The New York Times - USA (2020-06-28)

(Antfer) #1

16 0 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALSUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020


DUBLIN — Ireland’s Parlia-
ment appointed Micheal Martin, a
center-right politician, as prime
minister on Saturday as the coun-
try deals with the coronavirus and
fallout from a housing crisis.
Mr. Martin replaces Leo Varad-
kar, a doctor who drew acclaim for
his handling of the coronavirus
outbreak but who had been a care-
taker prime minister since a Feb-
ruary general election delivered a
loss of seats for his party but no
clear winner.
The new government, the result
of more than four months of nego-
tiations, will be the first to include
the country’s two rival center-
right political movements — Fi-
anna Fail, led by Mr. Martin, and
Fine Gael, led by Mr. Varadkar.
The two parties have alternated in
power since the founding of the
modern Irish state in 1922.
Together with the smaller
Green Party, the rivals must now
try to steer Ireland through what
is likely to be a period of turbu-
lence, with neighboring Britain’s
departure from Europe’s single
market contributing to economic
and political uncertainty.
The path to a new government
was cleared on Friday evening
when Green Party members
voted decisively to support join-
ing the coalition after extracting
concessions on environmental ini-
tiatives. The concessions included
a lowering of Ireland’s carbon
emissions 7 percent annually
through 2030, an increase in the
carbon tax, and an emphasis on
public transit and cycling and pe-
destrian infrastructure. The deci-
sion quashed fears that younger,
more left-wing party members
would reject an alliance with the
center-right.
The agreement to form the new
government comes after a turbu-
lent period in Irish politics, in
which Mr. Varadkar’s government
was toppled amid voter anger
over the housing crisis, rising
rents and a failing public health
service.
Those frustrations lifted the for-
tunes of the center-left Sinn Fein
party, which was formerly the po-
litical wing of the Irish Republican
Army before it committed itself to
democratic, nonviolent means.
The emergence of Sinn Fein’s
leader, Mary Lou McDonald, as
head of the opposition — poten-
tially allied with several smaller
left and center-left parties —
could help propel a long-term re-
alignment of Irish politics along a

more conventional left-right di-
vide.
In the meantime, the coalition
will govern under a power-shar-
ing arrangement in which Mr.
Martin will stand down in two
years to be replaced either by Mr.
Varadkar or by whoever is then
leader of Fine Gael.
A 31-year veteran of the Irish
Parliament, Mr. Martin, 59, took
over the leadership of Fianna Fail
in 2011 shortly before it suffered a
stinging election defeat, losing 51
of its 71 seats amid anger over its
handling of a disastrous property
bubble. The meltdown forced Ire-
land to accept a 67.5 billion euro
($95 billion) bailout organized by
the International Monetary Fund.
Despite having a conservative

reputation, Mr. Martin has since
supported the holding of referen-
dums on same-sex marriage and
abortion, aligning with an increas-
ingly liberal mood in Ireland.
As health minister in a previous
Fianna Fail-led government, Mr.
Martin introduced the world’s
first nationwide ban on smoking
in all workplaces, including Ire-
land’s famously smoky pubs. Ini-
tially greeted with skepticism and
strong resistance, the 2004 smok-
ing ban proved both successful
and ultimately popular, and simi-
lar approaches have since been
adopted in many other Western
countries.
Accepting the nomination as
prime minister, he said that to be
elected as political leader of a free
republic was the greatest honor
anyone could receive.
The new government’s hardest
job will be its response to the pan-
demic, said Mr. Martin, who also
paid tribute to Ireland’s health
care workers. “Our country has
shown time and time again that
we can overcome the toughest of
challenges,” he said.”

Months of Talks Produce


A New Irish Government


By ED O’LOUGHLIN

Micheal Martin was appointed
prime minister on Saturday.

