Raging Caldor Fire prompts mass evacuations as it barrels toward Lake Tahoe region
Erin Snodgrass
Residents are stuck in gridlock while attempting to evacuate as the Caldor fire approaches in South Lake Tahoe, California on August 30, 2021 Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
The Caldor Fire in Northern California prompted several evacuation orders and warnings on Sunday and Monday.
Fire conditions in the region are expected to worsen this week as the blaze continues to spread.
The dire conditions come as firefighters in California face several active wildfires amid an ongoing drought.
The raging Caldor Fire in Northern California prompted a series of evacuations orders and warnings in the region on Sunday night and Monday morning as the fire spreads rapidly toward the Lake Tahoe region.
The massive fire has already injured five people and destroyed more than 650 structures since it began on August 14, Cal Fire said in an update. Forty homes have also been damaged by Caldor’s conditions.
Evacuation orders have been issued for large parts of El Dorado and Alpine counties, while evacuation warnings stand in other parts of the counties. All of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate on Monday morning, leading to standstill traffic out of the city.
Cal Fire’s hourly updates on the fire’s trajectory and evacuation orders have warned there is a “potential threat to life and/or property.”
The fire’s rapid spread even prompted at least one hospital in the region to transfer all of its patients ahead of Caldor’s expected growth.
The Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe tweeted Sunday that all patients at the hospital would be transferred to regional partner facilities in light of the fire, and patient families would be notified.
The flurry of evacuation orders comes as fire officials expect the blaze’s dangerous conditions to worsen this week, Clive Savacool, fire chief for the city of South Lake Tahoe told KTVN.
“The Caldor Fire has made a pretty big jump in the last few hours, so that’s had a pretty big impact on the community and expansion of evacuations,” Savacool said. “It’s because these winds, the low humidity, the low moisture, all these conditions are making it very, very treacherous for this fire and so that’s why it’s been expanding so rapidly.”
Eerie video from the region shows the Caldor Fire casting an ominous orange haze in the area.
The dire conditions come as firefighters in California face several active wildfires amid an ongoing drought. The Dixie Fire, which is currently the largest active wildfire in the state, has grown to more than 765,000 acres since it began in mid-July, Cal Fire said.
Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks.
By David Rothkopf About the author: David Rothkopf is an author, a commentator, a former senior government official, and the host of the Deep State Radio podcast.
Evan Vucci / AP
America’s longest war has been by any measure a costly failure, and the errors in managing the conflict deserve scrutiny in the years to come. But Joe Biden doesn’t “own” the mayhem on the ground right now. What we’re seeing is the culmination of 20 years of bad decisions by U.S. political and military leaders. If anything, Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks. President Biden deserves credit, not blame.
Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement. Although Donald Trump made a plan to end the war, he set a departure date that fell after the end of his first term and created conditions that made the situation Biden inherited more precarious. And despite significant pressure and obstacles, Biden has overseen a military and government that have managed, since the announcement of America’s withdrawal, one of the most extraordinary logistical feats in their recent history. By the time the last American plane lifts off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 31, the total number of Americans and Afghan allies extricated from the country may exceed 120,000.
In the days following the fall of Kabul earlier this month—an event that triggered a period of chaos, fear, and grief—critics castigated the Biden administration for its failure to properly coordinate the departure of the last Americans and allies from the country. The White House was indeed surprised by how quickly the Taliban took control, and those early days could have been handled better. But the critics argued that more planning both would have been able to stop the Taliban victory and might have made America’s departure somehow tidier, more like a win or perhaps even a draw. The chaos, many said, was symptomatic of a bigger error. They argued that the United States should stay in Afghanistan, that the cost of remaining was worth the benefits a small force might bring.
Former military officers and intelligence operatives, as well as commentators who had long been advocates of extending America’s presence in Afghanistan, railed against Biden’s artificial deadline. Some critics were former Bush-administration officials or supporters who had gotten the U.S. into the mess in the first place, setting us on the impossible path toward nation building and, effectively, a mission without a clear exit or metric for success. Some were Obama-administration officials or supporters who had doubled down on the investment of personnel in the country and later, when the futility of the war was clear, lacked the political courage to withdraw. Some were Trump-administration officials or supporters who had negotiated with and helped strengthen the Taliban with their concessions in the peace deal and then had punted the ultimate exit from the country to the next administration.
