Digital and technology news. A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence landed in Iraq on Saturday to visit U.S. troops and was set to meet Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, a source in the premier’s office said.
Pence visited Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq where U.S. troops are stationed. The Iraqi government source gave no further details.
Twenty-four people have been swept away in massive landslides in villages in Kenya’s West Pokot County, 350 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, the capital, following relentless rainstorms.
Twelve bodies, including those of seven children, have been recovered, County Commissioner Apollo Okello told Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.
Okello said two children were pulled out alive and “rushed to the hospital.”
Rescue efforts have been hampered because roads have been transformed into rivers and bridges have been washed away.
President Donald Trump was non-committal Friday about signing bi-partisan legislation supporting pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.
In a telephone call to “Fox and Friends,” Trump seemed torn between supporting human rights and gaining a trade deal with China.
Trump said, “Look we have to stand with Hong Kong.” However, he added, “But I’m also standing with President Xi (Jinping). He’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy.”
Trump said the world’s two largest economies are “in the process of making the largest trade deal in history and if we could do that that would be great.”
The U.S. legislation, consisting of two bills, is aimed at insuring that Hong Kong retains enough autonomy to justify favorable U.S. trading terms. It also threatens sanctions for human rights violations.
In his “Fox and Friends” call, Trump also boasted that he is responsible for preventing a violent incursion from China into Hong Kong to quell the pro-democracy rallies.
“If it weren’t for me, Hong Kong would have been obliterated in 14 minutes. He’s got a million soldiers, standing outside of Hong Kong,” said the president, referring to the Chinese president. Trump also said he had asked the Chinese leader to refrain from any actions that would negatively impact the bilateral trade talks.
The U.S. legislation supporting the Hong Kong activists passed unanimously in the Senate and received only one negative vote in the House. If Trump would veto the legislation, lawmakers can override the president’s veto with two-thirds votes in both the Senate and the House.
Hong Kong’s anti-government protests began in June in opposition to a proposed bill – now withdrawn – that would have allowed Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to the mainland. The protests quickly turned into wider calls for democracy and opposition to growing Chinese influence. The protests also spread to local universities.
Many Hong Kongers are outraged by the steady erosion of the “one country, two systems” policy that Beijing has used to govern Hong Kong since Britain returned it to China in 1997.
U.S. health officials Friday told people to avoid romaine lettuce grown in Salinas, California, because of another food poisoning outbreak.
The notice comes almost exactly one year after a similar outbreak led to a blanket warning about romaine.
Officials urged Americans not to eat the leafy green if the label doesn’t say where it was grown. They also urged supermarkets and restaurants not to serve or sell the lettuce, unless they’re sure it was grown elsewhere.
The warning applies to all types of romaine from the Salinas region, include whole heads, hearts and pre-cut salad mixes.
“We’re concerned this romaine could be in other products,” said Laura Gieraltowski, lead investigator of the outbreak at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Voluntary labeling
Officials said their investigation led to farms in Salinas and that they are looking for the source of E. coli tied to the illnesses. Salinas is a major growing region for romaine from around April to this time of year, when growing shifts south to Yuma, Arizona.
After last year’s pre-Thanksgiving outbreak tied to romaine, the produce industry agreed to voluntarily label the lettuce with harvest regions. Health officials said that would make it easier to trace romaine and issue more specific public health warnings when outbreaks happen.
Officials never identified exactly how romaine might have become contaminated in past outbreaks. But another outbreak in spring 2018 that sickened more than 200 people and killed five was traced to tainted irrigation water near a cattle lot. (E. coli is found in the feces of animals such as cows.)
It’s not clear exactly why romaine keeps popping up in outbreaks, but food safety experts note the popularity of romaine lettuce and the difficulty of eliminating risk for produce grown in open fields and eaten raw.
Tighter safety measures
Industry groups noted that they tightened safety measures following last year’s outbreaks, including expanding buffer zones between growing fields and livestock.
“It’s very, very disturbing. Very frustrating all around,” said Trevor Suslow of the Produce Marketing Association.
