Tag Archives: Civil Unrest

US

Trump’s Final Days Draw Scrutiny as Handling of Documents Investigated

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WASHINGTON—In the final weeks of the Trump administration, the West Wing started to empty out. White House trade adviser

Peter Navarro

was spotted carting away a framed photograph of the U.S. and Chinese presidents facing off. The chief of staff’s wife was seen packing a stuffed bird into her car.

President

Donald Trump

remained preoccupied with overturning his November 2020 election loss. He spent his last days meeting with lawyers, plotting how to settle scores with Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and negotiating over pardons with his advisers, former aides said.

At 12:50 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2021, his last day in office, he issued a list of 143 pardons and commutations, generating more presidential records required to be turned over to the National Archives.

Boxes outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the final days of the Trump administration.



Photo:

Erin Scott/Reuters

The result was a rushed and chaotic exit from the White House that is now at the center of a federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents and other presidential material after leaving office.

“If you only start packing with two days left to go, you’re just running low on time,” a former aide said. “And if he’s the one just throwing things in boxes, who knows what could happen?”

Another former aide said uncertainty pervaded the West Wing in the final weeks as the president continued to contest the election. “It was a weird time,” the aide said. “It was like, are we doing this? Are we not doing this?”

Last Monday, FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents—including some marked as top secret and meant to be available only in special government facilities—from Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after a federal magistrate judge in Florida approved a search warrant. It couldn’t be determined when those records were stored at the resort, during his presidency or after it.

Much is still unknown about why the records ended up at Mar-a-Lago and what the motivations were for those who put them there. Officials have noted that since Mr. Trump left office, his team had at least two specific government requests to provide the material to the National Archives.

In January this year, 15 boxes were retrieved by the National Archives after its request. In the spring, the Justice Department subpoenaed additional records. Some documents were turned over in a June meeting between Trump lawyers and Justice Department officials, but investigators concluded that more documents remained, prompting the search.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers and representatives have said that they were in negotiations with the government when the FBI showed up and that they have complied with Justice Department requests.

Aides carrying boxes to the presidential helicopter as the Trump administration left the White House.



Photo:

Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Among the records taken by FBI agents is the December 2020 executive grant of clemency for the longtime Trump confidant

Roger Stone,

according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation inventory of the documents. In 2019, he was convicted in federal court of making false statements, witness tampering and trying to impede a congressional investigation into alleged Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Investigators, according to the search warrant released Friday, are seeking all records that could be evidence of violations of laws governing the gathering, transmission or maintenance of classified information; the removal of official government records; and the destruction of records in a federal investigation. The investigators have reached out to Trump aides who had knowledge of his records-management practices, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump’s office said in a statement Saturday that the former president had declassified the documents present at Mar-a-Lago. While a president has the power to declassify documents, there are federal regulations that lay out a process for doing so. Neither Mr. Trump nor his lawyers have publicly provided any evidence that he formally declassified the documents.

Compounding the problem was Mr. Trump’s tendency to ignore strict presidential-records laws and those governing the handling of classified information, according to former aides.

When

John Kelly

was chief of staff, the handling of classified and sensitive information in the White House alarmed him to such an extent that he sought to institute new protocols for the organization of such documents and for who was allowed to access them, Mr. Kelly said in an interview Saturday.


“It needed to be tightened up,” he said, adding that there was a lack of “deep understanding of the processes and procedures of security clearances and handling highly classified material.”

During Mr. Trump’s four years in office, he disclosed classified and sensitive information in conversations with foreign officials, on Twitter and to journalists.

In 2019, for instance, he told the journalist Bob Woodward that he had built a nuclear-weapons system that “you haven’t even seen or heard about.” Also that year, Mr. Trump sent a tweet saying the U.S. hadn’t been involved in an accident at an Iranian space facility and attached a satellite image that came from a highly classified U.S. reconnaissance satellite known as USA 224.

“Well, I guess that’s not classified anymore,” a National Security Council official told The Wall Street Journal at the time. Often, when classified information is shared publicly, it may be considered declassified.

Mr. Trump said at the time that he had an “absolute right” to release the photo.

The National Archives staff typically collects boxes of records throughout the length of an administration, sending its vans to the White House for materials that are marked and cataloged as they come in. That didn’t happen during the Trump years, said

Gary Stern,

a career Archives official, at a January 2021 panel organized by the American Historical Association.

FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret, according to a search warrant released by a Florida court Friday. Photo illustration: Adele Morgan

“We really could not start picking up until January, and we couldn’t get it all done even by Jan. 20,” when President Biden was sworn into office, he said. He said the transfer process was more strained than usual in the Trump administration in part because White House officials and the then-president didn’t expect to lose the election.

In recent days, some Trump allies have blamed the General Services Administration, which assists with the moving process, for sending sensitive documents to Mar-a-Lago. Kash Patel, former chief of staff to the acting defense secretary, said on Fox News on Friday that the GSA had “mistakenly packed some boxes and moved them to Mar-a-Lago. That’s not on the president.”

Christina Wilkes, the GSA press secretary, said in a statement that the agency doesn’t make such decisions. “The responsibility for making decisions about what materials are moved rests entirely with the outgoing president and their supporting staff,” she said. “Any questions about the contents of any items that were delivered, e.g., documents, are the responsibility of the former President and his supporting staff and should be directed to their office.”

Former advisers said that beyond the Oval Office, other West Wing offices, including the counsel’s and staff secretary’s offices, had begun packing up after the election was called for Mr. Biden. Members of their offices were designated as point persons. Aides put presidential records in boxes for the Archives and documents that didn’t need to be retained into “burn bags,” the contents of which would be incinerated.

Some former aides said they had substantial leeway in determining what went where.

“It was not a vigorous process where they have oversight and they’re checking to make sure you did it,” said one former White House official, who described the process as haphazard, even by the freewheeling standards of the administration. The document sorting, the former official said, was “kind of like the honor system.”

Some former aides say they had substantial leeway in determining which documents went where.



Photo:

Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Shutterstock

During Mr. Trump’s term, aides often received documents that had been collected from the Oval Office and the White House residence to find them torn up, and would need to determine which to reassemble with tape so they could be preserved, a former aide said.

It wasn’t uncommon to walk into the Oval Office and see several zippered bags—made specifically for transporting classified material because they can be locked—sitting on the Resolute desk with the key in the lock, one former aide said. When aides travel with the bags, they are instructed to keep the keys separate.

The rare hard-copy briefing papers Mr. Trump would be given were typically in the form of a small binder of information aimed at preparing him for phone calls with foreign leaders, which Mr. Trump would occasionally hold on to. French President

Emmanuel Macron

—whom Mr. Trump in conversations with his aides referred to as “Little Emmanuel”—spoke regularly with Mr. Trump, including on the U.S. president’s personal cellphone, straying from protocol.

Among the materials FBI agents removed in their search of Mar-a-Lago last Monday was information related to the “President of France,” according to a list of items removed from the property.

Officials regularly transported classified information with the president to Mar-a-Lago and other properties he visited, which on its own isn’t unusual, former aides said. Mr. Trump as president had access at Mar-a-Lago to what is known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, but didn’t always use it to view sensitive material, a former aide said.

Some aides grew concerned when the president would ask to hold on to a sensitive document while at his Florida resort because they didn’t always know where the document would end up, the aide said.

Mr. Trump took pride in the letters he received from foreign leaders, including those from North Korean leader

Kim Jong Un,

whose letters Mr. Trump used to read aloud to “anyone who walked into the Oval Office,” one of his top advisers recalled.

At least one of those letters was taken to Mar-a-Lago, and was among the 15 boxes of documents that the National Archives retrieved from the resort in January.

—Jess Bravin and Andrew Restuccia contributed to this article.

Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com, Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com

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World

Rising Food Prices Could Become a Business Risk, Analysts Say

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Rising global food prices and shortages of grain and fertilizer stemming from the war in Ukraine could create further economic turmoil, risk analysts said. In some countries, this could trigger unrest and test the resiliency of Western companies with overseas operations in the coming months, they added.

“Food insecurity is one of our [company’s] main topics and one of the things you really have to look out for—there’s no getting away from it,” said

Srdjan Todorovic,

the head of terrorism and hostile environment solutions at

Allianz

Global Corporate & Specialty, part of Germany-based financial-services company Allianz SE. “This is absolutely a global problem.”

People can accept many kinds of scarcity, but problems obtaining food—in addition to causing hardship—have a capacity to drive rule breaking and upheaval, said

Nick Robson,

a London-based global leader of the credit specialties practice at Marsh, a subsidiary of insurance broker

Marsh & McLennan

Cos. Typically, it takes a host of factors in addition to food shortages to trigger civil unrest. Still, risk analysts say they are keeping a close eye on global food prices.

