Free Republic

A bipartisan group of senators are calling on President Joe Biden to impress upon Turkey that Congress would not approve upgrades to Ankara's air fleet should the country refuse to allow Sweden and Finland into NATO. Sweden and Finland filed to join the alliance in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year. The U.S. overwhelmingly approved their entry, with Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley standing alone as the sole Senate vote against their admission. In order to join NATO, all 30 members must accept their entry. Turkey and Hungary remain the only members of the bloc that...

Several dozen Jewish tycoons from Russia are believed to have taken on Israeli citizenship or residency in recent years. Israel is grappling with a situation that involves dealing with dozens of Jewish Russian oligarchs as Western nations step up sanctions on businesspeople with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A worried Israeli government has formed a high-level committee to see how the country can maintain its status as a haven for any Jew without running afoul of the biting sanctions targeting Putin’s inner circle. Several dozen Jewish tycoons from Russia are believed to have taken on Israeli citizenship or residency...

When politicians and journalists talk about Afghanistan, most of them do not know what it really is. That is to say, they are distracted by the fact that it has had a flag, a territory, and a name, and until recently, its official representatives participated in a variety of international forums, such as the United Nations. Until last week, it even had a (semi-) democratic, elected, but remarkably corrupt government, which as a governing class supervised an equally corrupt police, judiciary, and army. All that is gone now. Why? Because the Taliban are better anthropologists than President Biden, the CIA,...

It’s not just generals who are always prepared to fight the last war. President Biden’s April 14 announcement that U.S. forces will leave Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 has a long and complicated backstory. Biden said his decision will allow America to put this violent and ambiguous past behind it, to retire the frameworks that conditioned its foreign policy for a generation, and to focus its energies on the competition with China.Perhaps so. The risk, however, is that Biden’s fixation on settling old scores has blinded him to contemporary realities, and has prevented him from answering the question...

Sister Inés Nieves Sancho a sewing teacher, the nun that was decapitated. Image: elespanol.com Tuesday’s slaughter took place after an armed group called 3R attacked two villages in the Central African Republic. At least 26 people have been killed, and many more wounded, in a massacre representing one of the biggest single losses of life in the Central African Republic (CAR) since a February peace deal. The UN’s peacekeeping mission in CAR (Minusca) reported on Wednesday that Tuesday’s slaughter took place after an armed group called 3R attacked two villages Koundjili and Djoumjoum, in the north-west of the country. The...

And you thought Sidney Blumenthal was shady. Few people have heard of Cody Shearer, the unsanctioned diplomat, private eye, and Clinton flunky whose name surfaced in connection with the so-called intelligence reports Sidney Blumenthal was channeling to Hillary Clinton during her time at the State Department. But this shadowy fixture of the Clinton machine was everywhere in the 1990s — including war-torn Bosnia, where he became the subject of a State Department investigation after he represented himself as an agent of the U.S. government and took cash from a genocidal warlord. Now evidence suggests Shearer, working with his partner Blumenthal,...

Your tax dollars are indirectly being used to pay warlords in Afghanistan to protect NATO vehicles–even making its way into the hands of the Taliban. A new report, Warlord Inc., released by Rep. John F. Tierney, member of the subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, brings to light a corruptive link between taxpayer dollars and Afghan warlords. The report shows of how taxpayers have inadvertently funded warlords all across Afghanistan to protect NATO convoys that operate outside of Afghan government and NATO forces. Money is also being used to pay the...

Abdullah's announcement came after the failure of last-minute attempts to head off another crisis in the presidential election saga. Kai Eide, the senior United Nations official in Afghanistan, led a series of talks with Karzai to lay the ground for a power-sharing deal in which Abdullah would concede defeat, making a second round unnecessary. In return, the former foreign minister had asked for a number of changes to the Afghan election body, including the sacking of its lead commissioner. But almost all of Abdullah's demands were rejected, leaving him no choice but to drop out, his supporters say. "He knows...

WASHINGTON (AFP)--U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview to be aired Monday that he has ordered a probe into attempts to quash an investigation into the mass execution of Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan. The New York Times had reported Friday that top officials from the previous administration of president George W. Bush discouraged separate probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and the Pentagon. They wanted to hush up the killing of up to 2,000 prisoners in 2001 because it was carried out by the forces of General Abdul Rashid Dostam, an Afghan warlord then on...

A 12-year old schoolgirl was gang-raped by five gunmen in Sarpul province in Northern Afghanistan. The girl and her family asked Hamid Karzai to prosecute the rapists and take their case seriously. They threatened that if they are not provided justice, the whole family will commit mass suicide to get rid of such life. They say, the local authorities keep silence on such cases and did not act to arrest those responsible. While crying, the rape victim told journalists that she was raped in a village called Baghabi in Sarpul province. She says five gunmen poured into their house in...

