KABUL, Sept 30 — The test facing the Afghan government now is not just whether it can quickly mount a counterattack and retake Kunduz, the northern city that fell to the Taliban on Monday, but whether it can prevent a nearby provincial capital from falling as well.
Accounts from the neighboring province of Baghlan on Wednesday showed that the collapse of government forces in Kunduz against less numerous Taliban forces was prompting a crisis of confidence in the neighboring province of Baghlan, where wealthier citizens and those with government connections have begun to leave for the relative safety of their hometowns.
In the midst of one of the gravest moments for the American-backed government in Kabul, military leaders spoke for a third day about launching a decisive counterattack against the Taliban in Kunduz. But it was becoming clear that most of the reinforcements for such an attack had been waylaid in Baghlan.
The reinforcements “will not be able to reach Kunduz without a big fight,” said Ted Callahan, a Western security adviser based in northeastern Afghanistan.
The Taliban have proven in the last few days just how tight a grip they hold on a stretch of northern Baghlan that abuts Kunduz Province. Reinforcements coming from either Kabul or the government stronghold in Mazar-i-Sharif must pass through the area to reach Kunduz city, and a number of convoys have been ambushed there.
It was not clear on Wednesday whether the front line in the north was still in Kunduz or was rapidly shifting south into Baghlan. That, at least, was how residents of Baghlan’s provincial capital, Pul-i-Kumri, were feeling.
“It is true, people are evacuating the city today,” Zabihullah Rustami, a former member of the provincial council, said by telephone. He had done so himself, he said, relocating to his rural district to the east. “People who are enemies of the Taliban are leaving,” he said, and the city was rife with “rumors that the Taliban might attack and take over the city.”
Pul-i-Kumri, about 90 miles north of Kabul, could become the next flash point if the Taliban’s momentum in the north is not checked in the next few days.
Taliban fighters have been creeping up to the city’s outskirts over the last six months. Gun and mortar fire are frequently heard, and skirmishes have become regular occurrences on three sides of the city.
“In Pul-i-Kumri, the situation is not in the favor of the government,” Mr. Rustami said. “If any Taliban come out and shout ‘Allahu akbar,’ the city will fall. The Taliban are close to the city.”
In a worrisome sign, two units of the Afghan Local Police surrendered their bases just outside Pul-i-Kumri to the Taliban on Wednesday and joined the insurgents, while a third base there was overrun, said Mohammad Leqaa, a former general who commanded police forces in several provinces. Other military units in the area were also said to have fled.
Mr. Leqaa estimated that as much as 10 percent of the city’s population left on Wednesday alone. “The residents were influenced by waves of people fleeing Kunduz by way of Baghlan,” he said. “We tried to announce to people not to panic and don’t leave. They weren’t listening.”
Mr. Callahan, the security adviser, said he expected government forces to put up more of a fight in Pul-i-Kumri than they did in Kunduz.
“I think you’ll see much more resistance” from the police and pro-government militias, Mr. Callahan said. “Mind you, Baghlan is big, and most of the security forces are drawn from the eastern parts of the province, so there is a big pool of potential reinforcements.”
Even so, he said, a strong defense could not be taken for granted because if panic took root in Pul-i-Kumri, a Taliban victory could be “a self-fulfilling prophecy,” and a small Taliban force could sow enough fear “to more or less walk in” as security forces retreated.
“It would be the same movie we’ve seen in Kunduz,” Mr. Callahan said.
The Taliban’s resurgence in Baghlan over the past two years is a complicated story of ethnic rivalry and local politics as much as ideology. Baghlan’s sprawling and populous northern district, known as Baghlani Jadid, is largely Pashtun, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group — from which the Taliban traditionally draws its members.
Pashtuns live in settlements across the north, but they are outnumbered in the region by Afghanistan’s second largest group, the Tajiks. In Baghlan, many Pashtuns have felt left out of the provincial power structure, especially after a leading Pashtun candidate failed to win the provincial council chairmanship in last year’s election. Since then, Pashtun support for the government appears to have waned in northern Baghlan and insecurity has been rising, especially along the stretch of national highway running through the province.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, convoys of reinforcements headed toward Kunduz were fighting pitched battles with the Taliban in two areas, said Abdul Shaker Urfani, a member of a community council in northern Baghlan.
By his count, more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers bound for Kunduz were stuck in the province on Wednesday. “They can’t break through the Taliban resistance,” Mr. Urfani said.
The capture of Kunduz, a city of 300,000 people, three days ago appeared to be the Taliban’s largest military victory in a war that has gone on for more than a decade. Kunduz is the first urban center the Taliban have held since 2001.
Soon after it fell, Afghan military officials spoke of using the city’s airport, five miles to the south, as a staging ground for a swift counterattack. Now, though, the airport is imperiled as well, caught between Taliban forces approaching from Kunduz and the insurgent-controlled countryside in every other direction.
By Tuesday night, Taliban fighters had pushed through the airport perimeter, threatening several hundred soldiers and at least as many civilians who had fled to the airport from the city. One police officer was killed and at least 17 were wounded defending the area, officials said.
Their situation improved somewhat when American warplanes struck Taliban positions at 11:30 p.m. and again at 1 a.m., an American military spokesman said. The Afghan Air Force also fired weapons.
Around the same time, American Special Forces soldiers and Afghan commandos left the airport headed for Kunduz, according to Afghan government officials. Whether the Americans were there to take Taliban positions or to call in airstrikes was not known. By morning, the Americans appeared to have returned, said people there who spoke by telephone.
An American military spokesman refused to discuss the matter.
It appeared that at least one American operation in the city ended in failure. An Afghan security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that a group of 100 or more Afghan soldiers, trapped in an ancient fortress north of the city, had held the Taliban off for more than two days. But when American forces tried to airdrop ammunition and weapons to them, the official said, “they missed the base and dropped the weapons in the river.” It was not clear whether the weapons actually landed in the water of the nearby Kalagaw River or had merely missed the defenders’ position by a long distance.
That position fell Wednesday morning, and about 60 soldiers surrendered or were captured by the Taliban, although at least a few dozen managed to escape, the official said.
Questions about how thousands of army, police and militia defenders could continue to fare so poorly against a Taliban force that most local and military officials put only in the hundreds were hanging over President Ashraf Ghani’s government and its American allies.
The government forces and militiamen defending Kunduz Province were said to number more than 7,000 when the city fell. Some fell back to the airport, some fled to their homes, and some are unaccounted for.
Military officials in Kabul continued to promise an imminent counterattack, but an Afghan security official in Kabul who insisted on anonymity to discuss security matters said he was not aware that enough troops were in position to mount one.
“There is no counterattack,” he said, “not now, at least.”
AA at UN (Credit: telegraph.co.uk)Addressing The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations in New York on Saturday, Abdullah Abdullah the Chief Executive Officer of National Unity Government (NUG) reaffirmed Afghanistan’s strong commitment to implementing long-term development projects across the country after 2015.
In his remarks, Abdullah highlighted the gains made by Afghanistan over the recent years, but said poverty still remains one of the biggest challenges in the country.
