International Security Archives - The World from PRX

For the first time in four years, Egypt is no longer under a state of emergency. The government of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi made the decision following years of criticism from human rights advocates.President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi announced his decision in a Facebook post. He said the move came because “Egypt has become an oasis of security and stability in the region.”Related: Activists look to Congress after Biden requests military aid for Egypt without human rights conditionsEgypt has been under a continuous state of emergency since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981, with the exception of a few years following the 2011 revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak. The state of emergency was reinstated in 2017 after two Coptic churches in the country were bombed by an ISIS affiliate.Related: Powerful countries break their silence on Egypt's human rights abusesThe state of emergency allowed for arrests without warrants, the swift prosecution of suspects and the establishment of special courts.Whether this move will help imprisoned writers, lawyers and activists is still unclear.Professor Samer Shehata, an associate professor in Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma, joined The World's host Marco Werman from Washington to break down what this decision may mean for people inside Egypt. Marco Werman: Samer, can you tell us why the state of emergency was put in place to begin with?Samer Shehata: Well, the most recent state of emergency was put in place in 2017 after a series of bombings by an ISIS affiliate against churches in Egypt that left a number of people dead. But in reality, Egyptians have been living under a state of emergency for about 50 years really, since 1967.For the state of emergency imposed by President Sisi, who did it impact primarily?Well, it probably impacts the majority of people who are in prison for protesting. But it's also been used against, of course, Muslim Brotherhood leaders and supporters, liberals and people who supported the 2011 revolution, youth activists, journalists, you name it, anyone who's been willing to criticize the government. So, practically, what does it mean for the thousands of political detainees, that the state of emergency has been lifted?Well, it's not perfectly clear yet what it will mean for those who are already in jail, right? Because many of the high-profile people, we believe, who've gotten the most attention are still going to be subject to their detention, and so on, and the court system that they have been subject to. It will, hopefully, end the special emergency state security courts that the emergency law allows. And it will, hopefully, if it is to mean anything other than just this declaration, will allow a little bit of greater political space in Egypt, but that's certainly yet to be determined. What do you think the lifting of the state of emergency now signals more generally about the Egyptian government? I mean, is this them rolling out a welcome mat for free expression or simply confidence that they're firmly in control of the country?Well, they're firmly in control of the country, but I think what it is in response to is increasing criticism and some action by the international community about the human rights record and the abysmal state of political freedom in Egypt. There's been intense criticism of the human rights record. And then, of course, very recently, the Biden administration withheld some $130 million of aid to the government. And the government has been, in response, trying to change its image, trying to kind of produce a makeover and to say that it's more interested in civil society groups, human rights and so on. And, Samer, those critics have been pretty relentless. Earlier this year, five leading human rights organizations in Egypt laid out some basic steps that should be taken to stop the erosion of human rights there. The lifting of the state of emergency — that was the first step. What are the next steps, and do you think the Egyptian government will continue the process?Sure, they asked for a number of very concrete things, I mean, freeing political prisoners, for example. There are thousands of political prisoners. Stopping the detentions that kind of go on forever, staying all executions, political and criminal cases and so on, all kinds of other things. So, those would really be much more...concrete actions. And therefore, I think, and many others, are a little bit skeptical about what this really means in practice. So, if I'm a protester or a journalist right now in Egypt and I see this policy change, put us in the mind of that person, what am I thinking? Can I go out and kind of express myself freely now?Not necessarily. I think it's certainly understood as a signal to the international community, more so than a signal to Egyptians. But it also could mean that there is only slightly more room for political maneuver in Egypt. Not a great amount, but a little bit more.This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. AP contributed to this report. 

Today in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, calls for civil disobedience came blaring from a loudspeaker attached to a mosque. One voice urged citizens not to go to work to punish the military for betraying the revolution.Related: Protests erupt across Sudan against military coup Yesterday, top generals seized power in Sudan. The military has cut most phone and internet services. Protesters have created blockades of burning tires, and soldiers are pursuing them — reportedly going door to door. Troops fired on crowds a day earlier, killing four protesters, according to doctors.Sudan’s ruling general said Tuesday that deposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdock was being held for his own safety and would likely be released soon. But he warned that other members of the dissolved government could face trial as protests against the putsch continued in the streets.Related: Sudan's troubled attempt at education reformThe takeover came after weeks of mounting tensions between military and civilian leaders over the course and the pace of Sudan’s transition to democracy. It threatened to derail that process, which has progressed in fits and starts since the overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising two years ago.Related: After the revolution, a secular Sudan?Dalia Abdel-Moneim, a Khartoum resident, joined The World's host Carol Hills to discuss the situation in the nation's capital, where she says the city is tense after all businesses and shops closed, except a few local bodegas. "It's literally a major strike." Daliah Abdel-Moneim, protester, Khartoum, Sudan"It's literally a major strike," Abdel-Moneim said. "Anyone who's out on the street is either going to try and get supplies or just trying to get to family or something. But the city is pretty much dead, and that's, I think, the case throughout the whole country." Carol Hills: There were reports of protests in some places. Soldiers on the streets using live ammunition reportedly have killed at least 10 people — 140 wounded. Do you think the Sudanese army will back down in the face of this kind of violence?Dalia Abdel-Moneim: Absolutely not. If anything, when we went out in 2018 and we stood up strong against [former dictator] Omar al-Bashir and his army, it proved to us that, you know, nothing scares us and we've reached the point of no return. We really can't go back and accept this attempted coup by the military. We'll just keep pushing forward, we'll keep protesting, we'll keep going out in numbers and that the day we're 40 million, there's only so many bullets that the army can have. And even if they shoot at us, they can't kill us all. I mean, honestly, personally, for me, I've just reached that point where I'm like: Do it. Nothing's going to stop us. We really are not going to take it lying down, so to speak.You sound defiant. How broad is popular resistance to this coup? Does it extend beyond major cities? I mean, I'm getting videos of protests in Port Sudan. You know, we're getting calls from all other cities in the country. It's not just Khartoum. We've all been burned by the military in the past. I mean, we have history with the military. It's not good history, and there's no way we will allow history to repeat itself, so to speak. So honestly, I don't think anyone will accept this attempted coup. We're going to stand up to ... we will do whatever we can within our means, and within our limited means, to make sure that what we, the people, want comes to fruition. We want a civilian government. We fought long and hard to have a civilian government, and we're determined to get it. I can't fathom the idea that I can go back to being ruled by the military again. I just can't.Sudan's top General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said today that Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is at his home and he was in good health and will return home when the crisis is over. He didn't use the word under "arrest." What do you make of that?OK, why wasn't he sitting next to him? If he's fine, if he's not under arrest, why not bring him out? Let him speak to the people. Why did you arrest the other ministers? Why are you firing at the protesters? If you're really trying to save him, be the savior of the revolution. Why cut the internet? Why switch off our phones? The transitional government was a partnership between the military and the civilians, and yet he's putting all the blame on the civilians. If you are a part of the revolution and you do want to save the revolution, you do not go about it by arresting ministers, beating them up, taking them to unknown locations and then coming up today and saying, "Oh yes, the prime minister is with me." Where is he? We want proof. Why isn't the prime minister speaking to us?It's always been a kind of fragile thing — the civilian-military government. Were you worried something like this would happen?Oh, please. I mean, all revolutions are messy. You know, you don't slice it and it comes out in perfect shape. There will always be mistakes made. There will always be problems arising. And we are talking about the destruction of a country for over 30 years. So you're not going to rebuild it in a day or even a year or two, it's going to take time. But we also have to look at the successes that the government has achieved in that short period of time. We were removed from the terrorist-supporting list. We got the sanctions lifted from Sudan. Our debt was relieved. You know, we're getting loans. We're getting help, financial, economic help and development help. You know, we've been welcomed back into the international arena, when for 30 years, we were treated as a pariah state. We were taking the steps in the right direction. And then for the military to come in and then announce that they've overthrown the government. No, you haven't overthrown the government because we, the people, choose the government that we want to govern us.Then, what is behind this power grab? I mean, did military leaders fear prosecution or just a loss of access to lucrative contracts? Why now? I think it's a number of reasons. I think the whole ICC [International Criminal Court] ​​issue coming up was a problem. They weren't enjoying the power that they used to before. I think there's also these fractions within the military itself. I mean, I'm not denying it. There were problems between the civilian and the military side, and there are problems in the country that weren't being addressed properly by the government, but at the end of the day, I don't think the military was willing to step aside and let the civilians take control, with the exception of Sadiq al-Mahdi's rule. The military has always been in power, always — ever since we gained independence. So I don't think it was easy for them to be shunted to the side, so to speak.The Biden administration yesterday suspended $700 million in financial aid to Sudan. Does that matter to the coup plotters? I mean, do they have other financial lifelines?Honestly, I don't think it would make an iota of a difference, because I think they have allies with much deeper pockets, and they will be more than happy to foot the bill, so to speak. Can you imagine military and civilian officials in Sudan sharing power again? Can that idea be revived or is it kind of all or nothing at this point?Honestly, that's the best solution that we could have, because the military is a strong presence. It is a strong entity. We can't ignore it. Can we do it without them? Realpolitik says no. But what we do need is we need two parties who will put the best interests of this country and its people at the forefront. It's not about my political party or your military leanings or my allies and your allies. It's about what's best for this country and its people. And if we can find leaders who are willing to do that, then I think we would be on the right track. But will we find leaders like that? On paper, yes. But in reality, things always change.Dalia, do you intend to keep protesting and to continue to fight back?We're all adamant. You know, we've come too far to go back now. I went out not expecting the numbers to be so large last Thursday, and I was shocked at how many people came out and just proved to me that we are all in the same boat. We all want the same thing. Doesn't matter what age, gender, race, class or where you're from. At the end of the day, we're all Sudanese and we want what's best for our country. And that gave me hope that we're more aware, we know what's happening. They can't fool us anymore, and we will protest until the very bitter end, if need be. But I honestly believe that just like they reached a compromise on June 30, 2019, they will reach a compromise again because our numbers are too big to be ignored.This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. AP contributed to this report. 

Across Sudan, people have taken to the streets to protest a military coup that threatens their hopes for a democratic future.For two years, the country has been run by a tense and volatile power-sharing agreement between civilian and military leaders that was established after former dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted from power.Tensions came to a critical point on Monday when armed forces detained Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Cabinet Affairs Minister Khalid Omer Yousif and other top civilian leaders.Related: After the revolution, a secular Sudan?“We still don’t know any news about the whereabouts of the prime minister, his wife, five of the ministers and a number of political leaders who were arrested in the early hours of this morning,” said Yousif’s adviser, Abdelmoniem el-Jack, over the phone from Khartoum.Jack, who is currently in hiding, said the military takeover was driven by three contested issues with the civilian leaders: unification of armed forces, reclaiming of economic resources controlled by the military, and justice for victims of violence during the 2019 revolution and the genocide in Darfur.Related: Sudan's troubled attempt at education reformIn a national TV address on Monday, Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Burhan, who chaired the Sovereign Council, announced they were dissolving the government and declared a state of emergency.“Usually, when a coup happens in Sudanese history, they always come like this. ... They say given the economic situation, [the] political insecurity that’s happening, we’ve decided to take over the reins of power.”"Jihad Mashamoun, Sudanese political analyst, United Kingdom“Usually, when a coup happens in Sudanese history, they always come like this,” observed Jihad Mashamoun, a Sudanese political analyst based in the United Kingdom. “They say given the economic situation, [the] political insecurity that’s happening, we’ve decided to take over the reins of power.”Indeed, Sudan has been in a near-constant political and economic crisis since the 2019 revolution.  The civilian-led government has been largely unable to address the high prices of basic goods, high unemployment and ongoing political instability in parts of the country. Related: After the revolution, Sudanese women ask what's next? “This has all been rather carefully constructed by the military who have sought to portray the government as unable to do the job of responding to the needs of the Sudanese population and have used that as a pretext now to take control of Sudan’s fragile transition."Jonas Horner, senior Sudan analyst, International Crisis Group“This has all been rather carefully constructed by the military who have sought to portray the government as unable to do the job of responding to the needs of the Sudanese population and have used that as a pretext now to take control of Sudan’s fragile transition,” said Jonas Horner, senior Sudan analyst at the International Crisis Group.But the military appears to have made a major miscalculation about how the people would respond to them taking over power.“They did not anticipate that people would go out and protest,” Mashamoun said. “They anticipated that the people would just be calm because they got tired of the economic crisis.”Instead, the opposite has been true. The resounding support for civilian leadership has been on display on the streets of Khartoum as peaceful protesters marched outside the army headquarters.“All the streets were blocked by stones and people refusing this thing from the military and refusing to be governed by the military people."Aymen Sayeed, protester, Khartoum, Sudan“All the streets were blocked by stones and people refusing this thing from the military and refusing to be governed by the military people,” said demonstrator Aymen Sayeed over the phone from Khartoum. “Give the power back to the people,” he added via text message to The World after the phone connection disconnected.While the internet and telecommunication services have largely been cut off, trickles of information have come through on social media, shedding light on the scale of civilian mobilization but also the deadly response by armed forces.In a social media post, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said at least three people had died and more than 80 people had been injured.Jack, the government adviser, says the international community must act against the leaders of the military coup.“There is a need for whole isolation from the international and regional community against General Burhan, General Hemeti, and all those who are involved in this coup."Abdel-moniem El-Jack, adviser to Cabinet Affairs Minister Khalid Omer Yousif“There is a need for whole isolation from the international and regional community against Gen. Burhan, Gen. [Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo] Hemeti, and all those who are involved in this coup,” said Jack, who called on the United Nations Security Council to sanction the leaders and for the African Union to suspend Sudan’s membership.In light of the coup, the United States said it was pausing $700 million in emergency economic support for Sudan that was meant to support the country’s democratic transition.

