Eight years ago, President Obama pledged to wind down the war in Iraq and redouble efforts to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. “As president, I will make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be,” he said during a campaign speech. “This is a war that we have to win.”
Lasting peace, Mr. Obama said, would depend on not only defeating the Taliban but helping “Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up.” He added, “We cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism.”
Now, at the twilight of his presidency, these goals are receding further into the distance as America’s longest war deteriorates into a slow, messy slog. Yet despite this grim reality, there has been no substantive debate about Afghanistan policy on the campaign trail this year. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton has outlined a vision to turn around, or withdraw from, a flailing military campaign.
The war in Afghanistan has cost American taxpayers in excess of $800 billion — including $115 billion for a reconstruction effort, more than the inflation-adjusted amount the United States spent on the Marshall Plan. The Afghan government remains weak, corrupt and roiled by internal rivalries. The casualty rate for Afghan troops is unsustainable. The economy is in shambles. Resurgent Taliban forces are gaining ground in rural areas and are carrying out barbaric attacks in the heart of Kabul, the capital. Despite an international investment of several billion dollars in counternarcotics initiatives, the opium trade remains a pillar of the economy and a key source of revenue for the insurgency.
“It does not appear that the Afghan forces in the near future will be able to defeat the Taliban,” said a senior administration official who spoke about the White House’s appraisal of the campaign on the condition of anonymity. “Nor is it clear that the Taliban will make any significant strategic gains or be able to take and hold on to strategic terrain. It’s a very ugly, very costly stalemate.”
The administration’s current strategy commits the United States to keeping roughly 8,400 troops in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future and spending several billion dollars each year subsidizing the Afghan security forces. The goal has been to coax the Taliban to the negotiating table by beating them on the battlefield, a prospect that now seems remote.
The next American president may be tempted to adopt the Obama policy and hope for the best. That would be a mistake. At the very least, the next administration needs to carry out a top-to-bottom review of the war, one that unflinchingly addresses fundamental questions.
One such question is whether the Afghan Taliban — an insurgency that has never had aspirations to operate outside the region — is an enemy Washington should continue to fight. American forces started battling the Taliban in 2001 because the group had provided safe haven for Al Qaeda, which was based there when it planned the Sept. 11 attacks. While Al Qaeda has largely been defeated, the Taliban has proved to be extraordinarily resilient.
Another question is what it would take to bring the conflict to an end — either by enabling Afghan forces to defeat the Taliban or by bringing them into the political fold — and whether that is something the United States is realistically capable of achieving.
This will not be an easy discussion. A precipitous drawdown from Afghanistan may well have calamitous consequences in the short run, exacerbating the exodus of refugees and expanding the area of ungoverned territory in which extremist groups could once again subject Afghans to despotism and plot attacks on the West.
But American taxpayers and Afghans, who have endured decades of war, need a plan better than the current policy, which offers good intentions, wishful thinking and ever-worsening results.
With less than eight weeks before Election Day, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton are locked in a tight contest, with both candidates still struggling to win the confidence of their respective bases, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.
Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has the support of 46 percent of likely voters nationwide, to 44 percent for Mr. Trump, the Republican, including those who said they were leaning toward a candidate. Looking more broadly at all registered voters, Mrs. Clinton holds a wider edge, 46 to 41 percent.
In a four-way race, Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are tied at 42 percent each. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, has the support of 8 percent of likely voters, and the Green Party nominee, Jill Stein, takes 4 percent.
The third-party candidates draw their strongest support from younger voters. Twenty-six percent of voters ages 18 to 29 say they plan to vote for Mr. Johnson, and another 10 percent back Ms. Stein. A little more than one in five political independents say they will vote for one of the third-party candidates.
Discontent with the major party candidates is widespread. Among those who say they intend to vote for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton, slightly more than half express strong support. The rest say that they harbor reservations about their candidate, or that they are simply voting to thwart the other nominee.
Over all, just 43 percent of likely voters describe themselves as very enthusiastic about casting a ballot in November. Fifty-one percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters say they are very enthusiastic about voting; 43 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters say they are very enthusiastic.
The race has clearly grown tighter in recent weeks. National polling averages show that Mrs. Clinton’s margin over Mr. Trump has narrowed from eight points in early August to two points today.
Mrs. Clinton found herself under attack last week for suggesting that half of Mr. Trump’s supporters held views that made them “deplorables,” and for her campaign’s attempts to conceal her pneumonia diagnosis. The Times/CBS News poll was conducted from Sept. 9 to 13, so many of those interviewed were aware of the controversies.
Mr. Trump hired new campaign leadership in mid-August and has been more disciplined in his public statements. His poll numbers have been steadily rising.
Mrs. Clinton continues to outpace Mr. Trump among women, nonwhites and younger voters, while Mr. Trump leads among whites, 57 to 33 percent.
Among white women, the candidates are virtually tied: 46 percent for Mrs. Clinton and 45 percent for Mr. Trump.
Mrs. Clinton’s support is notably strong among college graduates, particularly whites. She leads by 11 points among white likely voters with a college degree; if polling holds, she would be the first Democrat in 60 years to win among this group.
This is the first Times/CBS News poll of the election cycle to include a measure of likely voters. The nationwide telephone survey reached 1,433 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. To achieve a sample that reflected the probable electorate, these voters were weighted by their responses to questions about voting history, attention to the campaign and likelihood of voting.
With Mrs. Clinton sidelined by illness this week, Mr. Trump has vigorously pressed his case. He promoted a new plan to support working parents on Tuesday, and released a partial account of his medical status on Wednesday during a taping of “The Dr. Oz Show.”
Poll participants expressed ambivalence about the need for more information on the candidates’ medical histories. For each candidate, just 45 percent of registered voters said they wanted to see more medical records released. (Questions about Mr. Trump’s and Mrs. Clinton’s medical records were asked starting on Sunday afternoon, after news broke that Mrs. Clinton fell ill at a ceremony commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.)