Food costs are higher now than in 2007 and 2008, when then-record prices led to protests and riots in 48 countries, according to a United Nations report.

Though food prices have dipped slightly from highs reached in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they were still about 44% higher in July than in 2020, according to a food-price index compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

“We’re seeing across the world a much higher potential exposure to civil unrest as people see their purchasing power falling quickly,” said

Jimena Blanco,

the head of the Americas research team for risk-intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.

Fertilizer prices have reached record highs, with far-reaching consequences for farmers, agricultural yields and food prices. WSJ’s Patrick Thomas explains the reasons behind the surge and what it could mean for your wallet. Photo: Ryan Trefes

High fertilizer prices in particular have led to far-flung impacts. In Peru and Greece earlier this year, farmers took their trucks and tractors to urban centers to voice their aggravation. Sri Lankan protesters stormed the presidential palace and forced a change in administration, a move analysts have attributed in part to a ban on chemical fertilizers that shrank crop yields. The uprising in Sri Lanka was a conspicuous illustration of the volatile forces a disappointing harvest can unleash in short order.

At least 50 countries depend on Russia and Ukraine for 30% or more of their grain supplies, including many developing countries in North Africa and Asia, according to a report from Marsh. Turkey, for example, imported 78% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine in 2020, while Brazil is the main market for Russian fertilizers, Marsh said.

Not all countries face the same risks from rising prices. Rich democracies with the resources to absorb price increases, for example, are likely to fare better. Countries at risk tend to have some commonalities: They are autocracies, they rely on imported food and they have had subsidies they can no longer afford, said Marsh’s Mr. Robson.

The widespread quantitative belt-tightening, along with the impact of Covid-19 on public treasuries, could hurt some countries’ ability to dole out the food subsidies that had staved off unrest in the past, he said.

“With authoritarian regimes, you’re going to see a high likelihood of a pattern of increased civil disobedience, which would become dramatic in some countries,” Mr. Robson said. “I do think the circumstances in the short term will be extremely difficult.”

Mr. Robson added that in the longer term—12 to 18 months—steps could be taken to increase global food production and improve the situation.

Should unrest unfold, companies operating in affected areas can take some steps to mitigate the damage. Businesses are increasingly using technology to examine their supply chains to determine how unrest might impact their operations, Verisk Maplecroft’s Ms. Blanco said.

Allianz’s Mr. Todorovic said companies should also assess where exactly they have situated their facilities in hot-spot countries, figuring out, for example, whether those operations are near targets of protest such as public squares or town halls.

More from Risk & Compliance Journal

“A lot of companies are not specific targets of social unrest,” he said. “They just happen to be in the vicinity.”

Some observers have held out hope that a brokered deal to allow for a temporary resumption in Ukraine grain shipments might alleviate some of the food-shortage problem.

The agreement allows grain to flow for only 120 days and requires logistics companies and freight forwarders to step up and take the risk of moving the product, said

Laura Burns,

the political risk product leader for the Americas at insurance broker

WTW.

“Talking with my clients in the commodity space, a lot of them are unfortunately pessimistic,” she said.

Write to Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com

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US

Senate Passes Bill to Protect Supreme Court Justices’ Families

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Demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court building on Monday.



Photo:

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—The Senate swiftly passed a bill to expand police protections for Supreme Court justices to include their immediate family members, in the wake of protests following a leaked draft ruling that indicated the court could overturn Roe v. Wade.

The measure passed late Monday by unanimous consent. The broad support in the Senate suggests a clear pathway to passage in the House, but no immediate plan was set.

A leaked draft opinion published last week by Politico suggested that the conservative wing of the court was preparing to undo the 1973 Roe decision, which established abortion as a constitutional right, in a Mississippi abortion case the justices are currently considering. Chief Justice

John Roberts

confirmed the draft was authentic but cautioned it wasn’t final.

Protesters marched in several American cities after Politico published a leaked draft opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade may be overturned. The 1973 precedent established a constitutional right to an abortion. Photo: Michael Reynolds/Shutterstock

The Supreme Court is currently surrounded by security fencing to guard against potential threats. Over the weekend, some protesters demonstrated outside the home of Supreme Court Justice

Brett Kavanaugh

in suburban Chevy Chase, Md.

Senate Minority Leader

Mitch McConnell

(R., Ky.) accused progressives of trying to harass justices at their homes in order to achieve a desired judicial outcome, saying they were trying to “replace the rule of law with the rule of mobs.” He also said the White House had been slow to condemn such protests.

