The Jim Bakker Show

‘Digital Geneva Convention’ needed to deter nation-state hacking: Microsoft president

By Dustin Volz

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Microsoft President Brad Smith on Tuesday pressed the world’s governments to form an international body to protect civilians from state-sponsored hacking, saying recent high-profile attacks showed a need for global norms to police government activity in cyberspace.

Countries need to develop and abide by global rules for cyber attacks similar to those established for armed conflict at the 1949 Geneva Convention that followed World War Two, Smith said. Technology companies, he added, need to preserve trust and stability online by pledging neutrality in cyber conflict.

“We need a Digital Geneva Convention that will commit governments to implement the norms needed to protect civilians on the internet in times of peace,” Smith said in a blog post.

Smith outlined his proposal during keynote remarks at this week’s RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, following a 2016 U.S. presidential election marred by the hacking and disclosure of Democratic Party emails that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded were carried out by Russia in order to help Republican Donald Trump win.

Cyber attacks have increasingly been used in recent years by governments to achieve foreign policy or national security objectives, sometimes in direct support of traditional battlefield operations. Despite a rise in attacks on governments, infrastructure and political institutions, few international agreements currently exist governing acceptable use of nation-state cyber attacks.

The United States and China signed a bilateral pledge in 2015 to refrain from hacking companies in order to steal intellectual property. A similar deal was forged months later among the Group of 20 nations.

Smith said President Donald Trump has an opportunity to build on those agreements by sitting down with Russian President Vladimir Putin to “hammer out a future agreement to ban the nation-state hacking of all the civilian aspects of our economic and political infrastructures.”

A Digital Geneva Convention would benefit from the creation of an independent organization to investigate and publicly disclose evidence that attributes nation-state attacks to specific countries, Smith said in his blog post.

Smith likened such an organization, which would include technical experts from governments and the private sector, to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a watchdog based at the United Nations that works to deter the use of nuclear weapons.

Smith also said the technology sector needed to work collectively and neutrally to protect internet users around the world from cyber attacks, including a pledge not to aid governments in offensive activity and the adoption of a coordinated disclosure process for software and hardware vulnerabilities.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Dan Grebler)

After Islamic State defeat, broken Iraq farmers weigh heavy losses

Workers repair a house after it was damaged during clashes in the town of Basheeqa, Iraq, February 8, 2017.

By Michael Georgy and Maha El Dahan

QARAQOSH, Iraq/ABU DHABI (Reuters) – Sami Yuhanna was making a decent living as a wheat farmer until a jihadist put a gun to his head and declared his land in Iraq’s Nineveh province the property of Islamic State.

An army offensive has cleared the militants from the eastern half of the provincial capital, Mosul, and nearby towns and villages like Qaraqosh, home to Yuhanna’s fields.

But the terror and mismanagement that characterized their two-year rule after seizing Iraq’s agriculture heartland has devastated farmers and exacerbated the country’s food security problem.

Yuhanna, who used to sell about 100 tonnes of wheat per year, now lives in a small trailer and drives a taxi in the Kurdish capital of Erbil to barely survive. He is still haunted by the day armed militants arrived.

“They just took over everything I owned,” he said.

Farmers fear the agriculture sector could take years to recover, with tractors missing, unexploded mines in the fields and farm compounds damaged by airstrikes on the militants, who sold commodities like wheat to finance their operations.

Nineveh was Iraq’s most productive farming region before the arrival of Islamic State, producing around 1.5 million tonnes of wheat a year, or about 21 percent of Iraq’s total wheat output, and 32 percent of barley.

An estimated 70 percent of farmers fled when Islamic State took over, and those who stayed — either to join the movement or out of fear — faced heavy taxation.

As a Christian, Yuhanna was particularly vulnerable to the Sunni extremists, who tried to build a self-sustaining caliphate and killed anyone opposed to their radical ideas.

“The people that turned on me we were all from this area. I knew every one of them. They joined Daesh,” said Yuhanna, using an acronym for the group.

Reuters was not able to obtain official figures for agricultural output during Islamic State rule because the government had no access to areas under jihadist control.

Haider al-Abbadi, head of the General Union of Farmers Cooperatives, told Reuters in a telephone interview that he estimated output fell to around 300,000 tonnes, based on accounts of how much of the grain farmers had sold.

“Islamic State used to surround farmers in general and prevent them from going out into the fields and farming their land because they were scared they would escape or that they would go and join the government forces,” Abbadi said.