Mr. Johnson’s showing of 8 percent support in this poll will make it difficult for him to qualify for the first presidential debate, on Sept. 26. Under the rules set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a candidate must reach an average of 15 percent support in five major news media polls, including the Times/CBS News poll. Another poll included in the average used by the commission, the Washington Post/ABC News poll, had Mr. Johnson at 9 percent support last week.
The political party that dominates Pakistan’s largest city is facing one of the most serious crackdowns in its history after an intervention by its exiled leader in London led to a night of violence followed by the detention of senior party members and shutdown of its headquarters.
On Tuesday, officials closed the “Nine Zero” offices of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) in Karachi after supporters of the party – a highly disciplined movement of Karachi’s Urdu-speaking Muhajir population – ransacked two television stations in a rampage that left one person dead and eight injured.
Mustafa Kamal says Altaf Hussain’s party has taken money from Indian intelligence and claims he ‘stays drunk for days’
The violence came after MQM’s leader in exile, Altaf Hussain, lambasted Pakistan as a “cancer for the entire world” and the “epicentre of terrorism” in a speech broadcast over loudspeakers to a crowd in the city from his base in north London, where he has run the party since the early 1990s.
By appearing to incite his followers to attack the media for not covering his speeches, Hussain triggered an unprecedented challenge to his control over a party that has dominated the politics and commerce of Pakistan’s business capital for decades.
He urged his supporters to “move” on ARY and Samaa, two private television news stations, to “get justice”.
Pakistani paramilitary rangers cordon off a street leading to headquarters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.
Immediately afterwards, two television stations and their satellite trucks were attacked, including with gunfire. One person was killed in the violence while police vehicles were also torched.
The rangers, a nominally civilian police force controlled by the army, acted swiftly, rounding up senior MQM leaders, including the party’s top parliamentarian, Farooq Sattar.
The MQM is based in London on the first floor of an office building in Edgware.
Also held was Aamir Liaquat, a popular light-entertainment television personality who is involved in the party.
The police responded to Hussain’s speech by lodging a treason case against him.
The commander of the rangers, Maj Gen Bilal Akbar, vowed to take action and promised to detain anyone who had listened to Hussain’s speech and who could be identified by security camera footage.
Zahid Husain, a leading commentator, said the incident was a “defining moment for the party” that it might not survive.
“I have never heard anyone speaking like that, inciting violence and raising slogans against Pakistan,” he said. “The party was already under huge pressure and this has completely discredited it. The leaders in Pakistan cannot defend it.”
On Tuesday, Hussain apologised for his remarks, claiming he had been under severe mental stress.
The apology was not enough to assuage party leaders in Karachi who have been repeatedly embarrassed by Hussain’s outbursts.
In a highly unusual public rebuke of Hussain, Sattar told a press conference after his release on Tuesday afternoon that the MQM “won’t allow this to happen in future”.
“Whatever the reason given for yesterday’s tragedy – mental stress, health or anything else – it is not tolerable and it is not justified,” he said. “We disassociate ourselves with yesterday’s slogans and we recognise Pakistan constitution and laws.”
Although Sattar did not announce a complete break with Hussain, as some analysts had speculated, he said decisions would now be “taken in Pakistan by local leaders”.
“Decisions will be taken by MQM Pakistan until Altaf Hussain’s health issues are resolved,” he said.
Speaking at the MQM’s headquarters in London, Wasay Jalil – a member of the coordination committee – denied the party was involved in extremism and blamed the rangers for triggering Monday’s violence.
Jalil dismissed talk of a split between the London and Karachi branches of the MQM and said there was no prospect that the MQM’s London-based founder Altaf Hussain might resign or be toppled.
“Mr Hussain is not a party worker. He’s the ideologue of the MQM. We make decisions in Pakistan. He ratifies the decisions.”
He added: “He’s the undisputed leader of the Muhajir nation. He has charisma, he’s self-made and that’s why the Pakistani establishment hates him.”
The MQM has come into ever greater conflict with the rangers in the last two years as both the central government in Islamabad and the powerful army have sought to impose order on the unruly port city of 20 million people.
The party, which was established by Hussain in 1984, has long dominated the city through the loyal support of Karachi’s Muhajir community – relatively well-off Urdu speakers who migrated from India after independence in 1947, and their descendants.
While the party promotes a secular politics that staunchly opposes Islamist militancy, it also runs a violent enforcement wing that dominates the city’s criminal economy.
From an unassuming office in Edgware, the Pakistani metropolis is ruled by a party Imran Khan accuses of murdering his Movement for Justice colleague Zhara Shahid Hussain
In March 2015, assault rifles were found during a raid on MQM’s offices. The last year has seen a ban on media coverage of speeches by Hussain.
Senior leaders have also been arrested, including Waseem Akhtar, who was set to be elected as Karachi’s new mayor.
Akhtar was arrested in July and is accused of multiple crimes, including instigating riots that shook the city in 2007.
The former MP has been held for more than a month at Karachi’s central prison and is unlikely to be released any time soon, meaning he could run the city from behind bars.
The party has also bitterly complained about what it claims are illegal attacks against its party workers by the rangers. It says 130 of its activists have been illegally detained and 62 killed.
The Islamic world, at the end of this week, looks like a series of boiling cauldrons from Dhaka to Kabul through to Istanbul and Baghdad. Islamist rage depicts itself equally violently in killing other Muslims as it does infidels. This – Islamist terror – is the common thread between terrorist acts in Mumbai, Paris, Brussels, Orlando and all over Afghanistan. From Syria-Iraq, the scourge has spread to Libya and will reach out to the rest of Africa, Europe and even the US.