Abdullah also touched on the issue of peace and security in Afghanistan and asked Chinese leadership to use their influence convincing Pakistan to contribute honestly in restoring long standing peace in the country.
“China has been helping Afghanistan in the past 14 years, support for the reconstruction of the country, capacity building—at the same time showed some interest in investing in Afghanistan. Recently they also were facilitating or supporting the initiatives which were there for reconciliation,” he added.
The CEO addresses the UN summit at a time that the people of Afghanistan are still coping with serious security threats and poverty. However Abdullah pledged that NUG is determined to take measures in reducing poverty in the country.
“Afghanistan begun to pursue its MDGs almost half a decade later than other member states. Based on our 2005 to 2015 MDG report, we have a mixed achievements and setbacks, while poverty rate as remains more or less constant for several years, we have made considerable progress in primary education, gender equality, in women empowerment, child and maternal mortality rate are being reduced, ” CEO Abdullah said.
In addition, Abdullah talked on the issue of terrorism and reiterated that the militant groups are still operating inside the Pakistani soil.
It is expected that NUG will submit the evidences proving Pakistan’s support of terrorism to the UN general assembly.
A trilateral meeting between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US is also scheduled to take place in New York on the sidelines of the general assembly meeting.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Col. Qalandar Shah Qalandari, Afghanistan’s most decorated pilot, recently took command of what was meant to be the building blocks of his country’s new air force: a squadron of shiny American-made attack helicopters, intended to solve the chronic lack of close air support for Afghan troops.
Sixteen of the armed MD-530 scout helicopters were rushed here this year to great fanfare, and a dozen more are to join them. But Colonel Qalandari was not impressed. “This plane is a total mess,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t know why we have this plane here.”
An Afghan public affairs officer tried to shush the colonel as he spoke to a journalist at the Afghan Air Force base at Kabul airport. A United States Air Force public affairs officer looked on aghast.
But Colonel Qalandari kept on: “I will tell the truth. This is my country, and these are my men, and they deserve the truth.”
He tossed a map on the table, showing the effective range of the helicopter from its Kabul airfield: It cannot even reach areas where the Taliban normally operate. In summertime, its maximum altitude with a full load of fuel and ammunition is only 7,000 to 8,000 feet, he said — meaning it cannot cross most of the mountain ranges that encircle Kabul, which is itself at an elevation of about 6,000 feet.
“It’s unsafe to fly, the engine is too weak, the tail rotor is defective and it’s not armored. If we go down after the enemy we’re going to have enemy return fire, which we can’t survive. If we go up higher, we can’t visually target the enemy,” Colonel Qalandari said. “Even the guns are no good.”
Each helicopter carries two .50-caliber machine guns, mounted on pods on either side of the craft’s small bubble cockpit. “They keep jamming,” one of the colonel’s 10 newly American-trained pilots said.
Colonel Qalandari is not the first Afghan official to complain about the woeful state of efforts to build an air force to replace the Americans in carrying out airstrikes, medical evacuations and transport missions in a country with poor and dangerous roads. United States officials have long seen the aspirations as unrealistic, while Afghans have complained that their allies have ignored their views about what they need to fight the Taliban.
One of the Afghan Air Force’s primary assault vehicles is the MD-530 scout helicopter. Its range is about 83 miles. But it cannot operate above an elevation of 7,000 to 8,000 feet, which dramatically reduces the area it can patrol in Afghanistan’s mountainous landscape.
In the past, efforts were focused on reconstructing the air force left behind by the Soviets, or at least the helicopter transport and gunship parts of it. During the Soviet era, the Afghan Air Force even had MiG-21 jet fighters with Afghan pilots. What the Afghans have had lately is a fleet of prop-driven Cessna transport planes, and aging Russian MI-17 transport helicopters and MI-35 helicopter gunships, the kind Colonel Qalandari flew in the past.
American efforts to rebuild the Russian fleet stalled after the conflict in Ukraine brought Western sanctions on the Russians. That has made spare parts difficult to obtain and new Russian helicopters all but impossible to buy.
Of the Afghan legacy fleet of five MI-35 gunships — a fearsome aircraft well-suited to Afghan conditions — only one is still flying. “And that one won’t last much longer,” Colonel Qalandari said.
Some of the Russian MI-17s, normally used for transport, have been outfitted as gunships or medevac aircraft, but there are constant problems keeping them in service because of issues with maintenance and spare parts. Afghan V.I.P.s also tend to demand them for personal transportation when they travel around the country.
American officials hailed the MD-530 as a quick — and realistic — solution to Afghanistan’s air force needs.
Built by McDonnell Douglas, the two-seat helicopter has a 33-year history, serving as a Special Operations scout helicopter, and in the United States as a traffic and weather news helicopter, or for power line work.
It is simple to fly and repair, and could be put into action in Afghanistan quickly, American officials said. The first four of the MD-530 gunships to be battle-ready have already gone on two combat missions, in August, and Afghans and Americans both pronounced them a success.
American officers say that it would take much longer — many years — to train Afghan pilots to fly more advanced American military helicopters with advanced avionics and computerized controls. They are also extremely expensive to fly.
“This is a sustainable solution,” said Lt. Col. James Abbott, an Air Force trainer who put off retirement to help run the MD-530 program in Afghanistan. “You’re fighting guys with a gun in the back of a pickup truck: How much technology does that need?”
The new helicopters were procured and delivered, with enough Afghan pilots trained and ready to fly them, in less than a year. “It’s been pretty amazing what they’ve done in a short time,” Colonel Abbott said.
Some of the Afghan pilots have already qualified on the MD-530 as instructor pilots, and are training other Afghans. Training mechanics and maintainers will take longer, and American contractors are still doing most of that work.
The pilots inside the MI-17 helicopter. Spare parts for the Russian fleet are difficult to obtain, but many Afghans are dissatisfied with replacement American helicopters. Credit Andrew Quilty for The New York Times
Colonel Abbott said a lot of the Afghan criticism of the new aircraft was from pilots used to Russian equipment, and replacing that has become impossible. “It’s a tough sell for the legacy guys,” he said, “but the young pilots love it.”
As for the complaints about the helicopter’s troubles in the high altitudes and thin air of Afghan battlefields, he noted that those would be a problem for even most advanced aircraft.
Capt. Naiem Azadi — one of the new instructor pilots and a veteran of the MD-530’s first combat mission, in Jalalabad last month — is enthusiastic about the helicopter. But he wished it had gun sights, he said. As it is now, targeting is visual, and the twin .50-caliber machine guns are aimed by tilting the helicopter toward the target.
“If we don’t have ground controllers guiding us, it’s very hard to target safely,” Captain Azadi, 27, said.
Already, one of the new helicopters has crashed, while an American pilot was flying with an Afghan trainee near the 8,000-foot-high Lataband Pass, just east of Kabul.
Colonel Qalandari said the incident showed the limitations of the helicopter in Afghan terrain. After the helicopter landed, a recurring tail rotor problem, plus its light weight, caused it to tip over in a wind. While the crew escaped safely, the aircraft rolled down the mountainside, toppled off a cliff, and was completely destroyed.