“This season it will be difficult to see an improvement. The only hope is that the farmers might be able to market their produce to the government again. I don’t expect the wheat crop to be more than 500,000 tonnes this season.”

Fadel El Zubi, Iraq Representative for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), agreed the outlook is dire.

“It is extremely important to support farmers as their situation in newly retaken areas is characterized by extreme difficulties that is disabling them to start planting for this season 2016-2017,” Zubi said in written answers to Reuters.

“Seeds, fertilizers, fuel, electricity, sustainable agricultural equipment, as well as irrigation channels and wells and other essential supplies, are not available to enable farmers to restore their usual farming.”

The militants seized 1.1 million tonnes of wheat that was in government silos, according to Zubi. In addition, about 40 percent of agricultural machinery was sold as parts or smuggled into neighboring countries to raise money for militant activities, Abbadi said.

FOOD SECURITY

Ensuring food security has consistently been one of the central government’s biggest — and most pressing — challenges.

Even late dictator Saddam Hussein was cautious when it came to food. A rationing program for flour, cooking oil, rice, sugar and baby milk formula, the Public Distribution System (PDS), was created in 1991 to combat UN-imposed economic sanctions.

Impoverished Iraqis continue to depend on the system, which has become corrupt and wasteful over the years as well as severely curtailed in conflict zones.

The FAO estimates there are around 2.4 million people in Iraq who do not have access to nutritious food that meets their dietary needs.

Islamic State set itself apart from militant groups like Al Qaeda by holding territory and attempting to create an administration that could deliver basic services in order to win public support. But the group failed in areas such as farming.

For one thing, the militants did not match government prices, farmers said. While the state used to pay double the market price for commodities such as wheat, for example, Islamic State paid below the global average.

“They were paying farmers around $200 a ton while the government used to pay up to $600 a ton,” Zubi said.

Ghanem Hussein used to work 100 donhums (250,000 square meters) of wheat and barley crops below mountain ranges. When the jihadists showed up, his planting shrunk to 10 donhums because he didn’t fully cooperate with them.

“They did not buy anything from us. I just grew enough to feed my animals. Total destruction,” said Hussein, throwing seeds by hand on a small plot of land around his house in the village of Omar Khabshi.

He now fears for the safety of his children because dogs that ate corpses left on roadsides by fighting are biting people in his village.

NO HOPE

Islamic State’s failure to meet the basic needs of Iraqis would likely undermine any bid to make a comeback in the country as it tries to recover from losses in Syria and Libya, farmers said.

But the government is not offering much hope either, they said, with most of its resources directed at driving the militants out of Mosul.

Farmer Abdel Hakim Ali, 45, used to sell 50-100 tonnes of wheat and barley annually to state-run silos before Islamic State arrived. He and other farmers have contacted the government to see if the old arrangements could be revived.

Parts of a bulldozer are seen at a farm in the town of Basheeqa, Iraq, February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

“They said to wait because the budget is weak,” said Ali. “The state is failing. This is our government. They said wait for God’s mercy.”

This is a familiar story to farmers. When Islamic State took over Mosul in June 2014, farmers in the region had still not received government payments for the wheat they had sold that year.

Kadhum al-Bahadli, the government’s advisor on agricultural affairs, said efforts were underway to pay and compensate farmers and offer loans for seeds despite low oil prices and deteriorating state finances.

“The government has already put plans to compensate Mosul farmers for the wheat delivered to silos before the occupation of Daesh. They should be patient as the process is complicated and needs more time.”

Aref Hassan, head of a farmers association in Basheeqa with 1,100 members, showed Reuters photographs of a town once surrounded by green fields that was reduced to rubble in the effort to dislodge jihadists.

Only a few families have returned.

Hassan walked through an olive grove, despairing at the sight of one tree after another burned by militants in an apparent bid to create smoke to evade airstrikes.

Reviving the grove could take a decade, he said. For now, there are more pressing concerns.

“There are still mines and improvised explosive devices on a lot of land so farmers can’t work,” he said.

“We hope that international organizations and demining organizations will clean up the farming areas. The farmer cannot go back to his land until these farms are cleared.”

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Kenyan court says closing Dadaab refugee camp would be unconstitutional

makeshift shelters in Kenyan refugee camp

By Humphrey Malalo

NAIROBI, Feb 9 (Reuters) – A Kenyan court said on Thursday it would be unconstitutional for the government to close a sprawling refugee camp housing mostly people who have fled unrest in neighbouring Somalia.

Nairobi has vowed to shut Dadaab, once seen as the world’s largest refugee camp, because it says the complex has been used by Islamist militants from Somalia as a recruiting ground to launch a string of attacks on Kenyan soil.