Let us make no mistake that Islamist terror is thriving globally. A section of the Muslims is using extreme violence to terrorise fellow Muslims. Yet, the other hard reality is that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are willing to die and kill in the name of Islam as that see that as the way to paradise.
The other issue is whether, in all this, the Dhaka attack is a manifestation of ISIS’s presence or an example of local radical groups using the ISIS brand to seek publicity through their gruesome acts. It is doubtful if ISIS have sent their CEOs to manage things in Bangladesh. What, however, is more likely is that those Bangladeshis who had gone to Syria and Iraq have returned and are now willing to be used by one or more of the several radical organisations that still exist in the country. These could be independent acts replicated all over the world. They are more like franchises than actual branches of the main group. It is a kind of common discourse with groups acting under peer pressure knowing that the rest of us do not have an adequate reply. Drones will kill but they do not prevent the birth of other jihadists.
To understand where the world stands today perhaps a short recap of recent history is necessary. The game was played in several playing fields. Vietnam had been a Cold War disaster for the US and an early reprieve was necessary. Proxy wars in Africa had not delivered satisfactorily and Iran had slipped out of the US orbit. Brezhnev provided the opportunity to the US in December 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. For the first time, the US used religion and not democracy and human rights as weapons when the Afghan jihad was launched. And for the first time in modern history, Muslims from different parts of the ummah got together to battle the Evil Empire. Ultimately, an exhausted, over-stretched Soviet Union withdrew and the Afghan mujahideen thought this was the result solely of their bravery and Islamic faith. No credit was given to the US contribution for this victory.
The 1990s were different; the US lost interest in the region. The jihadi presumed he had inherited the world because of his superior religion. When this did not happen, the mullah reverted with great vehemence to promising paradise in the other life to be attained through war and dying for the faith. Theological orthodoxy has been the ploy since then.
The US administration allowed Pakistan to develop its nuclear capability when it winked at Zia ul-Haq’s efforts to nuclearise. Pakistan launched its proxies in India (and later in Afghanistan) in the 1990s confident that it could use terror as a weapon under a nuclear umbrella. The US had fought an inconclusive war in Iraq; Saddam Husain continued to be the ruler and the Americans were seen as occupation forces in Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda was born and Osama bin Laden swore to cleanse the Holy Land of infidel forces. September 11, 2001 brought the US back into West Asia with all its might and instead of concentrating on eradicating the threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Washington once again diverted its attention to Iraq. The world knows what happened there and how.
Arab Winter not Spring
Iran emerged as the strongest force in the region. The Arab Spring in Iran-backed Syria turned into a long cold bitter winter. ISIS was officially born in June 2014 when Abu Bakr Baghdadi made his sole appearance and announced the ‘caliphate’.
This is not to say that ISIS or the Al Qaeda are solely the result of US policies and interests. Local dictators and monarchs have contributed to this by suppressing any attempt at collective emancipation of their people and denied them any hope of power sharing. ISIS was helped in its phenomenal rise by the Saudis and the Qataris in their regional and sectarian battles against Iran. But even they did not expect the group to be so successful in its efforts at state-building. In fact, the caliphate would be a great danger to all the Muslim allies of the West in the region. There may be some truth in reports that the Iranians and the Saudis secretly met in an effort to try and dissolve the caliphate. Turkey tried to play the dangerous game in several ways with and against ISIS in order to contain the Kurds. The Istanbul airport bombing is the result of this double game, just as much as the recent onslaught in Baghdad with hundreds killed is obviously mean to exhibit its strength and discredit reports that its hold is slipping.
It is impossible to fully discuss here the complex nature of the relationships in West Asia, which is compounded further by the interests of other outside powers that drive the present chaos. The Al Qaeda-ISIS rivalry in West Asia is another factor that adds to the confusion. At some point they are conjoined twins – for instance Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have the ‘Shahada’ as their banner. ISIS concentrates currently in its own region, followed by Europe and the US. It is a kind of a reverse-crusade.
While ISIS brutality is particularly frightening, there are two factors that cause greater concern. One, the deliberate use of certain Quranic verses by the ISIS to justify its brutality is accepted by a section of Muslims in different parts of the world. This frightens others, especially non-Muslims whose knowledge about Islam is bound to be inadequate. The second is that we often make the mistake of assuming that others see themselves as we see them. While the rest of us assume that everyone considers ISIS to be evil incarnate, there are others who think otherwise. For us in India, we have the problem that confirmed Pakistani terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba plan a ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ and dream of establishing three caliphates in India.
This fits admirably with the dreams of the Pakistani military mindset that seeks parity with India through confrontation. (Both share the same motto – ‘Jihad in the name of Allah’). Pakistani terror outfits dreamt of caliphates in India decades before Abu Bakr Baghdadi announced his caliphate in Iraq two years ago.
ISIS conceivably has no ethnic Arab presence or even interest in our region apart from the usual rhetoric. Bangladesh and Pakistan have Syria-Iraq returnees in larger numbers, who could be the vanguard of ISIS franchises. They would opt for the brand equity of ISIS and the latest attack in Dhaka was to register an international presence. Fortunately for India, we do not have those kinds of numbers in Syria or returning to wage jihad in their own country.
While one may be reasonably confident that ISIS will not make a mark in India, one should not be complacent and there is continued need to monitor the growing radicalisation of the youth in our major cities. Conscious efforts are being made to spread jihadist ideology. Inflammatory speeches and videos and violence against other sects are the usual ploys. There is little difference between Barelvi groups like the Raza academy and ISIS on theological principles such as blasphemy, apostasy and Shia Muslims. The number of Salafist mosques and madrassas all over the country has grown. These are funded illegally from abroad and tolerated and even, encouraged by state governments and the Centre. These institutions propagate Islamist supremacist ideologies that would ultimately lead to conflict.