They all conveniently forgot that they were responsible for some of America’s biggest errors in this war and instead were incandescently self-righteous in their invective against the Biden administration. Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan. Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced. Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us.
Never mind the facts. Never mind the losses. Never mind the lessons. Biden, they felt, was in the wrong.
Despite the criticism, Biden, who had argued unsuccessfully when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to seriously reduce America’s presence in Afghanistan, remained resolute. Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul.
The Biden administration nimbly adapted its plans, ramping up the airlift and sending additional troops into the country to aid crisis teams and to enhance security. Around-the-clock flights came into and went out of Afghanistan. Giant cargo planes departed, a number of them packed with as many as 600 occupants. Senior administration officials convened regular meetings with U.S. allies to find destinations for those planes to land and places for the refugees to stay. The State Department tracked down Americans in the country, as well as Afghans who had worked with the U.S., to arrange their passage to the airport. The Special Immigrant Visa program that the Trump administration had slowed down was kicked into high gear. Despite years of fighting, the administration and the military spoke with the Taliban many times to coordinate passage of those seeking to depart to the airport, to mitigate risks as best as possible, to discuss their shared interest in meeting the August 31 deadline.
The process was relentless and imperfect and, as we all have seen in the most horrific way, not without huge risks for those staying behind to help. On August 26, a suicide bomber associated with ISIS-K killed more than 150 Afghans and 13 American service members who were gathered outside the airport. However, even that heinous act didn’t deter the military. In a 24-hour period from Thursday to Friday, 12,500 people were airlifted out of the country and the president recommitted to meeting the August 31 deadline. And he did so even as his critics again sought to capitalize on tragedy for their own political gain: Republicans called for the impeachment of Biden and of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Within hours of the attack at the airport, America struck back, killing two terrorists and injuring another with a missile launched from a drone. A separate drone strike targeted a vehicle full of explosives on Sunday. In doing so, Biden countered the argument that America might lack the intelligence or military resources we would need to defend ourselves against violent extremists now that our troops are leaving.
The very last chapter of America’s benighted stay in Afghanistan should be seen as one of accomplishment on the part of the military and its civilian leadership. Once again the courage and unique capabilities of the U.S. armed services have been made clear. And, in a stark change from recent years, an American leader has done the hard thing, the right thing: set aside politics and put both America’s interests and values first.
Forest Service officials confirm all California national forests to temporarily close
Gregory Yee
Heavy smoke from the Caldor fire hangs over Highway 50 near South Lake Tahoe last week. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
All of California’s national forests will be closed beginning late Tuesday.
The closures will go into effect at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday and stay in place until the same time on Sept. 17, according to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region.
“We do not take this decision lightly, but this is the best choice for public safety,” said Regional Forester Jennifer Eberlien. “It is especially hard with the approaching Labor Day weekend, when so many people enjoy our national forests.”
The order doesn’t affect the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, which is not in the Pacific Southwest Region, officials said.
Officials said they hope to reduce the number of people visiting national forests to prevent anyone from being trapped during an emergency such as a wildfire.
Having fewer people on national forest lands also decreases the likelihood of new fires starting and will help keep firefighters and the community safer by limiting possible COVID-19 exposure, officials said.
While California has seen massive wildfires, forestry officials said they worry about the “record level” conditions for fires and dry fuels, fires behaving “beyond the norm” of experience, “significantly limited” resources to fight fires, and no predicted relief from weather conditions into the late fall, according to Monday’s announcement.
“More than 6,800 wildfires have burned 1.7 million acres across all jurisdictions in California, and the National Wildfire Preparedness Level … has been at PL5 since July 14, 2021, only the third time in the past 20 years that the nation has reached PL5 by mid-July — indicating the highest level of wildland fire activity,” officials said.
Monday’s announcement comes weeks after the Forest Service closed nine national forests in Northern California.
As US military leaves Kabul, many Americans, Afghans remain
Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the final five U.S. military transport aircraft lifted off out of Afghanistan Monday, they left behind up to 200 Americans and thousands of desperate Afghans who couldn’t get out and now must rely on the Taliban to allow their departure.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. will continue to try to get Americans and Afghans out of the country, and will work with Afghanistan’s neighbors to secure their departure either over land or by charter flight once the Kabul airport reopens.
