US Embassy in Ukraine Calls Nuclear Power Plant Attack 'War Crime'

WASHINGTON — 

The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said that attacking a nuclear power plant is a war crime, after Russia on Friday seized a Ukrainian nuclear facility that is the biggest in Europe.

The statement on the embassy’s Twitter account went further than any U.S. characterization of Russia’s actions in Ukraine since it launched its invasion Feb. 24.

“It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further,” U.S. Embassy Kyiv said in its post.

Russian invasion forces seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in heavy fighting in southeastern Ukraine, triggering global alarm, but a blaze in a training building was extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe.

Russia’s defense ministry blamed a fire at the plant on a “monstrous attack” by Ukrainian saboteurs and said its forces were in control.

The State Department sent a message to all U.S. embassies in Europe telling them not to retweet the Kyiv Embassy’s tweet calling the attack a war crime, according to CNN, which said it reviewed the message.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters asking if the Kyiv Embassy’s tweet reflects the position of the entire U.S. government.

Rights groups have alleged violations of international war crimes law in Ukraine, including the targeting of civilians, as well as indiscriminate attacks on schools and hospitals.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden stopped short of calling Russia’s actions war crimes, saying, “It’s too early to say that.”

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby on Friday declined to answer the question, saying he would leave that determination to the International Criminal Court.

“This just underscores how reckless the Russian invasion has been and how indiscriminate their targeting seems to be. It just raises the level of potential catastrophe to a level that nobody wants to see,” Kirby said in an interview with CNN.

“It is certainly not the behavior of a responsible nuclear power.”

Britain has publicly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government of war crimes.

The ICC, the world’s top war crimes prosecutor, on the request of 39 member states, is investigating reports of cluster bombs and artillery strikes on Ukrainian cities.

Karim Khan, a British lawyer named as the chief prosecutor of the ICC last year, said the crisis in Ukraine is a chance to demonstrate that those committing war crimes would be held to account.

Intentionally targeting civilians and civilian objects is a war crime, a U.S. State Department spokesperson told Reuters, adding that it is backing the investigation, particularly Khan’s efforts to preserve evidence of possible atrocity crimes.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has strongly denied claims that Russian forces have struck civilian infrastructure targets or residential complexes.

Taiwan Foreign Minister Calls US Help Critical to Deterring War with China

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — 

As Taiwan continues to face a military threat from China, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said this week the Taiwanese government continues to focus on its “asymmetric defense” capability — including U.S. assistance — to make it an unattractive target, despite its limited military power.

Taiwan’s current strategy is to make certain “China will understand it will pay a very heavy price if it initiates conflict against Taiwan,” Wu said during a virtual event hosted by the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University.

Speaking with former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Wu argued for continued U.S. support of Taiwan through arms sales, military exchanges, shared intelligence, and freedom of navigation exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

FILE – Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu holds a speech during his visit to Czech Senate in Prague, Czech Republic, Oct. 27, 2021.

“We want the people here in Taiwan to be able to defend themselves if China is going to launch a war against Taiwan,” Wu said.

Taiwan has lived under the threat of military action by China since China’s Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang fled the mainland after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949. While the conflict has remained largely a stalemate since then — with Beijing continuing to claim Taiwan as a province — an aggressive military modernization campaign by China means it could be able to attack Taiwan as early as 2027, according to the U.S. Defense Department.

Wu said China could have the potential to attack targets other than Taiwan in the future.

“China has made so much investment and have modernized their military capable of not only striking at Taiwan but go beyond the first island chain, so we need to develop our asymmetric warfare so that Taiwan is able to defend itself,” he said, referring to the name of the defensive barrier of Taiwan, Japan, Okinawa, and the northern Philippines.

Similar concerns have led the United States as well as France, Japan, Australia, India, South Korea, the Philippines, and the European Union to become more vocal about the future of Indo-Pacific security in the face of a rising China. Earlier this month, Washington released its latest Indo-Pacific strategy, which called for greater cooperation with regional partners.

Wu said Taiwan must be “very careful” to not provoke China and trigger a conflict. The most recent incident occurred in 1995 and 1996, when China fired missiles toward Taiwan ahead of its first democratic elections. Future triggers could include a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan from China, which is why leaders such as President Tsai Ing-wen are extremely careful when they discuss Taiwan’s political status.