The CDC says 40 people have been reported sick so far in 16 states. The most recent reported illness started Nov. 10. The agency says it’s the same E. coli strain tied to previous outbreaks, including the one from last Thanksgiving.
The CDC’s Gieraltowski said that suggests there’s a persisting contamination source in the environment.
Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is making her first campaign hires in early voting Nevada, scooping up staffers who worked for Beto O’Rourke’s campaign.
Klobuchar’s campaign announced Friday the Minnesota senator had hired Marina Negroponte to serve as state director and Cameron Miller to serve as Nevada political director. Both held similar roles in the state for O’Rourke’s campaign, which ended this month.
Negroponte helped organize the Hispanic community for the civil rights nonprofit We Are All Human Foundation and spent a decade working in international development for the United Nations.
Miller has worked on several state legislative campaigns in Nevada.
The state is third in line to vote next year on the Democratic presidential field.
Klobuchar has been working to build momentum after strong performances in the last two debates.
Vietnamese authorities arrested blogger and independent journalist Pham Chi Dung, a prominent government critic and VOA contributor, in Ho Chi Minh City Thursday.
In a statement posted online, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security accused Dung of “dangerous” anti-state actions, including “fabricating, storing, and disseminating information, as well as other materials opposing the Vietnamese government.”
State media said Dung carried out “anti-regime activities such as producing anti-state articles, [and] cooperating with foreign media.”
Dung, 53, president of the outlawed Independent Journalist Association of Vietnam (IJAVN), could face a jail sentence of five to 20 years if found guilty, local media said.
Dung, who writes regularly on VOA’s Vietnamese Blog, faced similar allegations in 2012.
IJAVN vice president Nguyen Tuong Thuy told VOA that Dung’s arrest was “a dangerous move to silence dissenting voices and repress freedom of speech in Vietnam.”
IJAVN’s website has been blocked since Dung’s arrest. Thuy said he fears “the arrest will have a big impact on the group’s activities and its members,” as authorities continue to investigate the group.
Dung established IJAVN as a “civil society organization,” July 4, 2014, and has said that America’s Independence Day inspired him to create a platform to advocate for freedom of the press, freedom of expression and democracy.
“The arrest of Pham Chi Dung is the continuation of an intensified crackdown against political activists and bloggers in Vietnam,” freelancer Duong Van Thai, a Vietnamese political asylum seeker in Thailand and a former state-run media reporter in Vietnam, told VOA. “The arrest showed Hanoi’s desire to exercise greater control over the freedom of speech.”
Nguyen Tuong Thuy noted that Dung’s criticism of the government had intensified of late, likely triggering his arrest.
“He has written more aggressively in a stronger style, but Pham Chi Dung is still the same!” Thuy said
Dung resigned from the Communist Party in 2013, ending 20 years of membership. In the years since, Reporters Without Borders has lauded him as an “information hero.” In addition to VOA, he has contributed to NBC News and Nikkei Asian Review.
The Vietnamese government continues to ban independent or privately-owned media outlets. It exerts strict control over radio and TV stations and printed publications, and routinely block access to politically sensitive websites.
President Donald Trump on Friday promoted a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, a day after a former White House adviser called it a “fictional narrative” and said it played into Russia’s hands.
Trump called in to “Fox & Friends” and said he was trying to root out corruption in the Eastern European nation when he withheld aid over the summer. Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president is at the center of the House impeachment probe, which is looking into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as he held back nearly $400 million.
He also worked to undercut witnesses at the hearings, including the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump recalled from her post in Kyiv. The president called her an “Obama person” and claimed without evidence that she didn’t want his picture to hang on the walls of the embassy.
“There are a lot of things that she did that I didn’t like,” he said, adding that he asked why administration officials were being so kind to her. “‘Well, sir, she’s a woman. We have to be nice,’ ” he said they told him. Without providing details, Trump said he viewed her differently. “She’s very tough. I heard bad things,” he said.
