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70 Dead, Dozens Still Missing After Turkey Floods; Rescue Ops Continue

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More than 40 villages still have no electricity after flash floods last week.
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Bozkurt:
Seventy people died and 47 are still missing in Turkey after flash floods hit Black Sea regions last week, officials said on Monday.
The death count has been climbing all weekend as rescue and recovery workers pick through debris left behind by the subsiding waters in the hardest-hit areas.
More than 40 villages still have no electricity and some areas have no running water, according to the disaster and emergencies service.
Emergency teams set up temporary cell phone receivers and transmitters to help with communications, it said.
The devastation across Turkey's northern regions came just as the country was gaining control over hundreds of wildfires that killed eight people and destroyed swathes of forest along its scenic southern coast.
On Saturday, five Russian servicemen and three Turkish citizens died when their Russian Be-200 firefighting plane crashed in a remote mountainous zone in the south.
Scientists say natural disasters such as wildfires and floods are becoming more intense and frequent because of global warming caused by polluting emissions.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/70-dead-dozens-still-missing-after-turkey-floods-rescue-ops-continue-2511808">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/70-dead-dozens-still-missing-after-turkey-floods-rescue-ops-continue-2511808</a>

news world 70 Dead, Dozens Still Missing After Turkey Floods; Rescue Ops Continue

More than 40 villages still have no electricity after flash floods last week. Bozkurt: Seventy people died and 47 are still missing in ...

US "Domestic Politics" Behind Afghanistan Withdrawal: German Chancellor

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="US 'Domestic Politics' Behind Afghanistan Withdrawal: German Chancellor" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-04/pk15delg_angela-merkelafp_625x300_25_April_21.jpg" title="US 'Domestic Politics' Behind Afghanistan Withdrawal: German Chancellor" /></div>
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said US withdrew from Afghanistan because of domestic politics. (File)
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Berlin:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that the United States had decided to withdraw from Afghanistan partly because of domestic political reasons, sources in her party told AFP.
At a meeting with her CDU-CSU party leadership, Merkel said NATO's decision to pull out after almost two decades of deployment was "ultimately made by the Americans", and that "domestic political reasons" were partly to blame.
"We have always said, if the Americans stay, we will also stay," she said, according to participants at the meeting.
"The troop withdrawal sparked a domino effect" that culminated in the Taliban sweeping back into power, said Merkel.
"For the many who have built on the progress and freedom -- especially women -- these are bitter events," she said.
Efforts must now be focused on evacuating German nationals as well as Afghans who had worked with the Germans or who are in danger from the Taliban, she said.
Berlin estimates that 2,500 local employees who worked with German troops or at the embassy, as well as their family members, need to be evacuated from the country.
Another 2,000 Afghans, such as human rights activists or employees of non-governmental organisations, also need to be brought out of the country. The number swells to 10,000 if their family members are included.
Beyond these groups, many others will seek to leave Afghanistan, said Merkel.
"We must do everything we can to help neighbouring countries to support the refugees," she said, according to the sources.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-domestic-politics-behind-afghanistan-withdrawal-german-chancellor-2511772">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-domestic-politics-behind-afghanistan-withdrawal-german-chancellor-2511772</a>

news world US "Domestic Politics" Behind Afghanistan Withdrawal: German Chancellor

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said US withdrew from Afghanistan because of domestic politics. (File) Berlin: German Chancellor Angela...