Wu said domestic problems could also force Beijing’s hand if it needed to unite China against a common enemy. “We also need to watch out for this classical theory about authoritarian countries. They like to divert domestic attention by initiating external conflict. If something is happening in China, inside their country, for example, economic slowdown, unemployment, or major disasters, things like that, that might be the time that we need to watch very carefully,” he said.

In the meantime, Taiwan continues to face Chinese efforts to sway public opinion and destroy morale from within Taiwan by convincing civilians “democracy is doomed.” Tactics have included more than 1,000 Chinese People’s Liberation Army air sorties toward Taiwan last year, Wu said, as well as disinformation campaigns and political infiltration.

Wu said these tactics are “below the thresholds of a military conflict” but still require Taiwan and allies such as the United States to keep pushing back.

Events like Wu’s talk at the McCain Institute are part of Taiwan’s greater public relations strategy to remain a central concern for both the U.S. government and the U.S. public, said Kitsch Liao Yen-fan, a cyber and military affairs consultant at the Taiwanese civil society group Doublethink Lab.

Liao said this was a particular concern for Taiwan after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, as the U.S. public may not want to see its military send troops to another foreign conflict. While the United States is not formally committed to defending Taiwan if it were attacked, under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act it has pledged to help it defend itself.

Whether this would ever extend to sending U.S. personnel to Taiwan in a wartime scenario, however, is still a topic of debate — and a decision that Taipei hopes to influence.

Talks like those by Wu, however, “create sufficient momentum to tip public opinion on Taiwan’s side, and on the political side of the United States to reach a tipping point where the willingness to actually send the military into the next conflict will be reversed again,” said Liao.

Biden Administration Increases Sanctions on Russia Amid Calls for Stronger US Measures

WASHINGTON — 

Facing criticism that its initial package of sanctions on Russia was not severe enough, the Biden administration on Wednesday both defended its actions and announced an expansion of the penalties, which are meant to deter what appears to be an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On Wednesday afternoon, in a statement released by the White House, President Joe Biden announced that he had included Nord Stream 2 AG, the company that built a controversial natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, as well as its senior executives, on the list of entities being sanctioned.

The move came a day after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that his government would not certify the pipeline, a necessary step in making it operational. The U.S. sanctions effectively prevent a reversal of Scholz’s decision, because it would subject any company doing business with Nord Stream 2 to U.S. sanctions.

“These steps are another piece of our initial tranche of sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine,” Biden said. “As I have made clear, we will not hesitate to take further steps if Russia continues to escalate.”

Also Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a news conference that the measures the U.S. and its allies have taken will result in a “vicious feedback loop” that will damage Russia’s economy by raising interest rates, encouraging investors to flee Russian assets and weakening the Russian ruble against other currencies.

Initial response criticized

Biden and his administration faced sharp criticism Tuesday, after announcing sanctions on two Russian banks and a handful of wealthy Russian citizens, and imposing restrictions on the purchase of Russia’s sovereign debt.

The measures fell far short of the devastating response that the Biden administration had spent weeks warning Russia to expect and drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

In an appearance on CNN, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, a Democrat, said, “I think you should use the overwhelming amount of (sanctions) now. You may reserve something like what I call the ‘mother of all sanctions,’ unplugging Russia from the SWIFT financial system. But at the end of the day, when is it that we’re going to be clear to Putin that there are severe consequences for what he’s doing?”

Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, said in a statement, “Joe Biden has refused to take meaningful action, and his weakness has emboldened Moscow.”

Expert sees merit in both approaches

There are reasonable arguments for both the incremental approach to sanctions and a “shock and awe” approach that puts them all in place at the same time, said Daniel Ahn, a global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former chief economist for the U.S. Department of State.

On the incrementalist side, he said, the argument is that, “You may want to keep some ammunition in reserve in case of different contingencies, and also to achieve as much political consensus as possible, both domestically and internationally.”

On the side of full implementation, he said, the argument is that incrementalism weakens the signaling effect of sanctions and “gives time for adjustments to be made” by Russia.

However, Ahn said, the difference between the ultimate effects of each approach may not be as great as advocates think.

“As long as there is a sense of uncertainty, or market expectation that there could be future sanctions coming online, that already has a bit of a chilling effect on existing economic and financial activity,” he said. “The risk or uncertainty that sanctions could impose could deter a lot of private sector behavior, which is where the bite of sanctions come from. So, I think from an actual impact perspective, there’s less daylight between the two (approaches) than people think.”