“We have no illusion that any of this will be easy, or rapid,” said Blinken, adding that the total number of Americans who are in Afghanistan and still want to leave may be closer to 100.
Speaking shortly after the Pentagon announced the completion of the U.S. military pullout Monday, Blinken said the U.S. Embassy in Kabul will remain shuttered and vacant for the foreseeable future. American diplomats, he said, will be based in Doha, Qatar.
“We will continue our relentless efforts to help Americans, foreign nationals and Afghans leave Afghanistan if they choose,” Blinken said in an address from the State Department. “Our commitment to them holds no deadline.”
Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told reporters the U.S. military was able to get as many as 1,500 Afghans out in the final hours of the American evacuation mission. But now it will be up to the State Department working with the Taliban to get any more people out.
McKenzie said there were no citizens left stranded at the airport and none were on the final few military flights out. He said the U.S. military maintained the ability to get Americans out right up until just before the end, but “none of them made it to the airport.”
“There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure,” said McKenzie. “We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we’d stayed another 10 days we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out that we wanted to get out.”
McKenzie and other officials painted a vivid picture of the final hours U.S. troops were on the ground, and the preparations they took to ensure that the Taliban and Islamic State group militants did not get functioning U.S. military weapons systems and other equipment.
The terror threat remains a major problem in Afghanistan, with at least 2,000 “hard core” members of the Islamic State group who remain in the country, including many released from prisons as the Taliban swept to control.
Underscoring the ongoing security threats, the weapon systems used just hours earlier to counter IS rockets launched toward the airport were kept operational until “the very last minute” as the final U.S. military aircraft flew out, officials said. One of the last things U.S. troops did was to make the so-called C-RAMS (Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar System) inoperable.
McKenzie said they “demilitarized” the system so it can never be used again. Officials said troops did not blow up equipment in order to ensure they left the airport workable for future flights, once those begin again. In addition, McKenzie said the U.S. also disabled 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft so they can never be used again.
Throughout the day, as the final C-17 transport planes prepared to take off, McKenzie said the U.S. kept “overwhelming U.S. airpower overhead” to deal with potential IS threats.
Back at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, watched the final 90 minutes of the military departure in real time from an operations center in the basement.
According to a U.S. official, they sat in hushed silence as they watched troops make last-minute runway checks, make the key defense systems inoperable and climb aboard the C-17s. The official said you could hear a pin drop as the last aircraft lifted off, and leaders around the room breathed sighs of relief. Later, Austin phoned Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who was coordinating the evacuation. Donahue and acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson were the last to board the final plane that left Kabul.
Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of military operations.
“Simply because we have left, that doesn’t mean the opportunities for both Americans that are in Afghanistan that want to leave and Afghans who want to leave, they will not be denied that opportunity,” said McKenzie.
The military left some equipment for the Taliban in order to run the airport, including two fire trucks, some front-end loaders and aircraft staircases.
Blinken said the U.S. will work with Turkey and Qatar to help them get the Kabul airport up and running again.
“This would enable a small number of daily charter flights, which is a key for anyone who wants to depart from Afghanistan moving forward,” he said.
Miami-Dade rejects coastal walls. It’s back to drawing board for hurricane protection.
Alex Harris
A proposal to protect coastal Miami-Dade from hurricanes by running a tall concrete wall though Biscayne Bay and waterfront neighborhoods is — unsurprisingly — dead.
The county on Monday formally rejected the plan, part of an instantly controversial $4.6 billion proposal from the Army Corps of Engineers that also included elevating thousands of private homes, flood-proofing thousands of businesses, planting mangroves and installing flood gates at the mouths of rivers and canals. Instead, the county will work with the Corps to come up with a new plan over the next year or so.
While the public and political leaders liked many of the Corps’ original ideas to address the rising risks of storm surge, there was little support for the walls.
In a March meeting with the village of Miami Shores, where the latest proposal called for an eight-foot wall along the east side of Biscayne Boulevard, which would have left hundreds of homes unprotected, the entire council came out against the walls.
“I haven’t heard anything but panicked cries for help about this, not even the slightest bit of support,” said then-councilman Sean Brady. “People are more interested in natural solutions or things that allow us to live with the flooding.”
