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LONDON: Senior Taliban leaders have criticized Britain’s Prince Harry after the royal admitted in his memoir to killing 25 people in Afghanistan, describing them as “chess pieces” on a board.
The prince has detailed his time serving as a military helicopter pilot — first as a forward air controller in 2007 and again in 2012 when he was a co-pilot gunner — in his book “Spare.”
The memoir, which went on sale in Spain days before its global launch on Jan. 10, has hit the headlines for its in-depth disclosures about the rift between Prince Harry and his brother William, Prince of Wales.
In one chapter of the book, Prince Harry, 38, details his two tours of Afghanistan, as well as the number of people he killed.
He writes: “It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it leave me ashamed, when I found myself plunged in the heat and confusion of combat I didn’t think of those 25 as people.
“They were chess pieces removed from the board; bad people eliminated before they could kill good people.”
Anas Haqqani, a leader of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, hit out at the prince’s “chess pieces” comment.
He tweeted: “Mr Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return.
“Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes.
“The truth is what you’ve said. Our innocent people were chess pieces to your soldiers, military and political leaders. Still, you were defeated in that ‘game’ of white and black squares.
“I don’t expect that the ICC will summon you, or the human rights activists will condemn you, because they are deaf and blind to you.
“But hopefully these atrocities will be remembered in the history of humanity.”
Abdul Qahar Balkhi, spokesperson for the Taliban-led Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry, also criticized the prince.
He said: “The western occupation of Afghanistan is truly an odious moment in human history, and comments by Prince Harry are a microcosm of the trauma experienced by Afghans at the hands of occupation forces who murdered innocents without any accountability.”
When asked about the royal’s comments, a spokesperson for Britain’s Ministry of Defence said: “We do not comment on operational details for security reasons.”
However, Col. Richard Kemp, who took command of British forces in Afghanistan in 2003 before his retirement, told Sky News that Prince Harry’s comments about targets being “less than human” were dangerous.
He said the remarks “were probably ill-judged for two reasons. One is his suggestion that he killed 25 people will have reincited those people who wish him harm.”
Kemp also said people who support the Taliban may now be “motivated to kill Harry” because of memories that may have been “resurrected” by what he said.
Representatives of Prince Harry have not commented.
MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Saturday cut short the term of the military chief of staff he appointed five months ago and replaced him with a retiring general without explaining the surprise move.
Marcos’s office announced the replacement of Lt. Gen. Bartolome Bacarro, who had received the highest military award for combat bravery. A statement late Friday that did not specify any reason for the change in military leadership. Bacarro’s three-year term was supposed to end in August 2025.
The appointment of military chiefs is a sensitive issue. The military has a history of restiveness, failed coup attempts, corruption scandals and has faced accusations of human rights violations. Efforts have been made for years to instill professionalism in the military and insulate it from the country’s traditionally chaotic and corruption-tainted politics.
Lt. Gen. Andres Centino, the military chief of staff who Bacarro replaced in August last year, was installed by Marcos to the top post of the 144,000-strong armed forces. Centino, who was due to retire next month, was chosen over a dozen senior generals and will have a fresh three-year term.
Asked for reaction on his removal, Bacarro told reporters without elaborating Friday night in a text message that the military would support the new chief.
National police spokesperson Col. Jean Fajardo said police forces have been placed on “heightened alert” mainly to secure an annual religious gathering in Manila. He denied the move was linked to purported military restiveness that has been reported by social media.
A new law that took effect last year fixed the term of the military chief of staff to three years to allow a top general more time to initiate reforms and press a yearslong campaign to modernize an underfunded military confronting Muslim and communist insurgencies and increasingly aggressive actions by China in the disputed South China Sea, where the Philippines lays claim to contested islands, islets and reefs with other coastal states.
In a turnover ceremony at the main military camp in the capital on Saturday, Bacarro handed a saber symbolizing military leadership to Centino and thanked the military, his family and the president. Marcos did not attend but was represented by his close advisers, including Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin.
Bersamin stressed in a speech he was impressed by the smooth military leadership transition, which he said should be emulated by politicians to avoid disruptive post-election unrest like what has happened in America.
“Continue with this tradition, where you respect each other, where you give so much consideration to the qualifications of your fellow officers in order to enable your organization … to move forward instead of looking back,” Bersamin said.
Marcos, he said, had asked him and other key presidential advisers to show the “highest respect” to Bacarro for his battlefield exploits and hinted the general may be given another government post after the end of his military career.
