, is known as the “ graveyard of empires”. It was a source of tension between the Russian and British empires in the nineteenth century and of Soviet interference for a decade from 1979, during which period it became a frontier in a proxy war between the two superpowers. The Soviet occupation was resisted by the Mujahideen, including one Osama bin Laden, w ho were covertly funded and supported by the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, which in turn received funds from the CIA in line with the Reagan doctrine to subvert Russian influence. The USSR incursion failed and within a couple of years of their departure the puppet regime of Mohammad Najibullah was deposed.

F ar from heeding the lessons from the Soviet humiliation, the US under George Bush engaged in mission creep, with the goal expanded to democratise and reform Afghanistan. This certainly provided security to Afghans and increased education and work opportunities for young girls and women. But the domino-like fall of successive provincial capitals shows that the enterprise of establishing an alternative government was built on sand and has highlighted once again that state-building by outside powers is a fool ’ s errand. Change within a warlord-riven country like Afghanistan, where combat is ingrained, has to be organic. When Biden says that the Afghans must fight for the future of their own country, he is right.

Unfortunately they have not been well-served by the government of Ashraf Ghani, which is notoriously corrupt and has failed to pay swathes of police and army officers for months. Many of them are stationed away from their families in locations they have no affiliation to and faced with a fearsome Taliban have opted to throw in the towel. I met Ghani in 2005 over an elaborate dinner at a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Lisbon. The Columbia University-educated Professor of Anthropology and former World Banker was engaging and thoughtful. But while adept at charming international donors at Davos, he lacks credibility with his own people. His pronouncement on Saturday that remobilising the Afghan National Security forces was a “ top priority” was laughable. The view of the Afghan owner of my local pizza takeaway in East London, who fears for his family and friends on the ground in his erstwhile homeland, is that President Ghani will have already negotiated his own route to exile.

While the US and UK are hastily sending in forces to help evacuate their consular staff and other nationals, given the gravity of the situation, there remains no appetite on the part of American and British electorates for a prolonged presence in the country. Several Western commentators and politicians, including the former Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the former International Development Secretary, Rory Stewart, fret about the message it sends potential allies about the West ’ s commitment to its purported interests. In an era of great power competition between the US and China in which the West will need regional supporters in Asia, there is consternation over the reliability of US support.

But this is irrelevant, as the US ’ lack of commitment to its foreign policy pursuits is already priced in. When Pakistan ’ s President General Pervez Musharraf, who himself assumed power in a coup, visited London after the US invasion in 2001, he told me directly that Pakistan was stuck between a rock and a hard place and had no choice but to support the US-led invasion. But he was also unequivocal that Pakistan would extract as much bounty from the Americans as possible before “ they ditch us again”, a reference to the hasty evaporation of support for Pakistan once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989.

So the US decision is pragmatic and to many of those observing it the message will be a confirmation of what they already know. If you live in a dangerous neighbourhood, you had better pursue a realist foreign policy based on self-interest and a recognition that ultimately you are on your own. The real tragedy is that the people of Afghanistan, who have enjoyed relative peace for two decades, will now be displaced from their homes and have to once again live under a tyrannical and brutal regime that claims to be guided by Islamic theology. Interesting, then, that when the Taliban regime was previously in power, it obtained a significant chunk of its revenue from the taxation of opium, hardly a practice compatible with the religion they claim to follow.

The tragic future of Afghanistan may be that it once again becomes a centre for regional power struggles to be played out by those in relentless pursuit of their own interests including Russia, Iran, China and Pakistan. Provided the Taliban, which craves international recognition, does not provide a breeding ground for terrorists the West will consider its job done. It will be the people of Afghanistan that will have to fight for a more hopeful future. It will be a gruelling, bloody and unenviable task.