Members of Miami’s Downtown Development Agency worried the up-to-20-foot walls would destroy property values and drive away investment in the wealthy downtown and Brickell neighborhoods. The agency even commissioned renderings of the wall — complete with graffiti and trash floating in the murky brown water — to drive home their point.
Other advocates for climate action in the community called the plan “a $5 billion Band-Aid” because the wall is only designed to protect against storm surge, not sea level rise. Other parts of the plan, like elevating and flood-proofing properties, serve double duty.
In February, politicians in Miami-Dade and Miami offered the Corps another, more politically palatable vision for coastal protection: a mangrove-covered and oyster bed-ringed island surrounding the coast, paired with shorter concrete walls on the mainland.
The concept, conceived and paid for by major Miami developer Swire Properties, did not go into the same detail as the Corps’ three-year, $3 million study. It also didn’t offer estimates on how much the alternate would cost or how high the walls would be.
For the last six months, Miami and Miami-Dade officials have worked to convince the Army Corps that this alternate vision was viable and worth paying for completely, but they were unable to reach an agreement with the wording of the original plan.
In a statement, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Monday the county has “listened closely” to resident concerns throughout the process.
“Based on the feedback of residents and stakeholders, we are moving forward with our storm resilience efforts through a ‘Locally Preferred Plan’ to focus our readiness strategy on nature-based features and to continue working directly with impacted residents and cities,” she said.
As part of that, the county formally requested the Corps extend the study and add extra federal funding so Miami-Dade can work out a new plan.
Jim Murley, the county’s chief resiliency officer, said this extension will allow the county to get more input from the community and help find a solution that “strikes the right balance between protection from storm surge and that quality of life that we want in our community.”
“It’s a tough one to strike when there’s not much to look at for examples,” he said.
City of Miami Commissioner Ken Russell, who represents the majority of Miami’s bay front, said he supported the mayor’s decision to seek a locally preferred plan and pointed to the state of New Orleans’ levee system after Hurricane Ida a lesson for Miami.
While a concrete wall around our city is not a viable option, significant storm surge infrastructure in Miami is a must,” he said. “We cannot afford to simply reject the wall and send them away.”
Niklas Hallberg, project manager for the Back Bay study and Army Corps engineer, said his team will work with the county to figure out how much money and time they need to study a different solution. Once they submit it, he said, it usually takes about six to eight months for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works in Washington to approve the request and then however long the engineers need to come up with a new strategy.
The extension will kick off another round of public comment, official meetings and more chances to review drafts of the plan.
This delay will likely cause the county to miss the next federal appropriation bill in 2022 that would get the ball rolling on design and development. The next available bill for this kind of project will be in 2024, which Halberg called “a reasonable goal.”
Halberg said it’s up to the county to ask for what kind of solution it wants the Corps to model. It does have to meet some critical federal standards, like passing a cost-benefit analysis that shows a project will prevent more property damage and losses than it costs to build.
“As far as what the county can do, they can tell us to remove the structures or they can request a much smaller plan,” he said. “The trade-off could be that there’s a lot more residual risk with that.”
Halberg said he believes the final version of the plan will include some type of structural element, but that it’s too soon to know for sure.
Under Corps rules, the federal government picks up 65% of the tab for any project approved by both the Corps and the local sponsor, in this case, Miami-Dade. Anything the county asks for in addition to the agreed-upon plan (like landscaping along the walls, or park benches) would be considered a “betterment” and fall on Miami-Dade to pay for.
“The Corps looks forward to continuing the relationship with the county on a locally preferred plan and getting a solution that everyone can be pleased with and get the storm protection Miami needs,” Halberg said.
The US military says it permanently disabled over 150 vehicles and aircraft before leaving Kabul so they can ‘never be used again’
The US military says it permanently disabled over 150 vehicles and aircraft before leaving Kabul so they can ‘never be used again’
Ryan Pickrell
A view of the C-17 Globemaster prepares to take off in the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 29, 2021 MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES via Getty Images
The last manned US military aircraft departed the airport in Kabul on Monday.
The US permanently disabled over 150 vehicles and aircraft when the military departed, a US general said Monday.
The Taliban captured an arsenal of operational US-made weapons when they defeated the Afghan army.
The last manned US military aircraft have departed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, ending nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, said Monday afternoon.