But rights groups argued it would hurt Somalis fleeing violence and poverty and accused Kenya of forcibly sending people back to a war zone. The government has dismissed that allegation.

“The government’s decision specifically targeting Somali refugees is an act of group persecution, illegal, discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional,” High Court judge John Mativo said in a ruling.

At its peak, as Somalis fled conflict and famine in 2011, Dadaab’s population swelled to about 580,000, earning it a reputation at the time as the world’s largest refugee camp.

Early last year, U.N. officials said the number had fallen to 350,000, while a Kenyan official later in the year put it at 250,000.

The government originally wanted to shut down Dadaab last November, but delayed the closure after international pressure to give residents more time to find new homes.

The court’s action was welcomed by rights groups.

“The High Court sent a strong message that at least one of Kenya’s branches of government is still willing to uphold refugee rights,” said Laetitia Bader, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“After months of anxiety because of the camp closure deadline hanging over their heads, increasingly restricted asylum options and the recent US administration suspension of refugee resettlement, the court’s judgement offers Somali refugees a hope that they may still be have a choice other than returning to insecure and drought-ridden Somalia.”

The government has 30 days to appeal, Mativo said. There was no immediate comment from the interior ministry.

The government spokesman was due to hold a news conference later on Thursday to address the ruling.

Somalia’s Western-backed government is battling an Islamist insurgency as it oversees a fragile reconstruction effort after decades of conflict. Swathes of the country do not have basic services.

(Reporting by Humphrey Malalo; Editing by Clement Uwiringiyimana and Tom Heneghan)

Freed from jihadists, Mosul residents focus fury on Iraqi politicians

By Michael Georgy

MOSUL (Reuters) – As raw sewage gushed out of a crater made by an airstrike against Islamic State in Mosul, seething residents who sold their clothes to survive had a sobering message for Iraqi politicians boasting of military advances against the group.

“If life does not improve, we will not accept this and there will be a revolt against the government,” said Ihsan Abdullah. “If things don’t change Islamic State will just come back. Mosul residents will support whoever can help them.”

A former traffic policeman, he said he had not worked since Islamic State swept into the city in 2014, leaving him no choice but to sell his clothes for food.

When government forces arrived, he asked for his job back, but he was told he would first need to go to Baghdad to get clearance proving he was not a member of Islamic State. That would take too long, he said.

Iraqi forces have driven the militants out of east Mosul, and are poised to expand their major offensive into the western half of the biggest city in northern Iraq. That has brought relief after more that two years of Islamic State’s harsh rule.

But residents are turning their fury towards the Iraqi government, blaming it not only for current hardships such as a lack of basic services, but for the conditions that enabled Islamic State to take over Mosul in the first place.

Many bitterly recalled the ease with which about 800 Islamic State militants seized control in a few hours, as thousands of Iraqi soldiers fled.

“All of this is because of the politicians. They sold out Mosul and created sectarian problems. It was in their interest to divide the country,” said coffee shop owner Akram Waadallah.

A group of men around him supported that view, standing beside shops destroyed by Islamic State’s rule and the firepower needed to dislodge the jihadists.

One man stepped forward and echoed a common complaint. “There is no running water. What are we supposed to do drink out of a dirty well?”

WINNING BACK TRUST

Iraqi leaders say they are determined to eradicate Islamic State, stabilize the country and create jobs for citizens.

Mosul, once a thriving trade hub and center for higher learning, is especially sensitive to sectarian tensions.

Sunnis, the majority in the city but a minority in Iraq, were all-powerful under Saddam Hussein. Many Sunni army officers hailed from Mosul, and many in the city were resentful after Saddam was toppled in a U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and Shi’ites came to dominate the government in Baghdad.

When the Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State swept into Mosul in 2014, they were welcomed by many fellow Sunnis who had accused the Shi’ite-dominated security forces of abuse.

Islamic State’s brutal rule and intolerance eventually alienated the public, but driving the fighters out is only the first step for the authorities trying to win back trust.

The battle for Mosul could make or break Iraq. If sectarian tensions persist, Iraqi officials say, the country will fail to unite and could even be partitioned based on sect.

For now, Mosul residents are focusing on their immediate needs, finding jobs and persuading authorities to provide basic services like water and electricity.

Former Iraqi soldier Azhar Mohamed was relieved when Islamic State was driven out of Mosul. When they were running Mosul, he often moved from house to house, rarely spending more than a night in one place to avoid capture.