He repeated his assertion that Ukrainians might have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s network in 2016 and framed Russia for the crime, a theory his own advisers have dismissed.
“They gave the server to CrowdStrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian,” Trump said. “I still want to see that server. The FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing.”
The president in the wide-ranging interview also claimed that he knows the identity of the whistleblower who filed the formal complaint that spurred the impeachment inquiry.
“You know who the whistleblower is. So do I,” Trump told the hosts.
Trump said he didn’t believe House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., who has maintained that he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower.
“If he doesn’t, then he’s the only person in Washington who doesn’t,” Trump said.
Trump said he does not expect to be impeached, claiming Democrats have “absolutely nothing” incriminating, despite days of public testimony by witnesses who said Trump withheld aid from Ukraine to press the country to investigate his political rivals.
“I think it’s very hard to impeach you when they have absolutely nothing,” Trump said, adding that if the House did vote to impeach him, he would welcome a trial in the Senate.
Trump’s claim on Ukraine being behind the 2016 election interference has been discredited by intelligence agencies and his own advisers.
CrowdStrike, an internet security firm based in California, investigated the DNC hack in June 2016 and traced it to two groups of hackers connected to a Russian intelligence service – not Ukraine.
One version of the debunked theory holds that CrowdStrike is owned by a wealthy Ukrainian. In fact, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russian-born U.S. citizen who immigrated as a child and graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The president repeated his claim one day after Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser on the White House National Security Council, admonished Republicans for pushing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill testified before the House impeachment inquiry panel. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Trump told “Fox & Friends” that “there was no quid pro quo,” in his efforts to push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine.
The president’s assertion is at odds with sworn testimony by impeachment witnesses.
Prince Andrew is scaling back travel and facing an uncertain future as he steps away from the royal role he has embraced for his entire adult life.
The latest blow came Friday afternoon when the board of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra announced that it was cutting ties to Andrew, who had been its patron.
The 59-year-old prince has suffered numerous setbacks in the six days since the broadcast of a disastrous TV interview from Buckingham Palace during which he defended his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein died in a New York prison in August in what the New York City medical examiner ruled was a suicide.
The Times newspaper said in an editorial Friday that the debacle demonstrates the need for “urgent reform” of the royal household. The paper urged Andrew’s older brother and heir to the throne, Prince Charles, to take steps to streamline and make the royal family “more modest.”
The disgraced prince scuttled plans for a trip to Bahrain that had been planned to support his Pitch(at)Palace project, according to the British news media, even though he is struggling to keep that enterprise going despite cutting ties to dozens of other charities.
He did go horseback riding with his mother, 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, near Windsor Castle on Friday afternoon despite harsh November weather. The monarch has not commented publicly on her son’s troubles.
There was a visceral public backlash to the TV interview _ particularly because Andrew did not express sympathy for Epstein’s young female victims that led politicians to debate the future of the monarchy in a televised debate ahead of the Dec. 12 national election. Shortly after the interview, Andrew announced that he was halting his royal duties “for the foreseeable future.”
Up until now, Andrew, the queen’s third child, had been able to skate away from troublesome questions about his private life and his extravagant lifestyle. His association with Epstein had been known for more than eight years, but it only took him down after he went on TV to discuss it.
Andrew is trying to find a way to keep alive at least one of his projects without relying on the prestige and real estate of the royal family.
Buckingham Palace officials said Andrew would try to maintain Pitch(at)Palace as a non-royal charity that eventually would not be centered at any of the royal palaces. The prince founded the project in 2014 to link up young entrepreneurs with established business people. In the past, idea and product pitches for the program have taken place at St. James’ Palace.
According to its website, Pitch(at)Palace has helped 931 start-up businesses and created nearly 6,000 new jobs. It boasts a 97% survival rate for new companies started by its alumni.
Andrew was expected to remove himself from the many other charities with which he’s been involved over the years, a diverse group that sheds light on his interests and reflects the varied demands made on a senior royal.