Asked about military equipment left behind at the airport, McKenzie said that some was brought out. Other systems, he said, were “demilitarized,” meaning US forces purposely broke them to prevent them from being used, CENTCOM clarified for Insider.
The counter rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) systems, which were used to fend off a rocket attack on the airport on Monday, were kept online until the last minute and then demilitarized.
“We demilitarized those systems so that they’ll never be used again,” McKenzie said. “We felt it more important to protect our forces than to bring those systems back.”
The general further explained that demilitarized equipment included 70 mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles “that will never again be used by anyone,” 27 Humvees “that will never be driven again,” and 73 aircraft that “will never fly again.” Many of the aircraft were not mission capable anyway.
“They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone again,” the CENTCOM commander said.
McKenzie added that some systems, such as fire trucks and front-end loaders, were left operational so that the airport could restart operations as soon as possible.
Even if the Taliban, which rapidly seized control of Afghanistan earlier this month in a sweeping offensive, is unable to use any of the systems the US military did not take with it when it departed the Kabul airport, the group has been able to get its hands on plenty of other working systems.
The Taliban managed to capture a substantial arsenal of American-made weapons, from rifles to military vehicles, when it overran the country and defeated the Afghan armed forces, which the US has spent billions of dollars arming and equipping.
The Biden administration, which has faced criticism for its handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, has acknowledged that US-funded combat capabilities fell to the Taliban.
“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said a few days after the fall of the Afghan capital.
There was a report of one fatality in Prairieville after a victim was apparently struck by a falling tree, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office said.
A man passes by a section of roof that was blown off of a building in the French Quarter by Hurricane Ida winds on Aug. 29, 2021, in New Orleans. (Eric Gay / AP)
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng told reporters earlier Sunday that the only road into Grand Isle, a barrier island south of New Orleans that is home to less 1,000 people, was under six feet of water. The local fire station was flooded, she said, and a few dozen people appeared to have disregarded a mandatory evacuation order.
“The conditions are very, very bad,” she said. “They are really getting beaten up right now.”
Images posted on Facebook by someone who appeared to be riding out the storm in Grand Isle showed roads topped with white-capped waves and a parking lot submerged in water.
“Pray for us all,” the person wrote.
The National Hurricane Center described Ida’s storm surge as “catastrophic” and said it could measure as much as 16 feet at Port Fourchon, where it made landfall shortly before noon.
Elsewhere in southern Louisiana, the quick rise in sea level was expected to be less, the center said. But security camera video from a fire station in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, showed what was still a dramatic surge of water.
The storm made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, and video and photos from areas in and around New Orleans showed roofs that had been ripped from buildings and, in one case, tossed down the road into a power line.
In Galliano, southwest of New Orleans, top sections of the Lady of the Sea Hospital could also be seen getting hurled from the building.
In St. Rose, just west of downtown New Orleans, a boat collision was captured on camera. A barge crashed into a bridge in Jefferson Parish, making it structurally unsafe, officials there said. It was one of more than a dozen examples in the region of what a spokesman with the U.S. Coast Guard’s local office described as “breakaway barges.”
In one instance, the regional transit authority told the station that the vessel had detached from a barge and run aground.
In St. Bernard Parish, where the Chalmette ferry could be seen floating upriver, parish president Guy McInnis told the station: “Nothing we can do at this point.”
A New Breed of Crisis: War and Warming Collide in Afghanistan
Somini Sengupta
Somalian refugees displaced by drought wait for rations in Dadaab, Kenya, July 14, 2011. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)
Parts of Afghanistan have warmed twice as much as the global average. Spring rains have declined, most worryingly in some of the country’s most important farmland. Droughts are more frequent in vast swaths of the country, including a punishing dry spell now in the north and west, the second in three years.
Afghanistan embodies a new breed of international crisis, where the hazards of war collide with the hazards of climate change, creating a nightmarish feedback loop that punishes some of the world’s most vulnerable people and destroys their countries’ ability to cope.
And although it would be facile to attribute the conflict in Afghanistan to climate change, the impacts of warming act as what military analysts call threat multipliers, amplifying conflicts over water, putting people out of work in a nation whose people largely live off agriculture, while the conflict itself consumes attention and resources.
