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From Vox
Biden promised a harder line on Saudi Arabia. Why can’t he deliver? -
A portrait of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the capital Riyadh one day ahead of the the Future Investment Initiative, October 22, 2018. | Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images
Biden hasn’t met with MBS directly, but he’s done little else to stop the crown prince’s human rights abuses.
On the campaign trail, Joe Biden vowed that the United States would finally teach dictators a lesson by punishing Saudi Arabia. “We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are,” Biden said at a 2019 Democratic debate. He seemed to grasp the danger posed by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, known by his initials as MBS.
After an all-out charm offensive in 2017 to 2018, MBS had initially convinced American thoughtleaders that he would modernize the stiflingly conservative kingdom. But the crown prince had quickly become one of the world’s most brutal leaders. Theassassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 was the prime example that MBS represented rupture, not reform. Even before that, MBS’s transgressions piled high: the kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister, the detention and blackmail of members of the Saudi elite, and a growingcrackdown on human rights defenders. Arrests of critics have accelerated since then, especially women’s rights activists. MBS is also responsible for potential war crimes in the ongoing military campaign in Yemen.
At this rate, this 37-year-old prince could rule the oil-rich kingdom as a kind of unhinged Saddam Hussein for more than a half- century.
Since taking office, Biden has said that “human rights will be the center of our foreign policy.” The rhetoric marked a contrast to President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, chief Middle East adviser Jared Kushner, who emboldened MBS by maintaining a close relationship with him (including regularly WhatsApping). Trump explicitly said that the White House would prioritize arms sales to Saudi Arabia and, unlike previous administrations, scarcely uttered the words “human rights.”
A year on, Biden has avoided Trump’s outright encouragement of MBS but has done little to stop his brutality. “The relationship goes on as before,” said Nabeel Khoury, a former American diplomat and Middle East expert. “Biden came in with a promise to review the relationship with Saudi Arabia over the question of Yemen and human rights abuses, starting with the Khashoggi murder, but then that didn’t go anywhere.”
The middle-of-the-road approach
Since the FDR presidency, Saudi Arabia has been an important United States partner. It is a major energy producer and home to the two most significant sites in Islam, and for decades, America had provided security guarantees to the kingdom. In return, the US has depended on Saudi Arabia as a counterweight to Iran in the Middle East, an intelligence partner against terrorist groups, and a dominant investor with an enormoussovereign wealth fund. But MBS’s ruthless intransigencehad put the relationship to the test.
Biden’s government-in-waiting recognized that MBS demanded a different approach. Daniel Benaim, who advised the campaign and is now a senior Middle East diplomat, searched for a way to elevate human rights. In summer 2020, he proposed a “progressive course correction” that spelled out consequences for future malign behavior.
Benaim suggested a six-month review of policy, but it’s not clear whether Biden’s State Department has conducted such a reassessment. (The State Department declined to comment on the record, as did the White House.)
Publicly, the Biden team has articulated the importance of Saudi Arabia to US interests. The administration is focused, White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk said, on “getting back to sound, predictable policies and sound statecraft.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken sees the partnership with Saudi Arabia as “an important one, a vital one, and in terms of dealing with some of the most significant challenges we face, one that we are very appreciative of.” A spokesperson said the State Department is advocating for human rights while bolstering security cooperation with the kingdom.
Overall, the Biden administration has responded to MBS with an approach that keeps human rights concerns behind closed doors because, advisers say, the relationship with Saudi Arabia is so integral to US policy. By balancing the concerns of human rights activists and the Washington national-security establishment, Biden’s team has found that it is disappointing both, as well as supporters of the crown prince.
A month into office, Biden broke with Trump by releasing the intelligence agencies’ report on Khashoggi. It showed unequivocally that MBS was responsible for the killing of the Virginia resident in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Blinken announced the new “Khashoggi Ban” that would prohibit government agents who target dissenters from entering the US.