At the daily White House briefing Monday, press secretary

Jen Psaki

said protesters “should never resort to violence, to threats, to intimidation in any way, shape, or form.”

The Senate is scheduled to vote this Wednesday on whether to take up legislation to assert healthcare providers’ right to provide an abortion before a fetus is viable, and to say that a patient has a right to receive one, in line with current Supreme Court precedent. In a 50-50 Senate where most legislation requires a 60-vote supermajority to advance, the bill is expected to be blocked.

If Roe is overturned, states’ law would determine abortion policy. Some states have plans in place to sharply curtail access to abortions, while other states have moved to codify existing law.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com

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Appeared in the May 10, 2022, print edition as ‘Bill to Boost Security For Justices Advances.’

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US

Chinese Agent Proposed Violent Means to End Dissident’s Congress Run, DOJ Says

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A Chinese spy hired a private investigator to use violence if necessary to end a candidate’s run for Congress, instructing him to “beat him until he cannot run for election,” prosecutors alleged as they unsealed a series of complaints accusing Chinese agents of harassing dissidents living in the U.S.

A man working as an agent of the Chinese government also plotted to appear at another dissident’s house pretending to represent an international sports committee in a bid to get his passport and that of a family member, prosecutors said. The dissident isn’t named but was confirmed by a person familiar with the investigation as Arthur Liu, the father of American figure-skating Olympian Alysa Liu, who has said he fled China after organizing student protests in 1989.

Altogether, prosecutors presented three cases in Brooklyn charging five people, three of whom are in custody and two of whom are at large.

While U.S. authorities have long accused the Chinese government of using illegal tactics to threaten political rivals and dissidents world-wide, law-enforcement officials said Wednesday the efforts had grown more brazen in recent years, reaching even into the U.S. political process.

“Authoritarian states around the world feel emboldened to reach beyond their borders to intimidate or exact reprisals against individuals who dare to speak out against oppression and corruption,” Matt Olsen, the assistant attorney general for national security, said at a press briefing on the cases.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Qiming Lin, the alleged Ministry of State Security agent who targeted the candidate, told the investigator: “Whatever price is fine. As long as you can do it.” According to a transcript of their conversation that prosecutors included in charging documents, Mr. Lin, who is in China, said: “We don’t want him to be elected,” adding, “we will have a lot more—more of this [work] in the future…Including right now [a] New York State legislator.”

The candidate, who is running for a New York seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, isn’t named in the complaint but matches the description of

Yan Xiong,

a student leader in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989 who later fled China, served in the U.S. military and became a citizen.

Mr. Lin suggested a variety of ways the investigator could end the would-be congressman’s candidacy, including by manufacturing derogatory information about him or arranging for him to be in a car accident, prosecutors said. “Car accident, [he] will be completely wrecked [chuckles], right?” Mr. Lin said, according to prosecutors. In another conversation, the agent allegedly said: “You go find a girl for him, see if he would take the bait.”

The private investigator, who wasn’t identified, reported the efforts to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the charging document.

Mr. Yan, a Democrat, is among several candidates vying to succeed Rep.

Lee Zeldin

in Long Island’s First Congressional District. Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, isn’t seeking re-election and is running in New York’s gubernatorial primary later this year.

Representatives for Mr. Yan didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Representatives for Alysa and Arthur Liu also didn’t respond to a request for comment. The complaint alleges that the surveillance and harassment campaign against Mr. Liu included looking to pay a reporter to let an agent tag along on an interview and ask his own questions, put a GPS tracker on his car, and get his Social Security number.

The complaint said investigators had also secured an international sports committee ID card bearing the name of an actual representative and an image of one of the agents. The plan to get Mr. Liu’s passport and that of a family member, the complaint said, was discussed in November 2021 and involved going to the Lius’ house with the identification card under the guise of checking if they were prepared to travel.

The 16-year-old Alysa Liu competed at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, finishing seventh in the women’s competition.

The three men accused of targeting Mr. Liu are two New Yorkers, Fan Liu and Matthew Ziburis, as well as a Chinese national they allegedly worked for, Qiang “Jason” Sun. The three allegedly engaged in other operations against several dissidents, including trying to bribe an Internal Revenue Service employee for access to one of their tax returns. They are also accused of stalking and surveilling an artist who made a sculpture depicting Chinese President

Xi Jinping

as a coronavirus molecule.