More steps possible

After announcing what it described as the “first tranche” of sanctions Tuesday, the White House said that more would be coming.

In an appearance on CNN Wednesday morning, Daleep Singh, a deputy national security adviser, repeated that assurance.

“Yesterday was a demonstration effect,” he said. “And that demonstration effect will go higher and higher. Russia is already feeling the pain, and let’s remember the bigger purpose. Our purpose is not to max out on sanctions. That serves no purpose to itself. Our purpose is to prevent a large-scale invasion and … seizure of large cities in Ukraine. Our purpose is to prevent human suffering that could involve tens of thousands of casualties. And our purpose is to prevent a puppet regime from taking over in Kyiv that bends to the will of Moscow. That’s what this is all about.”

Incremental approach

The administration’s response may have been affected by the limited nature of the actions Putin took on Monday. U.S. officials have, for weeks, been warning that a massive invasion of Ukraine was imminent, pointing to the more than 150,000 Russian troops positioned on its borders.

Putin on Monday announced that Russia had recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian provinces that are partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists. He also said that he would send troops, which he characterized as “peacekeepers,” into the two provinces, although on Wednesday it remained unclear whether Russian soldiers had crossed the border.

In a background briefing Tuesday, a senior administration official characterized Russia’s steps as “the beginning of an invasion” and said the first round of sanctions should be seen as “the beginning of our response.”

U.S. consulting with allies

The sanctions announced by the United States are in addition to similar sanctions being levied by the European Union, United Kingdom, and other U.S. allies. In the U.K., in particular, there have been calls to sanction wealthy Russian oligarchs, many of whom own property in London.

In a statement Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman spoke with representatives of France, Germany, Italy and the U.K.

“The deputy secretary and her counterparts underscored that Russia’s flagrant disregard for international law demands a severe response from the international community and agreed to coordinate closely on next steps, including massive additional economic sanctions, should Russia continue to escalate its aggression against Ukraine,” Price said. “They highlighted their continuing commitment to diplomacy, while reiterating that progress can only be made in an environment of de-escalation.”

BBC Calls Out Iran for Escalation in Threats to Staff

Iran has ramped up its threats and harassment of journalists working for the BBC’s Persian language service and their families, the British broadcaster says.

In a complaint filed with the United Nations this month, the BBC called on the U.N. and the international community to “condemn Iran for their unacceptable treatment” of its staff.

The complaint cited “extra-territorial threats” against the journalists in Britain and third countries; harassment of family members in Iran; financial pressures on the journalists and their families; and “increased intelligence and counter-intelligence activity aimed at undermining the professional reputation of BBC News Persian and its journalists.”

The problem has been going on for years, said Kasra Naji, BBC Persian special correspondent in London. But he said the threats have recently gotten worse.

“There has been an escalation,” Naji told VOA News. Over the span of six weeks, Iran’s intelligence agency called in several family members of BBC Persian personnel for questioning.

“They told our parents and brothers and sisters that we in London could be the target of kidnapping, or even killing, if we didn’t stop working for the BBC,” Naji said. “They also suggested that we could be kidnapped and renditioned to Iran.”

The agents cited the case of Ruhollah Zam as an example of what would happen if they didn’t comply, Naji said.

Zam, who founded an anti-government news website and Telegram channel while in exile in Paris, was lured to Iraq in 2019, where he had been promised an exclusive interview with a prominent cleric.

Instead, he was forcibly returned to Iran where the Revolutionary Court convicted him of “corruption on Earth” and executed him in December 2020.

In a joint statement, human rights lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher and Jennifer Robinson, counsel for the BBC World Service, said, “We know from Iran’s past actions that it is willing to take cross-border and deadly action to silence its critics, and that it perceives independent journalism about Iran as a risk to their power.”

Naji says the threats don’t appear to be linked to any particular story and haven’t impacted BBC Persian reporting.

Special Correspondent for BBC Persian TV, Kasra Naji attends a press conference on March 12, 2018 in Geneva.

“We have to report the stories. We have to report the news. We have to say what is happening,” Naji said. “And perhaps that’s the reason why the Iranian government keeps attacking us, because obviously they feel they haven’t managed to have an impact.”