It was a good step, but Biden didn’t follow through. The formal ban was implemented against 76 Saudis but not the prince himself. Critics say true accountability would have meant putting MBS on the banned list.MBS hasn’t visited the US since Trump, but that relates to an implicit policy of distancing him, not a formal declaration that he’s banned. (MBS’s brother, who was reportedly involved in the Khashoggi operation, quietly visited the White House in July.)
US Department of State/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud meet in Washington on October 15, 2021.
Human rights advocates would also like to see the Biden administration take bolder action, like levying targeted sanctions againstMBS and his inner circle and ending meetings with US officials. Activists have also suggested working with the international community to freeze assets and institute broad travel bans, and have urged US businesses to stop working with MBS’s Public Investment Fund.
On the campaign, Biden said he would stop supporting the war in Yemen. More than 375,000 Yemenis had died by the end of last year, and the devastating death toll led Obama alumni to take responsibility for supporting the 2014 Saudi invasion. The State Department says it is working with Saudi Arabia to end the war in Yemen.
Last February, Biden ended “offensive” support for the war. Yet last month the Senate, with White House encouragement, approved a $650 million arms sale to the kingdom for “defensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia, a distinction that many experts reject.
Abdullah Alaoudh, a Saudi researcher at the organization that Khashoggi established, Democracy for the Arab World Now, sees this as an example of Biden falling short of his pledges. MBS is running Saudi Arabia as a “rogue state,” Alaoudh said, and the Biden administration is “so weak, so ambivalent, so reluctant, thinking anything they are going to do is going to push Saudi Arabia to China. All MBS understands is the power of toughness and ultimatums.” Ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia altogether unless it withdraws from Yemen would be one such ultimatum the administration could make, Alaoudh suggests.
Biden has made one big move: He won’t talk to MBS directly. The president, thus far, has only held phone calls with his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. This has reportedly angered MBS. But it’s an insufficient form of retribution. “The big punishment for murder and dismemberment of a journalist is you don’t get to meet the president yourself? You can meet with anyone else and get all the weapons you need,” said Andrea Prasow of the Freedom Initiative. “The consideration of human rights is not integrated into US policy. It’s an add-on.”
Why is there so much hedging in US policy toward Saudi Arabia, even when the Biden administration has set out to shake things up?
Biden’s Middle East priorities
The Biden team now seems resigned to a close relationship with Saudi Arabia in order to achieve its own policy objectives, like cheap gas prices and an accord with Iran.
The US is largely energy independent and has steadily decreased the amount of oil it imports from the Persian Gulf. Even so, Saudi Arabia and its partners within OPEC have tremendous power over global oil prices, which in turn affect what Americans pay at the pump.
In late September, as gas prices were rising, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to Saudi Arabia in what was the first visit of a senior Biden official to meet with MBS. The trip was discreet: no photos with the crown prince, no critical statements.
“The bottom line is that US policy toward Saudi Arabia hasn’t changed at all and still is driven by energy prices,” said Anne Patterson, who served as the top Middle East diplomat in the Obama State Department. “The administration, like others before them, had to go hat in hand to the Saudis to ask them to raise production to lower US gasoline prices.”
In the Middle East more broadly, the Biden administration has focused on getting Iran back to a nuclear accord, which Trump ended despite bipartisan objection. That return requires the buy-in of regional partners like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The diplomatic acrobatics between Middle East powers may lead to similar compromises that Obama pursued when his team essentially let MBS invade Yemen in 2014 as a way to get Saudi Arabia on board with the deal.
Biden’s team is also concerned with countering China’s influence. China, dependent on Gulf oil, is now Saudi Arabia’s primary trading partner and is also helping Saudi Arabia build a ballistic missile factory.
Khoury, the former diplomat, says the Biden team wants “to transform US foreign policy from the Cold War mentality of an overreliance on the global war on terror, use of military, and so on, into putting diplomacy first.” But he likens it to a trapeze artist jumping from one bar without knowing which bar to catch.