“When my pilots fly in this, only God and I know what they’re going through,” the colonel said. “And I don’t know whether they’ll make it back.”
The MD-530 is not the only problem aircraft in the Afghan arsenal, according to Afghan officials.
They also have 25 C-208 transport planes, basically modified Cessna 12-seater prop planes, an aircraft the Americans praise for its simplicity and workhorse abilities.
The Afghan Air Force chief of staff disagreed. “The C-208 is not good for Afghan territory, it’s unacceptable to the geography of the country,” the senior officer, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Dawran, said in an interview. “We can’t keep them pressurized; they only have a 4,000- to 5,000-meter ceiling — no good in the hot weather. Only a single engine.”
General Dawran said that while he was grateful to the Americans for the help they had given, they had yet to accomplish nearly as much as the Russians did in creating an Afghan Air Force in the 1980s.
“Our international friends, especially the U.S.A., did a lot of good things to help the Afghan Air Force,” he said. “We began from zero, and now we’re in a better situation. But the Americans did not pay enough attention to what we wanted. They did not consult the Afghan side.”
The Afghan general was hopeful, however, about the planned delivery next year of 20 new Brazilian-made A-29 airplanes, a light attack aircraft purchased by the American military. Unlike the new helicopters, the A-29 will be able to drop laser-guided bombs and other high-tech arms.
“The nice thing about a laser-guided bomb,” said Colonel Abbott, “it doesn’t care what it gets dropped out of, it’s just as lethal.”
Brig. Gen. Chris Craige, the commander of the American Air Force training mission here, acknowledged that development of an Afghan Air Force had lagged behind other military training efforts. For one thing, the United States and its coalition allies did not even start working on training an Afghan Air Force until 2007, and efforts were complicated by the highly technical nature of air power and by the long periods of training needed for pilots and mechanics. Pilots in particular need English-language proficiency, which takes up most of the first year of their training.
The A-29, said General Craige, “is the absolutely right airplane for them. It will bring the next level of capability to them as far as not just machine guns and rockets, but also being able to drop bombs. And that’s where we really start getting the Afghan Air Force to a point where they can sustain themselves in those tough battles.”
Training on the A-29 does not begin until next year, and the full complement of 20 planes will not arrive until December 2018.
But Afghan ground forces are begging for air support as they face more determined ground challenges from the Taliban, who have boasted of how much easier it is to fight with fewer worries about American airstrikes.
Most American airstrikes in support of Afghan forces have to be approved on a case-by-case basis by Gen. John F. Campbell, the American commander in Afghanistan, and not all are.
One exception has been Musa Qala, a district of Helmand Province that fell to the Taliban on Aug. 26. Heavy American airstrikes rained down almost continuously on the district for weeks after that, according to Afghan officials and local residents.
But over all, General Craige said, “this is the first year where the coalition hasn’t come in and said, ‘We’ll take care of it.’”
That has been difficult for Afghans to accept. As another American general put it, speaking on the condition of anonymity while criticizing an ally, the heavy American use of air power in previous years has made Afghan government forces feel excessively dependent on it.
“The Taliban doesn’t complain about not getting air support,” the general said, “but they get it done.”
Pope Francis & President Obama (Credit: thedailybeast.com)Pope Francis on Thursday warned members of Congress and the American public not to be consumed by their opposition to religious extremism.
“Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion,” Francis said before a rapt joint meeting of Congress.
A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms,” he said. “But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.”
“We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within,” Francis said. “To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.”
Though Francis never mentioned Islam during his historic address — the first ever by a pontiff before a joint meeting of Congress — the comments appear to refer to ongoing global struggles against extremist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Some critics have worried that efforts to crack down on radicalism around the world end up limiting people’s rights and subjecting them to constant surveillance.
Francis’s speech on Thursday captured the attention of all of Washington.
In addition to the comments on extremism, the address largely focused on immigration, climate change and efforts to protect the poor.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — In streaming ribbons of white, great masses of Muslim pilgrims made their way between cities of air-conditioned tents toward the next stop on their holy tour of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Then something went disastrously wrong, trapping the crowds in narrow streets and touching off a mass panic and crushing stampede that left the asphalt covered with lost sandals, crumpled wheelchairs and piles of white-robed bodies.
It was the deadliest accident during the Hajj pilgrimage in a quarter-century, with at least 717 pilgrims from around the world killed and more than 850 wounded. And it posed yet another challenge for the country’s new leader, King Salman, who is already coping with low oil prices, a war in Yemen and an increasingly fierce rivalry with Iran.
The stampede was the latest in a series of crises that have plagued the pilgrimage this season: Just two weeks ago, a crane collapse killed more than 100 visitors, and hotel fires have injured others. The missteps have embarrassed the insular Saudi monarchy, which considers itself the global guardian of orthodox Islam and takes great pride in protecting the holy sites and their millions of annual visitors.
King Salman — who bears the title of “the custodian of the two holy mosques,” giving him personal responsibility for Mecca and Medina — expressed his condolences for the dead in an address aired on Saudi state television and ordered a review of the management of the pilgrimage. A commission was formed to investigate.
Other officials appeared to blame the dead. The Saudi health minister, Khalid al-Falih, said in a statement that the stampede may have been caused by “some pilgrims who didn’t follow the guidelines and instructions issued by the responsible authorities.”
But some present in the area at the time said security forces had temporarily closed exits from an area packed with pilgrims, causing the crowding that led to the stampede.
Khalid Saleh, a Saudi government employee who rushed to the site when he heard screams and sirens, said he had found “huge numbers of people on the ground either dying or injured.” Pilgrims there told him that some of the area’s exits had been closed so that V.I.P. cars could pass, he said.
The Saudis’ main regional rival, Iran, blamed the tragedy on Saudi mismanagement. The head of Iran’s Hajj organization, Said Ohadi, said two paths near the site of the accident had been closed for “unknown reasons.”
“This caused the tragic incident,” he told Iranian state television. “Saudi officials should be held accountable.”
At least 131 Iranians were among the dead, according to Iranian news agencies.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, blamed “misconduct and improper acts” by Saudi officials and declared three days of public mourning.
The Saudi government has spent billions of dollars on construction in Mecca in recent years aimed at enlarging the grand mosque, adding accommodations and facilitating movement between the sites. Those investments followed a number of high-casualty accidents, including the 2006 deaths of 360 people on a bridge that had long been identified as a dangerous choke point.
Nevertheless, Thursday’s stampede is likely to renew criticism that Saudi Arabia lacks the management skills to protect one of the world’s largest regular human migrations.
Irfan al-Alawi, the executive director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation and a critic of how the Saudi government has developed Mecca and another holy city, Medina, said by telephone from Mecca that the stampede had been a result of “poor management” by the government, given the number of past disasters.
The stampede occurred early Thursday, the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, near a T-shaped intersection of narrow streets in Mina, about six miles east of Mecca, where many pilgrims stay in air conditioned tents.
The area is close to Jamarat, where pilgrims gather to throw pebbles at walls in a ritual that represents the stoning of the devil.
Maj. Gen. Mansour Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, told reporters that large groups of pilgrims had run into each other and started shoving, causing the stampede, which was exacerbated by extreme heat and fatigue.
