A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27 , 2021
BY JENNIFER HASSANTwenty-six looted colonial-era
artifacts are to be displayed in a
French museum one final time
before they are returned home to
Benin, in what officials in the
West African country have said is
a “historic milestone.”
The items, which include 19th-
century thrones, sacred altars
and royal statues, were plun-
dered by the French army amid
the sacking of Abomey Palace in
1892 and have been held at the
Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques
Chirac in Paris since 2003.
The collection, widely referred
to as the “Abomey Treasures,” will
be presented to the public u ntil
Sunday as part of an event seek-
ing to celebrate the arts, cultures
and traditions of Benin, said a
news release issued by the mu-
seum last month.
The artifacts will then be
handed back to Benin, where
they will eventually go on display
at a n ew museum in the city of
Abomey that the French govern-
ment has helped to fund.
Calixte Biah, curator of the
Museum of History of Ouidah in
Benin, where the collection will
first be displayed, called on other
countries to follow France’s lead,
according to the Associated
Press.
“I think it would be decent that
other countries which hold Afri-
can artifacts take the same path
as France,” he said, expressing
hope that the return of the ob-
jects would spark other cultural
institutions to reevaluate collec-
tions of colonial-era a rtifacts.
“We see 26 artifacts. There are
others, no?” he said. “I’d say we
are at the beginning of a process.”
At least 90,000 artifacts from
sub-Saharan Africa are held by
institutions in France, according
to a 2018 report commissioned by
the French government. The ma-
jority of them can be found at the
Musée du Quai Branly.
Earlier this year, Germany be-
came the first country to an-
nounce plans to send hundreds of
pieces back to Nigeria, a move
that also stirred debate over
whether other countries shoulddo the same.
German officials said the deci-
sion stemmed from “moral re-
sponsi bility,” The Washington
Post reported at the time.
In 2017, French President Em-
manuel Macron vowed that his
country would work toward the
“temporary or permanent resti-
tution of African heritage to Afri-
ca,” remarks that prompted other
European museums to consider
returning — o r lending — items
stolen from former colonies.
However, some European mu-
seums have argued that their
artifacts were acquired legally.
They may also face legal obsta-
cles that prevent them from re-
moving items from their collec-
tions.
The French presidency said in
a statement that the return of the
objects to their country of origin
would allow the “African youth to
have access to their own heritage
in Africa, and not in Europe only,”
according to the AP.
In D ecember 2020, lawmakers
in France voted “overwhelmingly
in favor” of returning to BeninA final show in Paris before
looted items return to Benin
and Senegal 27 cherished arti-
facts that were taken during the
colonial era.
French Culture Minister Rose-
lyne Bachelot explained that Ma-
cron was seeking to “renew and
deepen the partnership betweenFrance and the African conti-
nent.”
However, she also stressed that
the law applied only to those 27
artifacts and “does not establish
any general right to restitution.”
The of ficial transfer of thetreasures is due to be signed in
Paris on Nov. 9, with the collec-
tion expected to be back in its
original country a few days later
— after being away from West
Africa for more than 100 years.
[email protected]MICHEL EULER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Part of a door from King Glele’s palace, as seen at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris.
The door is among 26 items that were looted by French troops in 1892 and are being returned to Benin.BY JENNIFER HASSAN
AND ADAM TAYLORlondon — Queen Elizabeth will
not physically attend an upcom-
ing United Nations climate con-
ference in Glasgow, after spend-
ing the night in a hospital last
week and being ordered to rest by
doctors.
The British monarch, 95, had
been expected to travel to the
Scottish city to attend an evening
reception at COP26 on Monday.
In a s tatement, Buckingham Pal-
ace said that she now hoped to
send a message virtually to the
high-profile summit.
“Her Majesty is disappointed
not to attend the Reception but
will deliver an address to the
assembled delegates via a record-
ed video message,” the statement
said.
The announcement came just
days after Buckingham Palace an-
nounced that the queen was hos-
pitalized for “preliminary investi-
gations” before returning to
Windsor Castle.
The tests marked her first over-
night stay in a hospital in eight
years, generating widespread
concern. On Google, “How is the
queen?” was a trending search
term in Britain.
The queen has returned to
“light duties at Windsor Castle,”
Buckingham Palace said. On
Tuesday, the monarch held two
virtual audiences from Windsor
Castle, one with the incoming
South Korean ambassador, Kim
Gunn, and one with the Swiss
ambassador, Markus Leitner.
Queen plans
a virtual role
at climate
conference
Buckingham Palace said that
during the meeting, both ambas-
sadors presented the queen with
their “credentials” — letters from
their respective heads of state
that serves as proof that the
queen “can trust them to speak on
behalf of their country.”
“The Queen is back in action,”
wrote ITV royal editor Chris Ship.
Photos taken of the virtual
meeting showed the monarch
smiling as she sat facing the
screen in a lemon-colored ensem-
ble and three-layered pearl neck-
lace.
Doctors directed the queen to
rest as she canceled her trip to
Northern Ireland last week.