A court in Saudi Arabia upheld a 20-year prison term imposed on a Saudi aid worker who had criticized the government on Twitter, drawing a rare public rebuke from the US in another sign of tension between the Biden administration and the kingdom.The ruling, confirmed late Wednesday, also upheld a 20-year travel ban on Abdulrahman al-Sadhan after his release. The case against him may have roots in an elaborate ploy that began in Silicon Valley and sparked a federal case against two Twitter employees accused of spying for Saudi Arabia. The men allegedly accessed the user data of over 6,000 Twitter accounts, including nearly three dozen usernames the kingdom had wanted disclosed.Abdulrahman al-Sadhan's family has said his identity appears to have been among those leaked to Saudi authorities as the person behind an anonymous Arabic Twitter account that had amassed a large following and was critical of the government. His case is the latest example of the continued crackdown against those who criticize the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It also shows the lengths to which the authorities have gone to silence them.Abdulrahman al-Sadhan's case stands out because of the severity of the sentence and its possible links with an FBI investigation and federal case in California against the two men accused of spying on behalf of the kingdom while working at Twitter with an alleged third accomplice. The Saudi appellate judges handed down their ruling Tuesday. Saudi authorities have not commented on the legal proceedings, including the most recent ruling. The court did not make the decision public.Abdulrahman al-Sadhan's sister Areej al-Sadhan, a dual Saudi-US citizen, talked to The World's host Marco Werman about the situation. Marco Werman: Areej al-Sadhan, what exactly was a crime Saudi authorities charged your brother with?Areej al-Sadhan: Basically for expressing his opinions on Twitter. It was a list of vague charges that don't make any sense, and it's all basically under the umbrella of what the Saudi call "fighting terrorism." And if you look closely at what the Saudi government considers terrorism: it's criticizing the Saudi rulers will be considered terrorism.And you were saying the two of you have been out of touch for the entire time he's been in prison thus far?For me, here in the States, even for my mom, who is also an American, we couldn't get to speak to him or see him at all. He's completely barred from any calls or visits. And even during the hearings, he was limited from contacting his lawyer. Abdulrahman's sentence of 20 years has now been augmented with a 20-year travel ban, which means your brother will be well into his 70s before he can leave the kingdom. How are you and your family taking this news?It's just crazy. It's inhumane. Unbelievable. Why would they do that for criticism, for tweets, you know, over tweets? It's just crazy. And of course, we're very upset. It's very painful. My mom has been suffering a lot as a result of this. She hasn't spoken to her son, and my brother was very close to my mom. He always checks on her. He's very loving and caring to all of us, but especially to our mother. This is very hard to be deprived from, you know, speaking to her son or seeing him. And on top of that, hearing all the details of torture and forced disappearance and mistreatment, it is just terrible and nobody should accept that.The US State Department says it is concerned about the mistreatment your brother was subjected to and that his fair trial guarantees were not respected. How has your family been dealing with the lack of transparency in Abdulrahman's case? How do you get accurate information? Luckily, there are different witnesses from the earliest of days, like when Khashoggi got assassinated in the Saudi consulate — Jamal Khashoggi. During that time, there was a lot of fear going on. There was a lot of news getting leaked of prisoners being tortured and being mistreated. During that time, my brother was disappeared for six months already, and the news I was receiving that my brother was being brutally tortured, that he might die from torture. And their brutality had reached to the point that they broke his hand and smashed his fingers, saying, "This is the hand you tweet with," or "This is the hand you write with." How did you find out about his injuries?There are several witnesses, and also it's confirmed by several human rights organizations that he was really abused in prison, and he was brutally tortured. So you yourself took to Twitter, the same platform your brother used, to express your outrage about the whole situation. What was the response there?Oh, I get threats all the time. I get threats of murder. I get threats of retaliation. As we're speaking right now, I've been receiving a lot of attacks and threats from Saudi-backed Twitter accounts, and some of them are, clearly, they are linked to the government.  You've been getting these as we've been speaking just now.Yes. What about the possibility of your traveling to Saudi Arabia to see your brother in prison? I mean, is that even on your mind? Unfortunately, I cannot travel to Saudi Arabia while MBS (Mohammed bin Salman) is actually in power. You can all imagine what would happen to me. They are already calling me a terrorist. They are calling me a traitor. They're calling me a spy and all sorts of crazy stuff. Just because I'm speaking up against the abuses to my brother and to many others in Saudi Arabia. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Twenty years ago today, less than a month after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush addressed the nation to announce the US-led invasion of Afghanistan."Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan," Bush said.Related: 'Why don’t you have mercy?': Afghanistan’s Hazara people increasingly face eviction, violence under Taliban ruleFast forward two decades, and this year in August, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban again, followed by an address to the nation by President Joe Biden announcing the end of the war."Our mission in Afghanistan has taking many missteps, made many missteps, over the past two decades," said Biden. "I'm now the fourth American president to preside over war in Afghanistan. Two Democrats and two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth president."Related: The Afghan government and the US lost popular support over corruption in Afghanistan, investigator general saysNow, Illinois Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, herself a veteran, has called for a commission to study the past 20 years of US involvement in Afghanistan. She joined The World's host Marco Werman from Washington to explain what it entails.Marco Werman: You've called your proposal, senator, the Afghanistan War Study Commission. What do you hope it will achieve?Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Well, I hope that it will achieve a comprehensive look at the various errors that have been made by all the different folks involved and gives us the lessons learned so that we don't enter into another quagmire like the one we've been in for 20 years in Afghanistan. We know that the United States will be involved in future conflicts. We need to make sure that we don't get ourselves into a situation where we spend 20 years at war in a country, only to come away and have the people who were in charge when we got there put back in charge when we leave.There have already been a series of lessons learned, reports on the Afghanistan war. How will your committee and investigation be different?Well, the key thing is that I want it to be completely nonpartisan, not bipartisan, but nonpartisan. I've served on bipartisan commissions before. I served on the Benghazi Commission, for example. That was bipartisan, but it was highly political. I want this to be a real, cold-hard facts look. I don't want anybody on a commission that was in any position of decision making or authority during those 20 years. So, not a past secretary of defense who was in charge at the time, not a previous president, not a member of Congress. This needs to be someone who can lead this commission, much like the 9/11 Commission, and bring us the lessons learned, whether it is the legislative branch failing to reauthorize a new authorization for use of military force or presidents choosing to do a troop surge or the corruption, trying to do nation building with the military as opposed to nation building with the State Department. All of the things that led us to where we are today. What we really need to do is make sure that we do this in a systematic way. I think the 9/11 Commission is a great example of the kind of work that can be done. And it must produce actionable recommendations. Like what? What would you see as an actionable recommendation?Well, I think, if you look at contracting, a significant portion of what happened is corruption within the Afghanistan government, within their national security forces. We know about the ghost soldiers in that we paid for the salaries of many, many thousands of so-called Afghan national security forces who never existed, and in fact, were on the books only, and their commanders collected that money. That corruption piece is really important. We certainly need to do an actionable recommendation for Congress [that] would be any type of authorization for use of military force must sunset after three years or must sunset after five years. You must have a new look at a new debate, instead of keeping an old one that lasts 20 years. So, there are things that can be done. You were on the committee that investigated the disaster at the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. That turned out to be a deeply politicized committee. What did you learn from that?Not to make it bipartisan. Make it nonpartisan. Don't let the politicians get involved. And if you watch the Benghazi Commission and watch my questioning, you'll see that I tried really hard to keep my questions and my focus solely on, what are the lessons learned that we never have an ambassador get killed in that way, so that we never have an embassy that's not listening to the intelligence community or is overriding what military leaders are saying, "hey, we should be doing this." It was my experience on the Benghazi Committee that led me to say, "Hey, what this needs is complete independence." I don't want it to be bipartisan, I want it to be nonpartisan, and I don't want anybody that had any skin in the game in terms of they were part of the decision-making process to be part of this of this analysis. It needs to be a cold, hard, independent look, with real actionable recommendations coming out of it. That's how we can best serve the American people with this commission. Senator, when do you think the committee would present its findings? And are you worried that if it takes a few years, a report on what went wrong from 2001 to 2021 might not be must-read material anymore?Well, I think it will be must-read materials. I mean, I'm still looking at lessons learned from the Civil War. You know, when I was an ROTC cadet, they took us to Gettysburg and we reenacted all of the battles and talked about the lessons learned from Gettysburg. In a 21st century army, we were learning about Gettysburg. I think lessons learned here will be relevant for many, many more decades into our nation's future. But what I do want to come out of it is, in addition to the long-term results, I think there will be many-short term findings that we can find out right away. For example, one of the things that we're hearing is that, I've known this, but it's the State Department that calls for the evacuation of civilians on the ground. what's called the noncombatant evacuation operations. The decision to start that is not the DOD [Department of Defense]. It's actually the State Department. So, there are some things that are more short-term lessons learned that we can get the results of in the next months or the first six months, the first 12 months of this commission. Some things are going to take many years for us to get the results for. But I think we're going to see findings and results coming out all along the way, even as the commission continues to work.Finally, you've been a senator since 2017. Prior to that, we must remember you were deployed to Iraq. That was 2004. And then later that year, your Blackhawk helicopter came under attack from an insurgent rocket, a horrific attack that left you a double amputee. How much did your own experience energize a desire to not leave any stones unturned from the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan?My personal experience is the core of who I am. I should have died on that day in Iraq, and my buddies didn't give up on me. And those same buddies later on returned and did more deployments. And that was really at the heart of why I wanted this commission, because our troops, over the last 20 years, many of them have had three, four, five, six, seven, I've heard of 10, 12 deployments. And every time we asked our troops to go overseas and they stand up and they salute, and they say, "Yes, sir," and they packed their rucksacks and they go. And I feel like we, who are here at home, just haven't lived up to the dedication and the sacrifices that these troops made. And one of the things that we can do is to make sure we don't make the same mistakes ever again if there are lessons can be learned. And so, yeah, my experience as a soldier does drive me now, because I feel that I owe my life to the men who saved me. And that means that now that I am in this position as a United States senator, that I'm not going to shirk that duty, so that, you know, my buddies have sons and daughters who are serving. And maybe someday one of my two girls will serve. And I want to make sure that we do right by them. And one of the things we can do is to have a cold, hard look when we make mistakes, learn those lessons and let's not make them again. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