General Turki and other officials said they would not comment on how the streets had become so crowded before the official investigation was complete.
And Saudi officials confined reporters given official access to the pilgrimage for hours after the accident, preventing them from reaching the site and investigating its cause.
Survivors described a nightmare situation of getting trapped in a crush of bodies and feeling other people walk over their backs in an effort to escape.
“I saw someone trip over someone in a wheelchair and several people tripping over him,” said Abdullah Lotfy, a pilgrim from Egypt, according to The Associated Press. “People were climbing over each other just to breathe.”
Cellphones and cameras are prohibited from the main sanctuaries, but can be used in the surrounding areas, and videos of the aftermath shared on social media showed scores of lifeless bodies in the street, many covered with the simple white garments pilgrims wear during the hajj.
One video showed a heap of men lying atop one another, while rescue workers in fluorescent yellow vests worked to free struggling survivors trapped between lifeless bodies.
The stampede was the deadliest incident during the hajj — and in the entire kingdom — since 1990, when 1,426 pilgrims perished in a stampede in a tunnel linking Mecca and Mina.
It occurred less than two weeks after a large construction crane toppled over and crashed through the roof of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing at least 111 people and injuring 394 others. The Saudi authorities have faulted the Saudi Binladin Group, a construction conglomerate working on the mosque expansion, denying it future contracts and banning some of its executives from leaving the country.
The accidents have occurred as the Saudi government spends billion of dollars on the construction of new buildings — including the world’s largest hotel — that critics say have destroyed the sites’ natural setting and cater only to the wealthiest pilgrims.
But accidents that kill large numbers of visitors have become less common than they were during earlier eras. The last was the stampede in 2006, along with a building housing pilgrims collapsed, killing at least 73 people.
Sami Angawi, a Mecca-born architect who has spent decades studying the pilgrimage, said the Saudi government faces a huge logistical dilemma in welcoming so many people and cycling them through a series of specific sites in a limited amount of time. Some two million pilgrims from 180 countries are performing the hajj this year.
He said the pilgrims’ diversity and lack of a common language added to the challenge. “With a huge number like this and all the diversity that is in it, it is hard to communicate and do orientation,” he said.
But he criticized the Saudi government for seeking to build its way out of the problem instead of improving crowd control.
“There is a lot of money spent, but the solution is not in making more roads or bridges,” he said. “It is in how to organize the management of people to have a flow from one area to another.”
Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi anthropologist at the London School of Economics, accused members of the royal family of profiting handsomely from the construction boom.
“The renovation and expansion are done under the pretext of creating more space for Muslim pilgrims, but it masks land grabs and vast amounts of money being made by the princes and by other Saudis,” she said. “There is no accountability.”
Dr. Rasheed said that officials in the kingdom had avoided responsibility in part by citing the belief that anyone who dies during the pilgrimage — one of the five pillars of Islam, and a duty for all able-bodied Muslims with the means to make the trip — goes to heaven.
Saudi state television reported the deaths in text banners on its screen during normal pilgrimage programming, only briefly showing footage of rescue workers putting injured pilgrims into ambulances.
“That is among the things that happen at any large gathering,” one presenter said.
He closed his program by reminding viewers that it is a “virtue” to die while performing the pilgrimage and that the tragedy was only “temporary.”
Reporting was contributed by Mona Boshnaq from London, Kareem Fahim from Cairo, Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran, Christine Hauser from New York, and Sheikha al-Dosary from Alexandria, Va.
This time Donald Trump is in hot water for what he didn’t say.
The Republican presidential front-runner decided to shake things up at a New Hampshire rally Thursday by abandoning his stump speech — wall, China, proven business leader — and taking questions from the crowd.
And the first one was a doozy.
“We’ve got a problem in this country,” said the first questioner. “It’s called Muslims. You know our current President is one. You know he’s not even an American.”
“We need this question?” Trump said, laughing.
“But anyway,” the man continued, “We have training camps growing, where they want to kill us. That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”
Instead of correcting the man on President Obama’s religion — he’s Christian — or denouncing the blanket statement about all Muslims, the birther movement banner holder just let it hang in the air.
“We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things,” Trump said. “And you know, a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton blasted the billionaire real estate mogul for not correcting the questioner.
“Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong. Cut it out. -H,” she tweeted.
“GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s racism knows no bounds. This is certainly horrendous but unfortunately unsurprising given what we have seen already,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz.
In 2008, Sen. John McCain drew boos at a town hall when he corrected a woman who called then-Sen. Obama “an Arab.”
“I have to tell you, Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as President of the United States,” McCain said.
Trump’s camp responded to the mounting backlash by accusing Obama of waging a religious war.
“The media wants to make this issue about Obama. The bigger issue is that Obama is waging a war against Christians in this country,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Christians need support in this country. Their religious liberty is at stake.”
One of the Queen’s personal representatives has resigned after leaked emails showed him saying British Pakistanis must be taught “basic common courtesy and civility”.
Paul Sabapathy, CBE, Her Majesty’s lord lieutenant of the West Midlands, made the remarks in an email after attending an event at the Pakistan consulate in Birmingham on 14 August to commemorate Pakistan Independence Day.
Apparently unhappy about the lack of respect he and colleagues were shown as the Queen’s representatives, he said: “Pakistanis are lovely people individually but there is a lot of work to do to teach them basic common courtesy and civility.”
He went on: “They talk to themselves and do not engage with the wider community. They are living in the UK not Pakistan. Whilst being rightly proud of their Pakistani culture and heritage they need to explain better and engage more with their non-Pakistani brothers and sisters if they want their children to succeed as British Pakistani citizens.”
Sabapathy, who was born in Chennai in India and moved to the UK in 1964, was the first non-white lord lieutenant.
Her Majesty’s lord lieutenants are the representatives of the crown for each county in the United Kingdom. Men or women of all backgrounds, they are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the prime minister.
Lord lieutenants were originally appointed in Henry VIII’s reign to take over the military duties of the sheriff and control the military forces of the crown. Nowadays they perform a largely ceremonial function but are nonetheless expected to uphold the same standards as the reigning monarch.
Sabapathy’s remarks were seemingly prompted by a group of 20-25 Pakistani men talking as he tried to address the Independence Day event.
When the Guardian contacted Sabapathy on Friday morning to ask for clarification on his remarks, he asked for time to comment. In the meantime a growing number of MPs spoke out about his remarks, with one Pakistani-origin MP saying the lord lieutenant had been offensive and must apologise.
At 5.30pm on Friday he issued a statement saying he had decided to stand down and wanted to offer an unreserved apology.
He said: “I wish to apologise unreservedly and wholeheartedly for the offence I have caused to the Pakistani community and others, by the contents of my private email. I have today written to all those who received my original email to express my sincere sorrow and regret. I have asked for their forgiveness in the hope that my comments do not damage relationships between the many communities of the West Midlands.”
A palace spokesperson said in a statement: “We understand that Paul Sabapathy has informed the Cabinet Office of his decision to step down from his role as lord lieutenant in the West Midlands. The Royal household would like to acknowledge the tremendous work done by Mr Sabapathy since his appointment in 2007 to support the work of the royal family and to bring together and work with the communities in the West Midlands.”