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

February’s complaint is the third filed against Iran by the BBC in the past five years, Naji said.

The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights did not return VOA’s requests for comment.

In response to an earlier complaint, U.N. experts in 2020 demanded that Iran end the harassment and called on member states to ensure the safety of journalists.

Legacy of threats

Amir Soltani, activist and author of Zahra’s Paradise, a graphic novel about protests over the 2009 contested elections in Iran, says the Iranian intelligence agency has been targeting individuals since the 1979 revolution.

“From the beginning, many Iranian writers and dissidents were abducted by the Intelligence Ministry and killed,” Soltani told VOA. “Many people disappeared and then their bodies were found in various states of mutilation. This was a campaign of fear and terror against intellectuals, against writers, against dissidents, and quite naturally against journalists.”

The tactics have continued over the past 40 years and are aimed at silencing anyone who speaks critically of the Iranian regime, he said. But while previous attacks were conducted secretly, they have become much more brazen, Soltani said.

Tehran’s repressive media environment means that many journalists work in exile. But living outside of Iran is no guarantee of security.

Transnational repression, in which governments reach across borders to coerce, intimidate, and sometimes harm or even kill citizens, is becoming a widely used tactic by authoritarian regimes, groups including Freedom House have said.

Last year, VOA Persian host and outspoken government critic Masih Alinejad was the target of a kidnapping attempt from her home in New York.

Four Iranians, believed to be intelligence operatives, were charged with conspiracy to abduct Alinejad with the intent of forcibly bringing her to Iran, ostensibly for speaking out about human rights violations.

In 2020, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said at least 200 Iranian journalists living outside of the country had been harassed, including 50 who had received death threats.

BBC Persian staff and their families have endured years of harassment.

In 2012, agents detained several relatives and tried to coerce them into persuading the journalists to either stop working for the BBC or to act as intelligence agents, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Other family members had their passports revoked, preventing them from leaving the country.

And in 2017, Iran charged 152 BBC Persian staff members, including Naji, with “conspiracy against national security.”

The court order, which is still in effect, froze all of their assets and has affected an estimated 600-700 family members, Naji said. The freeze prevents them from selling or dividing properties.

“Some of us think that our parents and our brothers and sisters are effectively hostages in Iran,” Naji told VOA.

Travel bans and sanctions on bank accounts are all too familiar, said Soltani, a U.S.-based human rights activist who left Iran in 1980. These issues have affected many members of society, not just journalists and their family members, he said.

“If you can attack an institution like the BBC, at that level, with impunity and not give a damn about what the repercussions can be, can you imagine what lone journalists and dissidents in Iran are facing?” Soltani asked.

As the BBC calls on the U.N. to condemn Iran for the latest threats, its journalists say they will not be silenced.

“We have all agreed, all of us here at the BBC,” Naji said, “that we have to shout from the rooftops so that everyone knows about this, particularly the Iranian government, that if they touch us, if they take action against us, there will be a cost attached.”

Reporter bio: Carmela Caruso is a freelance reporter based in Asheville, North Carolina, who specializes in press freedom and human rights. She is a student at Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has appeared in VOA and The Mountain Xpress. Follow @CarmelaMCaruso

Biden Marks Four-Year Anniversary of Parkland Shooting; Calls for End to Gun Violence

Washington — 

U.S. President Joe Biden Monday marked the fourth anniversary of the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida by calling on the country to uphold the “solemn obligation” to end gun violence.

“On this difficult day, we mourn with the Parkland families whose lives were upended in an instant; who had to bury a piece of their soul deep in the earth,” Biden said in a statement. “We pray too for those still grappling with wounds both visible and invisible.”

On February 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17 people in the deadliest high school shooting to date. Fourteen of those killed were students, the others, educators. The gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was 19 years old at the time and a former student at the school.

Cruz pleaded guilty to the shootings last October. His sentencing trial is set to begin later this year. Jurors will decide whether he spends the rest of his life in prison or gets the death penalty.

The shooting stirred a movement, March for Our Lives, started by students advocating for stricter gun laws.

“Out of the heartbreak of Parkland a new generation of Americans all across the country marched for our lives and towards a better, safer America for us all,” Biden said, “Together, this extraordinary movement is making sure that the voices of victims and survivors and responsible gun owners are louder than the voices of gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association.”