The Taliban raided an ISIS-affiliated hideout in the Afghan capital Kabul killing several insurgents, hours after a deadly bombing outside the Eid Gah mosque on Sunday that left at least five people dead. No one has taken responsibility for the blast, but the rival ISIS group has ramped up attacks against the Taliban, including the Aug. 26 bombing that killed more than 169 Afghans and 13 US military personnel outside Kabul airport.Related: Former adviser Sarah Chayes: The US failed to understand how Afghans wage warThough many people dread the harsh elements of Taliban rule, the group does not bring with it a reputation of being corrupt — a stark contrast to the government it ousted — which was notoriously rife with bribery, embezzlement and graft.Related: The Taliban want international recognition. Countries are debating.The US has invested some $2 trillion in Afghanistan. Corruption and mismanagement plagued the efforts from the start.One US government agency charged with overseeing money used to rebuild Afghanistan is called SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.John Sopko, who has led SIGAR since 2012, joined The World's host Marco Werman from Washington to discuss the years of mismanagement in the country.Marco Werman: Inspector general, your job is to sound the alarm when funds are being misused. Tell us in brief what your agency actually does.John Sopko: We're one of the independent inspectors general created by Congress. And we have audit and criminal investigative authority. And our job, as you rightfully noted, was to ferret out waste, fraud, abuse in the money spent in Afghanistan, as well as to give advice to Congress on any administration on the problems we found and how to fix them.So, knowing what you knew over the years in Afghanistan, tell me about your reaction when you saw the Taliban take over the country in August.I have to be honest, although we had predicted problems and major problems for the 10 years I'd been there with the Afghan military and the government, I think we were surprised, just like everybody else, at the speed to which the government and the military collapsed. And not only surprise, but also shock and sadness, because we knew what it meant for a lot of Afghans we had worked with over those years.In the report, SIGAR talks extensively about corruption. Can you highlight what was going on and could the US have done more to prevent it?I think the US, and we highlighted the US could have done a lot more, and actually the US contributed a lot to the corruption in Afghanistan, because we spent too much money, too fast in too small a country, with too little oversight. So, the corruption was really endemic, and we're not talking about corruption like you may see in the United States or Europe or elsewhere. We're talking about corruption that's actually baked into the system there. Money was being stolen from us and from all the other allies who contributed for years from the top, all the way down to the bottom. So, what was the attitude of the Afghan government to this kind of thing that would inevitably lead to dysfunction?The Afghan government did not take an active response to our criticism on corruption. And I think, in part, because the corruption was so endemic. They were very good at checking the box. They would create an organization, hold a conference, rename something. We were really upset, and repeatedly talked about this in our reports, with not only the [Ashraf] Ghani government, but the [Hamid] Karzai government before that. Now, this doesn't mean there weren't some honest cops — Afghan cops and prosecutors and parliamentarians and judges who tried to do something — but overall, it was a pretty pathetic response to fight corruption in that country.And what impact did that have on the government's ability to repel the Taliban ultimately?Well, ultimately it contributed to the Taliban's success, because what happened is, the Afghan people saw how corrupt and incompetent their government was, and they saw it wasn't improving. So, they lost respect for the government and support for the government. They also saw that our government was giving that money to those corrupt officials and those corrupt contractors and those corrupt warlords. So, we lost support. I imagine, John Sopko, calling this stuff out over the past decade has not made you the most popular man in Washington. How have administration officials and members of Congress responded to your reports?A lot of members of Congress responded positively and have been very supportive of us and have actually recognized, over the years, what we were doing and the warnings we were giving. Some people in the administration have done that and been very responsive. But once you start a war, it's hard to stop, and once you're in there for 20 years, then it's like changing a ship in the water, trying to slowly move it. We had some successes, but obviously, a lot of things were not taken to heart by some of the administration people. And there there was a groundswell of opposition to some of the ideas we came up with. When we first highlighted the problem of ghost soldiers and ghost police, there were a lot of nameless, faceless bureaucrats who whispered to congressmen and senators and staffers that, "Oh, SIGAR was exaggerating." Well, turned out, we weren't. And it turned out, even the Afghans admitted, for example, right before the collapse, that over 50% of the police in Helmand and other provinces never existed. So, the first US mission in Afghanistan was to get rid of al-Qaeda, then came the nation building, then came the surge and a strong desire to leave, but nothing happened until this year. How much do you think that constant pivoting led to a lack of mission focus and more corruption?I mean, the report we came out with, we've been working on summarizing all of our work in what happened over the last 20 years. We've been working on it for a year and it came out, ironically, just a day or two after the collapse of Kabul. That highlighted a number of lessons. We didn't really have a clear, articulated strategy and goal. And so, a lot of things collapsed as a result. So, instead of fighting a 20-year war, doing 20 years of reconstruction, we did it one year at a time. We really never focused our resources on the target. And that also contributed, although I think it's an equal problem, was just a lack of understanding of the political and cultural context of Afghanistan. I mean, we basically empowered the warlords who the Taliban had successfully beaten with the support of the people when we came in. And again, not understanding the context, not understanding the corrupting influence, not understanding how the Afghans hated these people, we empowered them. And, lo and behold, when you go to sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas. And what we did here is, we made our bed with some very evil, corrupt, powerful individuals in Afghanistan who were hated by the people. So, John, Congress has called for a review of the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and its military. How do you think Congress will react to its own findings? Will officials be more likely to listen this time around?Well, I hope they will. I mean, Congress has asked us to answer a number of critical questions to do these. I mean, they've asked us to explain, "Why did the Afghan military collapse so quickly? Why did the Afghan government collapse so quickly? What happened to all the money that we were shipping over there? Particularly, when did we shut off the spigots of money flowing to Afghanistan? What happened to all the weapons? What is happening to all of the women and girls who we supported and all those programs?" I think they're reaching out to us because we have a track record of speaking truth to power. We have a track record of being non-partisan. We've criticized Democrats, we've criticize Republican administrations. We just state the facts. I think a lot of people in Congress actually think we may be the best organization out there to answer those type of questions. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. AP contributed to this report.

A logistical success, but a strategic failure.That's how top US generals described the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, in the second day of hearings on Wednesday on Capitol Hill, this time before the House Armed Services Committee.A lot of the most intense questioning dealt with intelligence failures and how the US could have missed signs pointing to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government. Related: Gen. David Petraeus: The US has a 'moral obligation' to help those left behind in AfghanistanUS Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tried to answer for these failures in his opening statement: "We need to consider some uncomfortable truths; that we did not fully comprehend the depth of corruption and poor leadership in their senior ranks; that we did not grasp the damaging effect of frequent and unexplained rotations by President [Ashraf] Ghani of his commanders; that we did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by the deals that the Taliban commanders struck with local leaders in the wake of the Doha agreement." Related: Afghan UN employees worry about their safetyAuthor Sarah Chayes, who served as a special adviser to the US military in Afghanistan and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after a decade on the ground in Kandahar, has been watching the hearings closely. Her most recent book is called "On Corruption in America and What is at Stake." Chayes joined The World's host Marco Werman to share her reaction to these military testimonies and to fill in the blanks on who else may need to testify on US failures in Afghanistan. Marco Werman: What do you make of that explanation for the lack of military intelligence?Sarah Chayes: It's just stunning to me, but in a way, not surprising. So much US intelligence was focused on who we should kill instead of being focused on the degree of corruption, not just in the ranks of the Afghan military, but throughout the government, and the effect that that would have on the willingness of Afghan citizens to take mortal risks for their own government, you know? I mean, that information was being hammered on successive US administrations for years. I was one of the hammerers and not at all alone. And so, I find that very distressing. And then — this snowball effect of the local deals. I think this is another really significant failing on the intelligence and military side — is misunderstanding how Afghans wage war. Afghans rarely fight as units to the death. Fighting is much more a kind of psychological exercise. That's why it's often quite violent. So, you have the combination of the Taliban, who were making battlefield victories, a Doha agreement that essentially conferred sovereignty on them, and then they went to work on the ground, as you said. How could the United States government have missed that context?Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley tried to provide an answer for how the US failed to predict the Afghan government's collapse: "We can count the trucks and the guns and the units and all that. We can watch that from different techniques, but we can't measure a human heart from a machine. You've got to be there to do that. And I think that was probably one of the most significant contributing factors to missing the deterioration in the morale of the Afghan army." What do you make of Gen. Milley's comments? We were there for 20 years. We were on the ground for 20 years, and we still missed that type of psychological and social intelligence. We never got close enough to ordinary people.Related: How the Taliban might finance their new Afghan government Well, you spoke earlier about the lack of understanding of how Afghans wage war. I mean, Gen. Milley at one point questioned why the US had tried to build an Afghan army in our own image. What was he getting at? He put his finger on what you really can hang around the military's neck, is why would you create, in an environment of very difficult terrain, where wars are constantly being won by ill-armed, ill-equipped insurgents, why would you create a conventional army that looks like ours, that requires highly technical equipment that people need to maintain, that seems to require air support (although the Taliban never seem to need air support). And that, again, was going on for 20 years. And I think we really have to ask ourselves as a country, why? What was the incentive structure behind building that type of top-heavy, equipment-heavy military? And were economic interests not involved here? I mean, is this not the type of equipment and contractor support that is delivered by very high-end military contractors whose executives have been building fancy mansions around Washington, DC, for the last decade?So, the starting point for the hearings this week seems to be that the problems with the US project in Afghanistan were fundamentally military. And that's why generals were brought before lawmakers today and called to task. But weren't a lot of the fundamental problems also civilian?Well, exactly. Thank you, Marco. And I hope that civilian officials will be called soon. And first and foremost, for me, it would be Zal Khalilzad, [special envoy for Afghanistan], who is responsible for the actual terms of the Doha agreement. ... He's an Afghan American who conducted these negotiations at President [Donald] Trump's behest in Doha. Those negotiations, as far as I know, were conducted in Pashto without any member of the US government who spoke the language present — other than the ambassador — and they essentially conferred sovereignty on the Taliban. How would we expect an Afghan government not to be demoralized under those conditions?This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