But hardships persist. He too can’t seem to persuade authorities to give him his job back, so he can start to rebuild in a city with rows and rows of demolished buildings, shuttered shops and deep suspicions of the Baghdad government.

“I just want my job,” said Mohamed.

(Editing by Peter Graff)

Legal battles to test Trump and his immigration ban

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s temporary immigration ban faced on Monday the first of several crucial legal hurdles that could determine whether he can push through the most controversial and far reaching policy of his first two weeks in office.

The government has a deadline to justify the executive order temporarily barring entry of people from seven mostly Muslim countries and the entry of refugees after a federal judge in Seattle blocked it with a temporary restraining order on Friday.

The uncertainty caused by a judge’s stay of the ban has opened a window for travelers from the seven affected countries to enter the United States.

Trump has reacted with attacks on the federal judge and then the wider court system which he blames for hampering his efforts to restrict immigration, a central promise of the Republican’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Democrats, meanwhile, sought to use Trump’s attacks on the judiciary to raise questions about the independence of his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco over the weekend denied the Trump administration’s request for an immediate stay of the federal judge’s temporary restraining order that blocked nationwide the implementation of key parts of the travel ban.

But the court said it would consider the government’s request after receiving more information.

The government has until 3 p.m. PST (2300 GMT) on Monday to submit additional legal briefs to the appeals court justifying Trump’s executive order. Following that the court is expected to act quickly, and a decision either way may ultimately result in the case reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

Top technology giants, including Apple, Google and Microsoft banded together with nearly 100 companies on Sunday to file a legal brief opposing Trump’s immigration ban, arguing that it “inflicts significant harm on American business.”

Noting that “immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list,” the brief said Trump’s order “represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years.”

The controversial executive order also “inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result,” the brief added.

Trump, who during his campaign called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, has repeatedly vowed to reinstate the Jan. 27 travel ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day bar on all refugees in the name of protecting the United States from Islamist militants.

His critics have said the measures are discriminatory, unhelpful and legally dubious.

Ten former U.S. national security and foreign policy officials, who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, filed overnight a declaration in the court case against the executive order arguing the ban serves no national security purposes.

The declaration was signed by former secretaries of state including John Kerry, Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice and former CIA Directors Michael Hayden and Michael Morell.

Bob Ferguson, the Washington State attorney general who filed the Seattle lawsuit, said he was confident of victory.

“We have a checks and balance system in our country, and the president does not have totally unfettered discretion to make executive orders as he chooses,” he told NBC News’ “Today” show. “In the courtroom, it’s not the loudest voice that prevails… it’s the Constitution.”

On Sunday, Trump broadened his Twitter attacks on U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, who issued the temporary stay on Friday, to include the “court system.” Trump a day earlier derided Robart, who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, as a “so-called judge.”

“Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “If something happens blame him and court system.”

Trump did not elaborate on what threats the country potentially faced.

It is unusual for a sitting president to attack a member of the judiciary. Vice President Mike Pence defended Trump, even as other Republicans urged the businessman-turned-politician to avoid firing such fusillades against the co-equal judicial branch of government, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check on the power of the presidency and Congress.

Democrats, still smarting from Republicans’ refusal last year to allow the Senate to consider former Democratic President Barack Obama’s nomination of appeals court Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, have seized on Trump’s attacks to question his nomination last week of Gorsuch.

“With each action testing the Constitution, and each personal attack on a judge, President Trump raises the bar even higher for Judge Gorsuch’s nomination to serve on the Supreme Court,” Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said in a statement. “His ability to be an independent check will be front and center throughout the confirmation process.”

Republicans hope to swiftly confirm Gorsuch, a 49-year-old conservative appeals court judge tapped by Trump to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia nearly a year ago.

(Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chizu Nomiyama)

Beset by economic, political woes, Nigerians protest for change

By Angela Ukomadu

LAGOS (Reuters) – Hundreds of Nigerians called for a change of government on Monday as they marched through the streets of Lagos, reflecting mounting public anger over a sputtering economy and political tensions blamed on an absentee president.

In a rare show of public dissent against the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, more than 500 demonstrators halted traffic in the commercial capital, flanked by a heavy police escort as a truck blasted out protest songs.

Buhari has been in Britain since mid-January for treatment for an unspecified medical condition and, with no indication of when he might return, many Nigerians suspect his health is worse than officials admit.

The country is also mired in its first recession in 25 years and high inflation is driving up prices of basic goods.