Before Sabapathy tendered his resignation, Shabana Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood, whose family are from Mirpur in Kashmir, Pakistan, said: “Clearly he should apologise, his comments are very offensive. If he had issues with the way the event was organised then the appropriate thing to have done would have been to take it up with the event organisers directly.”
Valerie Vaz, Labour MP for Walsall South, said: “I am disappointed with these generalised remarks about the Pakistani community which indicates to me he is out of touch. In my experience the community are hospitable, generously support charitable causes both in the UK and aboard, support multi-faith activities and actively oppose those who seek to divide our diverse tolerant community in Walsall. I think he should apologise.”
Another West Midlands MP, Roger Godsiff, who represents Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath, was at the Independence Day event: “Based on my own visit to the Pakistani consulate in Birmingham on 14 August, it is surprising that Paul Sabapathy could make such sweeping generalisations. Perhaps the other attendees thought he was being a bit snooty and ignored him,” he said.
He added: “It seems that it would be helpful for community relations if he did apologise.”
Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, said: “Without understanding the context of what happened at the event it is difficult for me to comment. But I would say if Paul Sabapathy thinks the British Pakistanis don’t engage with the wider community he wants to come and live on my street. He wouldn’t be there for five minutes without being invited in for a chat with my British Pakistani neighbours.”
The remarks were leaked the day before Sabaphaty was set to appear as guest of honour at the British Organisation for People of Asian Origin (Bopa) in Birmingham. On Saturday he is due at the Belgrade Theatre for Bopa’s conference on the “Asian contribution to World War One”.
But Davinder Prasad, Bopa’s chief secretary, said Vaz and others were “making a meal out of it.”
He said: “Why should the lord lieutenant apologise? He was right in what he was saying. The Asian community, whether Sikh or Pakistani or Indian must learn. What he is doing is educating Asian people that they are in British society. They can’t behave as if they are still in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. They must not just expect to get food on a plate. They must accept what British society has on offer, for example, tolerance and respect. We need to show respect to the British monarchy. Why must people try to make a meal out of what he said?”
He added: “I’m appalled if someone is asking him to apologise. We are very fond of the lord lieutenant and see him as a source of inspiration. We have nothing but respect for him. If somebody is being discourteous or impolite, the lord lieutenant is right to draw it to their attention. Anyone criticising him should look himself in the mirror.”
Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield and secretary of state for international development, praised Sabapathy for his “superb work across the area” and good relations with the Pakistani community, and said something must have gone “awry” on Independence Day.
In his resignation statement, Sabapathy wrote: “As an immigrant myself, coming to the UK 51 years ago not knowing anyone and the first non-white lord lieutenant ever, I have been conscious of my duty to engage with and support all communities in their endeavour and to ensure they are represented fairly and without discrimination.
“Those who know me will, I am sure, confirm I am a great advocate of the Muslim and Pakistani communities – in the same way that I support all of those in the region, no matter their colour, creed or beliefs. Collaboration and engagement are at the heart of all my work. There is not one iota of prejudice on my part and I am deeply sorry for the upset I have caused and I offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies.
“It has been a privilege to be the representative of Her Majesty the Queen and to serve the communities of the West Midlands for the last eight years. Having given the matter deep consideration and in the light of my wife’s ill health I have decided to stand down as lord lieutenant of West Midlands to spend more time with my wife.”
The U.S. government spends millions each year on programs to improve the skills of foreign reporters, but rarely have its efforts helped produce such a media superstar as Khadija Ismayilova in Azerbaijan.
Ismayilova was 27 when she enrolled in her first U.S.-funded investigative workshop in Baku in 2003. At 30, she moved to Washington to work for the government’s Voice of America, which trained her in broadcasting. Two years later, she returned home as bureau chief of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and later, became a talk-show host and investigative reporter there.
Beginning in 2010, Ismayilova uncovered secret ownership amid government dealings in the telecommunications, construction, gold mining, hotel, media and airline services industries. Her bombshells won international awards and high praise from some in the State Department as well as anti-corruption groups worldwide.
But in Azerbaijan, in December, she was arrested and imprisoned. The hidden fortunes she revealed were those of Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, and his family. She reported that they used their positions to vastly enrich themselves with public funds.
The charges against her — tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship, embezzlement, inciting a suicide attempt and misuse of authority — did not cite her reporting. But U.S. and European officials and her employer say they are retribution for her articles, designed to quash her investigations and growing pro-democracy activism.
Earlier this month, Ismayilova was found guilty of all but the suicide charge and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison. She told the court that the government “won’t be able to force me to stay silent, even if they sentence me to 15 or 25 years.”
U.S. officials condemned the verdict.
“This sentence is clearly retribution for Khadija exposing government corruption and sends a warning shot to other journalists in the country,” said Jeff Shell, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent federal agency that supports independent media abroad. “The Azeri government has demonstrated to the international community that it disdains press freedom, supports its own impunity and has little regard for human rights.”
Khadija Ismayilova’s journey from U.S.-sponsored journalism workshops to a jail cell in Central Asia is also a tale of U.S. policy at odds with itself.
On the one hand, U.S. agencies and their affiliates train, fund and publish investigative reporters such as Ismayilova, who provide some of the last remaining independent news reports in Central Asia and Russia. Congress appropriated an estimated $64 million this fiscal year for programs to promote “media freedom and freedom of information” worldwide, according to State Department records.
But on the other hand, press freedom and human rights usually take a back seat in U.S. foreign relations to military, intelligence, oil or other business interests.
“The U.S. government isn’t doing anything in terms of pressure and sanctions against the government of Azerbaijan to make it clear the jailing of Khadija and other journalists there is unacceptable,” said David J. Kramer, a human rights specialist at the McCain Institute for International Leadership and former president of Freedom House. “There are other interests with Azerbaijan that have crowded out human rights concerns.”
In March, two officials from RFE/RL and the International Broadcasting Bureau, an independent U.S. agency that oversees Voice of America, flew to Baku to discuss Ismayilova’s case with the foreign minister, national security adviser, two other senior presidential advisers and the prosecutor and tax offices.
“I said, ‘If you have specific information that contradicts her reporting . . . give it to us,’ ” said Jeffrey N. Trimble, deputy director of the IBB. He got nothing, he added, and “no hint of flexibility.”
The Embassy of Azerbaijan declined to comment on questions submitted by The Washington Post.
Ali Hasanov, the presidential aide for public and political affairs, told media in Baku after the verdict that “Ismayilova faced criminal charges for committing concrete criminal acts unrelated to her journalistic activities. During the trial, the charges were fully proved and the adequate decision was made. That is why attempts to politicize the court’s verdict about Ismayilova by some international organizations, officials of different countries and a number of international human rights organizations are unacceptable.”
Before Ismayilova’s arrest, Azerbaijani officials portrayed her as an enemy of the state because of her reporting and on-air commentary.