“The war has exacerbated climate change impacts. For 10 years, over 50% of the national budget goes to the war,” said Noor Ahmad Akhundzadah, a professor of hydrology at Kabul University, said by phone Thursday. “Now there is no government, and the future is unclear. Our current situation today is completely hopeless.”
A third of all Afghans face what the United Nations calls crisis levels of food insecurity. Because of the fighting, many people haven’t been able to plant their crops in time. Because of the drought, the harvest this year is certain to be poor. The World Food Program says 40% of crops are lost, the price of wheat has gone up by 25%, and the aid agency’s own food stock is due to run out by the end of September.
Afghanistan is not the only country to face such compounding misery. Of the world’s 25 nations most vulnerable to climate change, more than a dozen are impacted by conflict or civil unrest, according to an index developed by the University of Notre Dame.
In Somalia, pummeled by decades of conflict, there has been a threefold increase in extreme weather events since 1990, compared with the previous 20-year period, making it all but impossible for ordinary people to recover after each shock. In 2020, more than 1 million Somalis were displaced from their homes, about a third because of drought, according to the United Nations.
In Syria, a prolonged drought, made more likely by human-made climate change, according to researchers, drove people out of the countryside and fed simmering anti-government grievances that led to an uprising in 2011 and, ultimately, a full-blown civil war. This year again, drought looms over Syria, particularly its breadbasket region, the northeastern Hassakeh province.
In Mali, a violent insurgency has made it harder for farmers and herders to deal with a succession of droughts and flood, according to aid agencies.
Climate change cannot be blamed for any single war, and certainly not the one in Afghanistan. But rising temperatures, and the weather shocks that come with it, act as what Marshall Burke, a Stanford University professor, calls “a finger on the scale that makes underlying conflict worse.” That is particularly true, he argued, in places that have undergone a long conflict and where government institutions have all but dissolved.
“None of this means that climate is the only or the most important factor in conflict,” said Burke, co-author of a 2013 paper looking at the role of climate change in dozens of conflicts across many years. “But based on this evidence, the international community would be foolish to ignore the threat that a warming climate represents.”
The combination of war and warming compounds the risks facing some of the world’s most vulnerable people: According to the U.N. children’s agency, Afghanistan is the 15th-riskiest country in the world for children, because of climate hazards, including heat and drought, and a lack of essential services, including health care. Two million Afghan children are malnourished.
That is in sharp contrast to Afghanistan’s part in global warming. An average Afghan produces 0.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, compared with nearly 16 metric tons of the average American.
The collapse of the government has also made Afghanistan’s participation in the next international climate talks entirely uncertain, said one of its members, Ahmad Samim Hoshmand. “Now I don’t know. I’m not part of any government. What government I should represent?” he said.
Until recently, he had been the government official in charge of enforcing the country’s ban on ozone-depleting substances, including refrigerants used in old air-conditioners and that are banned by the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that Afghanistan had ratified. Just days before the Taliban seized Kabul, he fled to Tajikistan. The traders of illegal substances whom he helped arrest are now out of prison, keen to exact revenge. He says they will kill him if he returns.
Hoshmand is now scrambling to emigrate elsewhere. His visa in Tajikistan expires in a matter of weeks. “My only hope is the ozone community, the Montreal Protocol community, if they can support me,” he said.
Afghanistan’s geography is a study of extreme hazard, from the glacier-peaked Hindu Kush mountains in the north to its melon farms in the west to the arid south, stung by dust storms.
Climate data is sparse for Afghanistan. But a recent analysis based on what little data exists suggests that a decline in spring rains has already afflicted much of the country, but most acutely in the country’s north, where farmers and herders rely almost entirely on the rains to grow crops and water their flocks.
Over the past 60 years, average temperatures have risen sharply, by 1.8 degrees Celsius since 1950 in the country as a whole and by more than 2 degrees Celsius in the south.
“Climate change will make it extremely challenging to maintain — let alone increase — any economic and development gains achieved so far in Afghanistan,” the United Nations warned in a 2016 report. “Increasingly frequent and severe droughts and floods, accelerated desertification, and decreasing water flows in the country’s glacier-dependent rivers will all directly affect rural livelihoods — and therefore the national economy and the country’s ability to feed itself.”
