Afghanistan situation: The U.S. intelligence community downgraded its assessment of the Afghan government’s resiliency following the withdrawal of U.S
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Foreign affairs updates
- Afghanistan situation: The U.S. intelligence community downgraded its assessment of the Afghan government’s resiliency following the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Kabul government may collapse within six months of US withdrawal. The Taliban's forces have made rapid gains in the north of the country, capturing towns previously held by government forces and surrounding major cities. The Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently visited the White House.
- Tigray carnage: At least 51 people were killed in an apparent airstrike on a village market in Tigray on 23rd June, and Ethiopian soldiers had blocked ambulances from reaching the scene of the bombing. More than 100 others were wounded in the attack, according to Tigray’s health authorities. The European Union condemned the attack, saying it was the latest in a “horrific series” of abuses in Tigray and called for an immediate cease-fire. It’s not yet known whether Ethiopian or Eritrean forces were responsible for the strike.
- Black Sea tensions: Russia complained on 23rd June of a “blatant British provocation” in the Black Sea, as a British Navy vessel sailed near the Crimean peninsula on its way to port in Georgia. Both sides contest the facts of the incident: The Russian Defense Ministry said it fired warning shots near the British ship and dropped four bombs in its way, while the British Defense Ministry said no such obstruction occurred. Those aboard the British ship said they heard shots “out of range,” and that Russian military planes shadowed the vessel. Tensions in the area are expected to remain high as NATO conducts military exercises in the Black Sea.
- Hong Kong's voices crushed: Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper made its final print run — one million copies — as the pro-democracy outlet became the latest victim of Hong Kong’s national security laws. The decision to close the newspaper came after 500 police officers raided its offices last week, arresting five executives, as assets of companies related to the paper were frozen. The paper’s owner, Jimmy Lai, has been detained since December on three national security-related charges, including allegedly colluding with a foreign country. Clearly, self-censorship will become the norm across other sectors like academia and entertainment.
- Terror in Mozambique: The 16-country Southern African Development Community (SADC) agreed to deploy troops to Mozambique in a bid to quell violence in the north of the country. The move comes as a group known as al-Shabab (a separate organization from the Somali group) have terrorized the Cabo Delgado province since 2017, in a conflict that has killed nearly 3,000 people and displaced close to 800,000. Although the SADC agreed to establish a “standby force,” the number or troops and the timing of their deployment has not been disclosed.
- UK High Court rejects Nirav's extradition plea: Wanted diamond merchant Nirav Modi, whose extradition to India was ordered in April by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel in the estimated USD 2-billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam case, has lost the first stage of his extradition appeal in the High Court. This leaves the 50-year-old jeweller with a chance to make his case at a brief oral hearing in the High Court with a renewed “leave to appeal” application for a judge to determine if it can proceed to a full appeal hearing. Nirav Modi as an appellant has five business days to apply for such an oral consideration, giving him time until next week, and if a renewal application is made, it will be listed before a High Court judge for a hearing. It is understood that Nirav Modi plans to make such an application. Nirav Modi remains behind bars at Wandsworth Prison in south-west London since his arrest over two years ago on 19 March 2019. The court accepted that while Nirav Modi's mental health had deteriorated due to the lengthy incarceration in a London prison, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, his risk of suicide did not meet the high threshold to conclude that it would be "unjust or oppressive" to extradite him. Nirav Modi is the subject of two sets of criminal proceedings, with the CBI case relating to a large-scale fraud upon PNB through the fraudulent obtaining of letters of undertaking (LoUs) or loan agreements, and the ED case relating to the laundering of the proceeds of that fraud.
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