There were hugs, smiles and a tight embrace at Toronto airport earlier this month as a 3-year-old Afghan boy reunited with his father.The boy, who was not named because he is a minor, was separated from his family on Aug. 26, when there was a suicide attack at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.He was put on a plane out of the country and spent two weeks at an orphanage in Qatar, according to Qatari and Canadian media reports. Officials with the UN as well as the Qatari government helped reach his family in Canada, and he was able to reunite with them.Related: 'We are still here': Afghan UN employees worry about their safetyBut this boy is lucky.In the chaos of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the mass evacuation from Kabul, a number of unaccompanied minors ended up on flights out of the country. Now comes the difficult task of reuniting them with their families or, for those who don’t have any relatives, helping them find new homes.Right now, there are at least 300 Afghan children who were separated from their families during the evacuation, according to Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, an organization that provides support for unaccompanied minors.“We know of children whose parents were killed in the process, and we know of children who were separated and placed on a different flight than their parent or their guardian and the child is in one country and the parents in another.” Wendy Young, Kids in Need of Defense, president“We know of children whose parents were killed in the process, and we know of children who were separated and placed on a different flight than their parent or their guardian and the child is in one country and the parents in another,” she said.Related: Minerals, drugs and China: How the Taliban might finance their new Afghan governmentYoung said that has spurred a global effort to help reunite Afghan children separated from their parents and also find housing for unaccompanied minors — children who evacuated with a friend or relative and also some who are orphans. The US State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to questions from The World about which countries unaccompanied Afghan minors have been relocated to, but earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited some of them at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.Some unaccompanied Afghan minors have started arriving in the US. This week, about 75 unaccompanied minors arrived in Chicago, according to city and federal officials, the Chicago Sun Times reported.Others are staying at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas, where Barbara Ammirati, deputy director for child protection in emergencies with Save the Children, has been part of the team offering support.Ammirati said that when the children arrive and it is determined they are unaccompanied, they are immediately separated from the general population at the base and placed in shelters.“It’s a very temporary accommodation,” she said. “It’s a small home — one room — and we’ve set it up. ... it looks like a bedroom with a welcoming living space.”No more than two minors, she said, stay in these facilities at a time and most of the minors she has worked with are between 15 and 17.Ammirati said these Afghan kids have been through a traumatic experience, but they are ready to start their new lives in the US.Related: Afghan women sidelined under new Taliban rule: ‘This country places no value on me as a woman’“They are happy to be in the United States. The first questions are, ‘Can I go to school, if I go here, will I go to school?’ A university student is desperate to get back to classes,” she said.Need for a more permanent statusYoung, from Kids in Need of Defense, said she is concerned about the children’s immigration status because Afghan children fall into a unique category.“They’ve been evacuated but they haven’t been processed and vetted as the rigorous and, frankly, bureaucratic and lengthy process that normally happens through refugee resettlement,” she said. “They haven’t spontaneously arrived here, so this is why they’re in parole status.” (An individual who is ineligible to enter the US as a refugee, immigrant or nonimmigrant may be "paroled" into the US by the Secretary of Homeland Security.)Related: The Taliban want international recognition. Countries are debating.That means they face a lot of uncertainty. Earlier this month, Young’s organization published a set of guidelines to protect Afghan children arriving in the US.Meanwhile, people from Afghan communities in the US have been springing into action. For example, the Afghan American Foundation recently hosted a Zoom session to explain what becoming a foster parent entails.Nadia Hashimi, a pediatrician and writer, started off the conversation.“For these children, this may be an event in their lives that stays very fresh. I think trauma does that. Trauma has a very deep footprint on the soul and so the easier, and the more comforted we can have these children feel in this moment and this process, the better it is.”Nadia Hashimi, pediatrician and writer“For these children, this may be an event in their lives that stays very fresh,” she said. “I think trauma does that. Trauma has a very deep footprint on the soul and so the easier, and the more comforted we can have these children feel in this moment and this process, the better it is.”About 800 people across the country were on the call, Hashimi said.Unaccompanied children arriving in the US is nothing new.Young said in recent years, the official US response has been more about law enforcement than child protection. In the case of these Afghan children, she said, the approach is still a work in progress.“What I hope happens is that we’ll look back at it and figure out what lessons learned there are because what we see whether you’re looking at the Central American situation or the Afghan situation is that these kids need our help,” she said. “And we owe it to them to have a system in place that kicks in rapidly and ensures that they get everything that they need including family reunification where appropriate.”

This week, as world leaders gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, concerns are growing about the safety of UN employees thousands of miles away in Afghanistan.An estimated 3,000 Afghans work for the UN in the country. Most remain there, and many fear being targeted by the Taliban for their work.“We are hoping, we are wishing to be evacuated, too.”Mohammed, Afghan UN employee“We are hoping, we are wishing to be evacuated, too,” said Mohammed, an Afghan UN employee who, along with some of his Afghan colleagues asked to not be fully identified because they fear risking their jobs or chances at evacuation.“Maybe the United Nations cannot help us,” he added. In August, as the Taliban took hold of Afghanistan, many UN international staff evacuated, adding to those who had already left the country to work remotely during the pandemic. All told, there are reportedly about 700 international UN staff with the Afghan mission.Some international staff, although it is unclear how many, are returning to Afghanistan although many international employees continue to work remotely from their home countries or from Almaty, Kazakhstan, according to a UN spokesman.Related: Afghan women sidelined under new Taliban rule: ‘This country places no value on me as a woman’This week, several members of US Congress, led by Texas Democrat Rep. Joaquin Castro, sent a letter to President Joe Biden stating: “While we support the United Nations maintaining a presence in Afghanistan to the extent possible, as well as delivering humanitarian assistance, this should not come at the expense of Afghan nationals who signed up to work under vastly different circumstances and now face grave threats to their security because of their previous work and other factors.”“We've got to advocate for them,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, told The World. “We have a moral obligation, both the United Nations and the United States and its allies, to protect those brave Afghanis [sic] who over the last 20 years work by our side.”The reality that UN officials have not planned evacuations for its local staff has left people like Mohammed at an extremely difficult crossroads.This summer, he relocated with his family to Kabul from a province as the Taliban made rapid gains in the country. Mohammed said that he cannot imagine moving back with his family to his previous field office.Some UN offices have been the target of attacks.On July 30, the UN reported that the Taliban attacked its compound in the western city of Herat. A security guard was killed.Mohammad is most worried about his family now.“When I think about my future with my family, especially for my wife, my daughter, life is so restricted for them; even for me, it is restricted.” Mohammed, Afghan UN employee“When I think about my future with my family, especially for my wife, my daughter, life is so restricted for them; even for me, it is restricted,” he said.According to some UN officials who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, plans are moving forward to resume field operations.Related: Minerals, drugs and China: How the Taliban might finance their new Afghan governmentMohammed is expecting an order from UN managers to return to fieldwork any day now. He said that he has considered resigning from his job because he does not want to leave his wife and young children alone in Kabul.But he is also the family’s sole breadwinner, he said, and finding another job in a country where the economy is spiraling is not a viable option for him.Dangers to womenMany of Mohammed’s Afghan colleagues face the same dilemma, particularly his female co-workers. The Taliban are enforcing rules that sideline women in Afghanistan.Some female UN workers told The World that they fear retaliation for their UN work involving social justice issues such as women’s rights, which may clash from the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic religious law.The women said that they barely leave their homes and conceal any items that could reveal they are affiliated with the UN. They know of friends who have been detained and tortured by the Taliban in recent months.“They just severely beat journalists who were covering a protest.” Female UN worker“They just severely beat journalists who were covering a protest,” one woman UN worker said, referring to a Sept. 7 protest by women, when Taliban security forces detained and beat two Afghan journalists with cables.“If the Taliban come and search my home and find my laptop, it will be difficult for me,” one female UN employee said.She said that she has asked to work remotely from a nearby country, but has not received permission to do that yet. She has considered finding another way to leave the country but “leaving by land is too risky for me. The borders are closed,” she said.Related: The Taliban want international recognition. Countries are debating.One female UN employee said she feels abandoned, especially after she received an email in late August informing the UN’s Afghan mission staff that the head of the UN mission, Deborah Lyons, would be on vacation from Aug. 30 to Sept. 9 — leaving just as the US exited Afghanistan after a 20-year war and days after suicide bombers attacked the Kabul airport. ‘Absent at such a critical time’Former UN officials were also troubled by that absence of leadership.Peter Galbraith once served as a high-ranking UN official in Afghanistan.“You can be evacuated but your job all the time has to be looking after your people, never mind looking after the situation,” Galbraith said. “I just can’t imagine being absent at such a critical time.”While the UN’s international staff was being evacuated in August, its local staff received a series of safety advisories seen by The World. They were told that if armed Taliban fighters search your home, “avoid making any sudden movements” and that “if you feel the situation is becoming aggravated, ask them politely, if it is possible to call the UN, explaining that the UN is in liaison with Taliban commanders, and it can assist in clarifying the situation.”Also, it said that employees should “get rid of any sensitive documents by putting them into a bucket with soap, water and whatever strong cleaning solution you have.”After soaking, the advisory said to put documents in the sewers, a well or down an elevator shaft.Related: For journalists working under Taliban rule, there are 'no guarantees,' Afghan media network head saysOn Aug. 23, UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke by video to Afghan staff.“The safety of all United Nations personnel in Afghanistan is our top priority,” he said. “We are doing everything in our power, namely through the permanent engagement with all relevant actors and will continue to do so to ensure your safety and well-being.”Liam McDowell, a UN spokesperson, said that since the Taliban seized power of Kabul on Aug. 15, two UN staff have reported being injured by members reportedly with the group. Nobody has been killed. “The safety of female staff members is of especial importance, and the UN has been very clear with all interlocutors that their rights must be protected. No female staff member have been harmed.”Liam McDowell, UN spokespersonRegarding female staff, McDowell wrote: “The safety of female staff members is of especial importance, and the UN has been very clear with all interlocutors that their rights must be protected. No female staff member have been harmed.”Several current UN officials privately criticize that the measure of safety for the UN’s Afghan staff “shouldn’t be that the Taliban haven’t decided to kill any of them yet.” Publicly, UN staff unions and associations have circulated a petition asking for the UN secretary-general to ensure local staff safety. The petition has 6,832 signatures so far.Galbraith, the former UN official, agrees that more should be done to protect local UN staff.“That is the dilemma that the UN faces,” Galbraith said. “If it's to continue to be present, it's going to need its Afghan employees.”Galbraith acknowledged the need to continue the UN’s life-saving humanitarian work, such as delivering food and medicine. That work is not without risk, Galbraith said, but the Taliban may want that work to continue.“There are some activities that the UN has done for decades, like the work of UNICEF, UNHCR and the World Food Program,” he said. “You can negotiate agreements with the Taliban for them to continue their work. In fact, the Taliban are desperate for them to continue their work.”Galbraith said that he is especially concerned about UN Afghan staff who work on longer-term efforts to promote women's rights, press freedom and electoral rights — goals that can directly clash with the Taliban.The local UN workers’ concerns came up in a vivid way during a virtual UN staff meeting in August.In a recording of that call, which was shared with The World, local staff asked top UN managers why they were not being evacuated despite warning UN leaders repeatedly for months about getting out of the country.At one point during the call, a woman was asking a question and gunfire could be heard from outside her window.“What can I say? I fully understand the difficult situation you find yourself in, and that it must be terrifying to have these people coming to your homes, coming to your neighborhoods and it’s certainly something that concerns us a lot.”Mette Knudsen, deputy special representative for the UN Assistance Mission in AfghanistanMette Knudsen, a deputy special representative for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, responded during the meeting: “What can I say? I fully understand the difficult situation you find yourself in, and that it must be terrifying to have these people coming to your homes, coming to your neighborhoods and it’s certainly something that concerns us a lot.”Knudsen explained that the UN needs help from other countries to issue visas in order to evacuate people.The United Nati