FALL OF SAIGON 2.0

Taliban fighters entering Kabul 'from all sides' as US begins embassy evacuation

The United States started evacuating its diplomats and was sending more troops to help secure Kabul airport and the embassy. Source: AFP

Biden Braces for a Brutal Loss

August 14, 2021 at 2:24 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 160 Comments

“The Biden administration is preparing for the fall of Kabul and a retreat from any U.S. diplomatic presence in Afghanistan — a stunning reversal of expectations,” Axios reports.

“It’s looking increasingly likely to high-ranking aides to President Biden that the U.S. will have no enduring diplomatic presence in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 — the date Biden has promised the full troop withdrawal will be complete.”

“It’s a major reversal from even a few weeks ago.”

“The working assumption in Biden’s inner circle had been that Kabul could hold for the short term, allowing the U.S. to stay diplomatically engaged and help Afghan women secure their rights beyond the U.S. withdrawal.”

Taliban fighters entering Kabul

With Afghanistan's second and third-largest cities having fallen to the Taliban, Kabul has effectively become the besieged, last stand for the government forces.

This article contains references to suicide.

Taliban insurgents entered the Afghanistan capital Kabul on Sunday, an interior ministry official said, as the United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.

The senior official told Reuters the Taliban were coming in "from all sides" but gave no further details.

A tweet from the Afghan Presidential palace account said firing had been heard at a number of points around Kabul but that security forces, in coordination with international partners, had control of the city



Australia is planning to expand its humanitarian intake for Afghan nationals

With the country's second and third-largest cities having fallen into Taliban hands, Kabul has effectively become the besieged, last stand for government forces who have offered little or no resistance elsewhere.

The United States started evacuating its diplomats and was sending more troops to help secure Kabul airport and the embassy after the Taliban's lightning advances brought the Islamist group to the door of the capital in a matter of days.

Heaving fighting was also reported around Mazar-i-Sharif, an isolated holdout in the north where warlord and former vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum had gathered his virulently anti-Taliban militia.

The only other cities of any significance not to be taken yet were Jalalabad, Gardez and Khost - Pashtun-dominated and unlikely to offer much resistance now.


As the Taliban's power grows, advocates for Australia's Afghan interpreters warn evacuations must happen now

President Joe Biden on Saturday doubled down on his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan despite the Taliban's rapid advances, but pledged to send more troops to evacuate civilians and warned the insurgents not to threaten that mission.

After consultations with his national security team, Mr Biden said a total of "approximately 5,000" US soldiers - up from 3,000 - will now help organise evacuations and the end of the US mission after 20 years on the ground.

He warned the Taliban that any action "that puts US personnel or our mission at risk there, will be met with a swift and strong US military response".

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani pledged on Saturday not to let the "imposed war on people cause more deaths", and said consultations were taking place to try to help end the war, without offering details.

Earlier, US Central Command said more American military personnel had arrived in Kabul to ensure the safe evacuation of American embassy employees and Afghan civilians who worked for US forces.

The Pentagon estimates it will need to evacuate about 30,000 people before it completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan by 31 August, a deadline set by Mr Biden.

Mr Biden's decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan has come under increased scrutiny given the implosion of the country's armed forces, but he said he had no other choice - and laid some of the blame at the feet of Donald Trump.

"When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor... that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021, deadline on US forces," Mr Biden said.

"I faced a choice - follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies' forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country's civil conflict," he added.

"I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan - two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth," Mr Biden said.

A host of European countries - including Britain, Germany, Denmark and Spain - all announced the withdrawal of personnel from their respective embassies on Friday.



Afghan woman Yalba Siddiqui (left) marched in Adelaide on Saturday
SBS News/Peta Doherty

On Saturday in Adelaide, hundreds of members of South Australia’s Afghan community rallied to condemn the Taliban and call for international action to halt the insurgents.

“What is happening [in Afghanistan] is horrible at the moment,” marcher Yalba Siddiqui told SBS News.

Ms Siddiqui’s husband is still in Kabul and waiting for an Australian visa.

“Day and night I worry about his safety,” she said.