In a 60-page statement issued days before her arrest, Presidential Chief of Staff Ramiz Mehdiyev said Ismayilova “makes absurd statements, openly demonstrates destructive attitude towards well-known members of the Azerbaijani community and spreads insulting lies. It is clear this sort of defiance pleases Ms. Ismayilova’s patrons abroad.”
Ismayilova, 39, is being held in Kurdakhani prison, 30 miles north of Baku and home to some of the 80 other journalists and pro-democracy activists identified by U.S. and European governments. Speaking through intermediaries, she answered questions in writing for this article.
“We publish investigations because we value peoples’ right to know,” she said. “I expect people to struggle for their right to know, to try to hold corrupt politicians responsible.”
Today the government owns all television stations, and virtually all newspapers are allied with the president.
“Azerbaijan has been a friend to the United States and a partner in the battle against radical Islam, but mostly it’s their oil. It’s important that [the oil] remains in a Western direction,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus.
Even so, Cohen said, President Aliyev “has talked about human rights, but we haven’t really seen it.” Cohen recently co-signed a letter to Aliyev, asking him to reconsider the closing of RFE/RL, which the police shuttered in December, and assure justice to Ismayilova, whose arrest the letter called “politically motivated.”
Ask anyone who knows Ismayilova to describe her, and they usually chuckle to themselves first. “She gives you a healthy amount of headache,” said Ayaz Ahmedov, a co-worker.
“She is the most courageous man in Azerbaijan!” said Altay Goyushov, a professor at Baku State University.
Ismayilova was raised in an intellectual household. Her mother was an engineer, and her father was the president of a company that made machinery for the oil industry. Their daughter was a stellar student. Khadija graduated from Baku State University with a master’s degree in the Turkish language and literature and also speaks Russian.
She came onto the job market shortly after Azerbaijan gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992, and for the first time independent news outlets began springing up in the former Soviet republic.
Her first jobs were at alternative monthly newsletters for nonprofit organizations; then covering politics for a Russian-language paper; then as a deputy editor in chief of an English-language newspapers’s Azerbaijan section.
Alakbar Raufoglu, a fellow journalist, first met her in the mid-1990s. “Sometimes people don’t like her because she says everything to your face; she will not talk behind your back.”
Ismayilova’s exposure to U.S. journalistic techniques and mind-set came in 2003 amid a dynastic transition in Azerbaijan. That year, Ilham Aliyev replaced his father, Heydar, a former chief of the KGB branch in Azerbaijan and first secretary of the Communist Party there, as president of the country.
With Western help and investment, Ilham Aliyev developed Azerbaijan’s oil and gas infrastructure and turned a country the size of Maine with a population of 9.6 million into a player at the center of multiple geopolitical competitions. Glass skyscrapers and garish displays of wealth sprang up in the otherwise crumbling downtown.
Sandwiched between Iran and Russia, Aliyev increased intelligence cooperation with Israel and the United States and allowed the U.S. military to use commercial airports to ferry troops and supplies into Afghanistan.
Ismayilova’s pedigree can be traced to some of the finest American investigative reporting minds in the industry, a small, sometimes awkward group of junkyard dogs. They were among the first to realize the golden nuggets of information that could be found within banal government documents.
Her teachers included people like Don Ray, a California-based broadcast journalist famous among U.S. reporters as a pioneering document sleuth. Beginning in 2006, he taught Ismayilova and her colleagues to conduct what he calls a “bottoms-up investigation” that begins with a search of standard corporate, tax and property records.
Another teacher was Drew Sullivan, a onetime city hall reporter at the Tennessean, who founded the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a nonprofit group that receives U.S. and other funding to teach reporters mostly in Central Asia and Eastern Europe how to do cross-border investigations. She also worked with a U.S.-trained Romanian computerized-records wizard, Paul Radu. Radu had built an online tool called Investigative Dashboard that contains corporate registries and company records worldwide, and much more.
Ismayilova would eventually combine Ray’s scrutiny of documents, Sullivan’s cross-border capabilities and Radu’s Dashboard to produce the half-dozen fact-filled stories about the Aliyev family that got her in so much trouble. The training that all three men provided to Ismayilova was partly subsidized by U.S. government funds.
But one more thing was required to turn her into a full-fledged investigative reporter: passion.
In March 2005, a friend, investigative reporter Elmar Huseynov, who had published stories linking Aliyev to hidden business holdings, was shot dead at his doorstep in Baku by assailants who have still not been identified.
“That was the moment when I felt guilty,” Ismayilova later told Ray in an interview. “I started crying — I just couldn’t control it. I couldn’t stop crying.”
Ismayilova had dismissed Huseynov’s work because he didn’t document most of the allegations made about the Aliyev family, Ray said.
Only later did she realize that “he was a one-man band going after the powers that be” with none of the training she had to find the necessary paper trail, Ray said. “She did some self-assessment and realized that the spirit of what he was doing was correct, but he didn’t know the best way to do it.”
Deeply regretful, she promised herself that she would honor him by continuing his work and training others to do the same.
The turning point for Azerbaijani investigative journalism came only in mid-2010. In March, The Post published an article by one of its correspondents about an 11-year-old boy with the same name and birth date as the president’s son who had spent $44 million on nine Dubai mansions.
Ismayilova had helped with the story but for safety reasons had asked that her name not be used.
The article, according to Raufoglu, the fellow journalist, “made the local media wake up. . . . We were asking ourselves, ‘Why can’t we write like this?’ ”
Ismayilova, he recalled, told colleagues: “Okay, we will call our colleagues abroad. We will figure out a way to prove everything we know.”
Ismayilova’s first bylined investigation was vetted and published by RFE/RL, once a Cold War propaganda outlet that has since evolved into the last remaining source of independent news in much of Central Asia and Russia. By then it broadcast only on the Internet, having been banned by the government from airwaves.
In August 2010, using documents from the State Committee on Financial Securities, Ismayilova and a colleague reported that an Azerbaijani holding company called SW Holdings had a near monopoly on recently privatized airline services to the state airline company, Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), including ticket sales, in-flight meals, technical upkeep, duty-free stores and taxi service.
SW Holdings, they wrote, was partly owned by Aliyev’s then 21-year-old daughter, Arzu, and by the wife of AZAL’s president.
“It is unclear where Arzu Aliyeva — who until now was best known for her role in an Azerbaijani tourism ad aired on CNN — may have acquired the estimated . . . $7.8 million . . . she used to acquire her initial stake of 29.08 percent” in SW Holdings, they wrote.
As president, her father, Ilham Aliyev, earns $230,000 a year.
The next article documented the meteoric success of Azerfon, a mobile phone company. Within three years, it had 1.7 million subscribers and was the only company licensed to provide 3G services. The government had insisted that the company was owned by Siemens, the German conglomerate.
Using Azerbaijani tax documents and the Panama State Registry of companies, Ismayilova walked readers through a trail of documents leading to three companies registered in Panama and the Caribbean tax haven of Nevis Island, and then to Leyla Aliyeva, 25, and Arzu Aliyeva, 22.
Every investigation drew threats and invectives from Azerbaijanis defending the president. In March 2012, Ismayilova received a letter containing still images from a video of her having sex with her then-boyfriend in her apartment. The letter writer threatened to air it if she didn’t stop her reporting.