In a third case, a former Chinese dissident living in Queens, Shujun Wang, was accused of using his status within the Chinese community to report to the Ministry of State Security on people the Chinese government considers threatening, including Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence, and Uyghur and Tibetan activists—both in the U.S. and abroad. At least one high-profile Hong Kong democracy activist on whom the defendant reported was subsequently arrested by Chinese officials, prosecutors said.

“The Chinese Communist Party is not the only entity engaged in these practices, but their level of aggressiveness is unique,” said FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Alan Kohler Jr., who added that the actions often targeted Chinese Americans.

Fan Liu and Messrs. Wang and Ziburis appeared in a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday afternoon. During his appearance, Mr. Liu denied the allegations through a Chinese interpreter. A judge set his release at $1 million bond.

The judge set Mr. Wang’s release at $300,000 bond. Mr. Ziburis’s bond was set at $500,000. The three defendants had their travel restricted, and a judge ordered Messrs. Liu and Wang to not enter the Chinese consulate in New York or other Chinese government facilities in the U.S.

Lawyers for all three defendants didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Friction between Beijing and Washington is running high, including over China’s reluctance to distance itself from Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. U.S. authorities have stepped up efforts in recent years to prosecute a range of allegedly illegal activities by the Chinese government in the U.S. In 2020, the FBI arrested five people on charges of helping Beijing harass and threaten fugitives in the U.S. In a separate case that year, a New York City police officer was arrested for allegedly helping the Chinese consulate spy on the local Tibetan community.

The Justice Department last month ended a Trump-era initiative to counter national-security threats from China after it led to a series of failed prosecutions of academics that sowed broad distrust in the higher-education community. At the time, Justice Department officials had said they planned to continue pursuing other cases involving allegations of wrongdoing on the part of the Chinese government, including those that targeted Chinese dissidents living in the U.S.

—Louise Radnofsky contributed to this article.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com, Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com and James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com

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US

Canadian Police Clear Protesters Disrupting Cross-Border Bridge Traffic

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Canadian police on Sunday arrested protesters and towed vehicles to clear access to a crucial bridge connecting Detroit with the Canadian border city of Windsor, Ontario, a move local officials say marks an end to a week of economic turbulence.

Law-enforcement and border officials are working on a timetable as to when the 1.6-mile Ambassador Bridge might reopen. Windsor police said Sunday that they hoped to allow traffic to resume on the bridge at some point during the day.

Protesters had succeeded in largely blocking most two-way bridge traffic since Monday in an attempt to persuade governments in Canada to drop Covid-19 vaccine mandates and related social restrictions.

Over 100 police officers surrounded the remaining protesters shortly after 8 a.m. ET Sunday on a main street that leads to access to the bridge, over which hundreds of millions of dollars of goods are transported by trucks into the U.S. and Canada each day.

A spokesman for the Windsor Police Service said roughly 12 protesters were arrested on Sunday and two or more vehicles were towed. Sgt. Steve Betteridge said protesters who were arrested weren’t violent and police didn’t have to use force.

“We are hoping to have the roadway open and the bridge open later today,” Sgt. Betteridge said. “But as you can appreciate, it’s a very fluid situation.”

Windsor police added that officers would remain in the vicinity of the bridge until they judged it safe for regular traffic to resume. “There will be zero tolerance for illegal activity,” the police force said in a tweet.

A Canadian judge granted police permission to forcibly remove the protesters starting Friday evening, following a petition from the City of Windsor and auto-industry representatives.

“Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge came to an end,” Windsor Mayor

Drew Dilkens

said Sunday. “Border crossings will reopen when it is safe to do so and I defer to police and border agencies to make that determination.”

Police officers moved along a road leading to the Ambassador Bridge on Sunday after clearing demonstrators.



Photo:

CARLOS OSORIO/REUTERS

A spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency said officials were working with police to restore normal border operations as quickly as possible.

North American auto makers, including

General Motors Co.

,

Stellantis

NV, and

Ford Motor Co.

, have curtailed production over the past week and sent employees home in some cases because parts required for assembly couldn’t be delivered. Some Canadian auto-parts suppliers have also begun to reduce production because they have been unable to ship orders to the U.S.

Auto-industry representatives on Saturday applauded efforts by police in their initial efforts to clear access to the Ambassador Bridge.