Mohammed Ammar, 23, works at a lively cell phone repair shop on a bustling street in a largely Syrian district of Istanbul. Quieter than his coworkers and dressed more formally, Mohammed Ammar takes his job seriously, because he knows how hard it is to find one. In the past three months, five of his friends got so desperate for work, they decided to return to Syria, a country they fled years ago.“The pandemic affected [my friends'] decision [to leave Turkey.]  ... When they left, they had no money to live.”Mohammed Ammar, 23, Syrian who works at a cell phone shop in Istanbul, Turkey“The pandemic affected their decision,” said Mohammed Ammar, who asked not to use his last name because he is living with a temporary protection residency in Turkey. “When they left, they had no money to live.”Related: Drought in Iraq and Syria could collapse food system for millionsThese are the tough choices that millions of Syrians are wrestling with around the world.After 10 years of civil war, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, controlling vast swaths of the country with an iron fist. Other parts of the country are controlled by largely Kurdish militias and opposition fighters backed by Turkish forces.In Turkey, the COVID-19 pandemic was hard on Syrians, Mohammed Ammar said.Many find informal work for less than minimum wage, or in the service sector, and some lost their jobs when Turkey went under lockdown. While many Turkish citizens had some measures of protection from the government or financial aid, many Syrians did not.Related: She survived a chemical attack in Syria A worker pours a cup of strong coffee at a Syrian sweet shop in Istanbul. Unemployment rates in Turkey are high, and the pandemic affected Syrian workers particularly severely.  Credit: Durrie Bouscaren/The World  His five friends returned to different parts of the country, but all found themselves in increasingly dire circumstances with food and fuel shortages and few job opportunities. Now, finding themselves in a country with rising food prices that outpace any potential earnings, they regret their decision to go back.He worries about them.“Now they regret their decision,” Mohammed Ammar said. “They can’t make it there. Life is so difficult, and they want to come back to Turkey again.”Related: A decade of war has devastated Syria's health care system  Workers help a customer at a Syrian dessert shop in Istanbul.  Credit: Durrie Bouscaren/The World  'Voluntary returns'Despite these challenges, several foreign governments are actively encouraging  — and sometimes forcing — Syrian refugees who live within their borders to return to the war-torn nation.In Lebanon, raids on refugee camps and mass arrests make life so unbearable that “voluntary” returns can hardly be classified that way, human rights groups warn. In Denmark, the government has revoked residence permits from some Syrians, because it believes the Syrian capital Damascus is safe. The Turkish government has also been accused of deporting Syrians to northern Syria since 2019.Refugee returns are a popular rallying cry among nationalist voters in Turkey, where 3.7 million Syrians are registered as refugees.Related: Displaced Syrians in Turkey say Syria's elections are a sham The Turkish government claims that 450,000 Syrian refugees have already returned to Syria from Turkey — a number that does not include the high numbers of people who return again to Turkey after staying in Syria. (The UNHCR puts the number of voluntary refugee returns to Syria from all countries at approximately 282,000.)Polls show that Turkish voters do want Syrian refugees to return — and politicians are capitalizing on these sentiments.Turkey’s main opposition leader, Kemal Kılıçkaroğlu, has pledged to facilitate the return of refugees to Syria within two years if his party comes into power.“I am not a racist. I am not angry at the people who came here, but at the people who made them come here,” Kılıçdaroğlu said on Sept 2. “Everyone should go to their country and live there in peace. They can receive humanitarian assistance there.”Related: Fighting in Syria has subsided. But refugees in Lebanon still hesitate to return home. The grounds of the Fatih Mosque, first built in the 15th century, serve as a popular community space for the Syrian community  Credit: Durrie Bouscaren/The World  A dangerous prospectAid groups, however, warn that returning to Syria is a dangerous prospect.“There has been a tendency to think that the war is over, that some parts of Syria are safe to return, and that refugees can return and go home. But that’s premature.”Marie Forestier, refugee and migrant rights researcher, Amnesty International“There has been a tendency to think that the war is over, that some parts of Syria are safe to return, and that refugees can return and go home,” said Marie Forestier, a refugee and migrant rights researcher for Amnesty International. “But that’s premature.”In a new report titled, “You’re Going to Your Death,” Forestier followed the cases of 66 Syrians who returned to Syria over the past four years. These returnees, she explained, were detained at border checkpoints, interrogated and accused of being terrorists. In one particularly horrific case, a woman and her 5-year-old daughter were raped by intelligence officials.“We believe these are not isolated and exceptional cases,” Forestier said. “People have returned to different areas, going through different border crossings and they have been abused in different intelligence centers.”These risks don’t stop at the border, added Haya Atassi of the Syrian Association for Citizens' Dignity in Beirut. Young men who return can be pressed into military service. The regime is known to detain people it suspects of dissent — and also their family members. Even routine government services can put you at risk, because all returnees are seen by the Syrian government as traitors to the state.“You cannot rebuild your house [in Syria] unless you get a security clearance from Syrian intelligence. And when you go and apply for this clearance, they would most probably know that you’re a returnee. So, they would detain you.”Haya Atassi, Syrian Association for Citizens' Dignity, Beirut, Lebanon“You cannot rebuild your house unless you get a security clearance from Syrian intelligence. And when you go and apply for this clearance, they would most probably know that you’re a returnee,” Atassi said. “So they would detain you.”Even in areas not controlled by the Syrian regime, rampant inflation and an economy in tatters has left many unable to afford food and basic necessities, amid an ever-present threat of violence. A Turkish coffee shop in a largely Syrian neighborhood of Istanbul.  Credit: Durrie Bouscaren/The World  Carving out a lifeMeanwhile, millions of Syrians continue to carve out a life for themselves abroad. In Istanbul, a small Syrian grocery shop is stacked to the ceiling with canned goods. Jars of jam, made from kiwi, apricot and cactus fruit frame a display of marinating olives. A deli counter offers a selection of hummus, labneh and other familiar spreads.Behind the counter, an employee named Hasan said he came to Turkey four years ago. Life here is expensive, and he’s never really been able to earn enough to settle down —  keeping him in a state of constant transition. But Hasan, who asked not to use his last name for security reasons, said he’ll never go back.“There are Iranian militias, Hezbollah, the Russians [in Syria]… it’s like you’re going into the middle of a military base. You can’t go there.”Hasan, Syrian customer in a Turkish grocery shop“There are Iranian militias, Hezbollah, the Russians… it’s like you’re going into the middle of a military base,” he said. “You can’t go there.”When asked how he feels when Turkish politicians suggest that refugees return to Syria, a customer interrupted.“It’s OK. Why are you being silent? Tell them it’s racism,” said Adil, a tour guide operator from Aleppo. He also asked not to use his full name, because he’s worried about repercussions from the Turkish government.Adil said that he is actively preparing to move back to Syria. He misses those days when he brought tourists to the citadels, the old souks and the columns of ancient Palmyra. He speaks Turkish and owns a business here, but he’s a grandfather now. He wants to be somewhere that feels like home.“I want to die with dignity, in my own land,” he said. “[Assad] is still in power, but he doesn’t live in my house.”Translations from Arabic provided by Yusuf Al-Mousa.

Think back to 2008. Things were humming along with the global economy and then bang! The bottom fell out of the housing market in the United States. People couldn't pay their loans. And you know what happened next.There's growing fear something like that could play out again, this time starting in China. One of China's largest real estate developers, China Evergrande, is on the brink of insolvency.Related: Aukus security pact sparks Chinese and French ireEvergrande, whose struggle to avoid defaulting on billions of dollars of debt has rattled global markets, says it will pay interest due Thursday to bondholders in China, but gave no sign of plans to pay on a separate bond abroad.The Chinese government, meanwhile, added to investor anxiety Wednesday by staying silent about whether it might intervene to restructure Evergrande Group's $310 billion debt.Related: Chinese suppliers face ambiguous global supply chain Economists say Beijing can prevent a Chinese credit crunch but that it wants to avoid appearing to arrange a bailout while it tries to force other companies to reduce reliance on debt.Jeremy Goldkorn, editor-in-chief of SupChina, has spent two decades in China as an editor and entrepreneur. Goldkorn joined The World's host Marco Werman to discuss the latest. Marco Werman: The company is now $310 billion in debt. What happened? Jeremy Goldkorn: Well, it's an enormous, sprawling empire. It started in 1996 when Chinese real estate, commercial real estate, was in its infancy. And over the last decade, Evergrande has gone into all kinds of businesses. So, it has what was a health division but now is supposed to make electric cars. And it's released six models, although it hasn't actually sold any of them. It has financial products. It has all kinds of investment products that target both its employees and its customers as well as outside investors. It owns a soccer club. So, it's an enormous company, and it's very difficult to understand exactly what it owns and perhaps more importantly, what it owes. But first and foremost, it's a real estate giant, residential and commercial, right?That's correct. That's how it made its money and that's still its biggest and real business.Will China Evergrande be able to meet the bond payments do this week? The news today was that they have negotiated some kind of settlement with one of the bond payments that was due this week. So, it looks like an immediate disaster has been forestalled. I would also say that much of the sort of financial chattering classes seem to have regained their confidence about the Chinese government's ability to handle this. And I think there's a little bit too much eagerness perhaps in the media. We are partly to blame to try and put this Evergrande crisis onto a global financial crisis template, onto the American subprime crisis, to look at it through the same lens. And it's a whole different situation, a very different government, a very different market, a very different social situation.How important is Evergrande to the Chinese economy as a whole? It's important. It is, if not the biggest, one of the biggest companies. It has got its fingers in all kinds of industries. All kinds of entities are involved from state-owned banks to, you know, the person on the street who owns an apartment and has put their lifetime savings into wealth management products offered by Evergrande. So, it is important to the Chinese economy, but it is not essential. China can very much get by without an Evergrande. So, the government probably has various ways to ease the pain of what looks like is going to be either a quick or slow collapse. Back in 2008, we were introduced to the phrase "too big to fail," referring to American banks that were bailed out by Washington. Is Evergrande too big to fail? And would Beijing help it out the next time it's in a serious bind like this?I think it might be too big to fail, but I think that the Chinese government is probably going to use this as a signal, particularly to the private sector, that there are not going to be any more bailouts and that everybody responsible is going to pay one way or another for this crisis. I read that Evergrande has over 1 1/2 million unfinished apartments in China. Is there a chance that they'll never be finished and would the buyers lose their money?There is the chance that they will never be finished. Just recently, there were images circulating on the Chinese internet of an enormous development in Kunming, Yunnan province, in the south that was never finished because the developers ran out of money and they had to implode all the buildings and destroy it. A lot of people must have lost money. So, if the government thinks that there are enough people that it could cause some kind of social crisis, they might step in and bail out the little guy. But on the other hand, they're likely to be customers and retail investors who are very angry by the end of this saga.Are Evergrande's problems a signal of something larger in China, a certain fragility, maybe?Yes, they are. And the signals have been going for quite some time. Evergrande is in the news, and everybody's talking about it this week. But there have been signals of some kind of disease in the corporate body for many years, ranging from the soccer club to the electric car company with six models that have never been produced. So, there's been a lot of signs for many years that Evergrande has troubles and that all is not as good as it sometimes seems.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. AP contributed to this report. 

A massive security flaw was discovered in Apple's iPhone this week — and it's a biggie. The phones could be broken into without the user doing anything to trigger the hack. Without even a click, your information could be at risk.That news left iPhone users scrambling to update their devices. It was security researchers at the The Citizen Lab at University of Toronto who realized that spyware from an Israeli cybersurveillance company known as NSO Group was behind it.Related: Security flaw exposed in Germany, followed by criminal investigationApple quickly released a critical software patch to fix a security vulnerability that researchers said could allow hackers to directly infect iPhones and other Apple devices without any user action.Citizen Lab researchers said the security issue was exploited to plant spyware on a Saudi activist's iPhone. The previously unknown vulnerability affected all major Apple devices — iPhones, Macs and Apple Watches, the researchers said. NSO Group responded with a one-sentence statement saying it will continue providing tools for fighting “terror and crime.”Related: Biden and Putin both place a 'high priority' on cybersecurityIt was the first time a so-called “zero-click” exploit — one that doesn't require users to click on suspect links or open infected files — has been caught and analyzed, the researchers said. They found the malicious code on Sept. 7, and immediately alerted Apple. The targeted activist asked to remain anonymous, they said.John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher with The Citizen Lab in Canada who discovered the breach with his colleagues, joined The World's host Carol Hills to talk about the international spyware marketplace that fosters these kinds of exploits. Related: US agencies hacked in monthslong global cyberspying campaignCarol Hills: John, how exactly did you and Citizen Lab discover the vulnerability in the iPhone software? John Scott-Railton: So, we were looking at the telephone of a Saudi activist and that phone was infected with a sophisticated piece of spyware. The spyware was made by an Israeli cybersecurity firm and mercenary hacking company called NSO Group. And NSO Group claims that it sells spyware to governments so they can track criminals. However, for the past five years, their spyware keeps showing up in cases where activists, journalists and human rights defenders are being hacked.Were you able to figure out who had used that spyware? Had a government, bought it, like the Saudi government? So at this time, we're not attributing the spyware to a particular NSO customer. What happened last week is that we were examining a backup that we had collected back in March of this activist's phone. We discovered some suspicious files and it turned out that those files, although they appeared to be GIFs, were actually malware and exploit payload. And what they would do is turn that phone into a spy in the activist's pocket. As soon as we spotted those files, we had a sense that we knew what we were looking at. We then shared them with Apple. And in less than a week, Apple moved to quickly figure out the vulnerability and push out an update to all Apple devices.Will you eventually be able to figure out who was behind putting that in the Saudi activist phone?One of the things that's important to realize here is that this is a spyware and an industry that is built around concealing itself from attribution and as a result, hiding from accountability. And it's cases like this that highlight both how seriously companies like Apple take the threat to their bottom line, but also the extent to which the industry needs to be exposed and needs to be called out and needs to be responded to. Now, some people have said, well, should I be concerned? I'm not a dissident. I've never criticized an autocrat. And the truth is, with respect to exploits, they may be used by a small number of people in the first year. But after that, who knows? Exploits have a bad habit of being used by an ever-widening circle of bad actors until they're being used by cybercriminal groups to target people just like you or me.Now, has Apple's response been effective? Will what they issued for people to fix this really work?Apple has moved quickly to close the specific exploit that NSO was using in this case. But the spyware industry is built around always having some exploits in reserve. And so, while this particular technique for gaining access to people's phones is gone, NSO itself remains a serious threat to phone users.Will NSO Group suffer any penalties? NSO is certainly forging ahead to make more spyware. They are doing their best to hire former administration officials in the US, and otherwise slosh their money around in an effort to keep their business going and growing. It's pretty clear that the tech sector is fed up with NSO Group at this point, and I think a lot of people are now looking to the government for some kind of help. And it's an interesting coincidence that yesterday, in an indictment the Department of Justice released against three Americans, former intelligence community members, helping the UAE government build hacking capabilities, the Department of Justice explicitly called out the international spyware marketplace and pointed out that that unregulated marketplace is causing global harm. That's an interesting case about these three former intelligence and military officials. How did that case move to a point where they could be charged? Well, this is a really interesting case. So a couple of years ago, Reuters reported on the existence of something called Project Raven, which, in a nutshell, was a group of former US intelligence and military officials who had gone to the United Arab Emirates and were helping them stand up a hacking capability. At the time, it was a scandal, but it pointed to something deeper, which is, there is a marketplace for former intelligence operatives to go and sell the contents of their brains to other regimes and to help those regimes leapfrog into the ability to hack at a nation-state level. This was obviously a really concerning case and if you read the charge documents, it seems pretty clear that what was going on is these people were giving the UAE things that they had learned and things which the US government alleges were protected by export regulations. What's interesting about that case is that it is a tip of the iceberg in terms of the marketplace of former officials turning around and monetizing the knowledge that they gained protecting the US. The harm that those people are causing is very concrete. In the case of Project Raven, the targets included activists and dissidents, but also US citizens.And my final question has to be, you know, there's about a billion-plus people with iPhones. Should all of us go and find the update? Everyone should update. And you should update for a couple of reasons. First, there is no way to protect yourself against this kind of spyware, short of doing your updates. But secondarily, we really have to send a message to players like NSO Group: "It's not OK to find this kind of thing and turn it into a tool to be used to target dissidents and truth-tellers," even though you may not think of yourself as the kind of person that an autocrat is going to be interested in. Think about what you're doing as increasing our group immunity against shady companies like NSO Group. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. AP contributed to this report. 