We were lucky in Hyderabad with the recent arrest of 11 suspects alleged to be plotting terrorist strikes on behalf of ISIS. The problem is that for every terrorist plot disrupted, there could be several others in the pipeline. But to blame ISIS without evidence would be to create a scare. Since there is no real presence of ISIS capability, the only way this can happen in India is if Lashkar-e-Tayyaba wears the ISIS mask and begins to operate here. This will let Pakistan off the hook, the US would not have to push Pakistan any more and we will not be able to contemplate any action. India must not fall into the trap of changing the narrative about terrorism in the country without adequate proof.
Vikram Sood is the former chief of Research and Analysis Wing
Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between Islamic State militants and Afghan forces as the extremist movement renewed efforts to seize parts of eastern Afghanistan.
Fighters pledging allegiance to the movement, also known as Daesh, attacked police checkpoints in the Kot area of Nangarhar province.
As many as 36 attackers were reported to have been killed in the assaults, with at least another dozen police and civilians also dead from the fighting.
The assault comes just three months after the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, said the militant movement had been wiped out in Afghanistan.
Afghan extremist fighters set up an offshoot of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) in 2014 and have since fought both the Government and Taliban to increase their influence.
Saleem Khan Kunduzi, Nangarhar province governor, said: “There is no doubt that Daesh do not respect anyone.
“They kill people, regardless of whether they’re a child or a woman. They burn down madrasas, mosques and schools.”
Sediq Ansari, the head of Afghanistan’s civil society federation, blamed local leaders for failing to tackle the threat from Islamic State.
He told the Reuters news agency: “They should be accountable for every drop of blood that has been shed in Nangarhar so it becomes a lesson to other officials.”
Isil is also a bitter foe of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which it accuses of lacking Islamic zeal. The US Air Force has begun launching air strikes on its positions in the country. So far this year, between 60 and 80 American air raids have targeted Isil in Afghanistan, including those by drones and strike aircraft.
Isil’s leadership is now believed to have left Nangarhar and moved northwards into the neighbouring Kunar province. That could be the next target if the group has the strength to expand.
The attack on Istanbul airport by suspected Islamic State terrorists is a classic example of unintended consequences, or what the CIA calls blowback.
But having turned a blind eye to the menace of Islamic State across its southern border for strategic reasons, Turkey can hardly be surprised at what is now occurring.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says it is highly likely Islamic State is responsible.
If so, it will be the third terror attack committed by the group in Turkey this year.
Add in the gathering violence committed by Kurdish separatists and it is clear that Turkey, once described as the most cosmopolitan country in the Islamic world, now faces a worsening crisis of religious and political violence.
The problem has been incubated by Ankara’s policies. Since the war began Turkey has used Syria’s innumerable opposition groups as a foil against the Assad regime, Turkey’s enemy and rival in the region.
Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has been increasingly supportive of Islamist movements across the region, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which in 2013 was overthrown in a military coup.
But as the Americans discovered when they funded the Mujaheddin against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, terror groups like Islamic State and al-Qa’ida are “cold monsters’’. They have their own agendas, which will never align with the secular, liberal and peaceful society most Turks aspire to create. They are not your allies.
As a NATO member, Turkey has been an ally in the coalition air campaign against Islamic State, but a deeply reluctant one. Late last year it finally began launching sorties against Islamic State targets inside Syria and northern Iraq after much international pressure and a suicide attack in the border town of Suruc, which killed 34.
Turkey has also been broadly supportive of Australia’s efforts to suppress Islamic State, catching, where it can, transiting Australian fighters and deepening its co-operation with our police and intelligences agencies.
But traditionally Ankara has shown more enthusiasm for bombing hostile Kurdish groups such as the PKK which have exploited the chaos in Syria and northern Iraq to establish a foothold on its border.
This has hindered the campaign against Islamic State as Kurdish fighting units are among the most effective troops in the Syrian-Iraq theatre.
Turkey has also allowed Islamist militants free reign at the border, both to smuggle foreign fighters into Syria and to move contraband, like oil, out of it. This has greatly contributed to Islamic State’s strength and wealth. But now, like spores to the wind, Islamic State’s attackers are spreading across the globe.
Yesterday’s attack was the third Islamic State assault in Turkey this year. It is unlikely to be the last.
Donald J. Trump said Sunday that a Muslim judge might have trouble remaining neutral in a lawsuit against him, extending his race-based criticism of the jurist overseeing the case to include religion and opening another path for Democrats who have criticized him sharply for his remarks.
The comments, in an interview with John Dickerson, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” come amid growing disapproval from fellow Republicans over his attacks on Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal judge in California overseeing a suit against the defunct Trump University, whose impartiality Mr. Trump questioned based on the judge’s Mexican heritage.
And they came as Republicans, concerned about how his remarks could harm their ability to retain control of the United States Senate and have a detrimental effect in races further down the ballot, continue to grapple with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s rhetoric without alienating his die-hard voters.
Mr. Trump has called Judge Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, a “Mexican” and said he has a “conflict of interest” in the case because of Mr. Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico. The case that Judge Curiel is overseeing is a class-action suit in which students of the for-profit operation say they were defrauded.
Mr. Dickerson asked Mr. Trump if, in his view, a Muslim judge would be similarly biased because of the Republican presumptive nominee’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants. “It’s possible, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah. That would be possible. Absolutely.”
When Mr. Dickerson noted that there is a tradition in the United States, a nation of immigrants, against judging people based on their heritage, Mr. Trump replied: “I’m not talking about tradition. I’m talking about common sense, O.K.?”
At a recent rally in San Diego, where the suit is being heard, Mr. Trump engaged in a minutes-long attack on Judge Curiel over the suit, which cuts at the heart of the candidate’s appeal to voters as a successful businessman.
