The United States is giving Ukraine 16 Mi-17 helicopters that Washington had procured for Afghanistan, a U.S. government agency charged with monitoring Afghan events said Wednesday.

The Department of Defense (DOD) notified Congress in January that it intended to give the Ukrainian government five of the Russian-built helicopters, which had been undergoing maintenance at a Ukrainian facility.

“Ukraine accepted these excess defense articles on March 11,” the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted in its quarterly report submitted to U.S. lawmakers this week.

The report added: “In mid-April, President (Joe) Biden announced a military assistance package to Ukraine that included an additional 11 Mi-17 helicopters that had been scheduled for Afghanistan.”

Mi-17s are mostly used to carry troops and military equipment. Ukraine is one of the former Soviet Union republics which hosts production and repair facilities for the helicopters.

US equipment left in Afghanistan

In its report this week, the

SIGAR also confirmed reports that the fall of the Western-backed Afghan government last August gave the country’s new Taliban rulers access to more than $7 billion worth of U.S. Department of Defense equipment.

“DOD estimates that $7.12 billion worth of ANDSF equipment remained in Afghanistan in varying states of repair when U.S. forces withdrew in August 2021,” the report said in reference to the U.S.-trained and funded former Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.

The SIGAR also clarified, citing the Pentagon data, that $18.6 billion worth of ANDSF equipment was procured through the U.S. Afghan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) since 2005 — not the $80 billion reported by some media. Much of that equipment was destroyed during combat operation, it added.

The equipment includes aircraft, vehicles, munitions, guns and communication equipment, as well as other gear, “in varying states of repair,” according to Pentagon spokesperson Army Major Rob Lodewick.

“Nearly all equipment used by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan was either retrograded or destroyed prior to our withdrawal,” Lodewick said in a statement last week.

Pentagon officials also told VOA that only a sliver of U.S.-owned and operated equipment was left behind when the last U.S. troops departed Afghanistan, estimating its value at just more than $150 million before it was destroyed or otherwise rendered inoperable.

The Taliban seized power from the now-defunct Afghan government in mid-August 2021. U.S.-led foreign troops finished withdrawing from Afghanistan on August 30 after nearly two decades of war with Taliban insurgents.

Afghan air force personnel also flew almost 50 helicopters and fixed wing aircraft to neighboring Uzbekistan as the Taliban took control of the country in a lightning 11-day military offensive. Several more aircraft and Black Hawk helicopters were taken to neighboring Tajikistan to prevent them from falling into Taliban hands.

The SIGAR report quoted the Taliban air force commander and former Afghan Air Force (AAF) personnel as saying that about 4,300 members, half of the former AAF, have joined the Taliban’s air force, including 33 pilots.

“Only a fraction of the 81 aircraft at the Kabul military airport are functional, including six repaired UH-60 Blackhawks,” the report said.

Humanitarian assistance

Meanwhile, the SIGAR report said that the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had paused the majority of development assistance programs in Afghanistan during August and September 2021. Since then, more than a dozen programs have restarted to address critical needs of the Afghan people.

“Efforts in these areas are being implemented through NGOs, international organizations, and other third parties, minimizing benefit to the Taliban to the extent possible,” the report noted.

The United Nations estimates that nearly 23 million people in Afghanistan, ravaged by years of war and the worst drought in three decades, are in need of humanitarian assistance. An estimated nearly 9 million of them remain at risk of famine-like conditions.

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 3.2 million children in Afghanistan will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2022, with one million severely malnourished children at risk of death if immediate action is not taken.

The Biden administration on March 31 pledged more than $204 million in humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan, according to the SIGAR. This is in addition to $308 million announced on January 11. The U.S. humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and for Afghan refugees in the region since October 2020 now totals nearly $986 million.

VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
…

President Joe Biden on Tuesday visited an Alabama facility that manufactures weapons he said were key to fending off Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He also pushed his request for $33 billion in supplemental aid for Ukraine. This report from VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell.
…

A judge in Fiji has ruled that U.S. authorities can seize a Russian-owned superyacht — but has put a hold on his order until at least Friday while defense lawyers mount a challenge.

The yacht Amadea — worth $325 million — had earlier been stopped from leaving the South Pacific nation because of its links to Russia. That order will stand for now, preventing U.S. authorities from taking the yacht to Hawaii or elsewhere.

