Greene County Democrat

Tag: Secretary of State Antony Blinken

  • Newswire : Haiti – Blinken on visit announces US support for Kenyan Peace Keeping Force

    UN Peace Keeping Forces in Haiti

    By New York Carib News

     

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Haiti to demonstrate American backing for an international initiative aimed at reducing gang-related violence in the Caribbean country.
    On September 5, 2024, Blinken landed in Port-au-Prince, where he presented a fresh round of assistance to refugees and met with interim prime minister Garry Conille.

    Blinken informed reporters, “At this critical moment, we do need more funding, we do need more personnel to sustain and carry out the objectives of this mission.” Since President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in July 2021, gangs have taken control of large areas of Haiti. Eighty percent of Port-au-Prince, the capital, is included in this estimate.
    Amidst its crisis of legitimacy, the Haitian government has found it difficult to retake power and preserve calm. The violence in Haiti has spread to ten departments, and the interim administration there widened the country’s state of emergency just one day before Blinken’s arrival.

    Before, the Ouest department—which includes Port-au-Prince—was the only territory covered by the state of emergency. However, a spokesman for Prime Minister Conille claimed that the enlarged emergency designation is a reflection of gang conflicts occurring in departments such as Artibonite, which is a sizable area that grows rice.

    The United Nations estimates that in 2024, the violence will have pushed a record 578,074 people from their homes, making it the world’s greatest internal displacement disaster due to crime. An estimated 2,500 people lost their lives or were injured in the ongoing conflict in only the first quarter of 2024.

    However, to support Haiti’s law enforcement, the Kenyan government dispatched 200 police personnel in June. Out of an anticipated 1,000 Kenyan policemen, a second wave of 200 came the next month. Nevertheless, Blinken cautioned that the Kenyan military might not be sufficient to stem the flow of gang-related violence on their own.

    He has publicly asked whether a UN peacekeeping force is necessary, as have other US officials. However, it is a contentious idea in Haiti, where on their most recent deployment, UN forces caused a fatal cholera outbreak.

    Between 2010 and 2019, the illness claimed the lives of around 10,000 individuals.
    Many in the country view international troops with caution due to the lengthy history of foreign intervention. The priority, according to Blinken during his visit, was to make sure the international community was ready to help the Kenyan soldiers going forward, who had arrived as part of a mission known as the Multinational Security Help Mission.

    Last October, the operation was authorized for a one-year duration. The UN should get together again and decide on an extension, according to Blinken. “The mission itself needs to be renewed,” he noted. “That’s what we’re working on right now. But we also want something that’s reliable, that’s sustainable, and we’ll look at every option to do that. A UN peacekeeping mission is one option.”

    The US has provided the most financial assistance for the project, with a $360 million pledge from President Joe Biden’s administration.

    Recent news of an extra $45 million in humanitarian relief for Haiti was released.
    During his visit, Blinken again emphasized the need to have a stable, democratically elected administration. He urged Haitian authorities to organize fresh general elections for the next year. “That is the critical next step,” he noted. “We want to make sure Haiti is back on a clear democratic track.”
    Previous to the killing of President Moise, Haiti had not had federal elections. Its most recent democratically elected authorities reached the end of their terms in January 2023, and there was nobody to take their place.

    At that moment, the late Moise nominated former prime minister Ariel Henry to lead the cabinet soon before his passing. However, because Henry was an unelected official and hence not very popular, local gangs took advantage of this mistrust of the government to further their own agendas and become more powerful.

    In the end, Henry resigned in April, which made way for the formation of a transitional council entrusted with restoring democratic standards. “Much remains to be done, and we’re determined to continue,” Blinken noted. “It’s starting to move.”

  • Newswire: US departs Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war

    From The Washington Post

    The United States ended its longest war in history, and its 20-year presence in Afghanistan, as the last U.S. aircraft took off at one minute before midnight from Kabul airport Monday, August 30, carrying all remaining American troops and diplomats. “I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan,” the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., said at a news conference about an hour later as the final C-17 plane cleared Afghan airspace. The last to leave, he said, were Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, the commander of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and acting American ambassador Ross Wilson. President Biden issued a written statement saying he would address the American people Tuesday afternoon. The statement said that the decision to end the final U.S. military mission, which evacuated more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and others over the past several weeks, was the “unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and of all our commanders on the ground.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a formal address, said the U.S. diplomatic mission to Afghanistan would be transferred for the time being to Doha, Qatar. From there, he said, “we will continue our relentless efforts to help Americans, foreign nationals and Afghans” at risk “to leave Afghanistan if they choose,” as well as what he said would be ongoing humanitarian and counterterrorism operations. He said fewer than 200 American citizens are believed to still be in Afghanistan. Calling it a “massive military, diplomatic and humanitarian undertaking,” Blinken said the evacuation mission was “one of the most difficult in our nation’s history.” The costs of the war were immense, lasting through four administrations — more than 2,400 U.S. military deaths and tens of thousands of Afghans killed, and trillions of defense and development dollars spent. Yet at the end of the day, the final departure returned Afghanistan to the undisputed rule of the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist militants whom U.S. forces ousted from power in 2001 and battled for nearly two decades. After years of ups and downs on the battlefield, and in the size of the American and allied forces, which had dwindled to a few thousand during the Trump administration, the end came quickly. In barely a month, the Taliban spread its control to all major cities, and the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed as President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. The U.S. military has been in regular contact with Taliban officials since their arrival in Kabul two weeks ago, and McKenzie described their communications as “pragmatic” and “businesslike” as they did not contest U.S. control of the Kabul airport. He said Donahue had spoken with his Taliban liaison just before departure. “They established a firm perimeter outside of the airfield to prevent people from coming onto the airfield during our departure, and we worked on that with them for a number of days,” he said. “They did not have direct knowledge of our time of departure — we chose to keep that information very restricted — but they were actually very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations.” U.S. officials said that a total of 122,000 men, women and children — 79,000 of them on American military aircraft and the rest on charter and allied military flights — were flown out of the country in a heroic and unprecedented airlift, as the Biden administration struggled to meet its own Aug. 31 deadline. The White House has said the number included about 6,000 Americans who were evacuated or otherwise departed Afghanistan since Aug. 14. But the administration acknowledged that many were left behind, including American citizens whom McKenzie estimated number in the “low hundreds,” and tens of thousands of Afghans who aided the U.S. and allied effort over the years but were unable or unwilling to breach the danger and chaos of reaching the airport. “There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure,” McKenzie said. “We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out.”