With Mr. Dickerson and, in a separate interview, with Jake Tapper of CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Trump repeated not only the criticisms of Judge Curiel, but he intensified them.
“He is a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine,” Mr. Trump said. “But I say he’s got bias. I want to build a wall. I’m going to build a wall. I’m doing very well with the Latinos, with the Hispanics, with the Mexicans, I’m doing very well with them, in my opinion.”
The candidate’s broadside against Judge Curiel was one of the most overtly racial remarks he has made in the presidential race, and it has been roundly criticized by prominent Republicans. It also came after Mr. Trump delivered a stinging rebuke to Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, the head of the Republican Governors Association and a star within her party, after she declined to appear with him at an event in her state.
The remarks exacerbated the tension that Republicans face in embracing their nominee. White, older, working-class voters comprise a large chunk of the party’s base, and Republicans need to keep the presidential campaign close in order to hold their Senate majority. But Mr. Trump has offended wide swaths of voters to whom the party must appeal amid shifts in national demographics.
The result has left Republicans to mitigate the damage by rejecting Mr. Trump’s language in one moment, but embracing his candidacy the next. An example last week was Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who endorsed Mr. Trump with lukewarm praise after declining to back him when he became the presumptive nominee. A day later, Mr. Ryan was forced to respond to Mr. Trump’s condemnation of Judge Curiel’s impartiality; Mr. Ryan rejected Mr. Trump’s comments.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, did not directly answer a question about whether the remark was racist, but said he completely disagreed with it. “All of us came here from somewhere else,” Mr. McConnell said in reference to Judge Curiel’s heritage. “That’s an important part of what makes America work.”
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican who had been floated as a potential vice-presidential nominee alongside Mr. Trump, said on ABC News’ “This Week” of Mr. Trump’s behavior, “I think that he’s going to have to change.” And Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker who has been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters, called the remarks “inexcusable” on “Fox News Sunday.”
“This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made,” said Mr. Gingrich, who has also been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate.
But none of the three men rejected Mr. Trump’s candidacy outright. Mr. Gingrich praised Mr. Trump moments later as a quick learner. Mr. Corker suggested that Mr. Trump “has an opportunity to really change the trajectory of our country, and it’s my sense that he will take advantage of that.”
In the weeks since he vanquished his remaining two primary opponents, Mr. Trump has repeatedly turned the campaign’s focus inward — about his businesses, the Trump University lawsuit, his fights with other Republicans — and obscured hopes Republicans had of keeping a spotlight on Hillary Clinton and her email controversy or on a jobs report suggesting a slowing of the economy.
Mr. McConnell, who quickly endorsed Mr. Trump after he became the presumptive nominee in early May, has been vocal about his concern that the remarks about Hispanics will have historic implications, along the lines of those that Barry Goldwater had on the party’s ability to woo black voters after he declined to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Mr. McConnell argued that the alternative to Mr. Trump — a second Clinton presidency — was worse. But he also urged Mr. Trump to stop focusing on the recent past and look to the future.
“This is a good time, it seems to me, to begin to try to unify the party,” Mr. McConnell said. “And you unify the party by not settling scores and grudges against people you’ve been competing with. We’re all behind him now. And I’d like to see him reach out and pull us all together and give us a real shot at winning this November.”
Sadiq Khan asks to meet in the Lahore Kahari, his local curry house, in Tooting. I haven’t eaten all morning – don’t want to spoil my appetite. Khan walks in, shakes my hand tightly, sits down and starts talking 10 to the dozen. It’s only a couple of weeks since the election, and he says he’s in the final stage of grief: acceptance. But it’s still painful. “It’s quite upsetting … ” he exhales loudly. “Thoroughly depressing. I was inconsolable.” He apologises for the speed of his delivery. “Two things you know when you’re a Khan: speak fast or you’re not heard, and eat fast or you don’t eat.” I make a mental note to get in quick with the food.
Khan, 44, is one of eight siblings (seven of them boys) born to a bus driver father and housewife-seamstress mother. He grew up in this part of south London, and still lives around here, as does his mother (his father died in 2003) and the rest of his family. He points out of the window to the mosque across the road – his local. The Henry Prince council estate where he grew up is a bus-ride away in Wandsworth; the house his parents later bought is a short walk, and he now lives 10 minutes away with his lawyer wife Saadiya and their two daughters. As local MPs go, you don’t get much more local than Sadiq Khan.
Former shadow justice secretary discusses Labour’s ‘rose tinted glasses’ about Blair era, claiming some in the party are looking back too favourably on the past
It’s a fascinating geo-history, but my mouth is watering. “Do you fancy some food?” I say. He looks surprised. “Well, let’s see how we get on.” So we carry on talking, not so much as a poppadom and glass of water between us. I’m beginning to understand why we’re here. Khan, the consummate politician, never misses a photo opportunity – this is Sadiq in his manor.
He asks where I’m from. Manchester, I say. He grins. “Come down here, take our jobs, take our women, bloody immigrants!” Khan could have been created by screenwriter David Simon – say, the successor to Tommy Carcetti as mayor of Baltimore in The Wire. He is fast-walking and fast-talking, with steel behind the smile; a wheeler-dealer with an eye permanently on the prize. (And then the next one.)
As it happens, the MP for Tooting does now hope to be mayor – of London. First, he must see off fellow Labour hopefuls, then dispatch candidates from rival parties. Let’s just say he’s quietly confident; he already has the backing of Unite, the largest trade union, and the GMB.
Khan was one of Ed Miliband’s lieutenants, responsible for the general election campaign in London. “We did very well by the way,” he says. “We kept all 38 seats and won seven others.” So why did Labour get hammered? “There was a concern among those who aren’t poor about what we could do for them, I suspect.” Are the candidates for leadership of the Labour party strong enough? “Let’s wait and see,” he says non-committally. Look me in the eye, I say. He does, but still doesn’t answer with any more conviction. “It’s too early to tell. I’ve got no horse in the race.”