The NRA is America’s biggest gun rights lobby. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution affirms the right to bear arms. In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, Florida, a Republican-led state, imposed a three-day waiting period to purchase firearms and raised the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21. The NRA argued the state law is unconstitutional.

Since the Parkland incident, school shootings have continued. Between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, there were 136 instances of gunfire at schools, according to gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Biden outlined steps that his administration is following to counteract this rise, including “curbing the proliferation of ‘ghost’ guns,” unregistered firearms that can be purchased without a background check.

He called on Congress to take action saying, “Congress must do much more — beginning with requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers.”

Multiple bills to scrutinize gun buyers and restrict purchases of the deadliest weapons have been put forward in the U.S. Congress over the last decade. None became law.

Most Democratic Party lawmakers back tighter gun regulations while most Republicans oppose them, citing the Second Amendment.

Western Evacuation Calls Draw Criticism

Britain joined the United States on Friday in urging foreign nationals to evacuate Ukraine while there are still commercial means to do so. The British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office updated its advice shortly after the country’s defense minister, Ben Wallace, flew out of Moscow after talks with senior Kremlin figures.

Estonia is also urging citizens to leave Ukraine immediately due to “an increased risk of military action by Russia.” The evacuation calls came as senior U.S. officials warned that Russia could invade Ukraine at any time and had sufficient forces deployed to do so.

The European Union’s envoy to Ukraine, Matti Maasikas, has urged nonessential staff at its embassy in the Ukrainian capital to leave amid heightening tension with Russia.

“I have urged all expat colleagues with the exception of the essential staff to leave Ukraine ASAP to telework from outside the country,” he wrote in an email message to EU diplomats. “I feel very sad,” he added.

A European Commission spokesperson, however, emphasized that the EU isn’t pulling out all diplomats. “We continue to assess the situation as it develops, in line with the duty of care we have towards our staff and in close consultation and coordination with the EU member states,” said Peter Stano, the foreign affairs spokesman.

The Kremlin denies it has any intentions to invade and is accusing Washington and London of provocative alarmism.

“The hysteria of the White House is more indicative than ever,” said Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson, Friday.

“The Anglo-Saxons need a war. At any cost. Provocations, misinformation and threats are a favorite method of solving their own problems,” she added.

While senior Ukrainian officials acknowledge the threat of a Russian “provocation,” there is deep frustration in Kyiv with the calls for foreign nationals to leave, with concerns mounting that the message is demoralizing for Ukrainians and at this stage premature. Ukraine has frequently played down warnings from the United States, and Ukrainian officials say they are seeing “nothing new” in Russian military activity now.

The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said Ukrainian authorities are “well aware” of the possible provocations Russia could stage. “We are currently considering all options,” he added.

Ukraine says it is giving Russia 48 hours to explain the presence of its troops at the border under the terms of the Vienna Document, a series of agreements on European security. But Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian foreign minister, said the statement is “not evidence of some radical change of the situation.”

Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands have also asked their citizens in Ukraine to leave.

British diplomats say a meeting Friday between the heads of government and ministers of NATO members was sobering. “Next week is the working assumption,” a senior British official said. During the meeting U.S. President Joe Biden was clear an invasion was imminent, he added.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the meeting “he feared for the security of Europe in the current circumstances,” Downing Street said in a statement.

“He impressed the need for NATO allies to make it absolutely clear that there will be a heavy package of economic sanctions ready to go should Russia make the devastating and destructive decision to invade Ukraine,” the statement continued.

Some British lawmakers added their concerns to Ukrainian worries that the calls for departures and evacuations were sending the wrong signals to Moscow and suggest the West is giving up on Ukraine. Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative member of Parliament and chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee, said the rhetoric being used by Washington and London appears to be “bordering on panic.”

Ellwood conceded the governments have a duty of care for their citizens, particularly when the threat picture changes.

“But it’s almost bordering on panic and that absolutely fits into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s objective. He’ll be delighted to see the West and the NATO alliance crumbling in this way.”

Ellwood has been advocating for a serious NATO force to be deployed in Ukraine for weeks, arguing that would be the only way to deter Russia. “The least we can do now is provide a no-fly zone,” he added.

Ukraine’s envoy in London has also been arguing for NATO deployments. Britain should send troops to Ukraine to deter an invasion, Vadym Prystaiko told The Times of London.