She immediately posted the threat on Facebook. “If they think they will stop me this way, they are wrong.”
The video was aired two days later, but the tactic backfired. Even radical Muslims in the mostly secular Muslim country condemned what they said was the government’s attempt to smear her.
Looking at the video, Ismayilova determined the camera angles and discovered phone wiring in her bedroom where the cameras had been, and followed it into her living room and bathroom. She found the installer, who recalled bringing the line to the apartment for a mysterious customer. Ismayilova asked prosecutors to investigate, but nothing came of it.
Two months later, she published two more investigative stories, jointly reported with OCCRP. One article probed the hidden ownership of a gold mining company which was widely believed to be British. Using official documents again, she reported that the president’s two daughters owned part of the firm through four Panamanian corporations.
“The UK company is actually a front for the first family,” Ismayilova wrote, “who stand to add to their already enormous wealth.”
The second article revealed that a $134 million glass-and-steel auditorium rising up from downtown Baku for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest 2012 was largely constructed by a company secretly connected to the president’s wife and two daughters.
After those stories, parliament passed a law ruling that ownership of private companies could no longer be made public except by court order, by police investigators or with the owner’s consent. Another law granted all presidents, ex-presidents and first ladies lifelong immunity from prosecution.
Ismayilova’s articles fueled small pro-democracy protests in Azerbaijan calling for the Aliyev government to step down. She joined in, crossing a line that her Western mentors found uncomfortable.
Sullivan tried to get Ismayilova to stick to journalism, but she “felt she was in an historic time and needed to come out and explain what the government was doing” in a plain-spoken way people could understand, he said.
“She felt the government was so evil and abusive of the people that she had to pick sides,” Sullivan said.
In early 2013, Ismayilova was arrested with other protesters in Baku and sentenced to community service, which she turned into another protest by sweeping the streets, joined by groups of her supporters. The government also questioned her about allegations that she passed secret documents to U.S. congressional staffers.
By now, the threats to Ismayilova had become routine but still worried her, friends said. Her tactic was always to publish them on social media, thinking that the publicity would give her protection.
But the threats escalated. Her mother’s address was printed in a prominent newspaper, SES, under the headline: “Khadija’s Armenian Mother Should Die.” Armenia is considered Azerbaijan’s main enemy.
It had become clear to Ismayilova that she would be arrested soon, a dozen of her colleagues said in interviews.
In September 2014, Thomas Melia saw her while he was serving as the U.S. envoy to an annual high-level European human rights meeting in Poland. As usual, they joked and laughed, then shared stories of how many more Azerbaijani journalists and activists they knew who had been imprisoned since the last time they met.
“I told her, ‘Why don’t you not go home,’ ” Melia recalled. “ ‘Stay here or go to D.C. Let things cool off.’ ”
She refused.
Melia recalled the last thing she told him before returning to Baku:
“ ‘If they arrest me, please speak out,’ ” he recalled her saying.
Sure enough, on Dec. 6, she was arrested and denied bail.
“I knew that I would be arrested,” Ismayilova later said from prison in response to questions by The Post. “I am not a running-away type of person.”
She was charged with driving her former boyfriend to attempt suicide. He drank rat poison, he said, but later confessed he had “defamed” Ismayilova because police forced him into it. After his about-face, he was charged with tax evasion.
Two weeks later, police stormed RFE/RL’s bureau in Baku. They searched the safe, confiscated computers and sealed the office for reasons they have yet to clarify.
The raid came six days after Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who oversees $14 million in mostly economic assistance to Azerbaijan each year, telephoned Aliyev to complain about his human rights practices.
The president also then banned all foreign aid to independent media outlets and signed a law shuttering those accused of defamation twice in one year. Ismayilova’s news outlet moved its operations to Prague. Some of its Azerbaijani journalists left with it for safety reasons; a handful remain in the country, keeping a low profile but reporting nonetheless.
In February, Ismayilova was charged with four other crimes — embezzlement, tax evasion, misuse of authority and illegal entrepreneurship — and denied bail again.
Kenan Aliyev, who hired her as RFE/RL bureau chief in 2008, said, “She’s like this woman who’s being insulted by the government, but she’s still fighting back; like she’s being raped, but she still fights back,” he said. “She’s saying. ‘We shouldn’t be afraid of this.’ . . . She’s now the symbol of Azerbaijan.”
While she sits in prison, 20 of her OCCRP colleagues from 11 countries have banded together to carry on her work. A series of articles posted on the nonprofit organization’s Web site under The Khadija Project further documents the wealth of the Aliyev family and their lobbying in the United States.
Ismayilova’s imprisonment illustrates the limits of U.S. support for independent media as a critical part of durable civil societies worldwide. The Voice of America, whose editorials reflect U.S. policy and where Ismayilova was widely respected as a reporter when she worked there, did not editorialize on her behalf until she was sentenced on Sept. 1.
“The United States is deeply troubled by today’s decision of an Azerbaijani court to sentence prominent investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova to 7 1/2 years in prison,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said after the sentencing.
Previously, the State Department had issued only brief statements of support for Ismayilova, usually in response to a question posed at a briefing.
Colleagues and some members of Congress criticize the State Department for not doing more to gain her release, saying it has let oil and security interests dominate the relationship. The Senate Appropriations Committee has demanded an accounting of the department’s steps to seek her release and that of a handful of other political prisoners.
Pro-democracy Azerbaijanis are particularly angered by what they see as Washington’s inaction. “This back-door, under-the-table diplomacy just is not working anymore, and everyone is realizing this,” said Arzu Geybullayeva, who fled under threats and is currently a Vaclav Havel journalism fellow at RFE/RL in Prague.
Tom Malinowski, the State Department’s human rights envoy, defended the department’s actions. “We have been pushing hard, and they have pushed back hard in ways that have affected the relationship,” he said, but refused to give examples. “They understand what steps will be required to improve the climate, and the ball is in their court.”
Ismayilova has her own opinion on the U.S. response to her predicament.
“Western politicians, who have compromised human rights and democracy values for energy and security cooperation, should know that corruption and organized crime does not know borders,” she said from prison. “By tolerating these diseases in other countries, they open their own country for corruption.”
Komuves is a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Mabeus is a graduate student there. OCCRP’s Khadija Project is edited by Drew Sullivan, whose brother, John, is a Washington Post investigative reporter. One of the project’s editors is on the faculty with Dana Priest at the University of Maryland but was not involved with this article.
Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris has offered to buy an island off Greece or Italy and develop it to help hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from Syria and other conflicts.
The telecoms tycoon first announced the initiative on Twitter.
“Greece or Italy sell me an island, I’ll call its independence and host the migrants and provide jobs for them building their new country,” he wrote.
More than 2,300 people have died at sea trying to reach Europe since January, many of them Syrians who fled their country’s four-and-a-half year conflict.
Sawiris said in a television interview that he would approach the governments of Greece and Italy about his plan.
Asked by AFP whether he believed it could work, he said: “Of course it’s feasible.”
“You have dozens of islands which are deserted and could accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees.”
