Washington: The United States has slammed China for its move to impose a controversial national security law in Hong Kong, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying it's a "sad day" for the people of the territory and warning Beijing of new countermeasures.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday signed a controversial security law that gave Beijing new powers over Hong Kong that are tailor-made to crackdown against dissent, criminalising sedition and effectively curtailing protests, amidst global anger and outrage in the former British colony.
In a strongly-worded statement on Tuesday night, Pompeo said, "The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) decision to impose draconian national security legislation on Hong Kong destroys the territory's autonomy and one of China's greatest achievements."
"Hong Kong demonstrated to the world what free Chinese people could achieve one of the most successful economies and vibrant societies in the world," he said.
But Beijing's "paranoia and fear" of its own people's aspirations have led it to eviscerate the very foundation of the territory's success, turning 'One Country, Two Systems' into 'One Country, One System', the US Secretary of State said. "Today marks a sad day for Hong Kong, and for freedom-loving people across China."
Civil liberties, including the right to protest, freedom of speech and the independence of the judiciary, were enshrined in Hong Kong's mini-constitution called 'Basic Law', which came into effect with the end of British control in 1997.
File image of Mike Pompeo. AP
The 50-year agreement, in effect, offers Hong Kong a "one country, two systems" principle, guaranteeing it the rights and freedoms that do not exist in mainland China.
Pompeo said the United States will continue to stand with the freedom-loving people of Hong Kong and respond to Beijing's attacks on freedoms of speech, the press, and assembly, as well as the rule of law, all of which have, until now, allowed the territory to flourish.
He rued that the CCP's action demonstrates once again that Beijing's commitments in this case the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law were "empty words".
The Chinese Communist Party promised 50 years of freedom to the Hong Kong people, and gave them only 23. Within the past few years, Beijing has also violated its agreements with the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations, Pompeo said.
"This is a pattern the world cannot ignore," he said, adding that the United States will not stand idly by while China "swallows Hong Kong into its authoritarian maw".
"Last week, we imposed visa restrictions on CCP officials responsible for undermining Hong Kong's autonomy. We are ending defense and dual-use technology exports to the territory. As per President (Donald) Trump's instruction, we will eliminate policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment, with few exceptions," he said.
In a related action, the United States on Tuesday suspended any License Exceptions for exports and re-exports to Hong Kong, and transfers within the territory of items subject to the Export Administration Regulations that provide differential treatment than those available to China.
A day earlier, the Commerce Department regulations affording preferential treatment to Hong Kong over China, including the availability of export license exceptions, were suspended.
"Further actions to eliminate differential treatment are also being evaluated. We urge Beijing to immediately reverse course and fulfil the promises it has made to the people of Hong Kong and the world," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said.
Congressman John Curtis, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led a bipartisan coalition to introduce the Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act, which would designate the people of Hong Kong as Priority 2 refugees, streamlining their admission process to the US and opening up an asylum route for frontline activists in immediate danger.
The Senate companion bill is led by Senators Marco Rubio, Bob Menendez, Todd Young and Ben Cardin.
The world witnessed the courage of Hong Kong's pro-democracy activists, who last year took to the streets to defend their autonomy from China's authoritarian grip, Rubio said.
"Following last night's implementation of Beijing's National Security Law, the US must help the people of Hong Kong preserve their society at home and find refuge for those who face persecution for exercising the rights once guaranteed under the Joint Declaration.
US officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing US and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.
Although the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty programme that detainees described during interrogations. Investigators also identified by name numerous Afghans in a network linked to the suspected Russian operation, the officials said — including, two of them added, a man believed to have served as an intermediary for distributing some of the funds and who is now thought to be in Russia.
The intercepts bolstered the findings gleaned from the interrogations, helping reduce an earlier disagreement among intelligence analysts and agencies over the reliability of the detainees. The disclosures further undercut White House officials’ claim that the intelligence was too uncertain to brief President Donald Trump. In fact, the information was provided to him in his daily written brief in late February, two officials have said.
Afghan officials this week described a sequence of events that dovetailed with the account of the intelligence. They said that several businessmen who transfer money through the informal hawala system were arrested in Afghanistan over the past six months and were suspected of being part of a ring of middlemen who operated between the Russian intelligence agency, known as the GRU, and Taliban-linked militants. The businessmen were arrested in what the officials described as sweeping raids in the north of Afghanistan, as well as in Kabul.
A half-million dollars was seized from the home of one of the men, added a provincial official. The New York Times had previously reported that the recovery of an unusually large amount of cash in a raid was an early piece in the puzzle that investigators put together.
The three US officials who described and confirmed details about the basis for the intelligence assessment spoke on condition of anonymity amid swelling turmoil over the Trump administration’s failure to authorise any response to Russia’s suspected proxy targeting of US troops and downplaying of the issue after it came to light four days ago.
White House and National Security Council officials declined to comment, as did the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe. They pointed to statements late Monday from Ratcliffe; the national security advisor, Robert C O’Brien; and the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, Jonathan Hoffman. All of them said that recent news reports about Afghanistan remained unsubstantiated.
The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, berated The Times on Tuesday after this article was published, saying that reports based on “selective leaking” disrupt intelligence gathering. She did not address or deny the facts about the intelligence assessment, saying she would not disclose classified information.
On Monday, the administration invited several House Republicans to the White House to discuss the intelligence. The briefing was mostly carried out by three Trump administration officials: Ratcliffe, O’Brien and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Until recently, both Meadows and Ratcliffe were Republican congressmen known for being outspoken supporters of Trump.
That briefing focussed on intelligence information that supported the conclusion that Russia was running a covert bounty operation and other information that did not support it, according to two people familiar with the meeting. For example, the briefing focused in part on the interrogated detainees’ accounts and the earlier analysts’ disagreement over it.
Both people said the intent of the briefing seemed to be to make the point that the intelligence on the suspected Russian bounty plot was not clear cut. For example, one of the people said, the White House also cited some interrogations by Afghan intelligence officials of other detainees, downplaying their credibility by describing them as low-level.
The administration officials did not mention anything in the House Republican briefing about intercepted data tracking financial transfers, both of the people familiar with it said.