CHARLES MCQUILLAN/GETTY IMAGES

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two
employees of Afghanistan’s hu-
man rights commission were
killed in Kabul on Saturday as a
bomb attached to their vehicle ex-
ploded, the latest in a rising num-
ber of targeted killings in the Af-
ghan capital.
From assassinations of reli-
gious scholars and assaults
against cultural figures to wide-
spread Taliban attacks across the
country, the rise in violence is sap-
ping the brief optimism from an
American agreement with the Tal-
iban. Under that deal, the United
States would withdraw its troops,
paving the way for direct negotia-
tions between the Afghan sides to
end the war in a hoped-for political
settlement.
The peace deal has hit a wall
over a prisoner exchange that was
supposed to enable direct talks.
Instead, the violence has intensi-
fied.
In a statement, Afghanistan’s
Independent Human Rights com-
mission said one of its vehicles
was struck by a magnetic bomb on
Saturday morning, killing two em-
ployees who were on their way to
work.
The victims were identified as
Fatima Khalil, 24, a donor coordi-
nator for the commission who had
recently completed a degree from
the American University of Cen-
tral Asia in Kyrgyzstan, and Jawid
Folad, a longtime driver at the
commission.
“So far no group has claimed re-
sponsibility, and the perpetrators
of this brutal attack are not clear,”
the statement said.
Afghan and American officials
say the war has entered a compli-
cated period of uncertainty, with
an emboldened insurgency aided
by regional powers exerting pres-
sure on a struggling government
by cranking up bloody attacks, of-
ten without claiming them.
In a sign of the complexity of the
war zone, U.S. intelligence re-
cently concluded that the Taliban
were receiving bounty money
from Russian intelligence for tar-
geting American and coalition
forces last year even as they nego-
tiating peace with the United
States.
The deal, signed in February, in-
cluded the exchange of 5,000 Tal-


iban prisoners for 1,000 Afghan
forces within 10 days of its sign-
ing. That exchange, which was
met with resistance from the Af-
ghan government, is only now
nearing completion with the re-
lease of nearly 4,000 Taliban pris-
oners.
The Taliban agreed not to attack
American targets but refused a
cease-fire with Afghan govern-
ment forces, leaving that to direct
negotiations between the Afghan
sides. However, American offi-
cials said there was an informal
understanding with the insur-
gents that they would reduce their
attacks by 80 percent. Afghans
have been increasingly frustrated
that they haven’t seen that reduc-
tion in violence, and the United
States, focused on President
Trump’s urgency to get out of the
war, has done little to hold the Tal-
iban to it.
The Afghan National Security
Council said June had seen the
deadliest week of the war, with 291
Afghan soldiers killed in Taliban
attacks in one week. Javid Faisal,
a spokesman for the National Se-
curity Council, said the Taliban at-
tacks in the past three months
rose nearly 40 percent compared
with the same period last year.
“We have had deep concern
since the agreement between the
U.S. and the Taliban was signed,”
said Haidar Afzaly, the head of the
Afghan Parliament’s Defense

Committee. “The only group that
has benefited from that is the Tal-
iban, who are seeing their pris-
oners released.”
He said the Taliban, who were
set back by frequent airstrikes in
2019, “are emboldened now” and
“have expanded their attacks.”
Officials say the Taliban are also
exploiting the gray areas of the

battlefield complicated by rem-
nants of a weakening Islamic
State and the rising presence of
criminal networks as the coro-
navirus outbreak further dam-
ages the country’s struggling
economy.
The Taliban have increasingly
subcontracted assassinations and
targeted killings to criminal net-
works in the cities, a senior Af-
ghan security official said, putting
pressure on the country’s intelli-
gence agency and law enforce-
ment. In the countryside, the Tal-
iban are continuing bloody at-
tacks in the open, but they have
refrained from publicizing the at-
tacks to avoid a direct clash with

the United States so as not to en-
danger the withdrawal of Ameri-
can troops.
In a sign of the conflict’s com-
plexity, among the latest victims
targeted for assassinations were
five prosecutors with the Afghan
attorney general’s office who were
fatally shot on their way to the
Bagram prison to help release Tal-
iban prisoners.
The killings added to a long list
of assassinations, including two of
the most prominent religious
scholars in Kabul, who were killed
by explosions inside their
mosques. Another explosion
struck the family of the renowned
Afghan writer and poet Assadul-
lah Walwaliji, killing his wife
Anisa and teenage daughter Al-
teen.
“The investigation into the
killing of one scholar hadn’t been
completed when they martyred a
second one,” said Mawlawi
Habibullah Hasam, the head of an
Afghan religious scholars’ union.
“We have told the government
very clearly — if, God forbid, an-
other scholar is martyred, then we
have no other choice but to di-
rectly blame the government as
the murderer.”
“They are responsible for secu-
rity,” Mr. Hasam said. “You can’t
just put up a Facebook statement
and say this group did it. What are
you here for then?”