“You end up with a face on the ground,” Khoury said.
Back to basics?
Biden advisers returned to Washington with an appreciation that the Trump years were so disruptive, and MBS so dangerous, that Biden couldn’t return to the two countries’ close cooperation during the war on terrorism. A “dramatic rethinking” was needed, wrote Benaim, but now a return to the time before Trump might be the best they could do.
While the administration has raised human rights in private conversations with Saudi counterparts, the louder message is coming from the Pentagon, with its approval of massive weapons sales. The Obama administration sold $118 billion of arms to the country and the Trump administration $25 billion, and Biden is poised to help Saudi Arabia continue to be the world’s largest buyer of weapons.
The Defense Department said the latest $650 million sale “will support US foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political and economic progress in the Middle East.”
Human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, however, don’t see MBS’s leadership as a force for “progress.” Some aspects of life in Saudi Arabia have liberalized under MBS — with shifts like men and women attending concerts together. But these are limited reforms at the hands of a leader who regularly imprisons or kills his political enemies and has targeted feminist activists. “Even as the country opens up socially, culturally, and politically, it’s become more restrictive and much more suffocating,” a Saudi person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of those concerns, told me.
MBS may have been a pariah immediately after Khashoggi’s assassination, but now much has been restored. Three years ago, titans of business shunned the kingdom’s “Davos in the Desert’’ investment conference. Last year, many returned; the administration sent Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves to speak, not exactly a high- level presence but another example of the middling policy that confers some legitimacy on MBS.
McGurk, the top Middle East adviser in the White House, summed up Biden’s approach as “back to basics,” with an emphasis on “lessons learned” and “not pursuing maximalist, unachievable objectives.” At best, that means treading water in the Middle East. At worst, it suggests to MBS and other tyrants that they will face no consequences.
One might say that Biden’s campaign rhetoric was just politics and that, historically, campaign promises don’t translate into actual foreign policy. But Biden was no regular candidate — he had chaired the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and traveled the world as vice president — so his comments from 2019 might have had gravity.
From those remarks, it’s clear that Biden and his inner circle understand MBS. And it’s equally clear that they haven’t figured out how to turn their criticisms into policy.
The best $65 I ever spent: A BDSM whip -
Dana Rodriguez for Vox
Staying married was my own form of masochism — just without the kinky accoutrements.
In the 15-minute break in a lecture on dominance and submission, during which our porn-star professor had complained of the heat in the room and then nonchalantly shucked herself out of her tights, I sat in a folding chair, unable to move, tears rolling down my face. My husband shrugged it off as “hormones” and went to the water cooler to chat with the friends he’d acquired that evening. A short middle-aged woman who looked like she could’ve been your second grade teacher sat down beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.
“My husband is crazy about it, but I hate this whole scene,” I told her, and then, realizing I was criticizing her lifestyle choice, added, “No offense.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry. He’ll still love you even if you don’t do this with him.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I choked. “I’m worried that I won’t love him.”
I bit my lip and looked away. I’d said too much. She patted my arm and walked off to join the crowd.
I was still reeling from the speed with which I’d arrived in a dungeon to learn about how to cause pain. That spring, my husband of 20 years turned 50 and decided he wanted to experiment with BDSM — bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism — and he wanted me to join him. He hadn’t had much in the way of paying work for nearly a decade and was clearly unhappy; he seemed to be looking for something more than what was in his daily orbit. I wasn’t into bondage — our sex life had been mutually satisfying for a long time, or so I’d thought — but I loved the guy and was deeply invested in our marriage. I wanted to help him feel happier. I thought, “What could it hurt?”