This is the country’s biggest risk, Akhundzadah argued. Three-fourths of his compatriots work in agriculture, and any unpredictable weather can be calamitous, all the more so in a country where there hasn’t been a stable government and no safety net to speak of.
The Taliban, for their part, appear more exercised by the need to scrub women’s pictures from billboards than addressing climate hazards.
But climate change is a threat multiplier for the Taliban, too. Analysts say water management will be critical to its legitimacy with Afghan citizens, and it is likely to be one of the most important issues in the Taliban’s relations with its neighbors as well.
Already on the Afghan battlefield, as in many battlefields throughout history, water has been an important currency. The Taliban, in their bid for Herat, a strategic city in the west, repeatedly attacked a dam that is critical for drinking water, agriculture and electricity for the people of the region. Likewise, in Kandahar province in the south, one of the Taliban’s most critical victories was to seize control of a dam that holds water for drinking and irrigation.
Climate change also stands to complicate the Taliban’s ability to fulfill a key promise: the elimination of opium poppy cultivation. Poppies require far less water than, say, wheat or melons, and they are far more profitable. Poppy farming employs an estimated 120,000 Afghans and brings in an estimated $300 million to $400 million a year, according to the United Nations, and has, in turn, enriched the Taliban.
Areas under poppy cultivation grew sharply in 2020.
Analysts said the Taliban would seek to use a poppy ban to gain legitimacy from foreign powers, such as Qatar and China. But it is likely to face pushback from growers who have few alternatives as the rains become less reliable.
“It’s going to be a gigantic political flashpoint,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, who studies the region at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
The last drought, in 2018, left 4 million Afghans in need of food aid and forced 371,000 people to leave their homes, many of whom haven’t returned.
“The effects of the severe drought are compounded by conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic in a context where half the population were already in need of aid,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov said by email from Kabul on Thursday. “With little financial reserves, people are forced to resort to child labor, child marriage, risky irregular migration exposing them to trafficking and other protection risks. Many are taking on catastrophic levels of debt and selling their assets.”
Akhundzadah, a father of four, is hoping to emigrate, too. But like his fellow academics, he said he has not worked for foreign governments and has no way to be evacuated from the country. The university is closed. Banks are closed. He is looking for research jobs abroad. For now, there are no commercial flights out of the country.
“Till now, I’m OK,” he said on the phone. “The future is unclear. It will be difficult to live here.”
California Marine Nicole Gee, 23, who cradled baby at Kabul airport, killed in Afghanistan attack
Bill Keveney, USA TODAY
Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee celebrated the joy of service just days before she was one of 13 U.S. service members killed in Thursday’s suicide bombing attack near Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
A week ago, Gee, 23, posted a photo on Instagram that showed her holding a baby at that airport. She added a simple, profound comment: “I love my job.” The same photo was posted by the Department of Defense on Aug. 21.
Gee, from Sacramento, California, served as a maintenance technician with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. On her Instagram page, she described herself as a “positive mental attitude advocate.” The locations listed on her page include California, North Carolina and “somewhere overseas.”
Another photo on Gee’s Instagram page shows her earlier in the week, on duty with her rifle next to a line of people waiting to board a transport plane. She described her assignment as “escorting evacuees onto the bird.”
Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, seen holding a baby at Kabul’s airport, was one of the 13 U.S. service members killed in the Aug. 26 bombing in Afghanistan.
Other recent Instagram photos show Gee with friends in Spain, where they shared a toast, and Greece. Other pictures show the Marine riding a camel in Saudi Arabia and receiving her promotion to sergeant.
“Never would have imagined having my Sergeant promotion meritoriously in Kuwait,” she wrote of the promotion in a post shared three weeks ago.
A Facebook post by the city of Roseville, California, which calls Gee “a hometown hero,” says she graduated in 2016 from the city’s Oakmont High School and enlisted in the Marines a year later. It says her husband, Jarod Gee, also is an Oakmont graduate and a Marine.
Gee was remembered by Sgt. Mallory Harrison, a fellow Marine who roomed with her for more than three years, in a Facebook post accompanied by more than a dozen photos.
“Her car is parked in our lot. It’s so mundane. Simple. But it’s there,” she began the post. “My very best friend, my person, my sister forever. My other half. We were boots together, Corporals together, & then Sergeants together. Roommates for over 3 years now, from the barracks at MOS school to our house here. We’ve been attached at the hip from the beginning.