Despite Peace Deal, Violence in Afghanistan Surges


Attacks by Taliban


Rise Sharply in 2020


Afghan soldiers with damaged Humvees leaving a health facility after an attack in Kabul in May.

JIM HUYLEBROEK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Najim Rahim, Fatima Faizi and
Fahim Abed contributed report-
ing.


By MUJIB MASHAL

The U.S. is focused on


continuing its troop


withdrawals.


WASHINGTON — Former Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as-
sailed President Trump on Satur-
day for failing to punish Russia for
offering bounties to the Taliban to
kill American troops in Afghani-
stan, while the White House de-
nied that Mr. Trump had been
briefed on the months-old classi-
fied intelligence assessment
about Russia’s activities.
Citing officials briefed on the
matter, The New York Times re-
ported on Friday that a Russian
military intelligence unit secretly
paid Taliban-linked militants to
target coalition troops in Afghani-
stan, including Americans, and
that Mr. Trump had been briefed
about it. The article also reported
that the White House’s National
Security Council discussed the
problem at an interagency meet-
ing in late March, but no response
had yet been authorized.
Mr. Biden, the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee,
portrayed that as shameful.
“Not only has he failed to sanc-
tion or impose any kind of conse-
quences on Russia for this egre-
gious violation of international
law, Donald Trump has continued
his embarrassing campaign of
deference and debasing himself
before Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Biden
said in a virtual town hall event
held by a voter group, Asian and
Pacific Islander American Vote.
“His entire presidency has been
a gift to Putin, but this is beyond
the pale,” Mr. Biden added. “It’s a
betrayal of the most sacred duty
we bear as a nation, to protect and
equip our troops when we send
them into harm’s way.”
The officials briefed on the mat-
ter said the intelligence assess-
ment was based at least in part on
interrogations of captured Afghan
militants and criminals. The offi-
cials said the assessment had
been treated as a closely held se-
cret but that the administration


expanded briefings about it over
the past week — including sharing
information about it with the
British government, whose forces
are among those said to have been
targeted.
But as criticism of the adminis-
tration’s inaction swelled on Fri-
day and Saturday, the White
House claimed that Mr. Trump
had never been told about the in-
telligence assessment.
“While the White House does
not routinely comment on alleged
intelligence or internal delibera-
tions, the C.I.A. director, national
security adviser and the chief of
staff can all confirm that neither
the president nor the vice presi-
dent were briefed on the alleged
Russian bounty intelligence,” the
White House press secretary,
Kayleigh McEnany, said in a state-
ment Saturday afternoon, about
25 hours after the article was
posted on The Times’s website.
But one American official had
told The Times that the intelli-
gence finding that the Russians
had offered and paid bounties to
Afghan militants and criminals
had been briefed at the highest
levels of the White House.
Another said it was included in

the President’s Daily Brief, a writ-
ten document which draws from
spywork to make analytic predic-
tions about longstanding adver-
saries, unfolding plots and emerg-
ing crises around the world. The
briefing document is given to the
president to read and they serve
as the basis for oral briefings to
him several times a week.
Asked on Saturday evening
how the president could not have
known about the report if it had
been in his daily brief, a National
Security Council spokesman did
not immediately respond.
Ms. McEnany notably did not
question the substance of the in-
telligence assessment, saying
only that her statement “did not
speak to the merit of the alleged
intelligence.” She also did not
challenge the Times’s reporting
that the National Security Council
had convened an interagency
meeting about what to do about
the report in late March.
Ms. McEnany did not explain
why such an important report
would have been withheld from
Mr. Trump. Nor did she indicate
whether Mr. Trump was upset at
his subordinates for purportedly
withholding the information from
him.