With authorities moving to reopen the bridge, the focus in Canada will now turn to ending a protest in Ottawa, which on Sunday entered its 17th day. Protest organizers have repeatedly said they won’t leave the capital until governments in Canada drop the vaccine mandates and social restrictions. Over 400 heavy-duty trucks and other vehicles have turned the capital’s downtown into a parking lot, clogging traffic in the core and disrupting residents’ lives. Some Windsor protesters said their blockade was inspired by events in Ottawa.

“The country needs the police to do their job…and restore order,” Bill Blair, Canada’s Emergency Preparedness Minister, told CTV News on Sunday. He added that federal officials have discussed the rarely-used powers available in Canada’s federal Emergencies Act to help end protests. The act permits the national government to impose temporary measures, such as deployment of the military, if it believes local authorities are unable to maintain security.

At another Canadian border town, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canadian police on Sunday restricted traffic to the Peace Bridge, which crosses from the community into Buffalo, New York, after protesters attempted to block bridge traffic. Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop said police weren’t allowing vehicles onto the bridge unless they were essential workers or had a legitimate commercial reason for traveling. He said town officials learned of a potential blockade through social-media posts, with protesters demanding an end to Covid-19 restrictions.

The Ambassador Bridge, one of the busiest border crossings in North America, accommodates roughly 30% of annual two-way U.S.-Canada trade, which recent U.S. data pegs at more than $600 billion. Two-way U.S.-Canada trade of over $28 billion in motor vehicles and auto parts was transported last year over the bridge, according to Statistics Canada.

Efforts to clear protesters blocking access to a key U.S.-Canada trade corridor appeared to have stalled Saturday afternoon as the crowd near the Ambassador Bridge entrance grew. Photo: Cole Burston/Getty Images

—Jacquie McNish and Kim Mackrael contributed to this article.

Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com

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World

Kazakhstan Protests: Russia Sends Troops as Dozens Killed in Unrest

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MOSCOW—Russia sent paratroopers to help Kazakhstan’s leader stamp out a wave of protests as, further west, Russian President Vladimir Putin confronts the U.S. and its allies over the future of another former Soviet republic, Ukraine.

Dozens of people were killed in clashes between protesters and Kazakhstan’s security forces in the early hours of Thursday, including 18 law enforcement officers, according to Russian state media. Initially sparked by a sharp increase in fuel prices at the beginning of year, the protests quickly spiraled into a broader outpouring of frustration with the resource-rich nation’s authoritarian leaders. Protesters accuse them of squandering its wealth, including its uranium reserves, echoing the kind of uprisings that toppled one of Mr. Putin’s protégés in Ukraine in 2014 and a wave of protests against Belarus’s pro-Kremlin leader in 2020.

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World

In Kabul, Private Rescue Efforts Grow Desperate as Time to Evacuate Afghans Runs Out

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A disparate group of American veterans, military contractors, aid workers and former spies is scrambling to get as many people out of Afghanistan as they can before President Biden shuts down the window for rescues in coming days.

Even as tens of thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. and a large number of American and other foreign citizens remain stranded, Mr. Biden is sticking by his plan to withdraw the remaining military forces from Kabul’s U.S.-controlled airport by Aug. 31.

Erik Prince, the American defense contractor, said he is offering people seats on a chartered plane out of Kabul for $6,500 per person. U.S. and NATO forces are sending special rescue teams into Taliban-controlled areas of the city to spirit their citizens into the airport. And countless Afghans who thought the U.S. would protect them after having assisted the U.S.-led coalition forces in the past two decades are now realizing that they will most likely be left behind, to face Taliban wrath alone.

Private rescue efforts are facing growing obstacles this week, just as the urgency grows. Chartered planes are flying out of Kabul with hundreds of empty seats. New Taliban checkpoints on the road to Pakistan have made driving out of the country increasingly risky. Confusing bureaucratic hurdles have prevented countless people from leaving Afghanistan.

“It’s total chaos,” said Warren Binford, a law professor at the University of Colorado who has been working on various evacuation efforts. “What’s happening is that we’re seeing a massive underground railroad operation where, instead of running for decades, it’s literally running for a matter of hours, or days.”

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US

Taliban Block Routes to Kabul Airport, Hampering Evacuations From Afghanistan

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Afghans and Westerners stranded in Kabul after Sunday’s Taliban takeover started trickling into the city’s U.S.-controlled airport for evacuation flights, but entry remained extremely difficult, with Taliban checkpoints on most access roads and no clear system to bring people in.