Most of the thousands of Britons and Americans in Ukraine have deep roots there. Many have dual nationality, strong family ties and are married to Ukrainians and are unlikely to leave. U.S. Embassy staff have been telephoning American nationals in Ukraine urging them to evacuate.

Biden has announced military plans to fly American troops into Poland to help with any evacuations, hoping to avoid the chaos seen during the August U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan. Britain is also drafting evacuation plans. Like the Americans, Britain is planning to evacuate more Kyiv-based diplomats and to relocate them to Poland, British officials say.

“The aim is to strip down to the bare bones,” an official told VOA.

Report Calls for New US Strategy for Opioids

The U.S. needs a nimble, multipronged strategy and Cabinet-level leadership to counter its festering overdose epidemic, a bipartisan congressional commission advises.

With vastly powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl driving record overdose deaths, the scourge of opioids awaits after the COVID-19 pandemic finally recedes, a shift that public health experts expect in the months ahead.

“This is one of our most pressing national security, law enforcement and public health challenges, and we must do more as a nation and a government to protect our most precious resource — American lives,” the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking said in a 70-page report released Tuesday to Congress, President Joe Biden and the American people.

VOA Special Report: The Damage Done – Living America’s Opioid Nightmare

The report envisions a dynamic strategy. It would rely on law enforcement and diplomacy to shut down sources of chemicals used to make synthetic opioids. It would offer treatment and support for people who become addicted, creating pathways that can lead back to productive lives. And it would invest in research to better understand addiction’s grip on the human brain and to develop treatments for opioid use disorder.

The global coronavirus pandemic has overshadowed the American opioid epidemic for the last two years, but recent news that overdose deaths surpassed 100,000 in one year caught the public’s attention. Politically, federal legislation to address the opioid crisis won support across the partisan divide during both the Obama and Trump administrations.

Rep. David Trone, D-Md., a co-chair of the panel that produced the report, said he believes that support is still there, and that the issue appeals to Biden’s pragmatic side. “The president has been crystal clear,” Trone said. “These are two major issues in America: addiction and mental health.”

The U.S. government’s record is also clear. It has been waging a losing “war on drugs” for decades.

The stakes are much higher now with the widespread availability of fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. It can be baked into illicit pills made to look like prescription painkillers or anti-anxiety medicines. The chemical raw materials are produced mainly in China. Criminal networks in Mexico control the production and shipment to the U.S.

FILE – This photo provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Phoenix Division shows one of four containers holding some of the 30,000 fentanyl pills the agency seized in Tempe, Ariz., in August 2017.

Federal anti-drug strategy traditionally emphasized law enforcement and long prison sentences. But that came to be seen as tainted by racial bias and counter-productive because drug use is treatable. The value of treatment has recently has gained recognition with anti-addiction medicines in wide use alongside older strategies like support groups.

The report endorsed both law enforcement and treatment, working in sync with one another.

“Through its work, the commission came to recognize the impossibility of reducing the availability of illegal synthetic opioids through efforts focused on supply alone,” the report said.

“Real progress can come only by pairing illicit synthetic opioid supply disruption with decreasing the domestic U.S. demand for these drugs,” it added.

The report recommends what it calls five “pillars” for government action:

• Elevating the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to act as the nerve center for far-flung federal efforts, and restoring Cabinet rank to its director.
• Disrupting the supply of drugs through better coordinated law enforcement actions.
• Reducing the demand for illicit drugs through treatment and by efforts to mitigate the harm to people addicted. Treatment programs should follow science-based “best practices.”
• Using diplomacy to enlist help from other governments in cutting off the supply of chemicals that criminal networks use to manufacture fentanyl.
• Developing surveillance and data analysis tools to spot new trends in illicit drug use before they morph into major problems for society.

Trone said it’s going to take cooperation from both political parties. “We have to take this toxic atmosphere in Washington and move past it,” he said. “Because 100,000 people, that’s husbands, sisters, mothers, fathers. As a country, we are better than that.”

US Calls Death of Islamic State Leader 'Significant Blow'

washington — 

Top U.S. officials are hopeful that a risky nighttime raid, months in the making, will deal one of the world’s most resilient terror groups a long-lasting setback and blunt its efforts to strike at the United States and its Western allies.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced the death of reclusive Islamic State leader Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla early Thursday, hours after U.S. special forces left his hideout and his body in northwest Syria’s Idlib province.