Democrats and Senate Republicans were also separately briefed at the White House on Tuesday morning. Democrats emerged saying that the issue was clearly not, as Trump has suggested, a “hoax.” They demanded to hear directly from intelligence officials, rather than from Trump’s political appointees, but conceded they had not secured a commitment for such a briefing.
Based on the intelligence they saw, the lawmakers said they were deeply troubled by Trump’s insistence that he did not know about the plot and his subsequent obfuscation when it became public.
“I find it inexplicable in light of these very public allegations that the president hasn’t come before the country and assured the American people that he will get to the bottom of whether Russia is putting bounties on American troops and that he will do everything in his power to make sure that we protect American troops,” said Representative Adam Schiff, D-California, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
He added: “I do not understand for a moment why the president is not saying this to the American people right now and is relying on ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I haven’t heard,’ ‘I haven’t been briefed.’ That is just not excusable.”
Ratcliffe was scheduled to go to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet privately with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, an official familiar with the planning said.
The Times reported last week that intelligence officials believed that a unit of the GRU had offered and paid bounties for killing US troops and other coalition forces and that the White House had not authorised a response after the National Security Council convened an interagency meeting about the problem in late March.
Investigators are said to be focused on at least two deadly attacks on US soldiers in Afghanistan. One is an April 2019 bombing outside Bagram Airfield that killed three Marines: Staff Sergeant Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Delaware; Corporal Robert A Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York; and Sergeant Benjamin S Hines, 31, of York, Pennsylvania.
On Monday, Felicia Arculeo, the mother of Hendriks, told CNBC that she was upset to learn from news reports of the suspicions that her son’s death arose from a Russian bounty operation. She said she wanted an investigation, adding that “the parties who are responsible should be held accountable, if that’s even possible.”
Officials did not say which other attack was under scrutiny.
In claiming that the information was not provided to him, Trump has also dismissed the intelligence assessment as “so-called” and claimed he was told that it was “not credible.” The White House subsequently issued statements in the names of several subordinates denying that he had been briefed.
McEnany reiterated that claim on Monday and said that the information had not been elevated to Trump because there was a dissenting view about it within the intelligence community.
But she and other administration officials demurred when pressed to say whether their denials encompassed the president’s daily written briefing, a compendium of the most significant intelligence and analysis that the intelligence community writes for presidents to read. Trump is known to often neglect reading his written briefings.
Intelligence about the suspected Russian plot was included in the President’s Daily Brief in late February, according to two officials, contrasting Trump’s claim on Sunday that he was never “briefed or told” about the matter.
The information was also considered solid enough to be distributed to the broader intelligence community in a 4 May article in the CIA’s World Intelligence Review, commonly called The Wire, according to several officials.
A spokesperson for the Taliban has denied that it accepted Russian-paid bounties to carry out attacks on Americans and other coalition soldiers, saying the group needed no such encouragement for its operations. But one US official said the focus had been on criminals closely associated with the Taliban.
In a raid in Kunduz City in the north about six months ago, 13 people were arrested in a joint operation by US forces and the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, according to Safiullah Amiry, the deputy provincial council chief there. Two of the main targets of the raid had already fled — one to Tajikistan and one to Russia, Amiry said — but it was in the Kabul home of one of them where security forces found a half-million dollars. He said the Afghan intelligence agency had told him the raids were related to Russian money being dispersed to militants.
Two former Afghan officials said Monday that members of local criminal networks had carried out attacks for the Taliban in the past — not because they shared the Taliban’s ideology or goals, but in exchange for money.
In Parwan province, where Bagram Airfield is, the Taliban is known to have hired local criminals as freelancers, said General Zaman Mamozai, the former police chief of the province. He said the Taliban’s commanders are based in two districts of the province, Seyagird and Shinwari, and that from there they coordinate a network that commissions criminals to carry out attacks.
And Haseeba Efat, a former member of Parwan’s provincial council, also said the Taliban has hired freelancers in Bagram district — including, in one case, one of his own distant relatives.
“They agree with these criminals that they won’t have monthly salary, but they will get paid for the work they do when the Taliban needs them,” Efat said.
Twenty US service members were killed in combat-related operations in Afghanistan last year, the most since 2014.
Charlie Savage, Mujib Mashal, Rukmini Callimachi, Eric Schmitt and Adam Goldman c.2020 The New York Times Company
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Tuesday for an arms embargo on Iran to be extended indefinitely, but his appeal fell flat at the United Nations, where Russia and China rejected it outright and close allies of the United States were ambivalent.
The embargo, which is set to expire on 18 October, stems from the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, and Iran has exceeded the accord’s limits on uranium enrichment since then, part of a steady escalation of tensions that have at times pushed the two countries dangerously close to war.
The American bid is all but certain to fail in the UN Security Council; it might not even collect enough support to be put to a vote, diplomats said. The Trump administration has threatened that if the embargo is not extended, the United States will try to invoke a “snapback” provision of the 2015 deal to reimpose former UN sanctions on Iran — a move other nations said would be unwise and legally invalid.
Representatives of Britain, France and Germany voiced unease at both the expiration of the embargo and the US approach, particularly the snapback, which they flatly opposed.
The European powers said they hoped to find some way to limit Iranian access to arms through a compromise negotiated in the framework of the 2015 agreement, not an action imposed by the Security Council.
The arms embargo applies to Iran importing or exporting most kinds of weapons, including aircraft and tanks. Some limits on missile and nuclear technology will remain in place for a few more years.
The resistance to Pompeo’s call — coming not only from only rivals like China and Russia, but also from key allies — illustrates the growing isolation and declining influence of the United States, analysts said, even in dealing with an Iran that members see as a rogue nation destabilising the region.
UN officials presented findings that the missiles used in an attack last September on crucial Saudi Arabian oil facilities were made in Iran, as were weapons bound for Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen that were seized by the US Navy. The findings supported the conclusions of Western intelligence agencies.
“Iran is already violating the arms embargo, even before its expiration date,” Pompeo said in the Security Council meeting, which was held by video link. “Imagine if Iranian activity were sanctioned, authorised by this group, if the restrictions are lifted.”