Among them have been the Army Officers’ Golfing Society, which promotes golf in the British Army, and the Maimonides Interfaith Foundation, which is devoted to the use of art and dialogue to improve relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians.
The prince also was involved with a group fighting malaria and a charity helping deaf children throughout the Commonwealth, which includes Britain and many of its former colonies.
The Falklands War veteran also was expected to drop his ceremonial role with many military units. In addition, he has resigned as patron of The Outward Bound Trust, an educational charity that helps young people have adventures in the wild with which he had been involved with for decades, and was to step down as chancellor of Huddersfield University, university officials said.
Despite these many embarrassments and the dramatic drop in his work responsibilities, Andrew was not expected to face money pressures, although the details of his financial picture have not been made public.
He has long received financial backing from the queen’s private accounts and there was no indication that this would change. He was likely, however, to close or severely downsize his well-staffed personal office at Buckingham Palace.
When he served as Britain’s international trade envoy, Andrew relied extensively on public funding and was criticized for his deluxe travel style when going overseas on official business. He left that role in 2011, in part because questions were already being asked about his relationship with Epstein, who had already been convicted of sex offenses.
Heads of state and officials from the Central African bloc CEMAC are meeting in Yaounde to discuss the economies of the six-nation bloc, said to be the least developed on the African continent.
CEMAC’s development has been slowed by the spillover of the Boko Haram crisis into Cameroon, carnage in the Central African Republic and political tensions in countries that have some of the world’s longest serving leaders.
CEMAC consists of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville.
Hundreds of merchants from Gabon and Equatorial Guinea buy and sell goods at the Cameroon border market of Kiossi, located on the boundary line of the two neighboring states.
Cameroonian vegetable and fruits seller Ahmad Njimuluh says he’d like to see free movement of people between CEMAC member states.
He says between the western Cameroon town of Foumbot where he comes from, and Gabons capital of Libreville there are 68 regular police and customs check points and about 30 other control points which have been found to illegally extort money from commuters.
In November 2017, CEMAC heads of state meeting in Chad said they had reached a milestone agreement to lift visa requirements for its citizens traveling within the regional bloc.
But Gabon-born Roger Ngembou, political consultant with CEMAC, says that except for the border between Chad and Cameroon, where citizens travel freely, nothing has changed.
He says a survey carried out this year on why CEMAC’s growth is slow and projects are hardly implemented indicates that countries are reluctant to open up to each other due to security threats and corruption. He says it is imperative for CEMAC member states to make movement between its citizens visa-free so they can benefit from the opportunities their huge market of close to 60 million people offers.
The economic growth rate in central Africa is barely 1.5 percent. The president of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, says the region needs to reexamine some of its policies to speed growth.
Nguesso says for the sub-regional integration they have been asking for to be successful, he and his peers should first of all provide basic infrastructure like roads, rail and air transport, telecommunications and a viable electricity network. He says they have to tackle corruption which is making their countries poorer. He says while waiting for funding to develop the infrastructure, he and Cameroon’s President Paul Biya have decided to build a road linking the town of Pointe-Noire in his country and Douala in Cameroon.
CEMAC has plans to create a regional airline, roads that link the 6 countries, inter-state hospitals and universities. But Ngembou said he doubts their ability to execute the plans with the ongoing economic, social and political tensions in the region.
Cameroon, the region’s main economic engine, is dealing with Boko Haram, and a separatist crisis in two of its regions, and tensions over Biya’s 37 years in power.
In Equatorial Guinea, an attempt last year to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang, who has been in power for four decades, was foiled by his military.
And the Central African Republic has yet to stabilize since rebels overthrew the president there in 2013.
In the parts of Beirut where protesters camp out, financial institutions remained shuttered this week, with cartoons of pigs with dollar-sign eyes spray-painted on the walls next to graffiti calling for revolution.
In other parts of the city, the banks cautiously reopened, after being mostly closed for more than a month since daily anti-corruption demonstrations began in October.
Lebanon is now on the brink of financial collapse, according to economists, and the only way out is to build a government and end the upheaval. But the current leadership remains unable to agree on a prime minister or hold legislative sessions.