Never one to do things by halves, within days of declaring his newfound passion, he had befriended a thriving community of kinky people online and off. He was soon attending dungeon parties and dragging me along to meet- and-greets with people who identified as masters and slaves, dominants and submissives. He gave me books and pamphlets on how to be a dominatrix, and he pushed me to dress “sexier” than just garters and heels. We attended lectures and socials where people routinely showed up in dog collars, their leashes held by their partners. My husband watched them hungrily.
His appetite for kink became a 24-hour obsession. He ordered improbable shoes over the internet and insisted that I wear them. When I complained that wearing six-inch black faux-patent-leather stilettos with multiple buckles up past the ankles made it impossible to stand, he suggested I kneel in them instead. The same went for the skin-tight plastic mini-dress and the red brocade corset. Practicalities like being able to stand and breathe were beside the point.
I worried about our finances; most of the stuff wasn’t expensive in itself, but the purchases were adding up. “Maybe you could get some kind of job,” I said, and handed him the credit card statement that had come in the mail at the same time as the latest shipment of fetish wear. “How are we going to pay for all this?”
“It’s fine,” he said, handing the bill back to me. “Just pay the minimums. It’s all research. I’m going to write a blog about my journey so I can expense all of this stuff.”
I tried to explain that deducting a leopard-print catsuit off our taxes wasn’t going to do much to address our thousands of dollars in credit card debt, but he waved away my concerns.
It didn’t matter to him that I already owned boudoir wear that made me feel good. These new outfits were what he got off on now, and the fact that they didn’t make me feel pretty or loved or anything else positive was beside the point. I wasn’t interested in looking like my husband’s increasingly exaggerated idea of attractive, and he wasn’t interested in intimacy, touch, or plain old nakedness. He had changed the rules and I couldn’t keep up. Seemingly overnight, sex happened as part of a kinky “scene” — which meant one or the other or both of us dressing in tight outfits and heavy makeup and acting out some sort of fantasy role- playing session — or not at all. There was less and less of myself in our connection and more and more demands. But I stayed.
Staying played into my myth. I was the strong one. I could hold our marriage together — physically, financially, emotionally — in the face of whatever came our way. Friends and family expressed concern and alarm, but I was loyal to what I believed to be important. “Staying married” meant I won, I beat the odds, I didn’t fail at this. Staying was my own form of masochism — just without the kinky accoutrements.
That summer, we went to our first Ladies’ Night at a dungeon on Folsom Street in San Francisco. About once a month, the underground space hosted an event that was only for female-identifying doms and their subs of any gender. There were lessons in how to be a dominatrix, but the apex of the event was a round robin of subs and doms rotating through partners every few minutes, and my husband was quivering with excitement to participate.
I was quivering, but not with excitement. The dungeon made me nauseated, and I was feeling horribly guilty that I could no longer say “I love you” to my husband, especially when he demanded I do so as part of a “scene.” Maybe the love was already gone and I hadn’t seen it leave.
But I couldn’t let myself think about that. I had new skills to master. There I was at the dungeon, learning how and where to hit safely, what kinds of tools to use, and how to stop when your sub uses the safe word. I put on my pointy black snakeskin boots and a corset that pushed my boobs up to my chin and, from my now 6-foot height, stalked around like I owned the place. My fellow doms at the dungeon complimented my getup and called me a “badass,” noting my increasing ability to appropriately administer pain. I wasn’t immune to the praise. I’m a pleaser; I liked being good at my appointed role. I began to feel as though maybe I could pull this off. Ladies’ Night for us became a regular thing.
We went to the Folsom Street Fair, too, an adults-only kink-fest that takes over several blocks of Folsom one weekend every September. When we got behind the entrance barricades keeping out the underaged, my husband told me he was signed up to be a volunteer in the spanking exhibit. Even though it was barely noon, I had two quick beers to help me ride out the weirdness of crowds of naked people, leather people, pierced people, and my husband taking off his clothes on a public street and leaning over a sawhorse to receive whacks from a burly guy in a hood, a jockstrap, and nothing else.