In Taliban Takeover, Spiraling Political Calamity For President Biden

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="In Taliban Takeover, Spiraling Political Calamity For President Biden" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/gkl9rmks_taliban-bloomberg_625x300_16_August_21.jpg" title="In Taliban Takeover, Spiraling Political Calamity For President Biden" /></div>
Afghanistan: Taliban has taken control of the country after withdrawal of US-led foreign forces.
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Just last month President Joe Biden defended his Afghanistan pullout by saying that "the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely."
The images of Taliban fighters inside the presidential palace in Kabul on Sunday, after a series of provincial capitals fell in rapid succession and the nation's president fled, showed just how wrong Biden's prediction has been.
Instead of an American-trained Afghan military staving off Taliban terrorists for months or longer, the U.S.'s longest war is ending with a hasty evacuation of diplomats from Kabul's airport. Their sudden departure is raising difficult questions about Biden's approach to the conflict, and creating a spiraling political calamity for a president who had promised to be a sure-handed steward of U.S. foreign policy.
Biden's top aides fanned out across U.S. networks Monday morning to defend the withdrawal, saying the focus is now on securing Kabul's airport and that Biden's worst option would be sending troops back in to fight the Taliban.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Jon Finer, said that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated faster than any analyst expected, and chided the Afghan army for being unwilling to slow the Taliban advance.
In an interview with ABC, Sullivan downplayed the impact of the withdrawal on U.S. counterterrorism efforts worldwide. "We can fight terrorism effectively without having a large military footprint on the ground," he said. "What the president was not prepared to do was enter a third decade of conflict."
Both Sullivan and Finer said they expected Biden to speak publicly on the matter soon, but didn't specify when.
While Americans were left recalling the harried final days of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S.'s biggest adversaries saw a potent sign of America's vulnerabilities and shaky claim to leadership after the tumult of the Trump years.
Even some close allies couldn't hide their frustration.
"Nobody wants Afghanistan, once again, to be a breeding ground for terror," U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday. "It's fair to say the U.S. decision to pull out has accelerated things."
For Biden, the collapse was a punishing blow that may only worsen with time. The president had spent the early months of his administration basking in the glow of a ramped-up vaccination drive and budget and infrastructure deals meant to heal a struggling American economy.
The scenes out of Kabul will undermine those accomplishments.
"It couldn't look any worse, and that will have an impact," said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. "It's very easy to say, Donald Trump set us up for this and we're just simply following through, but really any responsible leader who was listening to all of the advice he was getting would have taken a more measured approach."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
LOOK: The Al Jazeera network broadcast what it said were live images of armed Taliban fighters roaming the presidential palace and posing at desks.
The militant group said it plans to soon declare a new “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” <a href="https://t.co/0DXn7XEkee">https://t.co/0DXn7XEkee</a><a href="https://t.co/604l4dX5f4">pic.twitter.com/604l4dX5f4</a>
— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) <a href="https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1426996819100307457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 15, 2021</a></blockquote>
For all the flaws in the deal Trump signed with the Taliban last year -- following talks in Qatar in which Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's government was sidelined -- Biden delayed the plan he inherited by just three months. Then his administration seemed caught off-guard when it became clear that Afghan translators and other allies who wanted to be evacuated weren't going to be out of the country before U.S. troops left.
Domestically, the political outrage over Afghanistan's fall from Republicans was predictable -- many didn't support Trump's plans to withdraw, either -- but Democrats were angry, too.
"Given the number of American lives lost and the number of soldiers who came back with life-changing injuries, it's devastating to watch 20 years of U.S. support for the Afghanistan army amount to almost nothing," Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said.
Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican who often clashed with Trump, said it was a "shameful, Saigon-like abandonment of Kabul." 
'Decided to Lose'
"History must be clear about this: American troops didn't lose this war -- Donald Trump and Joe Biden deliberately decided to lose," Sasse added.
With 6,000 U.S. troops expected back in Afghanistan guarding its airport this week, Biden will have much to answer for, including: how could the U.S., with all its military might and intelligence infrastructure, so entirely fail to see how quickly the Taliban would take over the country? How could an Afghan military built up with more than $80 billion in U.S. taxpayer support collapse in just days?
After he announced his decision in April to withdraw forces by September, Biden said the U.S. would maintain an "over the horizon" capability to step back into Afghanistan if needed to counter terrorists.
But America's mission in Afghanistan, realistically or not, was long pitched as being about more than going after the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Aid workers and contractors, backed by American and NATO military forces, poured billions of dollars into infrastructure projects and efforts to wean Afghan farmers off poppy production, the basis of the opium trade.
Female Rights
The foreign military presence also helped open up more space for girls and women, whose plight under the Taliban's previous rule was roundly condemned and whose futures have never looked so precarious.
It was not just America's longest war, but a costly one as well -- four presidents in succession spent nearly $1 trillion on a far-off conflict that killed about 2,400 American soldiers, but none until now found a way to leave. In justifying his withdrawal, Biden said there was little to be gained from staying longer.
That was a perspective the Taliban knew they could capitalize on if they could sustain themselves. And over 20 years, they rebuilt themselves despite an American troop presence that swelled to 100,000 at one point.
"Ultimately, it's up to the Afghans themselves," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. "It's up to the Afghan government, it's up to the Taliban to decide the way forward for the country, including Kabul."
Qatar Talks
In the end, the result was a U.S. government looking like it got outplayed by Taliban leaders who told them what they wanted to hear: we'll stop killing Americans and you'll get your troops out. Trump's administration, in talks sealed by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, agreed, and the deal was handed to Biden when he took office.
"Everyone's passing around this burning bag of crap and if you didn't set it down you didn't have to acknowledge what it was," said Jason Dempsey, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who deployed twice to Afghanistan and once to Iraq. "The bright spot in this day of calamity is a president finally being willing to take ownership of a foreign policy failure even if it wasn't his own design."
But for the time being, as the Taliban reentered Kabul and President Ghani went into exile, one conclusion seemed hard to avoid: Biden's administration mismanaged a withdrawal that was always going to be complicated.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin insisted in a briefing to lawmakers on Sunday that U.S. troops would've been attacked by the Taliban if they hadn't withdrawn. But that only raised further questions about why the world's most potent military was being run out of the country by less well-armed insurgents.
"Ultimately, there was a way to handle this withdrawal responsibly, slowly -- helping and guiding the Afghan security forces that America built up over 20 years -- but Biden chose the quicker route, having lost patience with this war," said Madiha Afzal, a Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution. "That precipitousness served as the final straw, ending in what we have just witnessed, the rapid collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/in-taliban-takeover-spiraling-political-calamity-for-president-biden-2511765">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/in-taliban-takeover-spiraling-political-calamity-for-president-biden-2511765</a>