Al-Mawla “oversaw the spread of ISIS-affiliated terrorist groups around the world,” Biden told reporters gathered at the White House, using an acronym for the terror group, which is also called IS or Daesh.

“After savaging communities and murdering innocents, [al-Mawla] was responsible for the recent brutal attack on a prison in northeast Syria holding ISIS fighters,” the president said. “This operation is testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they try to hide. … We will come after you and find you.”

Al-Mawla

Al-Mawla, known by multiple aliases, including Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi and Hajji ‘Abdallah, was born in Iraq in 1976 and became a religious scholar who rose through the terror group’s ranks, becoming a top aide to former IS leader and self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

By the time Baghdadi died in a U.S. raid on his hideout in northwestern Syria in October 2019, al-Mawla had become the heir apparent, having overseen IS’s slaughter of the Yazidi religious minority and some of the terror group’s global operations.

As leader, al-Mawla was even more reclusive than Baghdadi, who made occasional speeches to rally supporters, leading some analysts to wonder how much control he retained as IS affiliates outside Syria and Iraq gained in power and prominence.

U.S. officials, however, said al-Mawla was finding ways to be effective in building and expanding the bureaucracy that underpinned the terror group’s networks.

“While Baghdadi was iconic and a philosopher figure in ISIS, this guy was actually far more of an operational planner and a director of operations,” General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told a virtual conference late Thursday.

Disrupting IS operations

Al-Mawla “was every bit as evil and every bit as committed to attacks on the United States and our partners,” McKenzie said, adding that al-Mawla’s death could see IS leaders in Syria and Iraq cede power to regional affiliates.

But the affiliates could also suffer with al-Mawla out of the way.

“When you don’t have a central core that can disperse money and share money among competing franchises, it makes it harder for them to be resourced,” McKenzie said. “I think it’s going to be a significant blow.”

U.S. officials are also hoping the way in which al-Mawla died will further demoralize the terror group and its force of 8,000 to 16,000 fighters spread across Syria and Iraq.

“In a final act of cowardice and disregard for human life, [al-Mawla] detonated a blast, a significant blast, killing himself and several others, including his wife and children,” a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. operation told reporters.

“The blast was so large on the third floor that it blew bodies outside of the house and into the surrounding areas,” the official added.

The raid

U.S. defense officials said al-Mawla set off the explosion shortly after U.S. forces arrived at his hideout, a nondescript building in a residential section of Atmeh, a town in Syria’s Idlib province, not far from the border with Turkey.

Using a megaphone, the U.S. forces asked for al-Mawla and one of his senior deputies to allow noncombatants to leave, and to give themselves up.

Officials said a family of six living on the first floor got out, with the explosion shaking the building not long after.

“Let me be very clear, [al-Mawla] did not fight,” McKenzie said. “He killed himself and his immediate family without fighting, even as we attempted to call for his surrender and offered him a path to survive.”

Al-Mawla’s deputy and his wife then barricaded themselves on the second floor, dying after engaging in a firefight with U.S. forces.

One child on the second floor was also killed, though four others were rescued by U.S. troops.

Children among the dead

Initial reports from groups such as the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 13 people had been killed, including three women and four children.

Save the Children, an international humanitarian organization, said late Thursday that at least six children had been killed, calling the deaths “deeply alarming and unacceptable.”

U.S. officials insisted they had taken all possible precautions, blaming the deaths on the IS leader himself.

“We had a good sense of who was in the building … and had taken numerous safeguards throughout the rehearsals and planning to protect those individuals,” a second senior administration official said.

He added that military planners even opted for a raid, with U.S. forces scheduled to be on the ground for two hours, instead of an airstrike, to minimize harm to noncombatants.

Complications

U.S. military officials said despite the success of the initial operation, there were some complications.

One of the helicopters used to get troops to al-Mawla’s hideout experienced mechanical difficulties and had to be abandoned and destroyed shortly after leaving the site.

U.S. forces also briefly came under attack from fighters with the al-Qaida-affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, killing two of them in the ensuing firefight.

The presence of al-Qaida-linked fighters, however, was not unexpected given that northwestern Syria doubles as a hub for al-Qaida, IS’s main rival, and, according to U.N. member state intelligence agencies, “a strategic location for [IS] fighters and family members, in particular as a gateway to Turkey.”