“Iran will be free to become a rogue weapons dealer, supplying arms to fuel conflicts from Venezuela, to Syria, to the far reaches of Afghanistan,” he added.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, dismissed claims of Iranian aggression based on what he called “self-serving allegations and forged documents,” adding that it was the United States that “has directly undermined global peace and security.”
Zarif began and ended his remarks by quoting Mohammad Mossadegh, the Iranian prime minister overthrown in a CIA-orchestrated coup in 1953 — a nod to a long history of American intervention.
The meeting on Tuesday marked the first time since 2017 that Pompeo and Zarif had taken part in the same forum, if only virtually, but they did not appear together in the grid view of diplomats shown on the UN website. Pompeo left the meeting before Zarif joined.
Since leaving the nuclear deal, Trump has tried to cut off Iran from doing business with the rest of the world, threatening economic penalties for countries and companies that do not go along. Though most of the world opposes the US stance, much of it has complied.
Noting that the 2015 agreement had been adopted by the Security Council, Zarif said, “for the first time in Security Council history, a permanent member is punishing member States for not violating a Security Council resolution.”
Security Council members and UN officials chastised both Iran and the United States, urging them to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often referred to as JCPoA.
Some pinned the current crisis on Trump, saying that he had started a long series of provocations and retaliations by withdrawing from the agreement and imposing punishing economic sanctions.
“China opposes the US push for extending the arms embargo on Iran,” said Zhang Jun, the ambassador from China — which, like Russia, France, Britain and the United States, has veto power in the council. China, Russia, Germany, Britain, France and the European Union are signatories to the 2015 agreement.
“Having quit the JCPoA, the US is no longer a participant and has no right to trigger a snapback at the UN,” Zhang said.
The German representative, Christoph Heusgen, said he deplored Iran’s aggressions in the region and its human rights record at home, but he also endorsed the view that Washington had no standing to invoke UN sanctions.
“It is very unfortunate that the United States left the JCPoA, and by doing this actually violated international law,” he said.
Henry Rome, senior Iran analyst for Eurasia Group, said the meeting was “another vivid illustration of Washington’s isolation on the Iran issue — as well as its failure over the past three years to persuade any other signatory of the deal to back its approach.”
In the meeting, Rosemary A DiCarlo, the UN undersecretary-general for political affairs, detailed evidence that arms and weapons parts involved in the US Navy seizure and the oil field attacks were Iranian-made. She added that Iran has begun to violate the nuclear agreement in surpassing limits to its uranium enrichment, a potential step toward being able to produce a nuclear weapon.
But DiCarlo, a US citizen, cited “divergent views” on whether Iranian rockets, launched in February and April, could carry a nuclear warhead, as the United States has claimed.
Richard Pérez-Peña, Lara Jakes and Farnaz Fassihi c.2020 The New York Times Company
Sacramento: A former police officer who terrorized California as a serial burglar and rapist and went on to kill more than a dozen people while evading capture for decades pleaded guilty Monday to murders attributed to the Golden State Killer.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr had remained almost silent in court since his 2018 arrest until he repeatedly uttered the words “guilty” and “I admit” in a hushed and raspy voice as part of a plea agreement that will spare him the death penalty for a life sentence with no chance of parole.
DeAngelo, 74, did not cooperate with authorities. But he muttered a confession of sorts after his arrest that cryptically referred to an alter ego named “Jerry” that he said forced him to commit the wave of crimes that appeared to end abruptly in 1986.
“I did all that,” DeAngelo said to himself while alone in a police interrogation room after his arrest in April 2018, Sacramento County prosecutor Thien Ho said.
“I didn’t have the strength to push him out,” DeAngelo said. “He made me. He went with me. It was like in my head, I mean, he’s a part of me. I didn’t want to do those things. I pushed Jerry out and had a happy life. I did all those things. I destroyed all their lives. So now I’ve got to pay the price.”
While prosecutors suggested DeAngelo had been faking a split-personality, Ho said his day of reckoning had arrived.
“The scope of Joseph DeAngelo’s crimes is simply staggering,” Ho said. ”Each time he escaped, slipping away silently into the night.”
There’s no escaping now. DeAngelo, seated in a wheelchair on a makeshift stage in a university ballroom that could accommodate more than 150 observers at a safe distance during the coronavirus pandemic, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of murder and dozens of rapes that were too old to prosecute.
All told, he admitted to 161 crimes involving 48 people, Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten said.
The large room at Sacramento State University was made to look like a state courtroom with the seal of the Sacramento County Superior Court behind the judge’s chair and the U.S. and state flags on the riser that served as a sort of stage for a daylong proceeding that had a theater-like feel. Large screens flanked the stage so spectators could follow the livestreamed hearing.
DeAngelo, who wore orange jail scrubs and a plastic face shield to prevent possible spread of the virus, listed to one side and his mouth hung open as prosecutors read graphic details of the rapes and killings where snacked on leftover turkey before leaving.
Family members wept as the proceeding went on most of the day. A pile of used tissues sat on the floor next to Jennifer Carole, whose father, attorney Lyman Smith, was slain in 1980 with his wife, Charlene Smith, who was raped before being killed.
“This is much harder than I thought it was going to be. And I thought it was going to be hard," Carole said. “I feel a lot of anger, which I don’t think I’ve felt so powerfully before."
DeAngelo, a Vietnam veteran, and a grandfather had never been on investigators' radar until about a decade after the crimes seemed to end. Investigators connected a series of assaults in central and Northern California to slayings in Southern California and settled on the umbrella Golden State Killer nickname for the mysterious assailant.
Police used DNA from crime scenes to find a distant relative through a popular genealogy website database then built a family tree that eventually led them to him. They tailed DeAngelo and secretly collected DNA from his car door and a discarded tissue to get an arrest warrant.
The retired truck mechanic was arrested at his home in the Sacramento suburbs — the same area he terrorized in the mid-1970s, earning the title 'East Area Rapist'.
Prosecutors detailed sadistic acts he committed after slipping into homes undetected and surprising couples in bed by shining a flashlight in their faces and threatening to kill everyone in the house — including young children — if they didn’t follow his orders.
The masked prowler initially said he only wanted their money to earn their cooperation. He would have women bind their husbands or boyfriends face down in bed with shoelaces, and then he would tie up the women. Victims described being prodded by the barrel of a gun or the point of a knife.