A few beers later, we staggered into the crowds around the tents selling fetish wares: boned corsets, handmade fetters, masks made of leather and fur. My husband picked up a short, many-tailed whip made of braided black suede and smacked the ends into his palm.
“This one,” he said, “it’s only $65,” and looked at me to pay for it.
The shop’s owner said, “Ooh, the cat o’nine tails, good choice. I can tie knots in the tails for some extra sting if you like that,” and my husband’s eyes lit up. I handed over my credit card. I was a woman of the world; I could do anything.
Eventually, though, my own myth-making couldn’t keep up with reality. My love for my husband ebbed lower with each kink session, each purchase, and every fight about our finances. I spent more time wondering what the hell I was still doing there and less time trying to please anybody, least of all my husband.
My lack of enthusiasm seemed to spur him further down his chosen rabbit hole. He dressed up and went to some sort of club or kink event every night without me, and it became clear he was having sex without me, too. That’s when I cracked.
After nearly a year of this kinky experiment, I said, “I’m done. I want a divorce.” I felt the truth of that statement go all the way through my body. I realized I didn’t love him anymore, and I felt freer and more at peace than I had been all year.
“You can’t be serious,” he said. “After all this? We can work this out.” Without a shred of irony, he added, “Besides, this Saturday is the last Ladies’ Night of the year. You promised to go with me.”
He looked at me as though I had lost my mind. “I can’t go alone. You promised.”
Setting aside the promises to me he had made and now broken — all that “cleave only unto me” and “death do us part” stuff we’d said 20 years ago, not to mention the recent sex with strangers — I agreed to go. He needed more time to get used to the idea of splitting up. And I am not one to break a promise lightly.
That Saturday night, we changed out of our street clothes at the dungeon’s locker area and headed downstairs. We were early, but there were already plenty of people using the tables, benches, beds, and slings. One woman was tied naked to the 7-foot-tall X-shaped crucifix in the center of the room, her dom prowling around her with a feather. A professional dominatrix who liked to practice on my husband when she didn’t have other customers had her gear set up at a bench, her client bound and bent over on his hands and knees.
Euphoria bubbled up from deep inside me. I was almost giddy at the idea that the clothes, the tools, and the exhibitionist nature of the dungeon would no longer be part of my life. It was my final performance, and I realized I could play it to the hilt.
I handcuffed my husband to a bed, spread- eagle on his face, and told him he’d be sorry. He’d be sorry for the mess he’d made of our relationship. He’d be sorry he killed the love between us. He’d be sorry he’d hurt me. I pulled out the cat o’ nine tails with its wicked little knots and I started laying into him.
I’m a big, strong person. I figured I could hurt him. For a brief moment, the anger I had been sitting on for a year washed over me and I wanted to hurt him. I stood beside the bed and went to town on his shoulders, his ass, the backs of his legs (no kidneys or lower back, that’s bad practice — I was a reluctant dominatrix, not an irresponsible one), first with the suede whip and then with a bamboo rod. He twitched and jerked and moaned, but he didn’t ask me to stop. When my right arm flagged, I switched to my left. When I wanted a different angle, I knelt on the bed and hit the sides of his ribs, the backs of his calves, his upper arms. I used a paddle on each ass cheek and flat against both, first softly and then as hard as I could. His back was purple and white with angry lines and streaks, and his butt was cherry red, and still he didn’t say “stop.”
Finally, I’d had enough. Climbing on top of him, I rammed my knee into his crotch hard enough to make him grunt and leaned over to say in his ear, “Are you sorry?”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he sobbed. “That was so good. Do more. Fuck me. I love you. I’m sorry. Stay and do some more now.”
I reached over to unlock the cuffs.
“No,” I said. “I’m done.”
And I was. The only safe word I needed was goodbye.
Allyn Wright is the pseudonym of a writer in California.