The one thing he won’t do is rubbish Miliband’s legacy. Too many of his colleagues are already doing that, he says, looking back on the Blair years “with rose-tinted glasses”.
“A word I think you’ll hear overused in the leadership contest is ‘aspiration’. It’s used in a pejorative way to suggest we didn’t understand what it meant. I understand what it means. It means your dad working all the overtime hours that London Transport will give you, aspiration means your mum, notwithstanding having eight children, works as a seamstress at home as well to make ends meet. Aspiration means, as a 24-year-old trainee solicitor, sleeping on a bunk bed in your mum and dad’s home to save for a deposit. So I get aspiration.” This is classic Khan – defending Labour while promoting his ability to lead London in the same breath.
During the election campaign, Khan warned Labour MPs who had already announced they were standing for mayor not to put personal ambition before the party. Within a week of Labour losing the election, he stood down as shadow justice minister and shadow minister for London, and announced his bid for the mayor. By his own logic, surely Labour need him in the shadow cabinet? “Yeah, it was a tough one.” Did his daughters, aged 15 and 13, think he should go for the leadership or mayor? “Mayor. Maybe children are smarter than you think, and they saw I’d have much more fun as mayor of London. I’d be able to do what I want to, whereas being leader of the opposition is a far tougher proposition.” It’s a surprising answer – not least because he insists he does not want to be a “red-carpet mayor like Boris”. In the end, he says, it goes back to what London has done for his family, and what he’d like to see it do for future generations.
He loves to tell the story of the bus driver’s son made good; the boy who learned to box to look after himself on a tough estate (two of his brothers became amateur champions), who went on to captain the school’s cricket team and had trials for Surrey, who became a human rights lawyer representing victims of police abuse, and who sacrificed a brilliant legal career to serve his people. It is an inspirational story. And like all good lawyers, he retains the ability to tell it his way, always the master of his own narrative.
Khan began his legal career working with eminent human rights lawyer Louise Christian as a trainee in 1994, when she was in partnership with Mike Fisher. They made Khan a partner in 1997. Five years later Fisher left and the company was renamed Christian Khan. But when Khan was selected as Labour candidate for Tooting in 2004 he quit without notice.
“I walked away from the business. I wasn’t paid out because I wanted to be a full-time politician. It’s never been about money for me, so Louise took over the firm and I became an MP.” It was a brave decision – Khan had no salary for six months while campaigning. But it is also a selective interpretation of events.
I later hear that Khan hired lawyers threatening Christian with legal action unless he was compensated for his share of the company – and that only after Christian suggested a counter-claim (because she and his clients had been left in the lurch by him) did he drop the matter. I ring Khan to ask if it is true. He says he doesn’t know about a counter-claim, but yes, he did threaten legal action. “I was concerned about my tax liability, but ended up taking that on the chin. And strictly speaking, I was entitled to half the firm, and my lawyer advised me to pursue everything I was entitled to. In the end, I decided not to because I wanted to get on with my political career.” Khan admits that he and Christian have not talked since he left the firm.
Christian had been his mentor, and hoped he would one day take over the practice. Does he regret the way things ended? “Yeaaaah,” he says, weighing his words carefully. “But you’ve got to move forward. In my next venture, where I’m mayor of London, I can’t be looking backwards to my 10 years as an MP. You’ve got to move forward.”
As chair of the human rights pressure group Liberty in the early noughties, Khan campaigned against imprisonment without trial, then in 2005 as a new MP voted against Labour’s proposal to hold terrorism suspects for 90 days without charge. “When I first got elected, everyone said, ‘Sadiq’s a rising star, he’s going to go all the way.’ But Blair wanted to pass 90 days, and you’ve got a choice: do you hold true to your beliefs and speak out against it? And I did. It was the first ever defeat Blair had.” Did it make an enemy of Blair? “Oh my God, yeah! There were some people who never forgave me. I was threatened.” How? “That ‘you’re finished as an MP, you’ve got no chance now’. Whips said that, other MPs said that.”
Yet, three years later Khan was the whip responsible for pushing 42-day detention without charge through the Commons. What would the Khan who chaired Liberty make of Khan the politician? “The thing you’ve got to remember is, it’s a different role you’re performing. As the chair of Liberty, your job is to to put pressure on governments of whatever colour, right?” Ultimately, he says, you’ll get nowhere as a politician unless you compromise. “You’ve got to think: do you want to be a megaphone politician or do you want to get things done? ”
Khan has always had a reputation in politics – as he did in law – for getting things done. Do you have to be ruthless to succeed? “Ruthless? No. Decency can get to the top in politics.”
There seems an element of ruthlessness in going from challenging detention without charge to championing it, I say. “No,” he protests, “it’s not about you. It’s about who you did it for. So, when I’m a lawyer, I’m doing it for my client – he or she is the most important person, not me. When I’m a member of parliament, constituents are the most important people. When I’m chair of Liberty, our members are the most important people. And when you’re mayor of London, London is the most important thing. So you’ll be ruthless for your clients, ruthless for your constituents, ruthless for London, without necessarily being ruthless as a person.” You sense that whatever job he does, Khan will always see himself as a lawyer – the eternal advocate.
David, the photographer, arrives. “Your job is to make me look really really good,” Khan tells him, running his hand through his hair. “Clooneyesque is the job spec.” He laughs. “Yes, Clooneyesque.” Is it true he likes to think of himself as “cool and metrosexual”? “This is interesting, you see. When I see my children’s friends’ parents, right, I look at myself and say to my girls, ‘Come on, you’ve got a cool dad, surely?’, but they say, ‘no Dad, you’re not cool.’ They say my taste in music is not cool.” What does he like? “Jay-Z, Paul Weller, Sting.” What else do his girls say about him? “They say I’m a smart Alec because I like to have the last word.”