He piled dishes on the backs of men and said they would both be killed if he heard the plates crash while he raped the women.
At a home in Contra Costa County in the fall of 1978, he told a woman he would cut her baby boy’s ear off if she didn’t perform oral sex after he had raped her. “I admit," DeAngelo said after the prosecutor read the description of that crime.
He stole whatever he could find, sometimes a few bottles of Budweiser and some cash, other times diamond rings. He slipped off into the dark on foot or by bicycle and even evaded police who at times believed they came close to catching him. DeAngelo knew the territory well.
He started on the police force in the San Joaquin Valley farm town of Exeter in 1973, where he committed his first killing.
DeAngelo was among the officers trying to find a serial burglar in the neighboring city of Visalia responsible for about 100 break-ins.
Community college professor Claude Snelling was killed by the suspected “Visalia Ransacker” after trying to prevent him from kidnapping his 16-year-old daughter.
After three years on the force, DeAngelo moved back to the Sacramento area, where he worked for the Auburn Police Department in the Sierra foothills until 1979 when he was caught shoplifting dog repellent and a hammer — two items that could be of use to a burglar.
DeAngelo killed a couple walking their dog in a Sacramento suburb in 1978, but the majority of murders came after he moved to Southern California.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer choked up as family members of the victims stood during his description of each of the four killings there. Spitzer, who wiped a tear at one point, diverged from other prosecutors to address DeAngelo directly when discussing the 5 May 1986, rape and slaying of Janelle Cruz, 18 — the final killing.
“You attacked her, you beat her and you raped her,” Spitzer said. “You murdered her in the first-degree, bludgeoning her in the face.”
A guilty plea and life sentence avoid lengthy and expensive litigation. Victims will be able to confront DeAngelo during a lengthy sentencing hearing beginning on 17 August.
Victims began to stand in the audience as accounts of their attacks were read. Nearly two dozen were on their feet in solidarity as a prosecutor from Sacramento — where most of his sexual assaults took place — detailed each case. They cheered and laughed when Deputy District Attorney Amy Holliday noted victims consistently reported DeAngelo had a small penis.
One man, Victor Hayes, who was held at gunpoint while his girlfriend was raped in 1977 shouted out that he wanted his name read aloud.
"I've been waiting for 43 years. I’m not ashamed of what happened. I’ve never been John Doe in my life,” Hayes said later. “I want accountability and accountability starts with my name.”
Among the questions that remain is whether DeAngelo actually stopped his life of crime and, if so, why?
Ho cast doubt on DeAngelo's statement in the interrogation room, saying he had “feigned feeble incoherence" to detectives despite appearing sharp while under surveillance the day before his arrest. Ho said DeAngelo had acted crazy when he was arrested for shoplifting three decades earlier in an attempt to avoid charges.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said most serial killers do not have dual personalities or inner voices, though movies often portray them that way.
He said serial killers who get away with attacks for years are usually cunning and organized. Someone who suffers from a serious mental illness isn't capable of that. Serial killers who blame an alter-ego for their crimes are usually faking it, he said.
“It’s self-serving for someone to suggest that they did all of these things because of this voice: ‘Don’t blame me, blame the voice,’” Fox said.
Nairobi: James Gichina started out 15 years ago as a driver shuttling travellers from the airport, worked his way up to safari guide, and with the help of some bank loans, bought two minivans of his own to ferry vacationers around.
His clients were, as he is, members of Africa’s growing middle class — bankers from Nigeria, tech entrepreneurs from South Africa and fellow Kenyans who could finally afford trips to enjoy their own country’s beaches and wildlife preserves.
But when the coronavirus pandemic cratered the tourist industry and the economy, Gichina removed the seats from his minibus and started using it to hawk eggs and vegetables. With what he now earns, he said, he can barely afford to pay rent, buy food or send his nine-year-old son to school.
“We have been working hard to build better lives,” Gichina, 35, said of his colleagues in the tourist sector. Now, he said, “We have nothing.”
As the coronavirus surges in many countries in Africa, it is threatening to push as many as 58 million people in the region into extreme poverty, experts at the World Bank say. But beyond the devastating consequences for the continent’s most vulnerable people, the pandemic is also whittling away at one of Africa’s signature achievements: the growth of its middle class.
For the last decade, Africa’s middle class has been pivotal to the educational, political and economic development across the continent. New business owners and entrepreneurs have created jobs that, in turn, gave others a leg up as well.
Educated, tech-savvy families and young people with money to spare have fed the demand for consumer goods, called for democratic reforms, expanded the talent pool at all levels of society, and pushed for high-quality schools and health care.
About 170 million out of Africa’s 1.3 billion people are now classified as middle class. But about eight million of them could be thrust into poverty because of the coronavirus and its economic fallout, according to World Data Lab, a research organisation.
It’s a setback that may be felt for years to come.
“The tragedy is that because Africa is not growing fast, this collapse of the middle class could take several years to recover,” said Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the co-founder of the World Data Lab.
Africa’s middle class tripled over the past 30 years, by some estimates, spurred by job opportunities in sectors like technology, tourism and manufacturing. But now that the region is facing its first recession in 25 years, millions of educated people living in urban centres could fall victim to the extreme income inequality that has defined Africa for decades.
The rising middle class has been “critical for the future prospects of African economies as they stimulate long-term growth, social progress, an inclusive and prosperous society and effective and accountable governance,” said Landry Signé, author of Unlocking Africa’s Business Potential. The coronavirus “will drastically delay wages and hold back the dreams of Africa’s middle class,” he said.
Governments across Africa responded differently to the coronavirus, but Kenya was among those that closed borders, imposed curfews and restricted movement between counties. In Nairobi, the capital, malls were once touted as a symbol of a rising middle class. Now their owners are furloughing employees, shuttering stores and desperately trying to survive the crisis.
When Kenya first announced lockdown restrictions in March, there was almost no foot traffic at the Junction mall, where Nairobi’s middle class had once gravitated to dine and shop in more than 100 stores.
Eastleigh, a bustling area with dozens of malls, hotels, lodges and banks, was also put under a total lockdown in early May after a jump in reported coronavirus cases.
