Saudis openly bankroll Taliban

Fifteen years, half a trillion dollars and 150,000 lives since going to war, the United States is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight. A surging Taliban insurgency, meanwhile, is flush with a new inflow of money.
With their nation’s future at stake, Afghan leaders have renewed a plea to one power that may hold the key to whether their country can cling to democracy or succumbs to the Taliban. But that power is not the United States.

It is Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in the Afghan conflict: It is on both sides.
A longtime ally of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia has backed Islamabad’s promotion of the Taliban. Over the years, wealthy Saudi sheikhs and rich philanthropists have also stoked the war by privately financing the insurgents.

ISIS in Libya finally falls

Months after the fight over the Libyan city of Sirte was declared “almost over,” the Libyan unity government today finally managed to claim outright victory, as ISIS had held out in a handful of buildings near the coast for months, launching counter-attacks. Even then, the “victory” isn’t close to what it was initially advertised to be.
The ISIS forces finally abandoned those last buildings as US airstrikes began hitting them, and despite the unity government presenting ISIS as “trapped” in the neighborhood months ago, the ISIS fighters managed to flee to an unknown destination.

Echoes of Vietnam

The US military in Afghanistan is increasingly trying to control public information about the war, resulting in strained relations with western organisations offering different versions of events to official military accounts, the Guardian has learned.
In a recent incident, the most senior US commander in Afghanistan, Gen John W Nicholson, considered banning or restricting the UN’s access to a military base in Kabul, according to informed sources in both organisations.
The dispute followed a UN report in late September claiming that a US drone had killed 15 civilians. Washington insists it only killed members of Islamic State.

this is depressing

The poll, conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), found that 46% of Americans believe it acceptable to torture enemy combatants, with just 30% opposed to the practice and another 24% unsure or unwilling to answer.
Only Nigeria and Israel record higher rates of support for torturing captured enemy fighters, with 70% and 50% endorsements, respectively...
As Donald Trump, who has endorsed torture enthusiastically, prepares to take the White House, some 33% of Americans consider torture “a part of war”, with another 13% unsure or unwilling to answer...
Only 59% oppose attacking a target with the knowledge that civilians will be killed, down from 68% in 1999, the ICRC found.

Pentagon waste

The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.
Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.
The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology...
Among other options, the savings could have paid a large portion of the bill to rebuild the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal, or the operating expenses for 50 Army brigades.
But some Pentagon leaders said they fretted that by spotlighting so much waste, the study would undermine their repeated public assertions that years of budget austerity had left the armed forces starved of funds. Instead of providing more money, they said, they worried Congress and the White House might decide to cut deeper.

Battle for Aleppo is almost over

Syrian government forces and allied militias captured Aleppo's centrally located al-Shaar neighborhood from rebels on Tuesday, securing nearly three quarters of the besieged enclave less than two weeks after launching a ground offensive, according to the Syrian military.
The Syrian government and its ally Russia meanwhile rejected a cease-fire for the war-torn city, keeping up the military offensive amid rebel retreats and massive displacement.

Mosul offensive crawls

The startling progress of the first few weeks of the campaign to take Iraq’s second city, the terror group’s last urban stronghold in Iraq, has given way to a numbing reality: Isis will not surrender Mosul, and Iraq’s battered military will struggle to take it.
Since Iraqi forces entered Gogali, a light industrial neighbourhood, in mid-November, the advance has slowed. “When we started, we were talking weeks,” said Hussein. “Now, we hope it will be by early in the new year. But these guys are not cowards. They kill as easy as they breathe.”..
Iraqi troops stationed in Gogali and the roads leading to it insist they will win the war, no matter how long it takes. Some however concede that they could still be fighting in Mosul’s tunnels and alleyways as late as next summer.

another humanitarian crisis

As Iraqi security forces wage a grinding house-to-house battle to push the Islamic State out of Mosul, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is rushing to prepare for a potential mass exodus of up to 700,000 mainly Sunni civilians.
But winter is closing in, funds are short, and the head of the UNHCR mission is worried that the international community and the Iraqi government could be overwhelmed by events, possibly setting the stage for renewed sectarian tension.

India: Considering that this is all self-inflicted, this is amazing.
Nearly complete wipe-out of the poor

Small producers, lacking capital to stay afloat, are already shutting down. India’s huge number of daily wage workers can’t find employers with the cash to pay them. Local industries have suspended work for lack of money. The informal financial sector – which conducts 40% of India’s total lending, largely in rural areas – has all but collapsed.
India’s fishing industry, which depends on cash sales of freshly caught fish, is wrecked. Traders are losing perishable stocks. Farmers have been unloading produce below cost, because no one has the money to purchase it, and the winter crop could not be sown in time, because no one had cash for seeds...
But the sacrifice extends far beyond queues. Hospitals are turning away patients who have only old banknotes; families cannot buy food; and middle-class workers are unable to buy needed medicine. As many as 82 people have reportedly died in cash queues or related events. Furthermore, it seems likely that many of the short-term effects of the demonetization could persist – and intensify – in the longer term, with closed businesses unable to reopen. It could also cause lasting damage to India’s financial institutions, especially the Reserve Bank of India, whose reputation has already suffered.

some examples

He framed the policy in terms of a national spirit of sacrifice. Coming soon after Diwali, Hinduism's most important festival, the process of demonetisation was described as a new "festival of honesty".
"For a few days," Modi said, "we can all bear some inconvenience."...
Mohammed Iqbal, 30, who runs a mobile accessories shop in Bangalore's City Market, said his revenue had shrunk by as much as 80 percent.
"I used to make 4,000-4,500 [rupees] a day," he said. "Since the note ban, I'm struggling to make even 700."
As his sales sank, Iqbal found himself unable to pay wholesalers. Two weekends ago, short of supplies and dogged by a lack of customers, Iqbal shut his shop for two days, queuing for hours outside his bank and neighbourhood cash machine in an attempt to restore some liquidity to his business....
India's Supreme Court two weeks ago expressed concern and warned of riots if the situation didn't improve.
K Nataraju, 56, a fruit vendor in KR Market in Bangalore, used to make 500 rupees a day selling watermelons, oranges and sweet lime. After Modi's announcement, his sales have fallen to an average of 100 rupees ($1.45) a day. Like the overwhelming majority of poor Indians, Nataraju has no bank account.

even famine is possible

Rajesh Kushwaha, 40, and thousands of others are yet to get a day’s work in Delhi since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8. Kushwaha, who sleeps on a footpath outside a building material shop in Paharganj’s Chuna Mandi, is worried about fast exhaustion of paltry savings that his family is holding on to in Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh.
Kushwaha fears he might have to borrow from a moneylender if the condition persists for a few more days. “It has always been a hand-to-mouth situation for us. We are in a precarious position with people postponing construction and renovation activities in the absence of cash,” said Kushwaha, who could have earned at least Rs 3,500 from 10 days’ work.
“I and many others are skipping one meal a day to survive till employment returns,” said Kushwaha, for whom even buying a detergent soap to wash clothes is a luxury now.

real estate just stopped

Prateek Patel, the cousin of the developer, complained that he hasn’t sold an apartment since early November, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shocked the country by announcing an unprecedented currency overhaul.
Much of the country’s real-estate transactions, particularly land and home sales, have been conducted on a largely cash basis to avoid taxes. With many buyers now on the sidelines, sales have evaporated and huge price discounts are expected when the market gets its bearings back.