news world In Taliban Takeover, Spiraling Political Calamity For President Biden

Afghanistan: Taliban has taken control of the country after withdrawal of US-led foreign forces. Just last month President Joe Biden def...

Kabul's Former 'Green Zone' Abandoned As Diplomats Flee Afghan Capital

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Kabul's Former 'Green Zone' Abandoned As Diplomats Flee Afghan Capital" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/frkt0478_kabul-_625x300_06_August_21.jpg" title="Kabul's Former 'Green Zone' Abandoned As Diplomats Flee Afghan Capital" /></div>
Afghanistan: A general view of the green zone in Kabul, Afghanistan. (File)
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Kabul:
Kabul's former diplomatic quarter fell silent on Monday as foreign missions were moved to the airport, leaving Taliban patrols in control of the fortified zone of concrete blast walls and checkpoints known as the Green Zone.
With police and security contractors who once guarded the embassies in the Wazir Akbar Khan district now gone, some motorists were forced to get out of their cars and lift security barriers themselves before driving through.
"It is strange to sit here and see empty streets, no more busy diplomatic convoys, big cars with guns mounted," said Gul Mohammed Hakim, one the city's ubiquitous naan (bread) makers who has a shop in the area.
"I will be here baking bread, but will earn very small amounts of money. The security guards who were my friends, they are gone."
A couple of streets away from the now-deserted British embassy, a Taliban patrol went into the compound of Tolo News, Afghanistan's largest private broadcaster which lost several journalists to Taliban attacks over the years.
"So far they are polite, enquiring about our weapons (of the security team)," Saad Mohseni, head of Moby Group, which owns the station, said on Twitter. "They have also agreed to keep the compound safe".
Elsewhere in the city, there was a mood of shocked fear among many former government employees and civil rights activists, caught completely by surprise by the lightning seizure of the city and the flight of President Ashraf Ghani.
"Nobody could believe it would go so quickly," said one former government employee, now hiding in a friend's home. "They took Kabul in five hours!"
"Everyone I know, all the civil society people, government ministers, deputy ministers just feel lost. They're hiding or waiting," he said.
The victorious insurgents have promised not to carry out retribution against former government workers and a Taliban leader said his fighters had been "ordered to allow Afghans to resume daily activities and do nothing to scare civilians."
"Normal life will continue in a much better way, that's all I can say for now," he told Reuters via Whatsapp.
But already many people were adjusting to the new reality, expecting a return to the customs of the previous period of Taliban rule between 1996-2001, when men were not permitted to trim their beards and women were required to wear the all-enveloping burqa cloak in public.
"My first concern was to grow my beard and how to grow it fast," Hakim said. "I also checked with my wife if there were enough burqas for her and the girls."
In the city's Chicken Street, beloved of Western hippy tourists in the 1970s, the scores of shops selling carpets, handicrafts and jewellery, as well as small cafes, were closed.
Sherzad Karim Stanekzai, who owns a carpet and textiles store, said he decided to sleep inside his shuttered shop to protect his goods.
"I am in a complete state of shock. The Taliban entering that scared me, but (President Ashraf) Ghani leaving all of us in this situation has been the worst," he said.
"I lost three brothers in seven years in this war, now I have to protect my business."
He said had no idea where his next customers would come from. "I know there will be no foreigners, no international people who will now come to Kabul."
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/kabuls-former-green-zone-abandoned-as-diplomats-flee-afghan-capital-2511732">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/kabuls-former-green-zone-abandoned-as-diplomats-flee-afghan-capital-2511732</a>

news world Kabul's Former 'Green Zone' Abandoned As Diplomats Flee Afghan Capital

Afghanistan: A general view of the green zone in Kabul, Afghanistan. (File) Kabul: Kabul's former diplomatic quarter fell silent on...