US policy is fueling Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis -
Afghans line up as the UN World Food Program (WFP) distributes a critical monthly food ration to 400 families south of Kabul in Pul-e Alam, Afghanistan, on January 17, 2022. | Scott Peterson/Getty Images
Isolating the Taliban is pushing millions of Afghans into poverty and starvation.
More than five months after the fall of Kabul, the Afghan economy is on the brink of collapse, leaving millions of people at risk of extreme poverty or starvation. One major culprit: the US decision to halt aid to the country and freeze billions in Afghan government funds.
The scope of the humanitarian crisis facing Afghanistan is massive: According to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “virtually every man, woman and child in Afghanistan could face acute poverty” without massive investment from the international community and a concerted effort to rebuild the nation’s economy.
Guterres spoke to reporters regarding the scale of the crisis during last week’s launch of the UN’s funding drive for Afghanistan — the largest-ever fundraising appeal for a single country. The organization is requesting more than $5 billion in aid to help the Afghan people, both inside the country and in refugee camps in bordering nations like Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
Prior to the fall of Kabul in August 2021, the Afghan economy relied heavily on foreign aid; after the Taliban takeover, that influx of cash ceased. Under Taliban rule, unemployment is rampant and banks operate intermittently, with people able to withdraw no more than $100 in a month. On top of that, the US froze much of the $9.4 billion in Afghan currency reserves in Afghanistan’s central bank in August — a move which has functionally cut the country off from many foreign banks and left the Central Bank of Afghanistan unable to access its reserves and shore up the country’s cash flow.
Specifically, Afghanistan’s economic collapse means many people, including some members of the Taliban, can’t afford to buy food. In the aftermath of the US withdrawal, many Afghans working as interpreters, aid workers, prosecutors, professors, and journalists suddenly lost their positions and their incomes, and many have been forced into hiding, further hampering their ability to provide even the most basic necessities — blankets, food, fuel, and medicine — for their families.
Freezing temperatures are also forcing families to make the critical choice between food to sustain their families and fuel to keep them warm in the bitter winter months.
“Everywhere we go, we find thousands more people who need help,” said Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, told the Washington Post earlier this month. “They haven’t been driven from their homes, but they have lost their jobs, they have no savings, and their life systems are in collapse. They are not on our lists, but they come and wait outside the distribution sites, saying, ‘What about us?’”
“Everything is connected. The government has collapsed, people have no salaries, and the economy has gone to zero,” Shahwali Khan, a vendor in Kabul, told the Post. “People can’t afford to buy now, and we can’t afford to sell.”
US policy is helping drive Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis
Many of Afghanistan’s current problems are intimately connected to the US withdrawal from the country last year, and the Taliban’s ensuing takeover of the central government. Since then, US sanctions and an abrupt end to international aid have wrecked Afghanistan’s economy and sent it spiraling into crisis.
The US and the UN have made some concessions to allow humanitarian aid to operate outside the auspices of the Taliban; the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) granted some licenses to aid groups to operate in Afghanistan without running afoul of of financial restrictions on certain individuals and institutions in the country.
But, as experts have said, it’s not nearly enough to bring the Afghan people anywhere close to the needed aid, and regardless of the OFAC licenses, the Afghan banking system is still essentially held hostage by US sanctions against the Taliban.
“Sanctions are intended to have a chilling effect, in that sanctions will always go beyond the face of the text,” Adam Weinstein, a research fellow with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told the Intercept in December. Banks and businesses don’t want to risk dealing in places or sectors with economic restrictions from the US, for fear that they’ll violate a prohibition and be subject to sanctions themselves, Weinstein explained.
To that end, more than 40 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden last month, urging him to release the frozen currency reserves, which belong to the Central Bank of Afghanistan and the Afghan people.
“No increase in food and medical aid can compensate for the macroeconomic harm of soaring prices of basic commodities, a banking collapse, a balance-of-payments crisis, a freeze on civil servants’ salaries, and other severe consequences that are rippling throughout Afghan society, harming the most vulnerable,” the letter warns.