And protesters blame the chaos on corruption among the same stagnated political class, saying demonstrations will continue until they all resign and are replaced by nonpolitical “technocrats.”
“It’s not our fault,” said Kareem, 31, an optometrist who quit work to camp with other protesters near Lebanon’s parliament building. “It’s the politicians.”
Many employees are accepting half-salaries or losing their jobs, businesses are failing, and the banks are limiting the amounts of money people can withdraw or send abroad.
“We used to be two people working in this store but now it’s only me,” said Malak, 27, at a mobile phone shop on a busy Beirut highway. “I work harder and get paid less.”
Malak was paid in U.S. dollars before the crisis began, but now Lebanon is desperately short of the currency and he is paid in Lebanese pounds, which has rapidly lost value. Overnight, Malak’s salary was reduced by 20 percent.
The mobile phone shop, he added, lost 95 percent of its income. They cannot afford to buy more phones, even if they could sell them.
And renewed upheaval could easily close the banks again, deepening the crisis, said Walid Abou Sleiman, a prominent Lebanese economist.
“If we witness more instability, they will shut down,” he said. And that means, “you are shutting down the economy.”
Crisis long coming
Many of Lebanon’s economic woes began with the Syrian civil war in 2011, Sleiman explained.
Refugees streamed over the border, tourists stayed away and government services like electricity and water declined.
Over the years, Lebanese banks, once a “pillar of the economy,” also declined, as the private sector defaulted on more and more loans. Now, Sleiman said, there is a greater rate of bad loans in Lebanon than there was in the United States in 2008. And that rate was so great it sparked an international banking crisis.
“What happened is a wake-up call,” said Sleiman. “Reform is a must.”
Demonstrations began on Oct. 17 after lawmakers tried to impose a tax on the Whatsapp messaging service amid skyrocketing unemployment and poverty rates. Since then, Prime Minister Sa’ad al-Hariri has resigned, but promises of some reforms have not appeased the anger on the streets.
Even on off-hours, when only a few people roam the protest camps, new pop music calls for “the fall of the regime,” saying “all of them means all of them.”
As he stood alongside barbed wire barriers to the roads surrounding the parliament building, Kareem said demanding change is the only way to improve the situation in the long run, even as the economy rapidly declines.
“I will stay (as long as it takes)” to change the government, he said.
Insecurity
Meanwhile, the unrest has panicked many people, fueling the financial crisis that is fueling the unrest.
Billions of dollars were withdrawn from personal accounts since demonstrations began, forcing the banks to close. Banks now sharply limit the amounts of cash withdrawals and international transfers.
At a posh cigar shop in Beirut, Ayman, a father of two, said even his store, which appeals to wealthy clients, has lost nearly 50 percent of its business.
New sanctions against Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed military organization and U.S.-designated terrorist group, are further squeezing the population, he added.
“We are only buying necessities now,” he said. “And waiting to see if things get better.”
Demonstrations have been mostly peaceful so far, with the exception of sporadic clashes and the death of an activist earlier this month, but more protests are expected in the coming days.
And in this sharply divided country, experts say, rallies could easily dissolve into riots.
“I used to say the economic crisis will turn into a social crisis, and the social crisis could turn into a war,” said Sleiman, the economist. “But no one was listening.”
President Donald Trump was to pay respects Thursday to a pair of Army officers who were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
Trump has said the responsibility of receiving the remains of fallen U.S. soldiers is “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.
As the final day of public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry wound down, Trump left the White House for the short flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the remains of service members killed abroad are returned to U.S. soil.
David C. Knadle, 33, of Tarrant, Texas, and Kirk T. Fuchigami Jr., 25, of Keaau, Hawaii, died Wednesday when their helicopter crashed as they provided security for troops on the ground in Logar Province in eastern Afghanistan.
Both were assigned to Fort Hood, Texas. Each held the rank of chief warrant officer two.