“Unemployed people are hungry and angry,” read one Lagos demonstrator’s sign, against a backbeat of anthems by Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti, a fearless critic of Nigeria’s often brutal and corrupt military rule until his death in 1997.

“Government of the rich, for the rich, making rules for the poor,” chanted other protesters.

Buhari, whose age is officially given as 74, took office in 2015 on pledges to diversify the economy away from oil, fight corruption and end an Islamic insurgency by Boko Haram that broke out in the northeast in 2009.

But critics say he has made little progress, with Nigeria still heavily dependent on crude exports whose price has halved since 2014.

The still active insurgency has killed more than 15,000 people and led to a humanitarian crisis has left 1.8 million Nigerians at risk of starvation and turned millions more into refugees.

With Buhari’s hold on power looking increasingly uncertain, some fear a rerun of the unstable three-month transition triggered when President Yar’Adua fell ill before dying, after which his vice president Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in in 2010.

Like Yar’Adua, Buhari is a Muslim from the north, and like Jonathan, the current president’s deputy Yemi Osinbajo is a southern Christian.

Traditionally the two religious groups have taken turns to hold the presidency, but that accord was unbalanced by the death of Yar’Adua before his first four-year term ended. Olusegun Obasanjo, his Christian predecessor, held office for the maximum eight years, while Jonathan was in power for five.

Ethnically-charged violence has swept Nigeria’s heartland, where hundreds have died in clashes between Muslim herders and mainly Christian farmers, and militants continue to operate in the oil-rich Delta region in the southeast.

(Corrects paragraph 10 to show transition was during Yar’Adua’s illness)

(Reporting by Angela Ukomadu, Seun Sanni and Nneka Chile in Lagos; Additional reporting by Abraham Terngu and Afolabi Sotunde in Abuja; Writing by Paul Carsten; editing by John Stonestreet)

U.S. moves to resume admitting refugees, including Syrians

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department on Saturday moved to begin admitting refugees, including Syrians, as soon as Monday after a federal judge on Friday blocked a Trump administration temporary ban on refugee admissions.An email from the State Department’s refugee office reviewed by Reuters Saturday said the U.S. government is working with its legal team and interagency and overseas partners to comply with the ruling.

Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order had suspended refugee admissions for 120 days and indefinitely barred Syrian refugees but U.S. Judge James Robart in Seattle on Friday blocked the president’s order.

A U.S. State Department official told Reuters on Saturday that officials “expect some refugees to arrive Monday.”

The U.S. instructed the International Organization for Migration “to rebook refugees of all nationalities, including Syrians, who were” to schedule to arrive since the Trump’s order was signed, the email said.

“We are focusing on booking refugee travel through February 17. We are asking that arrivals resume this Monday, the first normal travel day of the week, if possible. We are aware that some refugees may not be ready to depart on short notice,” the email said.

A United Nations spokesman, Leonard Doyle, told the New York Times about 2,000 refugees were ready to travel.

Refugees do not usually enter on weekends, a U.S. official said, as the department hews to a strict set of rules on how their admissions are processed.

Other travelers from seven Muslim majority countries affected by President Donald Trump’s week-old curb on immigration can rework their flights after the judge’s order, as long as they have valid visas.

Refugees fleeing war, hunger and persecution have less autonomy. Advocates working on their behalf urged the government to move quickly on admitting them.

International Refugee Assistance Project Director Becca Heller called for “the instant resumption of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to immediately take the most vulnerable refugees out of harm’s way.”

During the week of the ban, the government admitted 843 refugees – but no Syrian refugees, government figures show. Officials previously told Reuters that they were “in transit” and had already been cleared for resettlement before the ban took effect.

For refugee families, they are trying to keep expectations in check and hope they do not end up back where they started.

Ayham Oubeid, a Syrian living in Cleveland, has been waiting for over a year for his brother George’s family to come to the United States as refugees. His brother, who has health issues, is living in Dubai on a work visa that covers him, his six-year-old daughter and five-months pregnant wife.

George left his job and moved the family out of their apartment when he was told they would be resettled in the United States on Feb. 13. But the family’s plane tickets were canceled when Trump announced the temporary ban. Without George’s job, the family could lose the work visa and be sent back to Syria in the midst of its deadly civil war.

Upon hearing of the judge’s ruling from Friday, Oubeid called George. He was careful not to be too hopeful, knowing the judge’s order could be overturned.