Maryan Bashir, who owns three stores in Eastleigh that sell mattresses and curtains, said traders like her were already worried about whether they could still get supplies from China as the pandemic began to affect imports. But the lockdown left them reeling from lack of customers.
It also cut employment. Out of 12 of her co-workers, only three lived within the locked-down area and could report to work.
Authorities lifted the curfew from Eastleigh in early June, but Bashir said it will be a long time before shop owners like her are able to make the same profits they made before the pandemic.
“The landlords are still asking for rent,” she said, “but if we are not earning anything, how do we even pay?”
The economic fallout of the COVID-19 outbreak is also being felt among the middle class in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy. Hit by low oil revenues in the pandemic, the West African nation faces increasing unemployment rates and a recession that could last until 2021, according to the International Monetary Fund.
As demand for goods and services crashed, small businesses and entrepreneurs dependent on cash flow found themselves increasingly in dire straits.
Biola Kazeem established his sports marketing company, Elev8 Sports Entertainment, six years ago, marrying his passion for sports with his college degree in communication. But as sports leagues worldwide canceled or postponed events, Kazeem said he lost 70 percent of his business and had to put half of his 11-member staff on leave without pay.
Despite facing financial challenges in the early years, “nothing absolutely prepared us for this,” Kazeem said in a phone interview from Lagos.
In Zimbabwe, which has been in economic free fall for years, the pandemic and the ensuing restrictions are threatening the solvency of those who have built a bridge into the middle class.
For years, Madeline Chiveso’s restaurant in downtown Harare, Zimbabwe, served professionals such as bankers, journalists and engineers flocking to work. But as infections rose and the restrictions tightened, there were no customers to serve. She was forced to close the restaurant.
She used to make $350 a day and now makes nothing. She is using her savings to pay bills, she said, jeopardising her dream of one day owning her own home.
“The future looks surely uncertain because nobody knows how this would end,” said Chiveso, who is 46 and a single mother of two daughters, both in college.
Kharas, of the World Data Lab, defined the middle class in Africa as households that spend anywhere between $11 and $110 per capita per day.
What distinguishes the middle class from the poor, said Razia Khan, chief economist for Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered bank, is the ability to earn a steady income. But because of the pandemic, many more people across Africa are at risk of being “knocked back into poverty” because of lack of jobs, unemployment benefits or any social safety net, she said.
The pandemic is also posing a threat to nascent industries supported by governments in Africa in recent years to boost the number of middle-income earners.
Rwanda, which announced aspirations to become a middle-income nation by 2035, supported the local textile and fashion industries to limit imports of used clothing from the United States and boost manufacturing.
Matthew Rugamba, 30, created House of Tayo in 2011, building it into one of the leading brands in Rwanda’s burgeoning fashion scene. Rugamba gained enough notice for his designs to be worn in Hollywood, at the premiere of the movie Black Panther.
But as Rwanda enforced one of the toughest lockdowns in Africa, Rugamba’s store shut its doors, only to open several weeks later to almost no customers. Even though he’s pivoted to making masks and introduced a delivery service, business has not been the same.
“We were at a point where people value the work that we do,” Rugamba said. But with the pandemic, he said, “you go through periods where you are worried that this is something that I have invested nine years of my life in, and is it going to be there tomorrow?”
More governments are offering financial support and tax breaks to businesses, and urging proprietors to hold onto their employees even if they reduce production or services, said Kharas, of the World Data Lab.
Economists like Khan said that emerging markets in Africa, no strangers to economic shocks, have proven resilient in the past and could come out stronger when the pandemic is over.
But that hope is likely a long way off for Gichina, the safari guide now selling eggs to survive. He works for the tour company Bonfire Adventures, which was founded in 2008 by an entrepreneur named Simon Kabu specifically to serve Africa’s growing middle class.
Once a milk delivery guy and conductor on the matatu minibuses used for transit in Kenya, Kabu grew up in Kenya’s central highlands to a mother who was a farmer and a father who was a retired civil servant.
But by starting a business that served the ever-growing travel needs of the middle class, he grew Bonfire Adventures into an award-winning tours company with 10 offices, 200 permanent staff and 300 drivers and guides.
The coronavirus has gutted all that, pushing Kabu, 45, to lay off his employees en masse. The only staff members currently working, he said, are accountants who are processing refunds for customers unable to travel.
Gichina hopes business will resume soon — especially as he dreads losing out on the peak wildebeest migration starting in late June, which usually draws tourists from across the world.
“The banks are pressuring us a lot,” he said of the urgency to settle his loans. “They are saying you have to pay.” But, he asked, “Where should we get the money?”
Abdi Latif Dahir c.2020 The New York Times Company
When a major explosion lit the skies on the edge of Tehran last week, the Iranian government was quick to dismiss the episode as a gas explosion at the Parchin military base, which was once the focus of international nuclear inspectors.
It turned out that was false: Satellite photographs show the explosion happened at a missile production facility not far from Parchin, a base laced with underground tunnels and long suspected to be a major site for Iran’s growing arsenal.
But beyond Tehran’s effort at misdirection — commercial satellite photographs showed the telltale burn marks of the explosion and the location — it is unclear whether the cause was an accident, sabotage or something else.
US and Israeli intelligence officials insist they had nothing to do with it.
But in Iran, where curating conspiracy theories is a national pastime, the sight of a huge explosion in eastern Tehran quickly merged on social media with news of a power outage in Shiraz, nearly 600 miles to the south. Shiraz also has major military facilities, and the explosion and the outage happened within the same hour on Friday.
There is no evidence the incidents were related.
Nuclear inspectors visited the Parchin military facility five years ago after years of standoffs with Iranian authorities. Renovations at the facility had been so extensive that it led to suspicions that the government might have been trying to hide past work on nuclear detonation technologies.
After the episode last week, Iranian news organisations were shown a small hole in an otherwise intact gas tank, which seemed an improbable explanation for an explosion so large that pictures of the flames, taken miles from the site, showed up on Twitter.
By the end of the weekend, overhead commercial photographs showed a scorched hillside at the Khojir missile production complex in eastern Tehran, where both liquid and solid propellants are made for Iran’s missile fleets.