Sawiris said an island off Greece or Italy could cost between $10 million and $100 million, but added the “main thing is investment in infrastructure”.
There would be “temporary shelters to house the people, then you start employing the people to build housing, schools, universities, hospitals.
“And if things improve, whoever wants to go back (to their homeland) goes back,” said Sawiris, whose family developed the popular El Gouna resort on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.
He conceded such a plan could face challenges, including the likely difficulty of persuading Greece or Italy to sell an island, and figuring out jurisdiction and customs regulations.
But those who took shelter would be treated as “human beings,” he said. “The way they are being treated now, they are being treated like cattle.”
Sawiris is the chief executive of Orascom TMT, which operates mobile telephone networks in a number of Middle Eastern and African countries plus Korea as well as underwater communications networks.
BRUSSELS, Sept 4 — The European Union’s sharpening divisions over a spiraling refugee crisis broke into the open Thursday with two leaders strongly disagreeing in public over whether the asylum-seekers were threatening “Europe’s Christian roots.”
That was the language used by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as he warned Europe against allowing in mostly Muslim families. A day after a drowned Syrian toddler washed up on the Turkish coast, another European leader retorted that Christian values demanded helping the less fortunate.
The furious exchange — a rare breach of the E.U.’s buttoned-down decorum — came as Hungarian authorities apparently laid a trap for thousands of asylum-seekers who had packed Budapest’s central train station after days of worsening conditions outside the station. Police had blocked them from entering the station for days but allowed them in early Thursday.
But a refugee-packed train apparently bound for the Austrian border came to a halt just west of Budapest, in a small town where dozens of police officers were waiting on the platform. They tried to force people off the train to take them to a migrant-processing center, threatening their chances to make it onward to Western Europe.
By day’s end, there was a standoff, with the packed train surrounded by police and the migrants refusing to budge. Some of the passengers received medical treatment on the platform.
Orban, Hungary’s nationalist leader who has spearheaded attempts to turn back the migrants, said Thursday that he had little choice but to seal his nation’s border with razor wire, soldiers and a high fence.
“We Hungarians are full of fear, people in Europe are full of fear, because we see that the European leaders, among them the prime ministers, are not able to control the situation,” he said in Brussels in a raw joint appearance with European Parliament President Martin Schulz. Orban and Schulz, a veteran politician from Germany, made no attempt to paper over their differences or their distaste for each other.
The Hungarian leader blamed Germany for the crisis, saying that its open-door policy toward Syrian asylum-seekers was propelling a wave of migrants to undertake dangerous journeys toward Europe’s heart. Germany expects 800,000 asylum-seekers this year, and it has said that it does not plan to turn away Syrians.
“The moral, human thing is to make clear: ‘Please don’t come. Why do you have to go from Turkey to Europe? Turkey is a safe country. Stay there. It’s risky to come,’ ” Orban said.
Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have overwhelmed Europe’s capacity to respond in recent months, opening stark divisions. Some leaders believe that the world’s largest economic bloc — a vast territory of 503 million residents — is more than capable of accommodating refugees. Others, including Hungary’s Orban, believe the continent’s population is in a far more delicate state.
The divisions could threaten some of the most basic tenets of the E.U., an alliance built on the ashes of World War II in a bid never again to allow such destruction. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this week that a Europe with no internal borders — a key achievement of European unification — could be in question if no solution to the refugee crisis is found.
Schulz called Orban’s approach “wrong.”
He warned that the splits emerging during the refugee crisis could do lasting damage to the 28-nation alliance, which was founded on a spirit of consensus and burden-sharing.
“This is a crucial moment for the European Union,” Schulz said. “A deeper split of the union is a risk we cannot exclude.”
Orban’s fears are shared by many Eastern European nations, which have pushed hard against any attempt to require them to take in asylum-seekers. Slovakia has said it will accept only Christians. In Estonia, where fewer than 100 migrants have been resettled, police on Thursday were investigating a suspicious early-morning fire at a dormitory that was housing victims of Syria’s war.
But the concerns also extend to Britain. There, fewer Syrians than would fit in a London subway train have been accepted this year. British media reported Thursday that Prime Minister David Cameron would soon announce plans to take in “thousands” more Syrian refugees, a striking turnaround for a leader who a day earlier had said that the answer to the crisis was not simply taking in “more and more” refugees.
Elsewhere in Europe, the refusals brought mounting anger from leaders who are more sympathetic to the growing crowds of asylum-seekers.
“For a Christian, it shouldn’t matter what race, religion and nationality the person in need represents,” European Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday, launching into Orban before the two met in Brussels. Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, proposed resettling at least 100,000 refugees across Europe.
In France, President François Hollande said the death of the toddler is “a tragedy, but it’s also a call to the European conscience. Europe is made of values and principles.” Images of the child’s body lying facedown and partly in the water on a Turkish beach evoked consternation around the world.
Hollande said he had just reached an agreement with Germany on a proposal for mandatory quotas to more equitably spread refugees across the E.U. Some European countries “are not shouldering their moral obligations,” he said.
Merkel, meanwhile, said she understood that not every nation was prepared to take on as large a burden as her country was doing. But she said it was impossible for Germany, Sweden and Austria alone to continue taking in the vast majority of the incoming asylum-seekers.
“The Geneva Convention does not apply only to Germany but also to every state,” she said, referring to the international treaty that requires countries to take in refugees of war.
Orban has vowed to seal Hungary’s borders by Sept. 15, empowered by emergency measures expected to be approved by the country’s parliament in the coming days. The measures would give authorities broad powers to crack down on illegal migration.
Outside Budapest’s elegant stone-and-glass-fronted station Thursday evening, people living in tents and atop worn woolen blankets sprawled across a vast public plaza and into an adjacent subway concourse. Tourists carrying frame backpacks slipped into the station entrance past women cradling babies, men pacing anxiously and children arguing over the few available toys.
Refugees expressed a keen awareness that Hungary does not want them — and said the feeling is mutual.
“Hungary is a poor country. They can’t give us the life we’re looking for. They can’t even give us food or water,” said Yahya Lababidi, a tank-top-wearing 21-year-old law student from the northern Syrian province of Idlib. “We want to go to the rich countries.”
Lababidi said he had been traveling for a month, passing along “the usual route” — through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia — with a plan ultimately to settle in the Netherlands. But he said that when he tried to enter the train station in Budapest five days earlier, police officers barred his path. Since then, he’s been sleeping on the cold stone of the plaza.
“I escaped from war,” he said. “I thought things would be better than this.”
Hungarian leaders “have done all they can to stir up popular sentiment against immigrants and refugees,” said Marta Pardavi, a co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a group that offers legal advice to asylum-seekers. “This has become a totally divided issue. Friendships break up over this.”
Critics of the European response said the continent’s 20th-century history of dictatorships and wars should instill in it more sympathy for others in need.
“We are facing a historical moment, perhaps one of the biggest the E.U. has had to face over the last couple of decades,” said Yves Pascouau, director of migration and mobility policies at the Brussels-based European Policy Center. “European citizens have fled dictatorships and wars. This is a part of our history. We’ve been able to be protected elsewhere in our countries.”
Witte reported from Budapest. Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