A question remains over which of two Russian oligarchs really owns the Amadea, with only one of them facing sanctions. There are also questions about how far U.S. jurisdiction extends into Fiji.

Suva High Court Justice Deepthi Amaratunga on Tuesday granted an order allowing the U.S. to seize the superyacht after the U.S. had earlier filed a warrant. But the judge has also allowed for a pause while defense lawyers put together their challenge.

The judge’s next decision in the case will come on Friday, when he will decide whether to continue to put a hold on the yacht’s seizure pending a formal appeal by the defense.

The U.S. Justice Department in March announced the creation of a team of federal agents and prosecutors to pursue wealthy Russians or those aiding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The team, called Task Force KleptoCapture, was set up to seize assets belonging to oligarchs with the aim of pressuring Russia to end the war.

The U.S. claims the real owner of the superyacht Amadea is Suleiman Kerimov. The economist and former Russian politician was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 for alleged money laundering and has faced further sanctions from Canada, Europe, Britain and other nations after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Kerimov made a fortune investing in Russian gold producer Polyus, with Forbes magazine putting his net worth at $14.5 billion.

But defense lawyers claim the real owner is Eduard Khudainatov, the former chairman and chief executive of Rosneft, the state-controlled Russian oil and gas company. Khudainatov currently does not appear to face any sanctions, unlike many oligarchs and people with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin who have been sanctioned since the war began.

As with many superyachts, determining the real ownership of the Amadea is difficult due to the shadowy trail of trusts and shell companies. On paper, the superyacht is registered in the Cayman Islands and owned by Millemarin Investments Ltd., also based in the Cayman Islands.

Defense lawyers have claimed in court that Millemarin Investments Ltd. is the legal owner of the vessel and that the company is linked to the real, or beneficial, owner, Khudainatov. But U.S. authorities have claimed that behind all the various fronts, the real owner is Kerimov.

On April 19, after the yacht had sailed into Fiji from Mexico, the High Court in Suva ordered that the Amadea not leave Fiji until the merits of the U.S. warrant to seize the vessel were determined. Perhaps reflecting the question over ownership, the court later ordered Fijian prosecutors to amend an original summons, which named just Kerimov, to also include Millemarin Investments Ltd. as a second respondent to the case.

For now, the yacht continues to sit in a Fijian harbor with its crew of about 25 rotating on and off the vessel, while a police officer remains on board to ensure it stays put.

According to Boat International, the Amadea is 106 meters long and was built in 2017. It features a stainless steel albatross that extends off the bow and weighs more than 5 tons, a live lobster tank in the galley, a 10-meter (33-foot) pool, a hand-painted Pleyel piano and a large helipad.

The U.S. Embassy in Suva earlier said in a statement that the U.S. was acting with allies and partners around the world to impose costs on Russia because of its “war of choice.”

“We continue to ratchet up the pressure on Putin’s oligarchs and we are working with allies and partners to go after corrupt gains from some of the individuals closest to Putin, no matter where they are held around the world,” the embassy said.
…

A group of U.S. House lawmakers introduced a resolution on Tuesday, World Press Freedom Day, which named countries including China, Russia and Belarus as nations that committed “repressive and brutal actions” against journalists. 

China is “one of the worst media environments in the world and seeks to curtail political speech inside and outside the country…,” stated the resolution, citing the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2021 findings. 

Bahram Sintash, a Uyghur American, said his father is one of the journalists detained in China.  

“The U.S. government should speak up for many Uyghur journalists like my father who are arbitrarily detained and imprisoned by the Chinese authorities,” Sintash, who lives in Virginia, told VOA.  

Sintash lost contact with his father, Qurban Mamut, who was the former chief editor of the China-controlled Uyghur journal Xinjiang Civilization, more than four years ago.   

Then earlier this year, Sintash learned that his father was taken by Chinese authorities from his residence in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang in northwest China. 

“In February, I received an indirect message from my sister in Urumqi that our father, Qurban Mamut, was sentenced to 15 years in prison,” Sintash said.  

Fifty journalists are imprisoned in China, according to CPJ’s 2021 report released last December.

Twenty-two of them are Uyghur journalists from Xinjiang, who make up 44% of the incarcerated journalists in China and 7.5% of the 293 jailed journalists worldwide in 2021. 