David suggests, as we’re in the curry house, it would be nice to take pictures of him eating. This time, Khan is more keen. He speaks in Urdu to the manager, Rizwan, and asks him to order for us.
“How spicy do you like it?” Rizwan asks.
“Not very spicy,” Khan answers for me. “He lives in north London! The article will be as good or bad as the food – so make it good!”
I ask Khan why he would make the best mayor, and suddenly it feels like I’m interviewing him for the job. “I went to a good local state school, had an affordable university education, one of my brothers had an apprenticeship, council accommodation. Today’s Londoners don’t have the same opportunities we had, and it breaks my heart. But being disappointed about it is not enough. I want to do something about it. And I’ve got the experience – I ran a successful business before becoming a politician, lawyer for more than 10 years, big jobs in government, I understand what makes London tick, I’ve got ideas whether it’s housing or helping businesses or reducing inequality or the living wage.” He’s talking faster and faster. “Also, I want to get things done. I’m not doing it because it’s just a reward for long service or because I couldn’t hack it in politics or in law. It’s because I’ve genuinely got something to offer.”
David suggests a picture of Khan tucking into a poppadom. He looks appalled. “Don’t even try that. Listen, it’s got to be proper food. Not a poppadom. There’s an urdu word, gora, which means white. So you guys are gora. The joke would be, ‘that’s gora food’.”
But back to pitching for mayor. “First of all, we need a candidate who’s going to win. So, I’m the only candidate who’s fought and won a marginal seat. On every occasion my share of the vote has gone up. I was in charge of the 2014 London elections; not only did we keep all 15 councils we won another five. We had the best ever European election results in 2014.”
Dish after dish arrives – fish massala, chicken methi, seekh kebab, lamb karahi – the smell is overpowering, the taste heavenly. But Khan doesn’t seem interested. David asks if he could stop talking for a second. Khan smiles at the waiters. “Well, he can make me look Clooneyesque or make me look like Ed eating a bacon sandwich, so I’ve got to be nice to him.” And then back to me. “The reason we won the most seats in the European election was because we did well in inner London and outer London, so I get the science and the art of winning elections. I’m a winner. So if we want a candidate who will win the election in May, I think that’s me.”
Are you not going to eat, I ask. No time, he says – a mayoral candidate’s work is never done. His assistant tells him they had better be on their way. I’m staring at all the dishes in front of me; Khan wraps a kebab in a serviette and prepares to head off. I ask him if it’s true he does standup comedy. Only at Labour party functions, he says. “At my last gig, I met Windsor Davies from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. He said I was very funny. Arthur Smith says I’d be a very decent standup comic.” What’s his best joke?
“I went to hospital last week to meet the surgeons. I said: ‘What’s the easiest form of people to operate on? Surgeon One says: ‘The easiest form of people to operate on are accountants, because you slice them open and all their parts are numbered.’ Second surgeon goes: ‘No, actually you’re wrong, the easiest people to operate on are librarians because you cut them open and all their parts are in alphabetical order.’ Third surgeon goes: ‘No, you’re both wrong. The easiest people to operate on are politicians.’ I said: ‘Why?’ He goes: ‘Well, last week we had Jeremy Hunt in here and we sliced him open, and he was headless, heartless and gutless and his head and arse were interchangeable.’ Thank you. We’ve gotta go.”
Mansour vehicle (Credit: wsj.com)U.S. spy agencies zeroed in on Mullah Akhtar Mansour while he was visiting his family in Iran, laying a trap for when the Taliban leader crossed the border back into Pakistan.
While U.S. surveillance drones don’t operate in the area, intercepted communications and other types of intelligence allowed the spy agencies to track their target as he crossed the frontier on Saturday, got into a white Toyota Corolla and made his way by road through Pakistan’s Balochistan province, according to U.S. officials briefed on the operation.
Then, the U.S. military took over. Operators waited for the right moment to send armed drones across the Afghan border to “fix” on the car and made sure no other vehicles were in the way so they could “finish” the target, the officials said, using the argot of drone killing—all before Mullah Mansour could reach the crowded city of Quetta, where a strike would have been more complicated.
The ambush that killed Mullah Mansour marked a critical moment in Obama administration policy on Afghanistan, as it weighed a push for peace talks and a potential need for a military escalation. It also represented a message to Pakistan that the U.S. would take action on Pakistani soil if necessary without advance warning.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, warned on Tuesday that the strike would have “serious implications” for relations with the U.S. and described the incident as “completely against the U.N. Charter and international law.”
President Barack Obama secretly ordered the strike on Mullah Mansour after first trying to bring him to the negotiating table. Initially, there was hope in Washington that Mullah Mansour would be more open to negotiations than his predecessor, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Obama administration officials were divided over whether the Pakistanis were capable or willing to deliver Mullah Mansour for the negotiations.
U.S. officials said the Pakistanis tried and grew frustrated in February by Mullah Mansour’s refusal to send representatives to meet with the Afghan government.
Around the same time, people who maintain contacts with the Taliban began to report that Mullah Mansour had left Pakistan and was spending time in Iran.
U.S. intelligence agencies received information that allowed them to track Mullah Mansour’s movements, including details about devices he used for communications, U.S. officials said.
That allowed the spy agencies to present policy makers with a choice: If and when Mullah Mansour were located in Pakistan, should the U.S. strike?
Mullah Mansour’s travels made it easier to find him. In contrast, the Central Intelligence Agency spent years looking in vain for an opportunity to kill the reclusive cleric he replaced, Mullah Omar.
