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In this mailing:
* Soeren Kern: Belarus Floods EU with Migrants from Middle East
* Amir Taheri: Dealing with Taliban: It's Urgent to Wait


** Belarus Floods EU with Migrants from Middle East ([link removed])
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by Soeren Kern • September 5, 2021 at 5:00 am
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oneinstitute.org%2F17715%2Fbelarus-eu-illegal-migrants&pubid=ra-52f7af5809191749&ct=1&title=Belarus+Floods+EU+with+Migrants+from+Middle+East [link removed]
* Thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are pouring into the European Union from Belarus, a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. The surge in illegal immigration is being orchestrated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is accused of trying to blackmail the EU into reversing the sanctions it imposed over his disputed reelection and a crackdown on dissent.
* While the EU — hampered by its ideological commitment to open borders — appears at a loss as to what to do next, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania are being forced to spend millions of euros to build fences along their borders with Belarus. An EU spokesman explained that Brussels "does not finance fences or barriers."
* Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Belarus should be a concern not only for the Baltic countries or the EU, but for the "whole democratic world" which, he advised, "needs to wake up."
* "We firmly believe that the protection of European external border is not just the duty of individual Member States but also the common responsibility of the EU. Hence, proper political attention should be paid to it on the EU level and sufficient funding allocated." — Joint statement issued by the prime ministers of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
* "Only a very clear and unified EU policy on returning irregular migrants can effectively prevent criminal groups and regimes from exploiting illegal migration for their own purposes. Europe's message must be short and precise — those illegally entering the EU cannot be granted a refugee status and will be returned to their countries of origin." — Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.

A surge in illegal immigration into the European Union is being orchestrated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Dozens of Afghan migrants remain trapped in a stand-off along the border between Poland and Belarus. They have been camping out in a forest near the village of Usnarz Górny for almost a month after being taken there at gunpoint by Belarusian authorities. Pictured: Belarusian border guards stand behind the group of Afghan migrants on the border with Poland near Usnarz Górny, on August 20, 2021. (Photo by Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images)

Thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are pouring into the European Union from Belarus, a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. The surge in illegal immigration is being orchestrated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is accused of trying to blackmail the EU into reversing the sanctions it imposed over his disputed reelection and a crackdown on dissent.

Many of the migrants are being flown to Belarus from the Middle East and then bussed to EU borders by Belarusian authorities. The trips are being organized by Belarus's state-owned tourism agency, which charges migrants between $1,800 to $12,000.

The number of people illegally entering the EU from Belarus increased sharply after Lukashenko signed a decree on July 1 that allows citizens of more than 70 countries to travel to Belarus without visas and stay for up to five days, ostensibly to get Covid-19 vaccine shots.

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** Dealing with Taliban: It's Urgent to Wait ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • September 5, 2021 at 4:00 am
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itle=Dealing+with+Taliban%3A+It%27s+Urgent+to+Wait [link removed]
* More importantly, perhaps, it may be naïve to demand that Taliban give up terrorism -- the very method that has given them some significance for more than a quarter of a century. Terror is the very raison d'etre of this outfit.
* The New York Times ran reports glorifying the USSR at a time that the Georgian master of the Kremlin carried out bloody purges. And, for a while at least, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw Heinrich Himmler as leader of "moderates" in Nazi Germany....
* China has not morphed into the "moderate" power that Henry Kissinger, Beijing's chief lobbyist in the US, claims.
* Why should the group listen to Western powers when they have neither a coherent policy nor the hard power needed to back that policy? The Taliban know that they owe their very existence to terror and repression..... They reached the top of the pile because they could cut throats, stone women to death and dot the roads used by foreign troops with home-made bombs.
* The Taliban may promise not to threaten Western interests directly.... In the final analysis, however, a regime that treats its own people with utter contempt is unlikely to offer foreigners, especially the "infidel," a better deal. In most cases, at least in the short and medium terms, a regime's foreign policy is the continuation of its domestic policies.
* There is no need to rush towards any deal with Taliban.
* In dealing with nasty regimes, the choice is not limited to full scale invasion or abject surrender.

As the world tries to absorb the shock of Taliban's return to Kabul, officials in Western democracies are launching a debate on how to deal with the new masters of Afghanistan. Pictured: Taliban gunmen stand next to a mullah, who is speaking during Friday prayers, at the Pul-e Khishti Mosque in Kabul on September 3, 2021. (Photo by Hoshang Hashimi/AFP via Getty Images)

As the world tries to absorb the shock of Taliban's return to Kabul, officials in Western democracies are launching a debate on how to deal with the new masters of Afghanistan.

So far the main theme in this debate seems to be a desire to recognize the gun-toting "religious students" as the legitimate government of that long-suffering land. However, to ward off charges of appeasing a terrorist group, Western officials set a number of conditions before the implied recognition is granted. French President Emmanuel Macron, on a visit to Baghdad, has set four conditions while British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has unveiled four conditions of his own.

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