“I would like the Australian government to do something and hear our voice.

'Crying day and night'

For Kabul residents and the tens of thousands who have sought refuge there in recent weeks, the overwhelming mood was one of confusion and fear.

Muzhda, 35, a single woman who arrived in the capital with her two sisters after fleeing nearby Parwan, said she was terrified for the future.

"I am crying day and night," she told the AFP news agency.

"I have turned down marriage proposals in the past ... If the Taliban come and force me to marry, I will commit suicide."



Taliban seizes major Afghan cities as the US readies for evacuations from the capital

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply disturbed" by accounts of poor treatment of women in areas seized by the Taliban, who imposed an ultra-austere brand of Islam on Afghanistan during their 1996-2001 rule.

"It is particularly horrifying and heartbreaking to see reports of the hard-won rights of Afghan girls and women being ripped away," Mr Guterres said.

The scale and speed of the Taliban advance have shocked Afghans and the US-led alliance that poured billions into the country after toppling the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks nearly 20 years ago.

Days before a final US withdrawal ordered by Mr Biden, individual Afghan soldiers, units and even whole divisions have surrendered - handing the insurgents even more vehicles and military hardware to fuel their lightning advance.
'No imminent threat'

Despite the frantic evacuation efforts, the Biden administration continues to insist that a complete Taliban takeover is not inevitable.

"Kabul is not right now in an imminent threat environment," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday, while acknowledging that Taliban fighters were "trying to isolate" the city.

The Taliban offensive has accelerated in recent days, with the capture of Herat in the north and, just hours later, the seizure of Kandahar - the group's spiritual heartland in the south.



The Taliban on Friday took control of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-biggest city.
AAP Image/EPA/AKHTER GULFAM


Kandahar resident Abdul Nafi told AFP the city was calm after government forces abandoned it for the sanctuary of military facilities outside, where they were negotiating terms of surrender.

"I came out this morning, I saw Taliban white flags in most squares of the city," he said.

Pro-Taliban social media accounts have boasted of the vast spoils of war captured by the insurgents - posting photos of armoured vehicles, heavy weapons, and even a drone seized from abandoned military bases.

With Peta Doherty.

Fall of Afghanistan: Taliban enter Kabul as residents flee
15 Aug, 2021

AP

An Afghan official says troops have surrendered Bagram Airbase to the Taliban. The base is home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates.

Taliban fighters entered the outskirts of Kabul on Sunday as panicked workers fled government offices and helicopters began landing at the US Embassy in the Afghan capital, further tightening the militants' grip on the country.

Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital.

The militants later pledged not to take Kabul "by force" as sporadic gunfire could be heard in the capital.

"No one's life, property and dignity will be harmed and the lives of the citizens of Kabul will not be at risk," the Taliban said.

A man sells Taliban flags in Herat province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

A Taliban spokesman said "we are awaiting a peaceful transfer of Kabul city", AP reported.

Taliban negotiators were heading to presidential palace to prepare for a "transfer" of power, AP reported.

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The insurgents issued the statement on Sunday as their fighters entered the outskirts of Kabul.

The militants themselves didn't acknowledge the advance, though they earlier took Jalalabad, near a major border crossing with Pakistan, the last major city other than Kabul not under their control.

In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban has defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swathes of the country, even with some air support by the US military.

The rapid shuttle-run flights of Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters near the embassy began a few hours later as diplomatic armoured SUVs could be seen leaving the area around the post.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to questions about the movements.

However, wisps of smoke could be seen near the embassy's roof as diplomats urgently destroyed sensitive documents, according to two American military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.

Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, which typically carry armed troops, later landed near the embassy as well.

The Czech Republic also approved a plan to begin withdrawing their Afghan staff from their embassy after earlier taking their diplomats to Kabul International Airport.

A US Chinook helicopter flies over the city of in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

President Ashraf Ghani, who spoke to the nation Saturday for the first time since the offensive began, appears increasingly isolated as well.