American officials reached on
Saturday said it strained credulity
to think that White House na-
tional-security officials would be
discussing such an important
matter for months and even brief
British officials about it and never
provide the information to Mr.
Trump.
The Times article did not say
whether Vice President Mike
Pence had been briefed.
Ms. McEnany also said in her
statement that “the United States
receives thousands of intelligence
reports a day and they are subject
to strict scrutiny.” It was not clear
why she portrayed the report as if
it were a tip merely received by
the government from an outside
source, when it was instead an in-
telligence assessment developed
by the American government it-
self, based on analyzing intelli-
gence.
Mr. Trump is particularly diffi-
cult to brief on critical national se-
curity matters, according to a re-
cent examination by The Times
that drew on interviews with 10
current and former intelligence
officials familiar with his intelli-
gence briefings.
The president veers off on tan-
gents and getting him back on
topic is difficult, they said. He has
a short attention span and is said
to rarely, if ever, read intelligence
reports, including the written
President’s Daily Brief document
prepared for him.
Mr. Trump is said to have cho-
sen to sit for intelligence briefings
two or three times a week, rather
than every day. Those briefings
are based on the daily brief docu-
ments.
Press officers with the National
Security Council, the Pentagon,
the State Department and the
C.I.A. declined to comment on Fri-
day before the article was posted
online. The security council and
Pentagon spokesmen also de-
clined to comment when asked
again after the article was pub-
lished.
Both Russia and the Taliban
have denied the American intelli-

gence assessment. On Saturday,
Russia’s embassy in Washington
posted a screenshot of the Times
report to Twitter with “FAKE” su-
perimposed over it in big red let-
ters. The embassy also accused
American intelligence officials
without evidence of involvement
in drug trafficking in Afghanistan,
suggesting they were floating er-
roneous information to distract
from that.
In a statement, a Taliban
spokesman dismissed the intelli-
gence assessment as rumors,
meant to interfere in the peace
process with the United States to
end the long-running war there.
“We reassure our nation and
the entire world that the Islamic
Emirate is not a tool of anyone nor
is it employed for foreign agen-

das,” the spokesman, Zabihullah
Mujahid, said.
The pushback followed a fierce
expression of outrage at the
Trump administration’s inaction.
Much of it, like the statement from
Mr. Biden, came from Democrats.
But a few Republicans took public
notice as well.
Senator Lindsey Graham, the
South Carolina Republican who is
an outspoken supporter of Mr.
Trump but sometimes tries to
push him to more hawkish posi-
tions — such as opposing his plan
to pull out of Syria — said on Twit-
ter that he wanted the administra-
tion to take the intelligence as-
sessment seriously and brief Con-
gress on the matter.
“I expect the Trump Adminis-
tration to take such allegations se-
riously and inform Congress im-
mediately as to the reliability of
these news reports,” Mr. Graham
wrote.

The United States concluded
months ago that the Russian intel-
ligence unit, which has been
linked to assassination attempts
and other covert operations in Eu-
rope intended to destabilize the
West or take revenge on turn-
coats, had covertly offered re-
wards for successful attacks last
year.
In response to the intelligence
assessment, senior administra-
tion aides developed an array of
potential options — starting with
making a diplomatic complaint to
Moscow and a demand that it
stop, along with an escalating se-
ries of sanctions and other more
aggressive possible responses,
according to officials familiar with
internal deliberations.
But the White House has yet to
decide on taking any step, the offi-
cials said in recent days.
Islamist militants, or armed
criminal elements closely associ-
ated with them, are believed to
have collected some reward
money, the officials said. Twenty
Americans were killed in combat
in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was
not clear which killings were un-
der suspicion.
The officials familiar with the
intelligence did not explain the
White House’s delay in deciding
how to respond to the intelligence
about Russia.
Afghanistan has been the site of
proxy battles between Washing-
ton and Moscow before. In the
1980s, while the Soviet Union was
mired in its own bloody war in the
country, it was the United States
that covertly helped arm the mu-
jahedeen to fight against the Red
Army in one of the last major con-
frontations of the Cold War.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks, Russia was largely sup-
portive of the American effort to
destroy Al Qaeda and topple the
Taliban government. Russia de-
clared the Taliban a terrorist orga-
nization in 2003, but recently their
relationship has been warming,
with Taliban leaders traveling to
Moscow for peace talks.

Biden Scolds Trump Over Report on Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops


This article is by Eric Schmitt, Mi-
chael Schwirtzand Charlie Savage.


President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence honoring sol-
diers killed in Afghanistan. The White House press secretary said
both men were unaware of the explosive intelligence finding.

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

‘His entire presidency


has been a gift to


Putin,’ a rival says.


Fatima Faizi contributed report-
ing from Kabul, Afghanistan.


Gift subscriptions to The Times start at $25.


Visit nytimes.com/gift or call 855-698-5273.

Free download pdf