In the eastern city of Jalalabad, meanwhile, the first challenge emerged to Taliban rule, with hundreds of locals walking through the city’s central square and waving the black-red-and-green flags of the fallen Afghan republic to chants of “Allahu akbar.” Video footage showed gunfire as the demonstrators dispersed.

There was no immediate information on casualties, and it wasn’t clear whether this was a harbinger of a more brutal attitude by the country’s new rulers, who have attempted to project an image of benevolent tolerance since seizing the capital on Sunday. On Wednesday, Anas Haqqani, a senior member of the Taliban, came to Kabul for a meeting with former President

Hamid Karzai,

who ruled until 2014, and with the fallen republic’s chief peace negotiator,

Abdullah Abdullah.

Taliban fighters stood guard at a checkpoint in Kabul on Wednesday.



Photo:

Rahmat Gul/Associated Press

At Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, crowds of Afghans continued to gather along the perimeter, trying to flee the country. U.S. Marines focused mostly on keeping people from coming close. As a result, many of the evacuation flights continued leaving with empty seats even as tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with Western governments clamored for a way out before the Taliban track them down.

“The situation is very bad at the gate,” said Lida Ahmadi, who applied for a special immigrant visa for Afghans who had helped the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. “I slept on the road last night. Now, after two nights and two days at the gate, we’ve finally got the chance to come in. I am so happy now.”

Many others haven’t made it, so far. An Australian C-130, which can carry more than 120 passengers, flew out only 26 people Wednesday morning, the Australian government said.

Thousands of people rushed to Kabul’s international airport as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. WSJ’s Yaroslav Trofimov describes his journey from the city to catch an evacuation flight. Photo: AFP

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens remain in Afghanistan, senior Biden administration officials told Senate staff during a private briefing on Tuesday, a Senate aide said. The U.S. military evacuated 1,100 U.S. citizens, U.S. permanent residents and their families on Tuesday, according to a White House official. In total, the U.S. has evacuated 3,200 people so far and relocated to the U.S. 2,000 Afghans who were approved for special immigrant visas, the official said.

In the heart of Kabul, only one Western embassy—that of France—remained after all other Western missions shut down or moved to the airport on Sunday. In the past three days, it has become a magnet for hundreds of Afghans and foreigners trying to get out, with several hundred others camping around the compound in hopes of being allowed entry.

On Tuesday night, a convoy of some 10 buses traveled from the French Embassy to the Kabul airport, stopping at Taliban checkpoints, with passengers—most of them Afghans—later boarding a French A400 military plane to Abu Dhabi. By then, the crowded diplomatic compound had already run out of water and food rations.

Passengers aboard a French military plane awaited takeoff from Kabul on Wednesday.



Photo:

Stephane Nicolas

“The embassy had turned into an internally displaced persons camp,” said Stéphane Nicolas, head of operations for consulting firm ATR, who sheltered in the embassy until Tuesday night. “Behavior changes in this kind of place. Everyone is under shock, they know that they have lost everything, and that if they venture out they may die.”

Outside the passenger terminal of the military side of the airport Wednesday morning, U.S. Marines handed out field rations to Afghan civilians, many of them women and children. A secondhand bus, bearing the markings of a tourism agency in Germany’s Thuringia region, dropped off the latest load of refugees. A small boy pulled his father’s kameez as a Marine directed the new arrivals.

Ask WSJ: On the Front Lines

Join Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Matt Murray and chief foreign-affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov for a live Q&A about the collapse of Afghanistan’s government to the Taliban and the evolving humanitarian situation there. Join the event at 1 p.m. ET on Aug. 19

Esrar Ahmad, a former interpreter for U.S. troops who also managed to enter the airport on Wednesday, said that his son and wife were injured in a stampede at the gates. “The crowd pushed us from the back and she fell down,” he said. “Her knee was badly hurt by a rock, and she can’t really walk now.”

“The problem is that people believed in rumors of being able to go abroad without any documents or coordination,” added Hayatullah, a 47-year-old Afghan-American who also spent the night outside the airport gate before being allowed inside Wednesday morning. “These people created a huge chaos.”

In the U.K., Home Secretary

Priti Patel

told the British Broadcasting Corp. that officials are working “around the clock” to evacuate British and eligible Afghan nationals out of the country, and now are flying out roughly 1,000 a day.

Afghanistan Falls to Taliban

The U.K.’s chief of defense staff, Gen. Nick Carter, told Sky News the Taliban were cooperating with British troops supporting the evacuation efforts, adding: “What we’re not getting are reports of them behaving in a medieval way like you might have seen in the past.”