In 1991, Bacarro received a medal of valor for thwarting an attack by about 150 communist guerrillas on a northern Philippine town despite his smaller force. Wounded in the thigh by rebel fire, he commandeered a dump truck and rammed a fence to allow government militiamen, who were pinned down, to escape.
His sudden removal follows a decision by the national police chief, Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr., to tender his resignation on Thursday after Marcos’s interior secretary appealed to nearly 1,000 police generals and colonels to quit and allow a committee to investigate and weed out top officials involved in illegal drugs.
Azurin asked top police officials to support Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos’s drastic move. But he added some generals opposed the call for them to resign within the month because they were not facing any criminal lawsuits and have not been linked to the drug trade.
BEIJING: China lifts quarantine requirements for inbound travelers on Sunday, ending almost three years of self-imposed isolation even as the country battles a surge in Covid cases.
Beijing last month began a dramatic dismantling of a hard-line virus strategy that had enforced mandatory quarantines and gruelling lockdowns.
The containment policy has tanked China’s economy and sparked nationwide protests.
In the final unraveling of those rules, Sunday will see inbound travelers to China no longer required to quarantine.
Since March 2020, all arrivals had been forced to undergo isolation at centralized government facilities. This decreased from three weeks to one week this summer, and to five days in November.
Chinese people rushed to plan trips abroad after officials last month announced that quarantine would be dropped, sending inquiries on popular travel websites soaring.
But the expected surge in visitors has led over a dozen countries to impose mandatory Covid tests on travelers from the world’s most populous nation as it battles its worst-ever outbreak.
The outbreak is forecast to worsen as China enters the Lunar New Year holiday this month, during which millions are expected to travel from hard-hit megacities to the countryside to visit vulnerable older relatives.
Beijing has called travel curbs imposed by other countries “unacceptable,” despite it continuing to largely block foreign tourists and international students from traveling to China.
Despite the testing requirements, 28-year-old Zhang Kai told AFP he is planning a trip to either South Korea or Japan.
“I am happy, now finally (I can) let go,” Zhang said.
Friends of his have already landed in Japan and undergone tests, which he dismissed as a “small matter.”
Across Asia, tourist hubs are preparing for a surge in Chinese visitors.
At a crepe stand in Seoul, Son Kyung-rak said he was making plans to deal with a flood of tourists.
“We’re looking to hire and preparing to stock up,” the 24-year-old told AFP in Seoul’s popular downtown Myeongdong district.
“Chinese tourists are our main customers, so the more the merrier.”
In Tokyo, caricaturist Masashi Higashitani was dusting off his Chinese language skills as he prepared for more holidaymakers.
But while he told AFP he is thrilled about China’s reopening, he admitted some apprehension.
“I wonder if an influx of too many of them might overwhelm our capacity. I’m also worried that we need to be more careful about anti-virus measures,” he told AFP.
In China’s southern semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, Sunday will also see a major relaxation of stringent cross-border travel restrictions with the Chinese mainland.
Hong Kong’s recession-hit economy is desperate to reconnect with its biggest source of growth, and families separated by the boundary are looking forward to reunions over the Lunar New Year.
Up to 50,000 Hong Kong residents will be able to cross the border daily at three land checkpoints after registering online.
Another 10,000 will be allowed to enter by sea, air or bridges without needing to register in advance, the city’s leader John Lee said.
More than 280,000 in total had registered to make the journey within a day of the new rules being announced.
But Hong Kong travelers will still need to present a negative nucleic acid test result obtained no more than 48 hours before departure.
Immigration authorities will start issuing permits for mainlanders to travel to Hong Kong and Macau “according to the epidemic situation and service capacities,” the city has said.
Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific has said it will more than double its flights to the Chinese mainland.
BAMAKO: Forty-six Ivorian soldiers detained in Mali since July arrived home late Saturday, according to an AFP reporter at the airport, a day after they were pardoned by the neighboring country’s junta.
The troops, whose detention triggered a bitter diplomatic row between the neighboring countries, were arrested on July 10, 2022, after arriving in the Malian capital Bamako.
Mali accused them of being mercenaries, while Ivory Coast and the United Nations say they were flown in to provide routine backup security for the German contingent of the UN peacekeeping mission.
On December 30, a Malian court sentenced the 46 soldiers to 20 years in prison, while three women among the original 49 arrested, received death sentences in absentia.
They were convicted of an “attack and conspiracy against the government” and of seeking to undermine state security, public prosecutor Ladji Sara said at the time.
On Friday, Mali’s junta leader Assimi Goita pardoned all 49 soldiers.
And on Saturday, the remaining 46 arrived at an airport in the Ivorian economic capital Abidjan.
