Taliban, Haqqani enjoy safe havens in Pakistan: Pentagon

Agencies
April 13, 2018

Washington, Apr 13: Asserting that the Taliban and the Haqqani network enjoy safe havens in the border regions of Pakistan, a top US Army General today told the lawmakers that it was very difficult to contain insurgency in war-torn Afghanistan if Islamabad continues to harbour terrorists on its soil.

"It's very, very difficult to eliminate any insurgency if that insurgency has safe haven in another country. But right now, the Taliban, the Haqqanis and other organisations do, in fact, enjoy some safe haven in the border regions on the Pakistani side of the border. Pakistan has got to be part of the solution," General Mark A Milley, Chief of Staff of the US Army, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said to the end insurgency in Afghanistan, it was important to reduce the threat of terrorism something that can be handled on a routine basis by the internal security forces.

"In order to do that, you have to essentially do several things. You mentioned Pakistan. That is key. It's important that Pakistan is part of the solution. It's a regional solution. Part of our strategy is a regional strategy. That very much involves Pakistan," Milley said.

Responding to a question on reconciliation, he said the Afghan government was on the path right now to establish some sort of political reconciliation with various opponent groups. US is in support of that effort, Milley added.

"So it's important that we realign the forces, that we reinforce the capabilities that we're already doing, and that we regionalise the problem, including Pakistan, and that there's some sort of reconciliation process. At the end of the day, that's how that ends, and it ends successfully, and I believe that's achievable, the General said.

Milley said it was in the national security interest of the United States to maintain troops in Afghanistan.

One of the American objectives since 2001 has been that Afghanistan no longer was a platform for terrorists to conduct strikes on the continental United States, or in the United States.

"That's key. That's why we're there, and that's why we're still there," he said, adding that this can be achieved through a stable Afghanistan.

"So what does that look like? It means that the armed opposition, the Taliban, Haqqani network, Al-Qaida, ISIS, K and all these other groups are reduced in terms of capability that they no longer present an existential threat to the regime in Kabul, and that the Afghan National Security Forces are at large," he said.

"Their army, their police, their intelligence forces can handle the violent threat against the regime at a level that is something akin to crime or banditry," Milley said.

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News Network
April 28,2024

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Students in Paris blocked access to a campus building at a French university on Friday, as pro-Palestine demonstrations reach Europe.

The students occupied the central campus building of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, and dozens of others blocked its entrance, echoing protest action at American universities.

Students inspired by Gaza solidarity encampments at campuses in the United States blocked access to a campus building at the prestigious French university on Friday.

They blocked the entrance with trash cans, wooden platforms and other items.

The occupation of the Paris university campus came after police broke up a separate protest at the university’s amphitheater outside one of its Paris campuses.

Scores of student protesters gathered at the building’s windows, chanting slogans and holding placards reading “We are all Palestinians,” in defiance of administrators who students say called the police on their peers two days earlier.

Pro-Palestinian student protesters had occupied the amphitheater outside one of the university’s Paris campuses on Wednesday evening.

The US-style student protests, which began over the months-long Israeli regime’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, kicked off in the United States and have now spread to European capitals as well as Australia.

In the German capital Berlin, several people were arrested as police violently cleared a camp of Gaza war protesters at the German parliament.

Pro-Palestinian activists are demanding a permanent ceasefire, an end to the Israeli atrocities, and an arms embargo of the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli regime launched the war on Gaza on October 7 last year. The genocidal war has killed more than 34,356 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

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News Network
May 5,2024

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Iran has urged Muslim countries to cut all relations with the Israeli regime as means of pressuring Tel Aviv to end its ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks on Saturday, addressing the 15th Heads of State and Government Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Gambia’s capital Banjul.

“Beyond doubt, this time period will also pass by, despite all its hardships and adversities for the Palestinian nation,” he said.

“However, the manner and quality of the role that is played by us, Muslim states, in the face of this crisis will go down in history,” the top diplomat added.

“Undoubtedly, severance of diplomatic and economic ties and [imposition of] practical arms and trade embargo [on Israel] serves as an important means of cessation of its genocide in Gaza and atrocities in the West Bank and the Noble al-Quds.”

At least 34,654 people have died in Gaza since October 7, when the Israeli regime began the war in response to al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.

Despite the unabated campaign of bloodshed and destruction, the regime has so far fallen short of realizing its goals, including defeating Gaza’s resistance, causing forced displacement of the territory’s entire population to neighboring Egypt, and enabling the release of those who were taken captive during al-Aqsa Storm.

Amir-Abdollahian said Gaza’s developments proved that elimination of the Palestinian resistance “was nothing but an illusion.”

“Because the Israeli regime is not a legitimate government. It is only an occupying apartheid power,” he said, adding, “Passage of time is not going to lend legitimacy to an occupying power.”

The foreign minister asserted that realization of sustainable peace and security in the region was only possible through cessation of the regime’s occupation of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, and manifestation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

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News Network
April 29,2024

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At least 900 protesters have been arrested since the launch of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on university campuses across the US, where students are raging against the Israeli regime’s US-backed genocidal war on Gaza.

The Washington Post reported the tally on Sunday, the 10th straight day of the protests that began after Columbia University set up an encampment to demand cessation of the war and press the school to divest from Israeli financial interests.

The crackdown then started when university authorities called in the police, a move that sparked more than 100 arrests on the university’s Manhattan campus.

Two other highlights in the crackdown saw police forces rounding up roughly the same number of people at New York University and Emerson College in Boston.

Protests have also erupted across numerous other seats of learning, including Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and California State Polytechnic in Humboldt.

The ensuing countrywide counter-campaign of suppression has seen law enforcement resorting to riot control methods against the protesters.

The methods have featured “the same tools and tactics” that were deployed to confront the thousands-strong protests that sparked across the country after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd four years ago, the daily reported.

“At Emory University last week, Atlanta police said officers used ‘chemical irritants’ to clear an encampment, and a Georgia State Patrol officer was captured on video using a stun gun to subdue a man on the ground,” it said.

Academics have, meanwhile, been banding together throughout the US under the banner of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP).

Earlier in April, the FSJP’s Georgia chapter called on Morehouse College in Atlanta, which invited Joe Biden as its 2024 commencement speaker, to rescind its invitation as a means of objecting to the president’s role in enabling the Israeli genocide.

At Biden’s behest, the United States has been providing the Israeli war with unreserved military and intelligence support.

The US has also vetoed several United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in the brutal military onslaught that has so far claimed the lives of at least 34,454 Gazans, mostly women and children.

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