Britain's last chance of securing this treacherous corner of Afghanistan lies in the hands of a piratical, black- turbaned figure with long beard, white cloak and silver-sequinned slippers with curled toes. Mullah Abdul Salaam may not look much like a white knight. He served as a commander in the Taleban and even today his true loyalties remain suspect. The 45-year-old former Mujahidin guerrilla could, however, decide the fate of the British mission to stabilise the lawless province of Helmand, where this week he was put in charge of the key district of Musa Qala. "He's not just the best show...

MOGADISHU (AFP) - Key Somali warlords agreed to disarm their fighters and join the government, but the breakthrough was marred by a deadly gun battle during talks that brokered the accord. Seven warlords, who controlled most of Mogadishu before it fell to Islamist fighters in June, signed the pact, even as forces loyal to one of them engaged in a firefight with security forces outside the talks' venue. "The principal warlords who controlled parts of the Somali capital have decided to surrender their weapons to the transitional federal government," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told AFP. "They also agreed to instruct...

DAYS after winning control of Mogadishu, an Islamist militia was yesterday advancing towards the last stronghold of secular warlords, Jowhar.The coalition of warlords are widely believed to be backed by Washington and their defeat is seen as a setback for US policy. The United States has called for an international meeting this week in New York to discuss strategy on Somalia, bringing together officials from the UN, Europe and Africa. Residents said the militia, who won control of the Somali capital last week after driving out the warlords, drew closer overnight to the warlord stronghold of Jowhar, 55 miles to...

The Islamic fundamentalists of Somalia have taken control in Mogadishu, and the U.S.-supported warlords opposing them have retreated to nearby towns. In Washington, the post-mortems have already begun. The argument of “some experts” quoted anonymously in The New York Times was that financing the warlords, who are the leaders of major clans, “may have helped unnerve the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes.” The Bush administration owes no one an apology for supporting the warlords in return for help in trying to capture al-Qaeda members. The Islamic Courts Union has been sheltering al-Qaeda, some of whose leaders...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Islamic militia appeared to control Mogadishu on Monday after winning a bloody three-month battle against warlords who have run the Somali capital for 15 years. The warlords are widely believed to be covertly backed by a U.S. administration concerned, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, that Islamist rulers could provide a save haven for al Qaeda akin to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Many fled on Monday to other parts of Somalia or neighbouring Kenya. The Islamic side, which supports sharia courts in Mogadishu, announced they controlled the city in radio broadcasts and public meetings. Both residents and some members...

Can you imagine the rush of emotion you'd feel if your 8-year-old son, who had been kidnapped six months earlier, suddenly appeared at your door after you'd given up hope of ever seeing him again? In Pakistan just a fews days ago, I was repeatedly blessed to witness parents experience that thrill as we returned their abducted children. As the father in the above photos told us as he clung to his son, "It is a miracle." Indeed it was. Let me tell you how it happened. For those of you who haven't been following the unfolding story over the...

Hundreds of people have been fleeing the northern suburbs of Mogadishu after two days of heavy fighting in the Somali capital. Doctors say at least 60 people have been killed and that the hospitals are full of injured civilians. Residents say mortars are being used in the battle between an Islamic militia and warlords. The warlords have accused the Islamists of sheltering foreign fighters and assassinating moderate Muslims. The United Nations' Irin news agency quotes a doctor saying many more than 60 people may have been killed "because a lot of people are being buried where they died". The BBC's...

Afghanistan will encourage its powerful drug lords to invest their illegally earned profits back into the war-shattered country, according to the governor of the nation’s top opium growing region. The offer comes amid warnings of another bumper poppy crop that will fuel a booming narcotics trade that already accounts for 35 per cent of the impoverished nation’s income. "We as a government will provide them the opportunity to use their money for the national benefit," said Helmand Gov. Moham-med Daud during a two-day trip this week to the region by United States Ambassador Ronald Neumann. "They must invest in industries....

Somali warlords battle Islamists Mogadishu is controlled by thousands of gunmen At least seven more people have been killed on the fourth day of the heaviest fighting seen in the Somali capital for several years. Supporters of some of Mogadishu's militia leaders have clashed with an armed Islamist group which says it is trying to establish law and order. Their opponents say the Islamic courts are terrorising local people. More than 22 people have died since fighting began on Saturday - many of them civilians hit by stray bullets. 'Scary' A witness told AFP news agency on Tuesday that they...

A group of powerful warlords controlling the Somali capital has formed a new political party whose main goal is to oppose extremism associated with hard-line Islamic courts in the lawless Horn of Africa nation, officials with ties to the party said on Tuesday. The Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT), launched on Saturday in southern Mogadishu, aims to play a key role in fighting terrorism in the country that has lacked a functional government for the past 15 years. Witnesses said this week's fighting in southern Mogadishu, which left at least 18 people dead and displaced hundreds...