Images from Kabul this weekend showed women in black marching in pro-Taliban demonstrations. The women wore long, dark outfits, and their faces were nearly fully veiled.Recently, the Taliban issued a decree calling for female university students to wear clothing that covers their bodies and most of their faces. Taliban leaders say it's a return to Afghan tradition in the predominantly Muslim country. Related: 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan' is based on specific ideologyBahar Jalali, a former history professor at the American University in Afghanistan, disagrees. Over the weekend, she launched an online campaign called #DoNotTouchMyClothes to publicize what she considers to be traditional Afghan dress. Related: Afghanistan: Two decades of war and daily life in photosIt all started on Saturday when Jalali saw those images from the pro-Taliban protests by women."I was just really shocked to see that something that is completely and utterly foreign to Afghan culture was being presented as authentic Afghan attire. ... Even in the most remote conservative villages of Afghanistan, you will not see that kind of attire."Bahar Jalali, former history professor, American University in Afghanistan Women wave Taliban flags as they sit inside an auditorium at Kabul University's education center during a demonstration in support of the Taliban government in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Credit: Felipe Dana/AP "I was just really shocked to see that something that is completely and utterly foreign to Afghan culture was being presented as authentic Afghan attire," Jalali told The World. "Even in the most remote conservative villages of Afghanistan, you will not see that kind of attire."That day, Jalali uploaded a picture of herself in a traditional Afghan dress onto Twitter.Related: 'We are afraid': An Afghan women's rights activist is left behindWhen Jalali woke up the next day, it had gone viral. This is Afghan culture. I am wearing a traditional Afghan dress. #AfghanistanCulture pic.twitter.com/DrRzgyXPvm— Dr. Bahar Jalali (@RoxanaBahar1) September 12, 2021Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi, head of Afghan Service at Deutche Welle, also tweeted: Me wearing traditional Afghan attire in Kabul. This is Afghan culture and this is how Afghan women dress. @RoxanaBahar1 pic.twitter.com/fUZSqy4rRK— Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi (@WasHasNaz) September 12, 2021Mohammed Agha Ibrahimkhail also tweeted an image of rural Afghan women wearing colorful, lively dresses.  These are the rural women of Afghanistan. In Bamyan. The women of Afghanistan are colorful and alive. Those in Neqab are the Taliban women. pic.twitter.com/INaPIdziK2— Mohammad Agha Ibrahimkhail (@M_Ibrahimkhail) September 13, 2021And Malalai Habibi tweeted in support that she and her partner's attire in the photo reflects Afghanistan's "colorful and diverse culture."  My partner, @matin_rahem and I wearing traditional Afghan attire at #Nawrouz, our new year. This is part of the Afghan colorful and diverse culture. #RealAfghanistan https://t.co/CElQQDneRL pic.twitter.com/jv6GWJkRg7— Malalai Habibi | ملالی حبیبی (@MalalaiHabibi) September 13, 2021Jalali explained how traditional dress for women in Afghanistan includes colorful dresses with a lot of embellishments and embroidery reflecting different styles from various regions."And of course, a lot of these dresses are meant for women to dance in them, you know, to be alive and to be animated. It's really the polar opposite of what we saw at the pro-Taliban women's event, where you see women completely invisible. It's like they're not there."Bahar Jalali, former history professor, American University in Afghanistan"And of course, a lot of these dresses are meant for women to dance in them, you know, to be alive and to be animated. It's really the polar opposite of what we saw at the pro-Taliban women's event, where you see women completely invisible. It's like they're not there. It just looked very strange to me, very contrived," she said.Before the Taliban came to power, most Afghan women wore different headscarf styles ranging from loose to tight around the head and body. Now, she said, all women are expected to wear a tight veil with enveloping cloaks."That looks more like what a judge in the United States wears, something that's very completely shapeless. And you really no longer can have this diversity of headscarves. It has to be a really tight headscarf that covers a complete head — no hair showing — before you could show hair, it was not a big deal." Jalali said women now fear the consequences of veering from Taliban dress codes. Under Taliban rule in the 1990s, women were sometimes beaten or even executed for even minor dress-code violations. Dress is a powerful symbol of national identity, Jalali said. The viral campaign is Jalali's attempt to showcase the true face of Afghanistan — colorful, vibrant and alive. She said the dress code imposed on Afghans by the Taliban "seeks to erase women from society and seeks to erase Afghan culture." She added: "We are facing an assault on our identity, our sovereignty, our culture, our heritage."

Nuclear talks between the US and Iran remain stalled, but a new agreement between Iran and the United Nations is providing some hope that those nuclear talks could relaunch.Iran agreed Sunday to allow international inspectors to install new memory cards into surveillance cameras at its sensitive nuclear sites and to continue filming there. Related: US launches airstrikes targeting Iran-backed militiasThe agreement still leaves the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency in the same position it faced since February, however. Tehran holds all recordings at its sites as negotiations over the US and Iran returning to the 2015 nuclear deal remain stalled in Vienna. Meanwhile, Iran is now enriching small amounts of uranium to its closest-ever levels to weapons-grade purity as its stockpile continues to grow. This violates limits stipulated under the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, which promises Iran economic incentives in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, and is meant to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb.The US unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, but Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia have tried to preserve the accord.The recent Iran-UN announcement could buy time for Iran ahead of an IAEA board meeting this week in which Western powers had been arguing for Tehran to be censured over its lack of cooperation with international inspectors. Related: Iranian journalist targeted in alleged Iran kidnap plot says operation ‘must be condemned’Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group, a think tank based in Washington, has been following these developments closely. Carol Hills: First of all, what does it mean to reset monitoring devices at Iranian nuclear sites? Naysan Rafati: Well, it means that the International Atomic Energy Agency has surveillance cameras as part of its mandate for monitoring and verification. There are inspectors that go to sites. It does reporting on the state of Iran's nuclear program, but it also has cameras in place. And these memory cards are sealed and they're on the Iranian side. But what they allow the agency to do is to basically see what Iran has been up to while its nuclear program continues to advance. So, it's one of those issues where it strengthens the one side of the international nuclear agreement with Iran, which is monitoring and verification authorities. Should we read it also as a nod toward maybe Iran being interested in restarting talks with the US?Well, I think that that's really the key issue in the sense that it sounds like a very technical discussion and it is, in a sense, a very technical discussion, when we're talking about resetting cameras. Really what I think the US, the three European parties, everyone that's interested in reviving the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] we're looking to was, will Tehran, would they make any kind of nod toward cooperative relations with the IAEA? And that could in turn, lead to a resumption of negotiations, or would they drag this out, risk a censure resolution and see the crisis kind of continue to escalate?You mentioned Iran's new, more conservative government. Does this news signal that maybe it's willing to engage with the international community on this nuclear program more than the previous government?Well, I'm not sure I'd say more than the previous governments. I would say that any Iranian administration, presidential administration, is a player in Iran's nuclear posture, but it is one of several different centers of power. But we know for a fact that under the Rouhani administration, which left office in August, they were the ones that originally signed the agreement in 2015 with the US and the other world powers. And so, they had a vested legacy, interest, in a sense, to make sure that it didn't collapse entirely. Raisi and some of the conservatives and the hard-liners that now control all of the centers of power in Iran have been much more skeptical about the JCPOA to begin with. So right now, I think that this weekend's trip was kind of the first major test of whether or not the Raisi government was serious and the Iranian administration now was serious about, if not necessarily reengaging in the talks, then at least trying to stem a burgeoning crisis — especially if they faced a censure resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors. So, there's still quite a bit that has to fall into place to be able to say that negotiations are back on track. But I think you could also say that they are less derailed than they might have been otherwise. When you heard about this and read about it, do you think, "Hmm, this is a good sign. Good." Or do you think, "Eh, same old. Same old." I don't think it's same old, same old. When the news came this weekend that [IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi] had indeed come to some sort of agreement, I think it's very, very tempered optimism, optimism in the sense that a potential crisis this week at the IAEA Board of Governors has been seemingly averted for the moment, but tempered by the realization that there is still a great deal that needs to fall into place, including, centrally, the US and Iran resuming their indirect negotiations in Vienna before we can get to a point where we can say that Iran's nuclear program is on the road to being more restricted and better verified than it is right now. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. AP contributed to this report. 

When al-Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, it launched a new, so-called “war on terror” across the world.  But 20 years later, the threat of terrorism lives on, and in Africa, the problem has gotten worse.Related: How will the Taliban interact with other terrorist groups in Afghanistan?“Unfortunately, while in much of the world, 9/11 is viewed as in the past, in Africa, the legacy of those attacks lives on."Murithi Mutiga, project director forHorn of Africa, International Crisis Group“Unfortunately, while in much of the world 9/11 is viewed as in the past, in Africa, the legacy of those attacks lives on,” said Murithi Mutiga, project director for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group.“Today, there are more jihadis operating on the continent than there were 20 years ago,” he continued.Indeed, in recent decades, terrorism has become a shared burden between African countries and the United States. Related: ISIS-linked port seizure signals growing terrorism threat in MozambiqueIn 1998, when al-Qaeda attacked two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, then-President Bill Clinton ordered airstrikes on properties in both Afghanistan and Sudan, countries that were both harboring terrorists. Two years ago, the al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab attacked a hotel complex in Nairobi, killing dozens of people, including an American.Related: The group behind Nairobi’s recent terror attack recruits young people from many faiths. Officials can’t stop it. “Al-Qaeda's had a long presence within the region; it may not have always been called al-Qaeda, but a form of jihadist call has existed within the region for decades,” Mutiga said.  The group has since inspired the formation of Islamist militant groups across the continent that continue to wage deadly attacks.For some, the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan signaled the end of its “war on terror,” but it also brought fresh concerns about the fate of terrorism in Africa.“Africa is the new frontline of global militancy,” wrote Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari in an op-ed last month, calling for more support for African countries to address these problems.“Africa’s fight against terror is the world’s fight. We will defeat them one highway, one rail link — and one job — at a time.”But many experts warn against a globalist approach — noting how local ambitions remain at the roots of most insurgencies — Islamist or not.“I don’t think the international approach in terms of fighting global terrorism can be relevant in this context or anywhere else."Niagale Bagayoko, Africa Security Sector Network“I don’t think the international approach in terms of fighting global terrorism can be relevant in this context or anywhere else,” said Niagalé Bagayoko, of the Africa Security Sector Network.In the Sahel, for example, persistent insecurity is driven not only by Islamist militant groups but also by community clashes and armed militias, all of which are products of persistent local issues that governments have been unable to address.“It’s very important not to only read the current situation in the Sahel through the lens of jihadism and terrorism,” Bagayoko said. While a number of local groups, from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to the growing insurgency in Mozambique, continue to attach themselves to global insurgencies — most experts agree that those links are tenuous.Related: Hundreds remain missing after Cabo Delgado attack Twenty years after 9/11, experts in Africa say one thing is clear: The approach to counterterrorism needs to change. 

