Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will today call on the US President Joe Biden not to withdraw American forces from Iraq and Syria, Israeli media reported.
Bennett was scheduled to meet with Biden yesterday on his first visit to the White House as prime minister, but the meeting was postponed after an explosion at Kabul airport, Afghanistan, killed ten US service members.
Israeli intelligence officials met privately this month with the son of Libya’s top warlord to discuss his 2021 presidential candidacy, a signal that Israel is supporting his bid, a source familiar with the meeting told the Washington Free Beacon.
Saddam Haftar has been quietly seeking Western backing for his campaign, which is expected to pit him against Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of former strongman Muammar Qaddafi. Haftar is seen as a proxy for his father Khalifa Haftar, a dual U.S.-Libyan citizen and commander of the Libyan National Army.
Thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are pouring into the European Union from Belarus, a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. The surge in illegal immigration is being orchestrated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is accused of trying to blackmail the EU into reversing the sanctions it imposed over his disputed reelection and a crackdown on dissent.
Three people were killed and 20 others wounded in a suicide attack on a security checkpoint in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Sunday.
The suicide bombing targeted a Frontier Constabulary check-post on the Mastung road in Quetta, the provincial capital, a senior police officer said.
Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, arrived in Kabul on Saturday for talks with the Taliban regarding matters related to the safe evacuation of foreign nationals, border management and security in the region, sources said.
Geo News reported that Hameed will also meet with Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Mansoor Ahmed Khan and his team on issues of repatriation and transit through Pakistan and the situation on the border.
Kosovo has agreed to take in Afghanistan evacuees who fail to clear initial rounds of screening and host them for up to a year, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity Saturday.
The U.S. Embassy in Kosovo said later in a statement that the arrangement did not mean Kosovo was taking evacuees who had been deemed ineligible for admission to the United States.
Indian External Affairs (Foreign) Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar presided over a UN Security Council meeting last week focused on threats posed by ISIL.
Davood Moradian, Director General of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies, briefed the UNSC and accused the Islamic world of being passive observers.
Iran is engaging Taliban leaders following their takeover in Afghanistan, hoping for stability and an end to the flow of Afghan refugees into Iran.
Tehran is heralding a U.S. humiliation and the U.S. military withdrawal, which has led to the removal of American forces from near its eastern border.
In March, I travelled to Afghanistan and the Middle East with General Kenneth (Frank) McKenzie, Jr., the Alabama-born marine who heads Central Command. He has been overseeing the frantic evacuation out of Kabul. During one of several interviews aboard his plane, I asked him, “Do you really think, given the intermarriage, the interweaving of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, that the Taliban is really ever going to be able or willing to restrain Al Qaeda from doing anything against us?” By then, the Taliban held roughly half of Afghanistan, a country about the size of Texas. McKenzie was chillingly candid. “I think it will be very hard for the Taliban to act against Al Qaeda, to actually limit their ability to attack outside the country,” he replied. “It’s possible, but I think it would be difficult.”
U.S. officials had warned of an ISIS attack over the past week in wake of the sweeping Taliban takeover. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie of the U.S. Central Command said Thursday that the attackers were two ISIS suicide bombers.
Experts said the group, dubbed the “mortal adversary” of the Taliban, pose the biggest threat to America’s presence in the country.