Peter Irwin, the senior program officer for advocacy and communications at the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, told VOA that China has for many years targeted Uyghur journalists. 

“In many ways, (Uyghur) journalists were among the earliest targets for suppression and imprisonment by the Chinese government,” Irwin said. 

Rights groups and some countries, including the U.S., have accused China of mistreating Uyghurs, including subjecting more than 1 million Uyghurs to mass internment for “reeducation,” forced sterilization and labor or those either in and out of detention since late 2016. 

The U.S. government officially designated China’s treatment of Uyghurs as genocide in January 2021. 

Beijing calls the accusations “lies,” saying that “the local people are living a safe and happy life” in Xinjiang. 

CPJ’s list of China’s jailed journalists show that half of the 22 Uyghur journalists were arrested after 2016, and the rest were jailed from 2009 to 2014. 

According to Irwin, before 2015, Uyghur journalists who wrote independently or moderated blogs or other publications were targeted for their work. 

“After 2015 or so, you see a heightened attention to Uyghur journalists who tried their best to follow the arbitrary rules set out by the government and still couldn’t avoid imprisonment,” Irwin said. 

Nine of the 22 imprisoned Uyghur journalists worked for an independent website called Uyghurbiz, which was co-founded by Ilham Tohti, a former Uyghur economics professor at Minzu University of China in Beijing. 

According to CPJ’s report, Tohti was sentenced to life in prison on charges of “separatism” in September 2014.  

Jewher Ilham, a Washington-based Uyghur rights activist and Tohti’s daughter, told VOA that some of the Uyghur journalists who used to work for her father’s website had not been released from prison after they had finished their sentence. 

“Even though some of them should have been released by 2019 or 2020, they still remain in prison,” she said. 

According to Jewher Ilham, Chinese authorities repressed not only Uyghur journalists but also any Uyghur who tried to save or circulate uncensored news content. 

“My cousin was sentenced for 10 years in prison for refusing to hand in her phone at a checkpoint and saving a picture of my father and the text of his article,” Jewher Ilham told VOA. 

‘Tip of the iceberg’ 

Abduweli Ayup, founder of Uyghur Hjelp, a Norway-based organization that documents China’s Uyghur rights violations, said the CPJ’s findings are just “the tip of the iceberg.” His organization found 40 Uyghur journalists who were jailed in China in recent years. 

“In our data, there are at least 40 imprisoned Uyghur journalists among over 400 Uyghur intellectuals incarcerated by Chinese authorities,” Ayup told VOA. “If we include Uyghur website bloggers and government radio and TV hosts to our list, the number of jailed Uyghur journalists is at least over a hundred.” 

Ayup said that the 22 imprisoned Uyghur journalists in CPJ’s report are only the ones confirmed by media. 

“(There are) still many more imprisoned Uyghur journalists yet to be confirmed by media and added to the CPJ’s list of imprisoned journalists,” Ayup said adding that the CPJ’s number of imprisoned Uyghur journalists will be 23 if Qurban Mamut is included. 
…

If the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturns federal abortion protections, as a draft decision leaked on Monday night suggests, access to abortion in at least half of the U.S. states is likely to be sharply curtailed — in some cases, immediately — by so-called trigger laws that automatically go into effect in the event of such a decision.

Thirteen states have trigger laws that ban nearly all abortions if they go into effect. Nine more states have laws on the books that were invalidated by the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights case, but can be enforced if Roe is overturned.

A number of states have some combination of trigger laws, old anti-abortion laws still on the books, and anti-abortion laws passed in the wake of the Roe decision despite being in clear conflict with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization, estimates that 26 states are likely to significantly restrict abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe. The Center for Reproductive Rights, a group that supports access to abortions, estimates the number to be 25.

Draft opinion leaked

Late Monday, the news organization Politico released a leaked draft of a decision by the high court. Written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s most conservative members, it explicitly overturns two previous court rulings, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which are the basis of the federal protection of abortion rights.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote. “The Con­stitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, in­cluding the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely— the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The case in question, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, is a challenge to a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but Alito’s draft ruling reaches beyond the specific questions raised by the Dobbs case to overturn 50 years of judicial precedent.

The draft decision was leaked on the same day The Washington Post reported that Republicans in Congress are uniting behind a plan to pass a bill that would ban abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. That would set the ban around six weeks, a stage at which many women do not yet know they are pregnant. Any such bill would face a difficult road in the Senate, as Democrats are certain to use the filibuster to prevent it from passing.