US partners

The U.S. operation quickly earned praise from key partners, including the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

“This is a strategic gain,” SDF spokesman Farhad Shami told VOA on Thursday, calling al-Mawla’s death “significant.”

SDF officials, still feeling the sting of the nearly weeklong IS attack and uprising at al-Sina’a prison in Hasaka, have warned the incident was part of a larger plot by the terror group to take and hold territory.

They have also said that much of the planning for the attack, which killed more than 100 soldiers, guards and prison staff, had come from IS leaders, including al-Mawla, something U.S. officials confirmed Thursday.

“We consider this operation of eliminating [the] ISIS leader as revenge for their attack on Hasaka,” Shami told VOA, adding that SDF forces had provided resources and intelligence to the U.S. forces who carried out the raid.

Iraqi officials Thursday also celebrated al-Mawla’s demise and tweeted that Iraqi intelligence had contributed information leading to his location.

IS reaction

IS followers have also started to react to al-Mawla’s death, though initial posts on social media platforms reflected a strong sense of disbelief.

“What is the truth in the news of the Caliph’s martyrdom?” one supporter wrote in a post captured by Jihadoscope, a company that monitors online activity by Islamist extremists.

“Impure media are spreading rumors everywhere,” the follower added.

Another decried the initial report as “fake news,” accusing the U.S. of fabricating events to boost its own morale.

But Jihadoscope co-founder Raphael Gluck told VOA that as the hours passed, more IS followers began to accept that al-Mawla had indeed been killed and began focusing their anger at the U.S. and al-Qaida, accusing the terror group’s affiliates of collaboration.

What’s next for IS

U.S. officials say they are watching closely, with IS expected to name a successor. But those plans may have been complicated by recent developments in Iraq.

In October, Iraqi forces arrested Sami Jasim Muhammad al-Jaburi, also known as Hajji Hamid, described by the Pentagon as “one of ISIS’s most senior leaders.”

One Western counterterrorism official, speaking to VOA on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, called al-Jaburi’s arrest “very significant” as al-Jaburi was seen as a candidate to potentially replace al-Mawla should he be killed or captured.

Mutlu Civiroglu contributed to this report.

Biden Calls on Taliban to Release American Hostage

WASHINGTON — 

U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to release a U.S. civil engineer who was abducted two years ago and is believed to be the last American hostage held by the Taliban.

Mark Frerichs is a 59-year-old U.S. Navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, who worked in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects. He was kidnapped a month before the February 2020 U.S. troop pullout deal was signed and was transferred to the Haqqani network, a brutal Taliban faction accused of some of the deadliest attacks of the war.

Monday marks his second year in captivity.

“Threatening the safety of Americans or any innocent civilians is always unacceptable, and hostage-taking is an act of particular cruelty and cowardice,” Biden said in a statement.

“The Taliban must immediately release Mark before it can expect any consideration of its aspirations for legitimacy. This is not negotiable.”

Biden pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in August in a chaotic withdrawal that drew sharp criticism from Republicans and his own Democrats as well as foreign allies and punctured his approval ratings.

Frerichs’ family has criticized the U.S. government for not pressing harder to secure his release. Last week, his sister, Charlene Cakora, made a personal plea to Biden in a Washington Post opinion piece titled, “President Biden, please bring home my brother, the last American held hostage in Afghanistan.”

The United States has raised Frerich’s case in every meeting with the Taliban, the State Department said in a statement. “We call on the Taliban to release him. We will continue working to bring him home,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken added in a Twitter post.

U.S. and Taliban officials met for the first time since the pullout in October in Doha, Qatar, which had hosted talks on Afghanistan that led to the troop withdrawal.

The Qatari emir was due to visit the White House on Monday on a range of issues that will include global energy security, the White House said last week. Qatar represents U.S. interests in Kabul.

Trejo: "I hope Argentina calls me, I have to keep doing things the same" | Sports Social Networks

Oscar Trejo, Argentine midfielder for Rayo Vallecano, declared that “hopefully” in the short term he can receive the call from the albiceleste team, an illusion that, in order to be fulfilled, means “continuing to do things the same” for the remainder of the season.

Trejo is being one of the most decisive players of Rayo Vallecano this season, in which he wears the captain’s armband of the Madrid team.