After their plane landed at 11:40 p.m. (2340 GMT), the uniformed soldiers disembarked one by one, each brandishing a small Ivorian flag.
They were greeted by President Alassane Ouattara before entering the presidential pavilion at the airport where their families were waiting for them.
The soldiers’ trial opened in Bamako on December 29 and concluded the following day.
It came in the run-up to a January 1 deadline set by leaders from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for Mali to release the soldiers or face sanctions.
An Ivorian delegation had traveled to Mali for talks before the trial opened, and the Ivorian defense ministry had said the dispute was “on the way to being resolved.”
An agreement reached between Mali and Ivory Coast at the time had left open the possibility of a presidential pardon by Goita.
The Malian government on Friday cited a memorandum of understanding the two countries had signed “on the promotion of peace and the strengthening of relations of friendship, brotherhood and good neighborliness between the Republic of Mali and the Republic of Ivory Coast.”
It also thanked Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbe, who mediated in the row, but denounced the “aggressive position” of ECOWAS leader Umaro Sissoco Embalo.
Relations between Mali and its West African neighbors had already been strained before the arrests, since elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was toppled in August 2020 by officers angered at failures to roll back a jihadist insurgency.
Ivorian President Ouattara is considered one of the most intransigent West African leaders toward Mali’s putschists.
After the troops were detained, the UN acknowledged some procedural “dysfunctions” in a note addressed to the Malian government, saying that “certain measures have not been followed.”
The Ivorian presidency also admitted “shortcomings and misunderstandings.”
But the row escalated in September, when diplomatic sources in the region said Mali wanted Ivory Coast to acknowledge its responsibility and express regret for deploying the soldiers.
Bamako also wanted Ivory Coast to hand over people who had been on its territory since 2013 but who are wanted in Mali, they said.
Ivory Coast rejected both demands and was prepared for extended negotiations to free the troops, the sources said.
“This hostage-taking will not be without consequences,” Ouattara said at the time.
The tensions led Mali’s interim prime minister at the time, Abdoulaye Maiga, to denounce a “synchronization of actions” against Mali at the UN General Assembly in September.
He attacked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for having declared that the Ivorian soldiers were not mercenaries.
He also criticized ECOWAS chief Embalo as well as the heads of state of Ivory Coast and Niger.
COTONOU: Voters in Benin go to the polls on Sunday for a parliamentary election seen as a test of democracy as opposition parties are back on the ballot after boycotting or being excluded from the most recent presidential and legislative votes.
Benin’s image as a bastion of democracy and stability in West Africa has been dented under President Patrice Talon, who went back on a pledge not to run for another term and oversaw an opposition crackdown since coming to power in 2016.
Seven parties are competing for 109 parliamentary seats in Sunday’s vote, including the Democrates party linked to Talon’s predecessor and rival Thomas Boni Yayi. Boni Yayi’s supporters led protests in 2019 after opposition parties were blocked from the legislative vote for failing to meet strict new election criteria.
“I will vote for this party (the Democrates) for the rebalance of power,” said civil society activist Isidore Odountan, 31, in the largest city Cotonou.
Preliminary results, which are expected on Jan. 11, may also be an indicator of the strength of the various political forces jostling to succeed Talon. The next presidential election is due in 2026, when the next parliamentary vote will also be held.
Talon does not belong to any party but is supported by the two parties currently in power in parliament — the Bloc Republicain and Union Progressiste le Renouveau.
There is no immediate sign the vote will see protests like in 2019 or those that broke out in 2021 against Talon’s decision to seek re-election, said political analyst Expedit Ologou, head of Beninois thinktank Civic Academy for Africa’s Future.
“The atmosphere seems calm, peaceful, friendly, fraternal in most areas of the country,” he told Reuters.
Under Talon, the political protests have been met with deadly police violence, while politicized prosecutions and other legal tactics have been used to stifle the opposition, US democracy watchdog Freedom House said in its 2022 report.
Talon has denied targeting political opponents or violating human rights.
With more parties on the ballot, turnout should return to normal levels of around 60 percent after slumping to just 27 percent in 2019, Ologou said.
Regional security may be higher up voters’ concerns in this election as Benin, alongside neighboring Togo and Ivory Coast, has seen increasing attacks from militants linked to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State as violence creeps south from the Sahel countries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
The insecurity and higher living costs linked to the war in Ukraine pose a threat to Benin’s recent economic gains, the International Monetary Fund warned last July.