When Abdul Saboor steps off the train in Calaís, France, the 28-year-old Afghan gets to work immediately. A group of eight Afghan boys approaches him, asking for advice about getting to the United Kingdom. Some are as young as 13 years old.“There’s no good advice. … I don’t know what to say,” Saboor admitted. Saboor volunteers his time directing migrants to what’s known as the new “Calaís jungle,” a field converted into an outdoor shelter and food distribution point for hundreds of migrants living in or near the northern city of Calaís.Related: Afghan migrants remain stranded at Poland-Belarus border“I know their story. I know why they're here and I know how difficult it is to be an immigrant and have to leave your family."Abdul Saboor, Afghan photographer and volunteer, Calaís, France“I know their story. I know why they're here and I know how difficult it is to be an immigrant and have to leave your family,” Saboor said. Seven years ago, Saboor took a similar journey. While working as a translator for NATO in Kabul, he started getting threats from the Taliban, forcing him to flee his country and begin an arduous journey toward Europe, with the help of smugglers. “It took two years and a lot of time. … We had to go through the forest … mountains,” Saboor recalled. Related: EU's top migration official calls for global response to help Afghans A turning point came for him while living in a refugee camp in Serbia when a volunteer gave Saboor an old, digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera after learning he was interested in photography. From there, Saboor started documenting life in the camps and later documented the rest of his journey to France, where he received asylum in 2018. Related: Roma flee Romania for US-Mexico border to escape persecutionToday, Saboor is an award-winning professional photographer who has traveled across Europe capturing the struggles that migrants endure along the way — from police violence to homelessness and other kinds of mistreatment. View this post on Instagram A post shared by abdul saboor (@abdul_saboor079) “It's very important to document to show to the world it's not fair or it's not OK and how we've been treated,” Saboor said. “I think many people [were] not knowing, like, what's happening.”Now, he splits his time between photography and volunteering in Calaís. Related: Turkey's Lake Van: A dangerous crossroads on the migrant trailHe starts his afternoon at an old warehouse where several local, nongovernmental organizations have set up shop. The groups work with migrants to provide meals, clothes, blankets and other kinds of support. View this post on Instagram A post shared by abdul saboor (@abdul_saboor079) Pierre Roques, a coordinator with the local NGO l’Auberge des Migrants, said Saboor’s empathy and shared experience has proved invaluable when it comes to working with migrants in the field.“They feel confident when they talk to [Abdul]. It makes things easier for everyone.”Pierre Roques, coordinator, l'Auberge des Migrants, Calaís, France“They feel confident when they talk to him,” Roques said. “It makes things easier for everyone.”In the afternoon, Saboor headed to the Calaís jungle to check on the boys he met in the morning. He found them tucked away in the woods on a leafy patch of grass they planned to call home for the next few days. They were making TikTok videos, showing off their new digs, but later they confided to Saboor that they didn’t have any blankets or tents.So he puts in some calls. It’s very personal to him.“My brother is the same age and my niece and nephew ... they’re all trying to flee Afghanistan too,” he said. “I know why these boys are here. I wish I could do something more for them. I can never do enough, but I’m trying to do the best I can.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by abdul saboor (@abdul_saboor079) By the end of the day, Saboor said he was exhausted. But it wasn't over yet.He saw another group of teens engrossed in a soccer match and whipped out his camera to document it. View this post on Instagram A post shared by abdul saboor (@abdul_saboor079) He wants to capture little moments of respite like these in his photography.“It's a very powerful and strong ... short way to explain the situation,” Saboor said in between camera clicks. To show there’s still some hope amid all the chaos and sadness. 

This week, the world got a first glimpse into what a Taliban government in Afghanistan might look like.The group named an interim government made up of 33 men, mostly from one ethnic group — the Pashtuns. Two appointees are Tajik, and one is Uzbek. No one from the Hazara community or any other ethnic group were included.Related: Taliban names all-male 33-member interim government in AfghanistanEven before the Taliban takeover this August, Afghanistan was an Islamic country. The official name of Afghanistan included "Islamic Republic."But the Taliban follow a specific interpretation of Sunni Islam which, from now on, will be implemented across the country.Related: Afghan journalist breaks down sociological makeup of today's TalibanThe World spoke to several clerics and scholars in Afghanistan prior to the Taliban’s takeover to get their takes on the version of Islam the group plans to bring to the country. The Taliban’s IslamTaliban ideology is based on a specific version of Islam called the Deobandi school.The Taliban's interpretation of Islam is different from the Islam that existed in Afghanistan in the past, according to Omar Sadr, who teaches political science at the American University of Afghanistan.“The traditional Islam practiced in Afghanistan was quite different. It is an Islam as a faith for the majority of the people and that is different from Islam being as an ideology.”Omar Sadr teaches political science at the American University of Afghanistan“The traditional Islam practiced in Afghanistan was quite different. It is an Islam as a faith for the majority of the people and that is different from Islam being as an ideology.”Sadr, who is also the author of a book on cultural diversity in Afghanistan, added that the earlier version of Islam in Afghanistan was influenced by Sufi schools or tariqa.“Sufi tariqas were quite moderate, they were tolerant, they were accepting, they established a kind of order which was cosmopolitan and wherein it accepted diversity of the society and mutual coexistence.” Related: 'We are afraid': An Afghan women's rights activist is left behindDeobandi Islam was founded in northern India, not Afghanistan. Islamic scholars say it came about as a response to British colonial rule.One man who helped shape the movement was a scholar called Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Sadr said.“He was so much upset about how Muslims have been integrated within the Hindu community here and so he constantly wrote against all this and he preached that how we need to go back to Arabian model of Islam.”After the partition of 1947, followers of Deobandi Islam began teaching it in Pakistan.With the support of the government, Sadr said, schools began teaching it to students along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Some of those students went on to fight in Afghanistan.Today, the Taliban call Afghanistan an Islamic Emirate. That means a religious leader or an emir will be the top authority and governance will be based on the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam — the Deobandi and Hanafi schools.That will impact all sorts of things in daily life from banking, to how people should dress, to segregation of men and women in public spaces.Friday prayerOne Friday in August, before the Taliban takeover, the atmosphere was already tense at one of Kabul’s main mosques. During Friday prayers, men, young and old, kicked off their shoes, rushed inside, rolled up their sleeves and got ready for the weekly sermon. Sheikh Abdullah Noor Ebad sat up front on a raised chair, holding a microphone that helps project his voice across the mosque as he prepared to preach. The men sat on the floor in rows. Off to the side, women gathered in a small room tucked away in a corner. During his sermon, Sheikh Noor Ebad was cautious with his words. He doesn’t mention the Taliban or the tumult that his country is facing.Afterward, he agreed to answer a few questions from The World as long as they were read by a male. (Some conservative Muslim men prefer not to address women who are not related to them directly).“This war in Afghanistan doesn’t have an Islamic justification. ... Fighting between Muslims is not justified. True believers don’t kill each other. They work on bringing peace.”Sheikh Abdullah Noor Ebad, Kabul, Afghanistan“This war in Afghanistan doesn’t have an Islamic justification,” Noor Ebad said. “Fighting between Muslims is not justified. True believers don’t kill each other. They work on bringing peace.”Related: Afghanistan: Two decades of war and daily life in photosNoor Ebad said he was a Talib himself at one time. He knows the teachings and went to the same type of Islamic schools as some Taliban fighters.“But it seems like these men took away something entirely different,” he said.Foreign interferenceMasoudeh Jami, with the Jamiat-e-Eslah of Afghanistan, a movement that promotes Islamic thought and culture, told The World in an interview that the Islam she teaches to her students centers on peace and coexistence.“In Islam, there is great emphasis on cleansing your heart of hatred against everyone,” she said, “but especially the faithful. So, it’s puzzling when the Taliban target and kill fellow Afghans.”But for Jami, foreign interference in Afghanistan is what has made things worse.“Extremism in Afghanistan was supported and funded by foreigners,” she said, “and that’s unfortunate because now some people say they want nothing to do with Islam.”The US once supported Afghanistan’s Mujahideen in the 1980s. Pakistan has also shown support for the Taliban. Jami added that the role of religious leaders in Afghanistan is important moving forward. They should make sure people don’t lose sight of moderate Islam.Related: Women's shelters in Afghanistan face an uncertain future“After two decades of American presence, Afghanistan is a divided, heartbroken nation. ... It’s time foreigners leave so we can focus on healing.”Masoudeh Jami, Jamiat-e-Eslah of Afghanistan“After two decades of American presence, Afghanistan is a divided, heartbroken nation,” she said. “It’s time foreigners leave so we can focus on healing.” In the first few weeks of Taliban governance, however, Afghans have faced clampdowns on anti-Taliban protesters and restrictions on press freedom. Women have been told to stay home until the Taliban can determine how they can participate in public life.Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Deobandi Islam in Pakistan. It has been corrected.