Afghan Military Plane Crashes In Uzbekistan: Reports

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Afghan Military Plane Crashes In Uzbekistan: Reports" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2019-01/k9b27k2_cargo-plane-generic_625x300_14_January_19.jpg" title="Afghan Military Plane Crashes In Uzbekistan: Reports" /></div>
Afghan military plane crashes in Uzbekistan, reports said. (Representational)
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Tashkent:
An Afghan military plane has crashed in Uzbekistan, the Central Asian country's defence ministry said on Monday, confirming earlier reports.
"The military plane illegally crossed the border of Uzbekistan. An investigation is under way," ministry spokesman Bakhrom Zulfikarov told AFP, confirming Uzbek media reports of a crash taking place late Sunday in Uzbekistan's southern province of Surkhondaryo, which borders Afghanistan.
Zulfikarov said the ministry would prepare a statement on the crash.
Bekpulat Okboyev, a doctor in Surkhondaryo province, told AFP his hospital had taken in two patients who were wearing Afghan military uniforms on Sunday evening.
The doctor described one of the patients as having come in "with a parachute" and noted that the man had suffered fractures.
Central Asia has watched with alarm as Afghanistan's government has collapsed.
Three former Soviet countries -- Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- border the country.
On Sunday, Uzbekistan said 84 Afghan soldiers had been detained crossing the border, adding that it was negotiating with the Afghans over the soldiers' return.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghan-military-plane-crashes-in-uzbekistan-reports-news-agency-afp-2511729">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghan-military-plane-crashes-in-uzbekistan-reports-news-agency-afp-2511729</a>

news world Afghan Military Plane Crashes In Uzbekistan: Reports

Afghan military plane crashes in Uzbekistan, reports said. (Representational) Tashkent: An Afghan military plane has crashed in Uzbekis...

GOP Senator Helping Get Americans Out Of Afghanistan In Wake Of Complete Lack Of Any Plan From Biden

After attempts by the Biden administration and the establishment media to downplay the anti-communist uprising in Cuba as anything but that, Senator Marco Rubio made an impassioned speech demanding that the government “call it for what it is.”
“We should be clear in our language,” Rubio said during a speech on the Senate floor, adding “We don’t just condemn this tyranny. We condemn this communist, this Marxist, this socialist tyranny.”
Rubio demanded that America make “clear about whose side we’re on.” 
“The first lesson we need to take away from it is that Marxism, socialism, doesn’t work,” Rubio continued, adding “The way socialism, the way Marxism has always worked, the way it’s always empowered itself, is it goes to the people and immediately divides them. It says there is an oppressor class and that there is this victim class and these evil oppressors, capitalists, in the case of socialism or traditional Marxism, they oppress the victims.”
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Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, noted that the so called “opening” of Cuba under the Obama administration ignores that fact that a socialist regime still reigns with an iron fist over the people.
“They will use any opening as a tool — as a weapon — against their people, because that’s what socialism does,” Rubio urged, adding “That’s what these Marxists do in Cuba. They will use anything as a weapon against the people of Cuba.”
“You can open up all you want. We can pass a bill here that says, ‘Open to Cuba. A hundred percent open.’ Full free trade, you can do whatever you want. At the end of the day, the Cuban regime will control that opening. It’s not just what we want to do, it’s what they want to do,” the Senator further explained.
He went on to note that tourism, financial, medical and agricultural agreements have been tightly controlled by the communist Cuban military with the general Cuban population seeing little benefit from them “because socialism is about control.”
Rubio also took to Twitter Tuesday, and pointed out the hypocrisy of the platform banning US politicians, including Trump, while allowing ‘Marxist Socialist dictators to incite violence’:
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The likes of CBS News have even suggested that Trump’s actions during his time as president, rather than socialism in the country, led to the collapse of the Cuban economy:
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Footage out of the country has shown anti-communist protesters waving the U.S. flag in the streets:
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true" readability="7.3957703927492">
This is deeply moving.
Watch as Cubans wave the American flag while marching against the island’s 62 year-old communist dictatorship on the streets of Havana.
Never forget what America represents to millions across the world. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SOSCuba?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SOSCuba</a>🇨🇺 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PatriaYVida?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PatriaYVida</a> 
<a href="https://t.co/rbEZmL7YgB">pic.twitter.com/rbEZmL7YgB</a>
— Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) <a href="https://twitter.com/GiancarloSopo/status/1414330530200440836?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 11, 2021</a></blockquote>
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source <a href="https://summit.news/2021/08/16/gop-senator-helping-get-americans-out-of-afghanistan-in-wake-of-complete-lack-of-any-plan-from-biden/">https://summit.news/2021/08/16/gop-senator-helping-get-americans-out-of-afghanistan-in-wake-of-complete-lack-of-any-plan-from-biden/</a>

revolution summit GOP Senator Helping Get Americans Out Of Afghanistan In Wake Of Complete Lack Of Any Plan From Biden

After attempts by the Biden administration and the establishment media to downplay the anti-communist uprising in Cuba as anything but that,...