So far, however, no policy shift has been forthcoming. As of earlier this month, the US has pledged an additional $308 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan,but the Afghan central bank reserves remain frozen.
While some aid is getting to Afghans via the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and the WFP, those organizations often have stringent requirements regarding who qualifies for aid. In a nation on the brink, many who are in desperate need don’t qualify for aid because they don’t fit the program’s focus area or because they’re not poor enough.
And while Afghanistan’s current crisis isn’t wholly caused by external factors — even without sanctions by the US and its allies, the Taliban’s inability to manage the bureaucracy of government would have created issues, as would the pandemic and a severe drought that began in June last year — US actions do play a substantial role.
The chilling effect of sanctions is keeping businesses and banks from actually engaging with the economy. As House Democrats pointed out in their letter last month, relatively simple steps — like issuing letters to international businesses assuring them that they are not violating US sanctions — could help alleviate the crisis and shore up the Afghan private sector, but Treasury has yet to do so.
“Restoring a minimally functioning public sector and stopping Afghanistan’s economic free- fall will require lifting restrictions on ordinary business and easing the prohibition on assistance to or through the government,” Laurel Miller, director of the International Crisis Group’s Asia program, wrote in a New York Times op-ed this month. “Without that, there’s little hope that humanitarian aid can be more than a palliative.”
Humanitarian aid, at least on a large, international scale, doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, either; the UN’s Financial Tracking Service shows less than $29 million of the $4.4 billion needed to keep Afghanistan from disaster has been funded so far.
In the meantime, however, the Taliban will hold talks this coming week with Western nations, including Norway, Britain, the US, Italy, France, and Germany,about humanitarian aid. The talks should not be seen as a legitimization of Taliban rule, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt stressed to AFP on Friday, “but we must talk to the de facto authorities in the country. We cannot allow the political situation to lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster.”
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths echoed that sentiment in his initial call for donations last week, saying that unless the Afghan economy can recover and begin to provide for people, the crisis will only worsen.
Without aid, Griffiths said, “next year we’ll be asking for $10 billion.”
From The Hindu: Sports
Australian Open | Ash Barty enters quarterfinals, beats Anisimova in straight sets - The Australian is into the quarterfinals at Melbourne Park for the fourth straight year
Sindhu wins Syed Modi International badminton title - Men’s singles final between Arnaud Merkle and Lucas Claerbout was declared a ‘No Match’ after one of the finalists tested positive for COVID-19.
Men’s singles final at Syed Modi declared ‘No Match’ after one finalist tests positive for COVID-19 - The all-French clash was scheduled between Arnaud Merkle and Lucas Claerbout.
India wins toss, opt to field against South Africa in 3rd ODI - India have made four changes with Suryakumar Yadav, Jayant Yadav, Deepak Chahar and Prasidh Krishna coming into the playing XI.
Rizwan and Beaumont named ICC T20 Cricketers of the Year - Rizwan ruled the roost in 2021 when it came to the shortest format of the game. Beaumont was her side’s highest run- getter in the year in T20Is.
From The Hindu: National News
Ex-Himachal Cong. chief pushes for law on transparency for lawmakers - Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu to introduce bill to make declaration of income sources mandatory for all elected representatives
VUPPC to picket BJP office in Vizag on February 13 - Committee leaders criticise the party State leaders for not opposing the decision to privatise steel plant
‘Operation Lotus’ coming back to haunt the BJP in Goa: Chidambaram - Former FM is confident that Goans will vote for a stable, single-party Congress govt.
‘India’s tallest man’ joins SP, hopes to dwarf opponents - If the party gives him a ticket, Dharmendra Pratap Singh will prefer to contest from the Pratapgarh assembly constituency
Vice President Naidu tests positive for Covid for the 2nd time - Unlikely to participate in Republic Day celebrations
From BBC: Europe
Russia-Ukraine tensions: UK warns of plot to install pro-Moscow ally - The Foreign Office takes the unusual step of naming a former Ukrainian MP as a potential Kremlin candidate.