“It seems likely that some sort of gas or liquid storage tank blew up,” said Fabian Hinz, an expert on Iran’s military at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. “Probably industrial gas that’s needed for missile production,” he said, but it was unclear from the photos. The main buildings at the missile production centre appeared undamaged.
Iran’s missile programme has long been a target of Israeli intelligence agencies. A large explosion in 2011, which killed a key architect of Iran’s missile programme, is widely viewed as an act of sabotage.
But this explosion may have been different. Two Israeli intelligence services that operate outside Israel’s borders, the Mossad and the Israel Defence Forces intelligence unit, said they were investigating the episode and had not yet reached a final conclusion on whether it was an accident or sabotage. But several officials insisted that Israel was not involved.
US officials also said they doubted it was a sabotage operation. Usually, Israel and the United States act in coordination in such covert missions, as they did with the cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear centrifuge facility at Natanz a decade ago.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on whether Israel was involved in the explosion, a standard response to such questions. A spokesperson for the IDF also declined to comment.
Ronen Solomon of IntelliTimes, an intelligence blog, who was among the first to identify the Khojir missile facility as the site of the explosion, noted that it did “little damage.” But he noted it was “a vast facility,” and as part of the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, it has been the target of US economic sanctions.
If the explosion was an act of sabotage, some analysts noted, it was carefully designed to not invite retaliation because damage was so minimal. But in the past, there have been small attacks designed to create fear among Iranians that foreign powers had insiders in the country’s sensitive military programmes.
Iran’s news media tried to counter reports about the missile site, saying those were generated by “enemy media” eager to portray Iran’s missile bases as vulnerable to attack.
David E Sanger, Ronen Bergman and Farnaz Fassihi c.2020 The New York Times Company
Kathmandu: Nepal's Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Sunday claimed that efforts are being made to oust him after his government redrew the country's political map by incorporating three strategically key Indian territories.
"Efforts are being made to remove me from power, but that will not succeed,” Oli claimed, without naming any person or country.
He said nobody has openly asked him to quit. “But I have smelt undercurrent movements,” Oli said while speaking at an event to commemorate the 69th birth anniversary of the popular leader of the Nepal Communist Party late Madan Bhandari at the Prime Minister's residence.
"There have been various kinds of activities in the embassies and hotels," he claimed. “If you listen to the news media from Delhi, you will get the gesture.”
He said some Nepalese leaders were also involved in the game to remove him immediately.
The differences between Prime Minister Oli and his opponents including the ruling party’s executive chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal "Prachanda" have surfaced during the ongoing Standing Committee meeting of the party.
Oli, who faced criticism within his party for skipping the first and the second day of the Standing Committee meetings, attended the third meeting on Saturday, but briefly. He, however, did not speak at the meeting.
"In the past when I signed trade agreements with Beijing, my minority government collapsed. But this time we have a government with a full-fledged majority, so no one can remove me now,” Oli said on Sunday.
"I did not commit any mistake by claiming our land, which has been snatched from us for the past 58 years after Nepal enjoyed the rights over these areas for 146 years," Oli said.
Nepal this month completed the process of redrawing the country's political map through a Constitutional amendment, incorporating three strategically important Indian areas.
India has termed as "untenable" the "artificial enlargement" of the territorial claims by Nepal after its Parliament unanimously approved the new political map of the country featuring Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura areas which India maintains belong to it.
The India-Nepal bilateral ties came under strain after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated an 80-km-long strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass with Dharchula in Uttarakhand on 8 May.
Nepal reacted sharply to the inauguration of the road claiming that it passed through Nepalese territory. India rejected the claim asserting that the road lies completely within its territory.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior leader of the ruling NCP told PTI that Oli’s indication was his opponents within the ruling party, not from outside.
"There have been growing differences within the ruling party and the Prime Minister is being cornered within his own party and his own colleagues are criticising the government''s performance," he said.
Another NCP leader said that Oli''s absence in the first two days of the meetings showed the growing differences between him and Prachanda.
Prachanda has time and again spoken about the lack of coordination between the government and the party and he was pressing for a one-man one position system to be followed by the NCP.
Washington: President Donald Trump on Sunday retweeted a video of one of his supporters yelling “white power!”, once again using the vast reach of his social media platforms to inflame racial divisions in a nation roiled by weeks of protests about police brutality against black people and demands for social justice reforms.
The edited racist video shows a white man riding in a golf cart bearing “Trump 2020” and “America First” signs during what appears to be an angry clash over the president and race between elderly white residents of a Florida retirement community. Trump deleted the tweet more than three hours after posting it.
In response to a protester shouting “Where’s your white hood?” and other taunts, the man in the golf cart pumps his fist in the air twice and says “white power!” twice. The two-minute video continues to show profane exchanges between protesters and other Trump supporters riding on more golf carts.
The president retweeted the video to his millions of followers just after 7:30 Sunday morning, thanking “the great people of The Villages,” the Florida retirement community where the clash apparently took place. He added: “The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!”
The tweet was widely criticised as racist and insensitive, and again demonstrated the president’s willingness to use social media to amplify some of the most hateful commentary of some of his followers, even at a moment of national unrest.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican senator, called the video “offensive” and asked Trump to take it off his Twitter page.
“There is no question he should not have retweeted it, and he should just take it down,” Scott said on CNN's State of the Union. “We can play politics with it or we can’t. I’m not going to. I think it’s indefensible. We should take it down.”
Trump deleted it less than an hour after Scott’s comments, but he did not condemn the “white power” statement or specifically disavow the sentiment expressed by his supporter.
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said Trump “is a big fan of The Villages.”
“He did not hear the one statement made on the video,” Deere said. “What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”
John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser who just released a scathing book about Trump, said Sunday that the president’s inattention to detail made it possible that he did not notice the racist comments.
“He doesn’t pay attention to a lot of things,” Bolton said on State of the Union. “It’s entirely possible that he tweeted this video because he saw the sign, I think it was in the first go-kart that said the Trump 2020 or something like that. That’s all he needed to see. Not paying attention. Not considering all the implications of information he gets.”
But Bolton added, “It may be that you can draw a conclusion that he heard it and it was racist and he tweeted it to promote the message. It’s a legitimate conclusion to draw.”