Wednesday’s crash brought this year’s U.S. death toll in Afghanistan to 19, excluding three noncombat deaths.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, but the U.S military has dismissed that as a false claim. The crash remains under investigation.
One of the Islamic State’s most feared affiliates has suffered a significant setback, though U.S. officials caution reports that the terror group was “obliterated” are overblown.
U.S. officials confirmed Thursday that Islamic State-Khorasan, as the terror group’s Afghan affiliate is called, collapsed in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province following months of fighting.
“Afghan government and coalition operations against the group, along with the Taliban’s campaign … led to ISIS-Khorasan’s collapse in Nangarhar and the surrender of hundreds of fighters to Afghan forces,” a senior counterterrorism official told VOA, using an acronym for the group.
“Surrendered [Islamic State] fighters said they were told to leave Nangarhar for Kunar [province], where we assess the group still maintains a presence, as well as the northern provinces of Afghanistan,” the official added.
Afghans more optimistic
The U.S. assessment contrasted with some more optimistic pronouncements from Afghan officials, who touted the victory in Nangarhar as conclusive.
“No one believed one year ago that we would stand up and remain in Nangarhar, and thank God that today we have obliterated Daesh,” President Ashraf Ghani said Tuesday during a speech in Jalalabad, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
“It’s not possible that they once again equip themselves in other areas of Afghanistan and threaten other parts of the country,” Nangarhar Governor Shah Mahmoud Miakhel added.
Just two days earlier, Taliban officials touted their own success against the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, calling the group’s defeat in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces the result of a “decisive and large-scale” campaign that began in September.
‘Systematically uprooted’
“Over the course of the last five years, they were systematically uprooted,” spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement Sunday, adding the Taliban had “rescued the oppressed people of Nangarhar from this scourge.”
Both the Taliban and Afghan government officials said almost 600 IS fighters had surrendered, along with women and children.
Still, U.S. officials said the threat from IS-Khorasan, which is thought to have between 4,000 and 5,000 fighters across Afghanistan, was far from over.
The movement of the surrendered fighters to Kunar province and northern provinces of Afghanistan “suggests ISIS-Khorasan is still active in the country despite losing territory in Nangarhar,” the senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.
The U.S. Defense Department declined to discuss the statements by Afghan officials regarding the status of IS-Khorasan but said the effort to defeat the terror group would go on.
U.S. Forces-Afghanistan “will continue our work with the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces to ensure that ISIS in Afghanistan is destroyed,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Campbell told VOA.
‘Enduring defeat’ is goal
“The United States remains fully committed to the enduring defeat of ISIS, including ISIS in Afghanistan, which is critical to our national security,” he added.
Over the years, IS-Khorasan has seen its fortunes waver, at one point seeing its ranks whittled to as few as several hundred fighters.
But the IS affiliate has consistently found ways to bounce back, leading defense intelligence officials to label it as an “enduring threat” to both Afghanistan and the West.
The collapse of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq is doing little to slow down the terror group’s branch in Afghanistan.Newly unclassified intelligence suggests IS-Khorasan, as the group is known, is growing both in numbers and ambition, now boasting as many as 5,000 fighters — nearly five times as many as estimates from last year — while turning its focus to bigger and more spectacular attacks.Military officials say the numbers, shared by U.S.
“ISIS-K has been a force that’s had staying power,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst and CEO of Valens Global.
“A lot of that staying power relates to the fact that you have a growing militant landscape in Afghanistan,” he said. “People who for whatever reason are disaffected with the Taliban have an alternative in ISIS-K.”
There is also some thought that because of IS-Khorasan’s ambition and resiliency, the estimated thousands of remaining fighters could get a boost from the terror group’s core leadership in Iraq and Syria.
“With the caliphate’s collapse, the core seems to be shifting some of its resources and attention to the affiliate group,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a global security analysis group. “ISIS-K in Afghanistan is very high on my list of places where the group would look to make a resurgence.
“They know the United States won’t be there forever,” he added. “They’re laying the groundwork.”