German navy chief resigns over Ukraine comments - Kay-Achim Schönbach said the idea that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine was nonsense.
Jean-Jacques Savin: French adventurer dies crossing Atlantic Ocean - Jean-Jacques Savin, who was 75, had previously made the voyage in a large barrel.
Sedef Kabas: Turkish journalist jailed for reciting proverb - Sedef Kabas denies using the proverb to insult President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Serbia revokes Rio Tinto lithium mine permits following protests - The country cancels the mining licence for the Anglo-Australian firm’s controversial $2.4bn project.
From Ars Technica
Europe is in the middle of a messy nuclear showdown - Will green energy goals suffer as aging nuclear infrastructure is phased out? - link
Retired FBI agent has new theory about who betrayed Anne Frank’s family to Nazis - Vincent Pankoke ID’d Jewish Council member Arnold van den Bergh as most likely culprit. - link
A white supremacist website got hacked, airing all its dirty laundry - Patriot Front says it’s aligned with American heroes. Leaks paint a darker picture. - link
2022 Wagoneer rocks a high-end, vast interior while guzzling hydrocarbons - Luxurious interior and quiet ride combine with disappointing mileage. - link
What happens if a space elevator breaks - You don’t want to be under one if the cable snaps. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
What’s the first thing you do after sex? -
Continue the autopsy whilst reminding myself that one moment of weakness doesn’t make me a bad vet.
This is the first dirty joke my dad ever told me -
So Dopey and the other seven dwarves go to visit the pope. Doc goes up to the pope and asks, “Pope can you tell me, are there any dwarf nuns in the Vatican?”
He thinks for a moment. “No”, he says, “There are no dwarf nuns in the Vatican.”
The other dwarves chuckle.
“Well can you tell me, are there any dwarf nuns in all of Europe?”
The pope thinks for a second, “No, I don’t believe there are any dwarf nuns in Europe.” And the other dwarves start to laugh even harder. Dopey looks upset.
“Well can you tell me, are there any dwarf nuns in all the world?” He asks. The pope takes a minute to think. He shakes his head, “No, I don’t believe there are any dwarf nuns in the world.”
All of the dwarves burst out laughing and start chanting, “Dopey fucked a penguin! Dopey fucked a penguin!”
My dad told me this joke when I was 13. Thank you and good night.
When I was at the grocery store, I asked an employee where the cereal was, and he said, “I’ll see.” And walks off. 5 minutes later, I asked another employee about the cereal, and he too said, “I’ll see,” and walks off. -
“Doctor, my husband is an animal in the bedroom. He wants sex five, six, seven times a day. I love the man and the sex, but it’s just too much. Can you help me”?
The doctor replied, “Well, medically, I can’t really think of anything. Theoretically, this might work. From now on, whenever he demands sex, demand money. $10 in the kitchen, $30 in the living room, $50 in the bedroom. The man isn’t made of money, that should slow him down”.
She agrees and thanks the doctor. Excited she goes home ready to use his advice. She starts to prepare dinner. Her husband comes home, doesn’t even ask about dinner, but immediately sneaks up behind her and brushes up to her and plays grab ass. She turns to him and says. “Honey, I have a new rule regarding sex”. He replies, “Okay hon, shoot”! She continues, “From now on, I demand money for sex. $10 in the kitchen, $30 in the living room, $50 in the bedroom”. He looks at her says, “Okay, I think you deserve that, you do so much, no problem”.
He reaches for his wallet and sees he has a $50 bill in his wallet and hands it to his wife. She says, “Okay let’s go up to the bedroom”. He shouts, “NO, FIVE TIMES IN THE KITCHEN”!!!
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US Department of State/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