“Good to see the Queen is all
smiles back at work,” tweeted
Roya Nikkhah, royal editor at the
Sunday Times, who shared sev-
eral of the photos.
Though the queen is not ex-
pected to attend in person,COP26 is a high-stakes event for
the government of British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson. Other
royals, including her son Prince
Charles, are expected to attend
and feature prominently.
Earlier this month, the queen
had expressed irritation about
the number of elected world lead-
ers who had not committed to
coming. Some big names, includ-
ing Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have
said they will not attend, while
others like China’s Xi Jinping
have not confirmed.
“We only know about people
who are not coming,” the queen
said while attending the opening
of the Welsh Parliament in Car-
diff, in comments that were
picked up by the microphone of a
nearby live stream. “It’s really
irritating when they talk, but they
don’t do.”
[email protected]
[email protected]BUCKINGHAM PALACE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Q ueen Elizabeth II, told by doctors to rest, has a video audience with
Swiss Ambassador M arkus Leitner and his wife, Nicole, on Monday.BY MIRIAM BERGERA new French law seeks to pro-
tect independent bookstores in a
very French way: by mandating a
minimum price for book deliver-
ies to offset discounted offers by
retail giants such as Amazon.
In France, bookstores are an
essential businesses, or at least
they were deemed to be during
France’s third coronavirus lock-
down. Protecting independent
bookstores as a cultural product
is also a national priority: A 1981
law requires that books be sold at
a fixed price, not to be discounted
more than 5 percent.
Online retailers, key among
them Amazon, have upset this
balance. In 2014, France’s Nation-
al Assembly passed a law banning
online booksellers from offering
customers free delivery. In re-
sponse, Amazon set its delivery
fee beginning at just one cent.
Independent book stores typical-
ly deliver books for a fee of around
$6.
Somewhere between 20,
and 25,000 stores sell books in
France, according to the Ministry
of Culture, and about 3,500 to
4,500 sell books as their primary
business. Despite efforts to pro-
tect the book economy, many in-
dependent stores have struggled
to stay afloat as business for Ama-
zon and French online stores such
as Fnac and Cultura has grown.
Just two online retailers —
Amazon and Fnac — accounted
for 80 percent of total online book
sales last year, according to a
recent report to France’s senate.
During early parts of the pan-
demic — before France exempted
bookstores from lockdowns — the
government reimbursed ship-
ping fees. That support enabled
bookstores to maintain around
70 percent of their business andwas an impetus for legislative
action, center-right Sen. Laure
Darcos, who wrote the law, told
France 24.
The National Assembly ap-
proved the latest legislation this
month. The rule has yet to be
implemented, however, and the
minimum delivery fee is still un-
der negotiation. The la w, which
gained the support of French
President Emmanuel Macron,
does not target any online retail-
ers by name.
“This law is necessary to regu-
late the distorted competition
within online book sales and pre-
vent the inevitable monopoly that
will emerge if the status quo per-
sists,” the Ministry of Culture told
Reuters in a statement.
In the meantime, Amazon has
objected to the change and ar-
gued that it will have a negative
impact on low-income consumers
and those with less access to phys-
ical bookstores.
“Introducing a minimum ship-ping fee on books threatens cus-
tomers’ equal access to books, as
this will impact lower income
readers living in small towns and
rural areas,” an Amazon spokes-
man said in an emailed state-
ment. “To date, online shopping
has strengthened consumers’
equal and convenient access to
books regardless of where they
live.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
owns The Washington Post.
Ryan Raffaelli, an associate
professor at Harvard Business
School who has studied inde-
pendent bookstores, said in an
email that the new legislation
“aims to redefine the value of
bookstores by reframing them as
part of national culture.”
“Unlike price and inventory,
areas where Amazon often domi-
nates in the marketplace, the on-
line giant will likely find it more
difficult to compete against ‘com-
munity’ and ‘culture,’ ” he said.
[email protected]France seeks to bolster bookstores
SARAH MEYSSONNIER/REUTERS
A bookseller works in a Paris shop last week. French lawmakers
want a minimum book delivery fee to offset large online sellers.BY KAREN DEYOUNGThe United States hasn’t
reached any agreements with
Central Asian states bordering Af-
ghanistan for bases or other facili-
ties to use in counterterrorism
operations there against the Is-
lamic State and al-Qaeda, senior
defense officials said Tuesday.
“We have had extensive conver-
sations” and expect to have more,
with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
others, Colin Kahl, the undersec-
retary of defense for policy, said at
a Senate hearing.
U.S. forces “need to build out
more capability so we’re not just
reliant on facilities we have in the
Arabian Gulf,” Kahl said. The clos-
est major U.S. facilities, in Qatar
and Bahrain, are more than 1,
flight miles away.
“We have not secured firm bas-
ing agreements” with any of Af-
ghanistan’s direct neighbors, he
said. He said U.S. intelligence esti-
mated that the Islamic State-
Khorasan, the Afghanistan fac-
tion of the terrorist group, could
build the capacity to plan and
conduct international operations
within six months if unchecked.