“I can’t quite describe the feeling I get when I force myself to come back to reality & think about how I’m never going to see her again. How her last breath was taken doing what she loved — helping people — at HKIA in Afghanistan. Then there was an explosion. And just like that, she’s gone.”
She said the war stories told by older Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are “not so distant anymore.”
Harrison concluded: “My best friend. 23 years old. Gone. I find peace knowing that she left this world doing what she loved. She was a Marine’s Marine. She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world. She was my person. … Til Valhalla, Sergeant Nicole Gee. I can’t wait to see you & your Momma up there. I love you forever & ever.”
Trump’s lawyers used his tactics to spread disinfo. Now they’re paying for it.
By Barbara McQuade, MSNBC Opinion Columnist August 27, 2021
The pro-Trump lawyers may still have succeeded in giving Trump and his allies the talking points they need to perpetuate the big lie.
Truth has taken a beating during the past few years, from former President Donald Trump’s claims about the size of the crowd at his inauguration to his statements that Covid-19 was a hoax. But on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker, in Detroit, took a strong stand in its defense when she issued an order imposing sanctions against lawyers aligned with former President Donald Trump for what she called “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”
The lawyers sought a preliminary injunction to decertify the election results and to certify Trump as the winner instead.
Shortly after the November election, attorneys Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and others filed a lawsuit on behalf of Michigan voters against state officials alleging a scheme to “illegally manipulate the vote count” in favor of President Joe Biden, who won the election in Michigan by around 150,000 votes.
The lawyers sought a preliminary injunction to decertify the election results and to certify Trump as the winner instead. In December, Judge Parker denied the injunction request, finding that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on the merits, and noting that the claims were based on nothing more than “theories, conjecture and speculation.”
In July, Parker held a roughly six-hour hearing, in which Trump’s lawyers had few answers to her questions about the absence of a factual basis for their allegations. In a 110-page opinion, Parker took the rare step of punishing the lawyers for their abuse of the court system. Finding that the lawsuit had been filed “in bad faith and for an improper purpose,” she ordered the lawyers to pay the legal fees incurred by taxpayers of the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit.
She also ordered the lawyers to complete 12 of hours of legal education on pleading standards and election law. And she directed the clerk to send her opinion to the disciplinary authorities in the jurisdictions where each lawyer is licensed to consider suspension or disbarment.
Parker cited the need to deter others from engaging in similar behavior, which she characterized as “deceiving a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed, without regard to whether any laws or rights were in fact violated.”
Lawyers have a legal and ethical duty to avoid filing lawsuits that are frivolous. But calling this lawsuit frivolous is to understate its harm. The term “frivolous” suggests a lack of legal merit. What happened here was far more sinister.
Calling this lawsuit frivolous is to understate its harm.
These lawyers most certainly were aware they lacked the evidence to win this lawsuit. And yet they filed it anyway because it advanced an affirmative disinformation campaign designed to convince the public that the election had been stolen. As Parker wrote, “This case was never about fraud—it was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so.”
Filing a lawsuit without any factual basis sounds a lot like the strategy that a book by two Washington Post reporters said another Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, articulated on election night in November: “Just say we won.”
Trump himself apparently repeated a version of this mantra in a December phone conversation with acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. After Rosen rebuffed Trump’s requests to investigate election fraud, The Washington Post reported, he pressured him to “just say the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me.” In fact, according to Gordon Sondland, the former ambassador to the European Union, Trump used a similar tactic with the president of Ukraine. In exchange for military aid and a White House meeting, Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not actually have to conduct an investigation of Biden, Sondland testified — he just had to announce one.
Similarly, Powell and her colleagues did not need to win their lawsuits in Michigan and elsewhere; they just needed to file them to give Trump and his allies the talking points they needed to perpetuate the big lie. Parker wrote, “Many people have latched on to this narrative, citing as proof counsel’s submissions in this case.”
In imposing sanctions, Parker called out the lawyers who are willing to kill truth to advance a political agenda. Sanctions, she wrote, were necessary in this case to deter “future frivolous lawsuits designed primarily to spread the narrative that our election processes are rigged and our democratic institutions cannot be trusted.”
Only by exposing disinformation tactics can we begin to recognize them and build resilience to them as an electorate.