Abortion rights groups react

In their public reaction to the news, some abortion rights organizations chose to stress that the opinion is only a draft and may not express the court’s final decision.

“We don’t know if the document as reported by Politico is legitimate, and we don’t know if it represents the views of a majority of the Supreme Court,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. “What we do know is that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade it will be an unjustified, unprecedented stripping away of a guaranteed right that has been in place for nearly five decades. It would represent the most damaging setback to the rights of women in the history of our country.”

Others seemed more prepared to assume that the draft reflects the likely outcome of the case.

“This leaked opinion is horrifying and unprecedented, and it confirms our worst fears: that the Supreme Court is prepared to end the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement.

“While we have seen the writing on the wall for decades, it is no less devastating, and comes just as anti-abortion rights groups unveil their ultimate plan to ban abortion nationwide.”

Abortion opponents react

Groups in favor of more restrictions on abortion, or of outlawing the procedure altogether, were pleased with the direction of the draft ruling.

In a post on its website, Texas Right to Life, a group that last year spearheaded a law that effectively banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy in Texas, called the opinion “a clear, bold, categorical rejection of Roe.”

“The atrocity of Roe v. Wade stained the moral fabric of our country for nearly 50 years. Today’s encouraging news indicates that Roe soon may be gone. Yet, new attacks on Life will emerge,” the group added.

“If the draft opinion made public tonight is the final opinion of the court, we wholeheartedly applaud the decision,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, in a statement. “The American people have the right to act through their elected officials to debate and enact laws that protect unborn children and honor women. If Roe is indeed overturned, our job will be to build consensus for the strongest protections possible for unborn children and women in every legislature.”

Patchwork of laws

By overturning the rulings in Roe and Casey, the Supreme Court would effectively make the federal government silent on the issue of abortion, leaving it up to individual states to determine the legality of the process.

The attitude of states toward abortion broadly mirrors their political leanings, with states supporting the Republican Party more likely to have bans in place, and states supporting the Democratic Party more likely to allow broad access to abortion.

During his term in office, President Donald Trump promised that he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. Although none of his nominees — Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — explicitly said that they would vote to overturn the ruling, their appointments to the court set off a flurry of legislation in the states.

Last year, more than 100 pieces of legislation restricting abortion access were passed in various states, some plainly in conflict with Roe.

At the same time, many states with Democratic-run legislatures passed laws codifying the right to an abortion.

If the draft ruling is finalized by the Supreme Court, the likely result is that in the U.S., women’s access to abortion will be highly dependent on where they live. In the Northeast and on the West Coast, women will have relatively easy access to care, with abortion providers in multiple locations in every state.

However, in the Deep South and parts of the Midwest and Mountain West, women could be forced to travel hundreds of miles to get access to an abortion provider. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a woman in Louisiana would face a one-way drive of 1,071 kilometers (666 miles) to reach the nearest legal abortion clinic. In Florida, the average drive would be 925 kilometers (575 miles), and in Montana, it would be 617 kilometers (384 miles).
…

The Biden administration on Tuesday said an American professional basketball player being held in Russia on charges she had illegal marijuana vaping cartridges in her luggage is being wrongfully detained.

That could mean the U.S. is taking a more aggressive approach to securing the release of Brittney Griner, who has been held since she was detained at the Moscow airport in February.

Now her case will be handled by the State Department’s Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, which negotiates hostage release cases.

“The Department of State has determined that the Russian Federation has wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Brittney Griner. With this determination, the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens will lead the interagency team for securing Brittney Griner’s release,” a State Department spokesperson told ESPN.

Prior to today’s announcement, the U.S. had not officially said the WNBA player was being wrongfully detained.

“Brittney has been detained for 75 days and our expectation is that the White House do whatever is necessary to bring her home,” said Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas.

The WNBA also issued a statement about the case.

“As we begin the 2022 season, we are keeping Brittney at the forefront of what we do through the game of basketball and in the community,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. “We continue to work on bringing Brittney home and are appreciative of the support the community has shown BG and her family during this extraordinarily challenging time.”

It is unclear what made the Biden administration change its stand in the case, but it had come under pressure from members of Congress urging action to secure Griner’s release.

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
…