Either way, the president’s initial decision to approvingly share the blatant display of support for white supremacy was the latest example of his willingness to use his vast Twitter following to inject incendiary commentary into the ongoing debate in the country over systemic racism.
In May, as protests erupted after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer, Trump tweeted, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a phrase with a long history of connection to racism.
More recently, Trump has used his Twitter feed to attack protesters who have pulled down statues of Confederate generals, calling them “arsonists, anarchists, looters, and agitators.” On Saturday night, he tweeted out 15 “wanted” posters for people the US Park Police were seeking in connection with vandalism in Lafayette Square, just outside the White House.
The video on Sunday — which could not be independently verified by The New York Times — appeared to show a slow-moving parade through the Florida community with supporters of Trump riding golf carts, wearing red, white and blue, and displaying pro-Trump materials.
Protesters lined the street, many of them screaming epithets, accusing the Trump supporters of being racists and holding signs calling the president a bigot.
In his tweet, Trump did not specifically refer to the man who yelled “white power.” But his reference to “the great people of The Villages” was an eerie echo of his comments in the summer of 2017, when he responded to deadly violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, by saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Former vice-president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, invoked the president’s comments about Charlottesville in response to the video Sunday.
“We’re in a battle for the soul of the nation — and the President has picked a side,” Biden tweeted. Trump has repeatedly denied that he was expressing support for white supremacy with his “both sides” comment. But the tweet Sunday underscores what has become a hallmark of his presidency since he took office: a willingness to embrace divisive comments when they are coming from people he perceives to be his supporters.
The president has routinely retweeted far-right messages and a conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which includes people who believe that a “deep state” in the government is filled with satanic pedophiles. Trump once retweeted VB Nationalist, an anonymous account that has promoted a hoax about top Democrats worshipping the devil and engaging in child sex trafficking.
“I’ve been retweeted by the President of the United States, President Trump!” the author of the anonymous account tweeted at the time.
An analysis of Trump’s Twitter account by The New York Times at the end of last year found that the president had retweeted at least 145 unverified accounts that had pushed conspiracy, racist or other fringe content, including more than two dozen that were later suspended by Twitter.
Recently, Twitter has begun to crack down directly on Trump’s feed, posting warnings on some of his messages. In May, when the president tweeted about shooting after looting, the company added a statement to the post.
“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible,” the company wrote.
Later, when the president warned that efforts by protesters to set up an “autonomous zone” in Washington, DC, would be “met with serious force!,” Twitter put up a similar message and blocked it from being retweeted.
The quick deletion of the video Sunday was a rare instance in which Trump backed down in the face of criticism. His previous tweets have remained online despite the company’s online warnings.
Michael D Shear c.2020 The New York Times Company
Louisville: Authorities were investigating a fatal shooting Saturday night at a park in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, where demonstrators had gathered to protest the death of Breonna Taylor.
Reports of shots fired at Jefferson Square Park came in around 9 pm, Louisville Metro police said in a statement, followed by calls that the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department was performing life-saving measures on a male who died at the scene. Shortly after, police were told of a shooting victim across the street at the Hall of Justice. That person was hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries.
Video posted on social media appeared to show a man opening fire into the park as people scrambled for cover. The footage later showed at least one person bleeding profusely on the ground.
Officers cleared the park and police “are trying to gather as much information as possible in order to identify all who were involved in the incident,” the statement said. No information about arrests, possible suspects and the victims' identities and ages was immediately released. Officials did not immediately release additional information.
CONTENT WARNING: This video of today’s shooting at Jefferson Square Park was pulled from the FB livestream of one of Louisville’s more vocal protesters. Absolutely horrifying to see. To my friends, coworkers and anybody else down there, please be vigilant. Please be safe. pic.twitter.com/AT8PiOIKrG
— John Boyle (@JBernardBoyle) June 28, 2020
“I am deeply saddened by the violence that erupted in Jefferson Square Park tonight, where those who have been voicing their concerns have been gathered," Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said in a statement. "It is a tragedy that this area of peaceful protest is now a crime scene.”
The park has for weeks been the epicenter for protests in the city after the police killings of Taylor and George Floyd. The Saturday night shooting was at least the second during nearly a month of protests in Louisville over Taylor’s death. Seven people were wounded 28 May when gunfire erupted near City Hall, prompting a statement from Taylor’s mother asking people to demand justice “without hurting each other.”
“Praying for our city,” tweeted Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker of Louisville late Saturday. The Democrat is running for his party’s nomination to challenge Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell in the fall.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was killed in her Louisville home in March by police who were serving a no-knock warrant. Protesters have been calling for the officers involved in her death to be charged. One of the officers was recently fired.
Kenneth Walker, Taylor's boyfriend, was originally charged with attempted murder after he fired a shot at one of the officers who came into the home. Walker has said he thought he was defending from an intruder.
The no-knock search warrant that allows police to enter without first announcing their presence was recently banned by Louisville’s Metro Council.
Beijing: Construction activity appeared underway on both the Indian and Chinese sides of a contested border high in the Karakoram mountains a week after a deadly clash in the area left 20 Indian soldiers dead, satellite images showed.
The images released this week by Maxar, a Colorado-based satellite imagery company, show new construction activity along the Galwan River Valley, even as Chinese and Indian diplomats said military commanders had agreed to disengage from a standoff there.
The images appeared to show that the Indians had built a wall on their side and the Chinese had expanded an outpost camp at the end of a long road connected to Chinese military bases farther from the poorly defined border, according to experts.
The contradictions in words and deeds showed the fragility of an agreement following the worst violence since the Asian giants went to war in 1962 over their competing claims to the arid border region, experts said.
China has said that India first changed the status quo last August when it split the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federal territories — the territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the territory of Ladakh, parts of which are contested by China.
The new maps released by India following the move drew criticism from Beijing because they showed Aksai Chin — an area administered by China but contested by India — as part of Ladakh.
Indian officials said the standoff that culminated in this month's deadly clash in the Galwan Valley, part of a remote stretch of the 3,380-kilometer (2,100-mile) Line of Actual Control, or LAC, established following the 1962 war, began in early May when large contingents of Chinese soldiers entered deep inside Indian-controlled territory at three places in Ladakh, erecting tents.