“I don’t want to get excited. I don’t want my brother to get excited. Because it was hard for him when he lost everything and was told he couldn’t come,” Oubeid said.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards and David Shepardson in Washington, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Mary Milliken, Dan Grebler and Diane Craft)

Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of country: watchdog

Afghan National Army soldier stands guard

By Josh Smith

KABUL (Reuters) – The Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of the country, a U.S. watchdog agency reported on Wednesday, after security forces retreated from many strongholds last year.

Afghan soldiers and police, with the aid of thousands of foreign military advisers, are struggling to hold off a resurgent insurgency led by the Taliban, as well as other groups like Islamic State.

As of November, the government could only claim to control or influence 57 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, according to U.S. military estimates released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in a quarterly report to the U.S. Congress.

That represents a 15 percent decrease in territory held compared with the same time in 2015, the agency said in a report.

“SIGAR’s analysis of the most recent data provided by U.S. forces in Afghanistan suggests that the security situation in Afghanistan has not improved this quarter,” it said.

“The numbers of the Afghan security forces are decreasing, while both casualties and the number of districts under insurgent control or influence are increasing.”

More than 10 percent of districts are under insurgent control or influence, while 33 percent are contested, according to the report.

Some of the most contested provinces include Uruzgan, with five of six districts under insurgent control or influence, and Helmand, with eight of its 14 districts under insurgent control or influence.

U.S. military officials say much of the loss of territory reflects a change in strategy, with Afghan forces abandoning many checkpoints and bases in order to consolidate and focus on the most threatened areas.

Insurgents tried at least eight times to capture provincial capitals, although each assault was eventually beaten off.

According to U.S. military estimates, the number of Afghans living under insurgent control or influence decreased slightly in recent months to about 2.5 million people.

But nearly a third of the country, or 9.2 million people, live in areas that are contested, according to SIGAR, leading to some of the highest civilian casualty rates the United Nations has ever recorded in Afghanistan.

Afghan security forces also sustained heavy casualties, with at least 6,785 soldiers and police killed in the first 10 months of last year, with 11,777 wounded, SIGAR reported.

Casualty figures are rarely released by the Afghan government, while difficulties in confirming and tracking troop numbers make any figures subject to wide variation.

SIGAR reported some progress in combating corruption, which has plagued both Afghan military and political institutions.

(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Turkey dismissed more than 90,000 public servants in post-coup purge: minister

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities have dismissed more than 90,000 public servants for alleged connections to a coup attempt in July as part of a purge critics say has broadened to target any political opposition to President Tayyip Erdogan.

Speaking to reporters at a roundtable interview broadcast on television, Labour Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu said 125,485 people from the public service had been put through legal proceedings after the coup attempt, and that 94,867 of those had been dismissed so far.

Turkey has been rooting out followers of the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom it accuses of having infiltrated state institutions and plotted to overthrow the government. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied the charge and condemned the coup.

Some 40,000 people from the police, the military, the judiciary, the civil service or the education system, have been remanded in custody pending trial for alleged connections with the coup attempt, during which at least 240 people were killed.

Emergency rule declared after the failed coup attempt enables the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms when deemed necessary.

Rights groups and some of Turkey’s Western allies fear that President Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to stifle dissent, from state institutions to political parties.

NATO member Turkey has been hit by a spate bombings and shootings in the past year, claimed by Kurdish and Islamic State militants, on top of July’s failed coup, in which soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets in a bid to seize power.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Ece Toksabay and Ralph Boulton)

U.S., South Korea to defend against ‘evolving’ North Korean threat

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and his South Korean counterpart agreed during a phone call on Monday to strengthen their defense against “the evolving North Korean threat,” the Pentagon said, amid reports the North may be preparing a new missile test.

Mattis, who is to visit South Korea on Thursday, reaffirmed to South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo the U.S. commitment to defend the country and “provide extended deterrence using the full range of U.S. capabilities,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said in a statement the two sides had agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea as planned to defend against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic capabilities.

China has objected to THAAD, saying it will destabilize the regional security balance, leading to calls from some South Korean opposition leaders to delay or cancel it.

Mattis’s visit to the region comes amid reports that the North may be readying to test a new ballistic missile in what could be an early challenge for of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

The North also appears to have restarted operation of a reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear facility that produces plutonium that can be used for its nuclear weapons program, according to a U.S. think tank.

North Korea has carried out a series of nuclear and missile tests in defiance of U.N sanctions. It conducted its fifth nuclear test in September. North and South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

Mattis also met Jordan’s King Abdullah at the Pentagon and expressed his deep appreciation for Jordan’s contributions to the fight against Islamic State, the Pentagon statement said.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Ju-min Park in Seoul; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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