Benin’s agriculture-dependent economy has rebounded since the coronavirus pandemic, growing over 7 percent in 2021 and the first half of 2022. But the country of 12 million remains one of the poorest in the world with a fifth of the population living on less than $1.90 per day, according to the World Bank.
KYIV: Tears of joy streamed down worshippers’ faces as Ukraine’s main church celebrated a “return” to Kyiv’s Cathedral of the Assumption on Orthodox Christmas day, shortly after taking control of it from a rival church with alleged ties to Russia.
The golden-domed cathedral, of huge cultural and religious significance, sits on a high hill in the center of Kyiv by the river Dnipro, and forms part of the 980-year-old Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, also containing chapels and administrative buildings.
It has become a focus of a bitter conflict between Ukraine’s Orthodox communities, triggered by Russia’s invasion.
Members of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), Ukraine’s largest, piled into the cathedral’s ornate interior on Saturday, to hear the first-ever Ukrainian-language service in the cathedral.
“During these days of festivities, with strong feelings we ask God: Help us to defeat the enemy, who brought grief into our home. Help us to finally drive out the foreign invasion from the Ukrainian land,” said the OCU’s Metropolitan Epifaniy I.
Vadym Storozhyk, a 50-year-old Kyiv city councillor, said the Christmas service meant to him a “return” of a holy site under Ukraine’s control.
“Thirty years after renewing our history and gaining our independence — we return to our holy places, to our (spiritual) sources,” he said.
Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, who attended the service with the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, posted a message on Facebook celebrating what he said was the end of three-and-a-half centuries of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’s “capture” by Moscow.
Ukraine’s Orthodox Church, in its various iterations, has been subordinate to Moscow since the 17th century.
In a note at the bottom of his post, Tkachenko hinted at a major change to Ukraine’s Christmas celebrations, hitherto always held on Jan. 7, the same date as Russia and several other Orthodox-majority countries.
“I hope that this year all the churches will come to an agreement and we will celebrate Christmas together on December 25th,” he wrote.
Ukraine has about 30 million Orthodox believers, divided between different church communities. The war, now in its 11th month, has led many Ukrainians to rally round the OCU, which they see as more pro-Ukrainian than its rival, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
The UOC was officially under the wing of Russia’s Orthodox Church until May 2022, but announced a severing of ties due to the Moscow church’s support for the war.
President Vladimir Putin on Saturday praised the Russian Orthodox Church for supporting Moscow’s forces fighting in Ukraine in an Orthodox Christmas message and called it an important stabilising force in society.
Despite cutting ties, the UOC still faces allegations of pro-Russian views and direct collaboration with Moscow, which it denies, from Ukraine’s government and from much of Ukraine’s press and civil society. The UOC says it is the victim of a political witch hunt by its enemies in government.
The UOC was evicted from the cathedral after its lease from the government expired.
The handover of the cathedral took many by surprise — an OCU priest, Vasyl Rudnytskyi, looked stunned as he walked toward the building’s gates amid the deafening pealing of bells.
“I didn’t even consider the possibility of this two weeks ago, or the fact that we would celebrate Jesus’ birth in such a meaningful place for the Ukrainian people,” he said.
The OCU was established in 2019 and recognized as Ukraine’s official branch of Orthodoxy by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul, the global head of the Orthodox Church.
That decision infuriated Russia’s Orthodox Church, as Istanbul had previously recognized the UOC, then under Moscow’s rule, as the legitimate Ukrainian church.
Some of the UOC’s clergy and many of its worshippers moved to the OCU, to the former organization’s dismay. Both churches say the other is canonically illegitimate. Although the OCU soon had more worshippers than the old church, the UOC maintained control of over 12,000 churches, including the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra complex.
Ukraine’s government institutions and local press often refer to the UOC as the “Moscow Patriarchate,” a label the church rejects. A poll last August showed the UOC only retaining 20 percent of its worshippers from 2021, suggesting many had left it since the invasion, but the church told Reuters this data didn’t correspond to reality.
The UOC’s spokesman, Metropolitan Kliment, told Reuters the government’s actions were a “provocation intended to upset and humiliate millions of UOC worshippers.”
Lyudmyla, a 69-year-old worshipper, said she feared the government was biased against the UOC.
“I don’t like this. We need to be united not divided, right now. And this could lead to some kind of religious split (in our society),” she said.
The UOC’s monasteries and churches, including the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, faced a wave of searches by Ukrainian security forces and the police have announced a string of investigations.
Authorities said they found pro-Russian literature and Russian citizens being harbored on church premises, something the UOC denied.
Senior Taliban leaders hit back at Prince Harry's comments on … – Arab News