The Biden administration has
expressed confidence that its
“over-the-horizon” counterterror-
ism operations — primarily air-
strikes launched from outside Af-
ghanistan — are sufficient to dis-
rupt ISIS-K, as it is widely known,
and al-Qaeda and ultimately de-
stroy them.
But the testimony, before the
Senate Armed Services Commit-
tee, made public growing military
and administration concern that
without closer bases from which
to launch such strikes, the dis-
tances involved could undermine
that ability.
The hearing was one of a series
the committee is holding to exam-
ine the 20-year war in Afghani-
stan, the chaotic U.S. troop exit
and evacuation of American, al-
lied and Afghan civilians during
the last two weeks of August, and
national security plans for the
future.
Kahl and Lt. Gen. James J.
Mingus, the Joint Staff director
for operations, who also testified,
expressed support for a biparti-
san, independent commission to
investigate the past, present and
future of U.S. efforts in Afghani-
stan. The commission has been
proposed in a bill sponsored by
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a
committee member.
The acknowledgment of the ex-
tent of the threat comes as ISIS-K,
which Kahl described as a “mortal
enemy” of the Taliban, has
ramped up attacks in Afghanistan
following the exit of U.S. and
NATO forces.
Although for now its operatives
appear focused on “creating hav-
oc” within Taliban-ruled Afghani-
stan, the Islamic State group re-
tains the “intent” to strike the
United States and its allies, he
said. “The current intelligence as-
sessment” is that ISIS-K could
develop the capacity to plan andcarry out global attacks from Af-
ghanistan within six to 12 months,
he said. The al-Qaeda branch
there, which is allied with some
elements within the Taliban,
could have the same capability
within one to two years.
Kahl and Mingus cautioned
that those time estimates assume
that the United States and its
allies cannot successfully disrupt
terrorist planning.
The United States maintained
air facilities in Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan at various times during
the Afghanistan war, but those
agreements have long since
lapsed.
Despite appeals and induce-
ments offered by senior adminis-tration officials in recent months,
none of the Central Asian states
has agreed to allow U.S. opera-
tions.
Similar concerns have arisen
over U.S. intelligence capabilities
in Afghanistan. “Ideally, you
would have partners on the
ground. That’s not the case in
Afghanistan,” Kahl said. Faulty
intelligence led to the Aug. 29 U.S.
drone strike that killed 10 civil-
ians, including an aid worker and
seven children.
American surveillance flights
are in operation daily over Af-
ghanistan, he said, and Pakistan,
while prohibiting the launch of
any aircraft from its territory, con-
tinues to allow U .S. overflights.“Pakistan is a challenging actor,
but they don’t want Afghanistan
to be a safe haven for external
terrorist attacks,” Kahl said. “For
right now, counterterrorism co-
operation with Pakistan is pretty
good.”
Pakistan is also using a net-
work of informal channels to feed
intelligence and technical sup-
port to the Taliban to combat the
terrorist threat in Afghanistan,
The Washington Post reported
this week.
While the hearing was called to
examine current security in Af-
ghanistan and South and Central
Asia, much of the questioning
focused on the history of U.S.
involvement in Afghanistan and
the August evacuation.
Republicans sharply criticized
President Biden’s decision to com-
pletely withdraw all U.S. troops by
Aug. 31 and pushed Kahl to ac-
knowledge, as he has in the past,
that he would have preferred a
“conditions-based” approach that
would have left at least 2,
troops in Afghanistan until the
Taliban met certain require-
ments. “By the time I came in” to
office in late April, he said, “the
decision had been made.... My
personal opinion never changed.”
Democrats countered, as they
have in the past, that it was for-
mer president Donald Trump who
signed a February 2020 agree-
ment with the Taliban to with-
draw U.S. troops.
Asked whether Biden’s deci-
sion to withdraw in compliancewith that deal, announced in
April, had been reconsidered as
the Taliban moved toward a com-
plete takeover in August, Mingus
said that “it was deemed that the
risk” to both U.S. forces and civil-
ians trying to evacuate “was actu-
ally higher had we stayed beyond
the 31st.”
Noting that “this is our sixth
hearing on Afghanistan” since the
withdrawal, Sen. Angus King (I-
Maine) said “we had zero hear-
ings that I can recall” on the
Trump agreement, which prom-
ised full U.S. departure by May 1
this year. “Umbrage and outrage
about what happened this sum-
mer rings a little hollow to me,” he
said.
Under questions from Demo-
crats and Republicans, Kahl said
an estimated 5,500 American citi-
zens have left Afghanistan — 240
of them since the departure of U.S.
troops.
“In terms of how many Ameri-
can citizens are currently there,”
he said, “the Department of State
is in contact with 196 American
citizens ready to depart, and ar-
rangements are being made via
air or ground. Another 243 have
been contacted, but are not ready
to depart.”
Securing the departure of
American citizens, legal perma-
nent residents, and Afghans at
risk “is not without challenge,”
Kahl said. “But for those properly
documented, [the Taliban has]
continued to let them out.”
[email protected]Defense o∞cials, lacking a base near Afghanistan, warn of terrorist threat
EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Relatives bury victims after a bombing at a mosque in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, killed dozens this month.