An April 19 Taliban attack in Kabul targeted Afghanistan’s secret service, killing more than 60 people and underlining for the Americans the extent to which Mullah Mansour had chosen a military course. A decision was made that he should “face the consequences” of his refusal to negotiate, a senior administration official said.
The U.S. knew the route Mullah Mansour took to Quetta because he had taken it several times. U.S. intelligence agencies detected his preparations to cross the border back into Pakistan last week.
“Such actionable intelligence is rare,” another senior administration official said. “Given the preponderance of what has happened over the last few months, most principals around the table were going to be hard pressed to say: ‘Don’t take the shot.’”
Both the U.S. military and the CIA operate drones in the region. Military drones in Afghanistan rarely stray across the border, and CIA drones generally only go into Pakistan for strikes in what are known as Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to U.S. officials. Pakistan facilitates the program by clearing the airspace there for CIA drones, while publicly opposing U.S. strikes in Pakistani territory, they said.
But Balochistan has long been off limits to the drones, U.S. and Pakistani officials say. So U.S. officials believe that Mullah Mansour and other Taliban leaders felt more comfortable there.
Route N-40, which Mullah Mansour and his driver used, cuts between Taftan on the Iranian border and Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, according to the U.S. officials.
The U.S. normally would want multiple drones to keep eyes on such an important target. Because CIA drones weren’t operating in the area, U.S. spy agencies relied on signals intelligence and other location information to track the Corolla’s journey, according to U.S. officials.
Armed drones based in Afghanistan and piloted by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command were preparing to move in for the kill, the officials said.
The U.S. knew Pakistani radar could detect the intrusion. Pakistan might then scramble jet fighters to intercept the drones, so timing was critical.
The military’s Reaper drones crossed the border into Pakistani airspace, flying low over the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to exploit gaps in radar coverage, the officials said.
Officers in the U.S. military command center overseeing the operation held off briefly because the vehicle pulled over near unidentified buildings, the officials said. It’s not clear why the stop was made.
They waited until the car got back on the road and away from other vehicles and buildings. Then they launched the strike, and two Hellfire missiles took out Mullah Mansour, the officials said.
The drones hovered overhead to ensure there were no survivors, then headed back to Afghanistan, the officials said.
The U.S. government agencies involved in the operation agreed in advance that the strike would be disclosed publicly by the Pentagon once completed. The agreement also called for officials to be vague about identifying the location of the strike, and the Pentagon was instructed to announce that the strike took place along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But U.S. officials soon disclosed the location inside Pakistan.
Pakistani officials said they weren’t notified by U.S. authorities until seven hours after the strike.
—Margherita Stancati, Saeed Shah, Gordon Lubold and Qasim Nauman contributed to this article.
WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – The United States conducted a drone strike on Saturday against the leader of Afghan Taliban, likely killing him on the Pakistan side of the remote border region with Afghanistan in a mission authorized by U.S. President Barack Obama, officials said.
The death of Mullah Akhtar Mansour, should it be confirmed, could further fracture the Taliban – an outcome that experts cautioned might make the insurgents even less likely to participate in long-stalled peace efforts.
The mission, which included multiple drones, demonstrated a clear willingness by Obama to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership in Pakistan now that the insurgents control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since being ousted by a U.S.-led intervention in 2001.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook confirmed an air strike targeting Mansour in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region but declined to speculate on his fate, although multiple U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters he likely was killed.
“We are still assessing the results of the strike and will provide more information as it becomes available,” Cook said.
A Taliban commander close to Mansour, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, denied Mansour was dead.
“We heard about these baseless reports but this not first time,” the commander said. “Just wanted to share with you my own information that Mullah Mansour has not been killed.”
In December, Mansour was reportedly wounded and possibly killed in a shootout at the house of another Taliban leader near Quetta in Pakistan.
Bruce Riedel, an Afghanistan expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank, described the U.S. operation in Pakistan as an unprecedented move but cautioned about possible fallout with Pakistan, where Taliban leadership has long been accused of having safe haven.
A State Department official said both Pakistan and Afghanistan were notified of the strike but did not disclose whether that notification was prior to it being carried out.
“The opportunity to conduct this operation to eliminate the threat that Mansour posed was a distinctive one and we acted on it,” the official said.
TROUBLED PEACE TALKS
The U.S. drones targeted Mansour and another combatant as the men rode in a vehicle in a remote area southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal, another U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. special operations forces operated the drones in a mission authorized by Obama that took place at about 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), the official said. That would have placed it at Saturday at 3 p.m. in Pakistan.
Cook branded Mansour “an obstacle to peace and reconciliation between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban” and said he was involved in planning attacks that threatened U.S., Afghan and allied forces.
Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said the strike was unlikely to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table any time soon.
“The Taliban won’t simply meekly agree to talks and especially as this strike could worsen the fragmentation within the organization,” he said.
Kugelman said the most important target for the United States remained the top leadership of the Haqqani network, which is allied with the Taliban.
Mansour had failed to win over rival factions within the Taliban after formally assuming the helm last year after the Taliban admitted the group’s founding leader, Mullah Omar, had been dead for more than two years.
It was unclear who Mansour’s successor might be.
“If Mansour is dead it will provoke a crisis inside the Taliban,” Riedel said.
U.S. Senator John McCain, the Republican head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he hoped the strike would herald a change in the Obama administration’s policy against more broadly targeting the Taliban.
The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan is currently reviewing U.S. strategy, including whether broader powers are needed to target insurgents and whether to proceed with plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces.
“Our troops are in Afghanistan today for the same reason they deployed there in 2001 – to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for global terrorists,” McCain said.
“The Taliban remains allied with these terrorists, including al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, and it is the one force most able and willing to turn Afghanistan into a terrorist safe haven once again.”
(Additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Afghanistan and Drazen Jorgic in Pakistan; Editing by Bill Trott and David Gregorio)