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

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World

Hong Kong Man Found Guilty in First Verdict Under China’s National-Security Law

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HONG KONG—The first person charged under a national-security law imposed by Beijing was found guilty of inciting secession and terrorism Tuesday in a verdict that reaffirms new limits on speech in the city and could set a precedent for future trials under the law.

Tong Ying-kit, 24 years old, had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Mr. Tong was filmed driving a motorcycle that collided with police officers during street protests on July 1 last year—the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997 and the day after the national-security law was unveiled.

Mr. Tong carried a flag bearing the popular protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times.” Following the incident, the Hong Kong government said the slogan carried connotations of Hong Kong independence or subverting state power.

The “display of the words was capable of inciting others to commit secession,” read the ruling by a three-judge panel, adding that the defendant understood the slogan to carry a secessionist meaning.

The judges said Mr. Tong’s acts, including crashing into officers, was a “deliberate challenge mounted against the police, a symbol of Hong Kong’s law and order.” The judges said he carried them out with the aim of intimidating the public to pursue a political agenda.

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World

What Is Happening in South Africa? Riots After President Jacob Zuma’s Arrest

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The arrest of former South African President

Jacob Zuma

this month has triggered looting and violence in the country’s two most populous provinces amid a record wave of Covid-19 infections.

Why was Jacob Zuma arrested?

Mr. Zuma was president of South Africa from 2009 until 2018, a time when alleged corruption escalated in government and the ruling African National Congress. After he resigned, a government-mandated commission started investigating some of these allegations, but Mr. Zuma repeatedly refused to testify, despite an order to do so from South Africa’s Constitutional Court. On June 29, the same court sentenced Mr. Zuma to 15 months in prison for contempt of court and he was arrested the following week.

How widespread are the riots in South Africa?

Most of the violence and looting has been concentrated in Mr. Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, where South Africa’s economic capital Johannesburg and political capital Pretoria are located. Mobs have targeted shopping malls, factories and warehouses, many of them in impoverished townships, where residents have been hit hard by three brutal waves of Covid-19 infections and government-imposed lockdowns. Dozens of people have lost their lives. Traffic on the highway connecting the important port of Durban with Johannesburg—one of South Africa’s busiest transport routes—has also been interrupted. That has led to concerns over shortages of food and other essentials and could cause disruptions to exports from some of the country’s agricultural hubs and trade with other African economies as far afield as the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Thursday, relative calm returned to Johannesburg and police minister

Bheki Cele

said the expanding military deployment would help resolve the still volatile situation in KwaZulu-Natal. Some locals have formed vigilante groups to protect their communities. Thousands of South African volunteers returned to littered streets and destroyed shopping centers to begin cleaning-up the damage.

South Africa is facing unrest on a scale that has been rarely seen since white-minority rule ended in 1994. Here’s how one political event exposed deep-seated inequalities that have increased during the pandemic. Photo: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images
How has President Cyril Ramaphosa responded?

Mr. Zuma’s arrest was initially seen as a victory for his successor, Mr. Ramaphosa, who has pledged to clean up South Africa’s government and the ruling ANC. But the escalating unrest has also drawn attention to continued factional fighting within the former liberation movement, where Mr. Zuma still commands support. On Monday, Mr. Ramaphosa deployed the army to back up overwhelmed police and other law-enforcement agencies, and on Thursday he called up all military reservists in a bid to muzzle the rioting that has stoked fears of food and other shortages. He has called on South Africans not to join the violence and looting, which he says will further damage the economy and delay the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Is there a link between the unrest and the coronavirus pandemic?

South Africa has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. It is currently in the middle of a third wave of Covid-19 infections, which has already surpassed the country’s two previous waves. Only around 2.5% of its 60 million people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, so many are continuing to get sick and die. Government lockdowns that were supposed to stem transmission of the virus pushed the economy into its deepest recession on record last year, leading to increased hunger and poverty, and driving up an unemployment rate that stood at 33% at the end of March. Many of the looters say they are stealing to help provide for their families and to put pressure on a government that has failed to provide for them. “Politics was the trigger but the core issue here is the socio-economic grievances and frustration with the state,” said Ryan Cummings, Director of Signal Risk, a Cape Town-based risk consultancy.

A policeman guarded a group of suspected looters at a Johannesburg shopping center on Tuesday.



Photo:

James Oatway/Getty Images

Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at gabriele.steinhauser@wsj.com

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