Warlords he negotiated with just days earlier have surrendered to the Taliban or fled, leaving Ghani without a military option. Ongoing negotiations in Qatar, the site of a Taliban office, also have failed to stop the insurgents' advance.

Thousands of civilians now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul itself, fearing the future. Some ATMs stopped distributing cash as hundreds gathered in front of private banks, trying to withdraw their life savings.

Gunfire erupted at one point, though the Afghan presidency sought to downplayed the shooting.

"The defense and security forces along with the international forces working for the security of Kabul city and the situation is under control," the presidency said amid the chaos.

Militants posted photos online early Sunday showing them in the governor's office in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.

Abrarullah Murad, a lawmaker from the province told The Associated Press that the insurgents seized Jalalabad after elders negotiated the fall of the government there.

Murad said there was no fighting as the city surrendered.

Members of the Taliban drive through the city of Herat, Afghanistan, west of Kabul. Photo / AP

Members of Joint Forces Headquarters get prepared to deploy to Afghanistan to assist in the draw down from the area in this handout photo taken on Friday. Photo / AP

The militants took also Maidan Shar, the capital of Maidan Wardak, on Sunday, only some 90km from Kabul, Afghan lawmaker Hamida Akbari and the Taliban said.


Another provincial capital in Khost fell later Sunday to the Taliban, said a provincial council member who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The fall on Saturday of Mazar-e-Sharif, the country's fourth largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, handed the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan.

Atta Mohammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two of the warlords Ghani tried to rally to his side days earlier, fled over the border into Uzbekistan on Saturday, said officials close to Dostum.

They spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorised to publicly speak about his movements.

Writing on Twitter, Noor alleged a "conspiracy" aided the fall of the north to the Taliban, without elaborating.

"Despite our firm resistance, sadly, all the government and the Afghan security forces equipment were handed over to the Taliban as a result of a big organised and cowardly plot," Noor wrote.


"They had orchestrated the plot to trap Marshal Dostum and myself too, but they didn't succeed."

A Taliban flag flies from the clocktower of the Herat provincial official office, in Herat. Photo / AP

In his speech on Saturday, Ghani vowed not to give up the "achievements" of the 20 years since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.

The US has continued holding peace talks between the government and the Taliban in Qatar this week, and the international community has warned that a Taliban government brought about by force would be shunned.

But the insurgents appear to have little interest in making concessions as they rack up victories on the battlefield.

"We have started consultations, inside the government with elders and political leaders, representatives of different levels of the community as well as our international allies," Ghani said.

"Soon the results will be shared with you," he added, without elaborating further.


Many Afghans fear a return to the Taliban's oppressive rule. The group had previously governed Afghanistan under a harsh version of Islamic law in which women were forbidden to work or attend school, and could not leave their homes without a male relative accompanying them.

Plumes of smoke rise into the sky after fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel in Kandahar, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul on Thursday. Photo / AP

Salima Mazari, one of the few female district governors in the country, expressed fears about a Taliban takeover on Saturday in an interview from Mazar-e-Sharif, before it fell.

"There will be no place for women," said Mazari, who governs a district of 36,000 people near the northern city. "In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes."

In a statement late Saturday, however, the Taliban insisted their fighters wouldn't enter people's homes or interfere with businesses. They also said they'd offer an "amnesty" to those who worked with the Afghan government or foreign forces.

"The Islamic Emirate once again assures all its citizens that it will, as always, protect their life, property and honour and create a peaceful and secure environment for its beloved nation," the militants said.

Passengers trying to fly out of Kabul International Airport amid the Taliban offensive wait in line in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday. Photo / AP

"In this regard, no one should worry about their life."

Despite the pledge, those who can afford a ticket have been flocking to Kabul International Airport, the only way out of the country as the Taliban took the last border crossing still held by the government Sunday at Torkham.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told local broadcaster Geo TV that Pakistan halted cross-border traffic there after the militants seized it.