After a few skirmishes in May, Indian and Chinese commanders met 6 June to hash out an agreement that would reduce tensions.
The two sides agreed to build observation posts on either side of the mouth of the Galwan River, China's ambassador to India, Sun Weidong, told the Press Trust of India news agency on Tuesday.
Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that during the 6 June meeting "both sides had agreed to respect and abide by the LAC and not undertake any activity to alter the status quo,” but did not address whether they had agreed to observation posts.
Around midnight on 15 June, soldiers attacked each other with rocks, clubs and their fists in the Galwan Valley, the deadliest violence between the two countries in 45 years.
Indian security officials said the fatalities were caused by severe injuries and exposure to subfreezing temperatures. China has not said whether it suffered any casualties in the clash.
India and China have blamed each other for the melee and staked fresh claims on the area where it occurred.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Wednesday that the confrontation occurred on China’s side of the Line of Actual Control, and that Indian forces had illegally entered Chinese territory. “The responsibility (for the incident) is entirely not on the Chinese side,” Zhao said.
But Srivastava said Thursday that China had provoked the fight when its soldiers “sought to erect structures just across the LAC” on the Indian side. He said Indian soldiers foiled the attempts.
However, a sequence of Maxar images of the river bend where the clash occurred in the weeks before and after the clash showed that construction had expanded up the Galwan Valley toward the Line of Actual Control from Chinese bases, Maxar Vice President Steve Wood said.
Wood said that since 22 May, satellite images showed “convoy after convoy of heavy trucks, diggers, bulldozers and some military armored equipment” rolling down the Galwan Valley toward the disputed border.
Before and after the fatal clash, China was moving construction equipment, soldiers and military hardware toward the LAC, said Chris Biggers, senior analyst at the geospatial intelligence company HawkEye 360.
“The Chinese were obviously pushing toward the junction and what they perceive as their claim line. They have now built a post and a track reinforcing their claim, thus changing the status quo in the area,” he said.
At that junction, the Galwan River turns west toward an important supply route for a key Indian airfield. Biggers said that satellite imagery shows that India has built a stone wall there facing the new Chinese post, with a layered set of barriers draped in camouflage netting and tarps that “could also function as fighting positions.”
“We also see quite a bit of activity on the road, with trucks moving in both directions as well as troops marching in formation along the new track,” Biggers said.
Washington: American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilise the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.
Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.
The intelligence finding was briefed to President Donald Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options: starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorise any step, the officials said.
An operation to incentivise the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on western troops.
Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s so-called hybrid war against the United States, a strategy of destabilising adversaries through a combination of such tactics as cyber attacks, the spread of fake news, and covert and deniable military operations.
The Kremlin had not been made aware of the accusations, said Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. “If someone makes them, we’ll respond,” Peskov said.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, denied that the insurgents have “any such relations with any intelligence agency” and called the report an attempt to defame them.
“These kinds of deals with the Russian intelligence agency are baseless. Our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources,” he said. “That changed after our deal with the Americans, and their lives are secure and we don’t attack them.”
Spokespeople at the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA declined to comment.
The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.
While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.
At a summit in Helsinki in 2018, Trump strongly suggested that he believed Putin’s denial that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite broad agreement within the US intelligence establishment that it did.
Trump criticised a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations. They said the intelligence has been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week, including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.
The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their Taliban counterparts elsewhere.
The revelations came into focus inside the Trump administration at a delicate and distracted time. Although officials collected the intelligence earlier in the year, the interagency meeting at the White House took place as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and parts of the country were shutting down.
Moreover, as Trump seeks reelection in November, he wants to strike a peace deal with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan War.
Both American and Afghan officials have previously accused Russia of providing small arms and other support to the Taliban that amounts to destabilising activity, although Russian government officials have dismissed such claims as “idle gossip” and baseless.
“We share some interests with Russia in Afghanistan, and clearly they’re acting to undermine our interests as well,” General John W Nicholson Jr., commander of American forces in Afghanistan at the time, said in a 2018 interview with the BBC.
Though coalition troops suffered a spate of combat casualties last summer and early fall, only a few have since been killed. Four Americans were killed in combat in early 2020, but the Taliban have not attacked US positions since a February agreement.
American troops have also sharply reduced their movement outside of military bases because of the coronavirus, reducing their exposure to attack.
While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorised and what its aim may be.
Some officials have theorised that the Russians may be seeking revenge on NATO forces for a 2018 battle in Syria in which the US military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries, as they advanced on an American outpost.
Officials have also suggested that the Russians may have been trying to derail peace talks to keep the United States bogged down in Afghanistan. But the motivation remains murky.
The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the GRU.
The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.
Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilise the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination.
In addition to the 2018 poisoning, the unit was behind an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in Bulgaria a year earlier.
American intelligence officials say the GRU was at the center of Moscow’s covert efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the months before that election, American officials say, two GRU cyberunits, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into Democratic Party servers, and then used WikiLeaks to publish embarrassing internal communications.
In part because those efforts were aimed at helping tilt the election in Trump’s favour, Trump’s handling of issues related to Russia and Putin has come under particular scrutiny. The special counsel investigation found that the Trump campaign welcomed Russia’s intervention and expected to benefit from it, but found insufficient evidence to establish that his associates had engaged in any criminal conspiracy with Moscow.
Operations involving Unit 29155 tend to be much more violent than those involving the cyber units. Its officers are often decorated military veterans with years of service, in some cases dating to the Soviet Union’s failed war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Never before has the unit been accused of orchestrating attacks on western soldiers, but officials briefed on its operations say it has been active in Afghanistan for many years.
Though Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organisation in 2003, relations between them have been warming in recent years. Taliban officials have traveled to Moscow for peace talks with other prominent Afghans, including former president Hamid Karzai.
The talks have excluded representatives from the current Afghan government as well as anyone from the United States and at times have seemed to work at crosscurrents with US efforts to bring an end to the conflict.
The disclosure comes at a time when Trump has said he would invite Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of Seven nations, but tensions between US and Russian militaries are running high.
In several recent episodes, in international territory and airspace from off the coast of Alaska to the Black and Mediterranean seas, combat planes from each country has scrambled to intercept military aircraft from the other.
Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Michael Schwirtz c.2020 The New York Times Company