For Ben Rhodes, like for so many others, 9/11 was a life-changing event. At the time, Rhodes was a graduate student in New York, studying creative writing, but soon after, he went down to Washington and became a speechwriter and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications in the Obama White House.His new book is called "After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made." Related: NYU chaplain calls for a 'true pursuit of empathy' to heal after 9/11Rhodes joined The World's host Marco Werman to talk about the last 20 years since 9/11, and about his perspective on the end of the US mission in Afghanistan.Marco Werman: Ben, let's start 20 years ago. Where were you on Sept. 11?Ben Rhodes: I was 24 years old. I was working on a city council campaign in New York City, while I was a graduate student. I was at a polling site on the Brooklyn waterfront because that was Election Day. And so, I ended up having a kind of unobstructed view across the river of the attacks. I didn't see the first plane hit, but we all started staring up at the World Trade Center and watching this billowing black smoke come out of it, not knowing what was going on. And while we're staring at it, I see the second plane curve around and plow into the tower. And for me, that was the moment when everything I was doing in my life changed. And I just had a feeling that everything I was going to do after that was going to be somehow connected to the response to these events.Just one month after 9/11, President George W. Bush, of course, started the war in Afghanistan. Can you briefly take us through the arc of that war, its purpose in the beginning and its end in the last days?Yeah, so it was interesting to me to reflect on this after 20 years, because as a 24-year-old New Yorker, when we went into Afghanistan, my presumption was, we were going there to get the people who did 9/11. And when I look back at the arc, you know, what happens is, we go into Afghanistan, we topple the Taliban, we put al-Qaeda on the run. We don't finish them off. Bin Laden escapes into Pakistan. And around that time, the US government kind of shifts its attention in Afghanistan to nation-building, and the Taliban begins to regenerate and begins to turn into an insurgency. And by the time we came into government in 2009, in the Obama administration, you had a situation where the Taliban was showing itself to be resilient. And so, in 2009, you have a surge of forces. I do think between the years of 2009 and 2011, you see the kind of biggest successes in degrading al-Qaeda, but largely in Pakistan. And that culminates in the operation to take out Osama bin Laden in 2011. And then there's a period of time in which the United States is beginning to draw down its forces in Afghanistan, and try to transition to Afghan security forces. For several years, the Afghan security forces are in the fight, and they lost 70,000 troops in the fight against the Taliban. But over that time, they're steadily losing ground. And then Donald Trump initially surges a bit before kind of taking a sharp turn in the other direction, cutting a deal with the Taliban in 2020, in which he essentially agrees to withdraw US forces in exchange for a promise from the Taliban to not shoot at us. But they continue, obviously, to fight the Afghan government and security forces. And Joe Biden comes into office and decides that he's going to complete the withdrawal by the Sept. 11 anniversary this year. And when he does that, you have a collapse of the Afghan government security forces and a more resilient Taliban adversary obviously rolls into Kabul. And here we are.That was a very thorough arc. Let's go back and talk about the surge. When your boss, Barack Obama, was president, there was an internal debate over what we know now is a surge. Then-Vice President Biden was against the surge. What can you tell us about these internal debates and the thinking at the time?At the time, the military, essentially, is kind of turning its attention from Iraq to Afghanistan. They basically recommend to Obama that he pursue a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, along the lines of what they had done in the surge in Iraq. Obama was skeptical of this. He saw an enormous expenditure of resources that would go along with it, obviously huge risks to American troops, and a kind of unsolvable problem of a resilient Taliban that also had some safe-haven in Pakistan. But Joe Biden at the table, he was the one person who said that he was against this, just dead-set against it, that frankly, we couldn't nation-build in Afghanistan, it wouldn't succeed and that we should only think of Afghanistan in terms of finishing the counterterrorism mission against al-Qaeda. And that put him sharply at odds with the military. And there were some tense meetings there.Related: Afghanistan: Two decades of war and daily life in photos As you say, the debates around that surge were sharp. What did that debate represent, though, in a larger sense — America's role in the Middle East, and in the world?Well, I think that the assumption undergirding the military's recommendation was that it was possible for the United States to essentially defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan, and construct an Afghan government and security force. And so, I think what this whole debate is about is, can the United States remake other countries with our military? And look, I think that part of what we have to recognize is the degree to which a lot of the assumptions that we embrace as a country at the very beginning, right, in 2001, 2002, that we could build governments in Iraq and Afghanistan — that's what the US government set out to do. And it's a very hard thing to turn that machinery around.Related: Taliban names all-male 33-member interim government in Afghanistan With the benefit of hindsight, what decisions did the Obama administration make in Afghanistan that you would redo?Well, I think that the principle one is to have a smaller surge. The scale of that escalation in 2009, measured against, obviously, what it ended up achieving, doesn't seem necessary. Because the counterterrorism successes did not require, I believe, in retrospect, 100,000 troops. That's the first one. And then I think there's just the question of whether or not there was a better deal with the Taliban that could have been accomplished at some point than what Trump ended up doing, because Trump's deal was essentially like, we're getting out, and Trump cut the Afghan government out of that deal. And that, to me, was the fundamental flaw, is to say the US is negotiating its withdrawal — not with the Afghan government — but with the Taliban. And so, I think the great unknown is whether or not, at a different point, there could have been a better deal that led to a more orderly withdrawal, and perhaps some kind of government that brought in the Taliban, but also integrated elements of of the Afghan government, as it was. All of this does lead us to some bigger questions, especially on the anniversary of 9/11. You often talk about being part of the 9/11 generation. What defines your generation, like, its worldview?I think the worldview is that it's a generation that came of age politically, largely after the Cold War. So, we didn't have that organizing framework for how to think about America's role in the world. And when you have this massive event where you realize that history is not over, globalization is not inevitable, there was a generation of people that wanted to be a part of that post-9/11 response. I think part of what's so complicated is the period of time from 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq, that's when a lot of these decisions were made, to nation-build in Afghanistan, to invade Iraq, the Patriot Act, the establishment of Guantanamo, all these things that we've basically been responding to since. And I think the 9/11 generation is a generation of people that, because we dealt with the aftermath of those policies, came to understand the limits of what America could accomplish in the post-9/11 period, particularly militarily. America does have a really important role to play in the world and a lot of people around the world look to the United States for various things in various ways. But we have to balance the necessity of America, I think, playing a significant role in the world, against America not being overextended in ways that undermine our capacity to deal with the next generation of challenges: climate change, technology, the recession of democracy around the world. We cannot deal with those things if we're fighting forever-wars in multiple countries. And I think that's where the 9/11 generation is headed.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

This Saturday marks two decades since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States that left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.Related: Teens, born after 9/11, have a different perspective than those who lived through itThe events of 9/11 touched the lives of just about everyone in the US — but especially for American Muslims, from discrimination to extra surveillance.Related: Why a hate crime survivor tried to save the life of his would-be killerTwenty years ago, Khalid Latif was a sophomore at New York University. He's now the executive director and chaplain for the Islamic Center at NYU. He joined The World's host Marco Werman from New York City to discuss his experiences and the work he's done to bring communities together.Marco Werman: Khalid Latif, you and other NYU students saw the second plane go into the tower. Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001? And what are your strongest memories from that day?Khalid Latif: You know, I was actually on my way to a class that starts pretty early in the morning. As I walked into the building, a security guard came to the doorway saying, "We have to evacuate the building. A plane has flown into the World Trade Center." Moments before, I was cutting through Washington Square Park, which is at the center of NYU's campus, and it was pretty much empty. And now, I walked into a gathering of about 10 or 12,000 of my fellow NYU students, and we were all standing, looking downtown as the second plane flew into the towers. I returned back to my dorm and I overheard people who lived on the floor with me saying things to the effect of, "We should get all of the Muslims together and send them out of this country so that things like this don't happen."So, people were saying that already on Sept. 11?Yeah. We had media from all over the world that was engaging us, wanting to know, "What do Muslims think?" And we now became representative of all Muslims from all backgrounds around the world. And there were just a lot of precautions that we had to take as students at that time. We created a buddy system so that no one would have to walk around on their own who was a Muslim student. As a Muslim American, though, as you said, you began feeling the blowback immediately and you've worked basically since that time building bridges between Muslim Americans and other groups. How did your experiences post-9/11 inspire that work?You know, I've had a lot of different experiences attached to the tragedies of 9/11, I think, that made it very evident that even this construct of a Muslim American was something now that was coming to the surface that I think exists within this kind of good-bad-type framework, good Muslim, bad Muslim, moderate, extremist. There are very few people who are able to just call themselves American without a hyphen of some kind or a dash that prequalifies their American-ness. And now there became a deep dive into Muslims having to identify just how American they actually were. It became something that was evident, especially within immigrant Muslim communities. I've had many members of my community who are from all walks of life tell me that federal law enforcement visits them and their office, has come to their house, they don't know how to respond. Members of our community who dealt with their homes being raided and family members being tied up for really no reason given to them. These are realities that have been visited upon you, Khalid. When you were just 24, you became the chaplain for the New York Police Department. I know you shared a lot of stories about being surveilled and profiled as a Muslim man, some of them painful, some kind of absurd. But you have a particular account of being profiled while in uniform. Can you tell us about that?Yeah. So, on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was in 2010, as a chaplain for the police department and participating in the 9/11 memorial service, we would start out the day by having breakfast with family members who lost loved ones on that day. And we'd then take a bus down to the Ground Zero site. And I'm in my police uniform and inspector's uniform, but I still have a beard, I have my head covered. Three men approached me wearing suits saying that, "Secret Service has spotted you from the top of a building. They want us to check your credentials just in case." And I said, "Just in case what?" And they said, "We're sorry that we're doing this to you." And I said, "Then why are you doing it?" And you know, to understand what they're questioning in that moment is not just my physical presence at this location, but the entire validity of my emotion attached to this space, right? Where, I was a student at New York University on Sept. 11 in 2001. I did watch the second plane fly into the towers. I stood at funerals for people of my faith and other walks of life who died on that day. And in that moment, these men are questioning the validity of all of it. When the feds pulled you aside, did you get any support from your fellow NYPD colleagues?Well, who I got support from was a mother who had lost her son on Sept. 11. She intervened and said to these men that, "What you are doing right now is more dishonorable to the memory of our loved ones that we lost on that day than anything else. That here this young man is standing with us in our moment of need and you're making it seem as if he's doing something wrong just because he's Muslim." And as easily as they had taken the validation away, she brought it right back.So, that was the ninth anniversary of 9/11 when you were a chaplain with the NYPD. The country then saw a rise in anti-Muslim, really, extremism before and during the Trump presidency. How would you characterize things today, generally, for Muslim American communities?I think the Muslim community in the United States is a multifaceted community, and the direct engagement that we have with most forms of government tend to put us in a security box or an immigration box, and those boxes alone. I do think that they are still, on an individual level, realities that people face. I think there's definitely a lot more that can be done to ensure that civil rights, basic human rights, of Muslims in the United States are not things that get curtailed anymore. And not in a place for myself, personally, where I'm worried, for example, that anyone's going to take my 6-year-old son or my 8-year-old daughter away from me. But I walk out of my house with an understanding that, on any given day, someone might take me away from my family. Khalid, what, for you, feels different about this 20th anniversary of 9/11, if anything?You know, we're coming out of a pandemic, global realities that are geopolitical or things that the world is more aware of now because of social media. There's opportunity for us to see just how deeply connected and linked we are. And that interdependence is going to be a key factor in us being able to overcome any challenge. But it's going to take a lot of people being willing to just listen to the lived experiences of those who are different from them, and in a true pursuit of empathy. And I think there are more people who are getting to that place.This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Ethiopian officials have accused Tigrayan forces of killing more than 120 people in the neighboring Amhara region.It’s the latest sign of how the 10-month conflict has extended far beyond Tigray, with deadly consequences.Related: Tigrayan forces take Ethiopian town known for its ancient churches“In the case of atrocities against civilians, it has been happening in Tigray since the beginning of the conflict in November last year."Saviano Abreu, spokesperson, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs“In the case of atrocities against civilians, it has been happening in Tigray since the beginning of the conflict in November last year,” said Saviano Abreu, a spokesperson with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “We condemn any type of atrocities,” he said.This latest atrocity, according to Reuters, took place in the village of Chenna Kebele, near Gondar city in the Amhara region.Related: A 'sick joke': Tigrayan forces reject ceasefire in EthiopiaIn a statement, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said a large number of bodies had been discovered in the area. Residents and local authorities told the commission the victims were killed during a two-day period last week, by retreating Tigrayan forces.The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has denied what they called a “fabricated allegation" by the Amhara regional government, and rejected claims that Tigrayan forces had killed civilians.Over the course of the conflict, gruesome human rights violations have been recorded by all parties. But repeated offers and attempts at mediation have so-far failed.Related: Tigrayans say food is being used as a 'weapon of war' “The Ethiopian government has not responded positively to proposals for negotiations. Instead, it has publicly called for the mobilization of militia."Richard Mills, US Deputy Representative to the United Nations“The Ethiopian government has not responded positively to proposals for negotiations. Instead, it has publicly called for the mobilization of militia,” said Richard Mills, US Deputy Representative to the United Nations, during a UN security council meeting last month.“The TPLF, meanwhile, has expanded its own military campaign into the Afar and Amhara regions,” he added.In recent months, the ongoing fighting between Ethiopian federal defense troops, TPLF, and armed ethnic militias has displaced hundreds of people in Afar and Amhara.Related: Rising anger as youth get caught up in Tigray war “The number of people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance in these two regions, in addition to Tigray, is rising daily,” Abreu said.  The World Food Program has warned that more than 1.7 million people in Afar and Amhara are at risk of hunger. “This has just come to compound an already bad situation, so already, people are food-insecure, but this makes things completely worse,” said Christine Hakonze, head of WFP’s Semera sub-office, in a video posted on social media this week from inside the Afar region.On top of that, the UN continues to warn of a looming hunger crisis inside the northern Tigray region, which has been mostly cut off from the rest of the country for nearly a year.Over the weekend, a humanitarian convoy of 150 trucks was able to enter Tigray. Now there are concerns about how the expansion of violence will further limit access to Tigray, as overland humanitarian access to the region is currently limited to a single ground route through the Afar region.“The spillover of the conflict is also complicating our operations inside Tigray, humanitarian access into Tigray,” Abreu said.