Taliban seize Bagram military prison 25 km north of Kabul, free inmates

The Taliban have taken control of Bagram Prison, located on Bagram air base, and set free the inmates, mostly Taliban fighters, who were imprisoned there.

Ashraf Wani New DelhiAugust 15, 2021



Taliban took control of a biggest US-controlled prison in Afghanistan. (Image: India Today)

The Taliban have taken control of Bagram Prison, located on Bagram air base, and set free the inmates, mostly Taliban fighters, who were imprisoned there.

The Bagram air base, which used to be the largest US military base in the country, is now under the Taliban's control.

The Bagram Prison was controlled by the US forces who were stationed in Afghanistan. Following the decision to withdraw American troops from the country, control of the prison was passed on to the Afghan Armed Forces on July 1.

Afghan forces at Bagram air base, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, surrendered to the Taliban, according to Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi. The prison at the former US base held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters, news agency AP reported.

In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban have defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swaths of the country, even though they had some air support from the U.S. military.

On Sunday, they reached Kabul. Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital and awaiting a “peaceful transfer” of the city after promising not to take it by force.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera English satellite news channel that the insurgents were in the process of negotiating with the government.

READ: Taliban, Afghan govt in talks for 'peaceful transition of power' | Top developments

But when pressed on what kind of agreement the Taliban wanted, Shaheen acknowledged that they were seeking an unconditional surrender by the central government.

Taliban negotiators headed to the presidential palace Sunday to discuss the transfer, said an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. It remained unclear when that transfer would take place.

(With inputs from AP)

VIDEOS show Taliban fighters lounging in luxurious ex-home of US-backed warlord as pundits blame grift for collapse of Afghan army

15 Aug, 2021 09:09

©  Twitter / Xubi_119

The Taliban has shown off a lavish home that belonged to Afghan army marshal and close US ally Abdul Rashid Dostum, prompting pundits to opine that the decadent abode illustrated why the country’s military had wilted so quickly.

In videos resembling an episode of MTV’s iconic house tour program ‘Cribs’, Taliban fighters can be seen lounging in the ostentatious interior of former vice president Dostum’s residence in Mazar-i-Sharif. The northern city was captured by the militants on Saturday, after government forces there allegedly surrendered shortly after fighting broke out. 

Dostum, a seasoned warlord who aligned himself with the US-backed Northern Alliance during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, had vowed to defend Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban onslaught. But he reportedly fled the city after government forces handed over their weapons and equipment to the Taliban as part of a “cowardly plot,” Atta Mohammad Noor, the former governor of Balkh province, told the media. Noor, who was commanding local militiamen when the city’s defenses collapsed, said both he and Dostum had escaped and were safe. 

However, what Dostum left behind has both amused and angered social media observers. Footage shows cross-legged militants relaxing in overstuffed armchairs as others admire the mansion’s glitzy decor. One clip shows them examining what appears to be a gold tea set. 

The videos represent a “searing propaganda victory” for the Taliban, one pundit argued, noting that Dostum was a “near-mythic” figure who had once controlled vast swathes of Afghanistan.

Others expressed dismay that the Taliban fighters had enjoyed a “tea party” in a “castle” allegedly built using US tax dollars. 

“Whilst General Dostum lived in opulence, many of his soldiers went unpaid. One of the reasons for the army’s collapse,” British politician and former soldier Henry Bolton complained. 

Political pundit and MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said the footage served as a reminder that the “corrupt warlords we allied with in Afghanistan all these years have been pretty awful.”

During his years of cooperation with the United States, Dostum has faced repeated accusations of corruption and human rights abuses. He spent part of 2018 in exile, following accusations that he had ordered a political opponent to be sexually assaulted. 

The Taliban didn’t linger long in Dostum’s sumptuous lodgings, however, beginning an assault on Kabul on Sunday.