ISTANBUL MARCH, GET TEAR-GASSED

TURKEY Associated Press

WOMEN in Turkey braved an official ban on an International Women’s Day march in Istanbul, demonstrating for about two hours before police used tear gas to disperse remaining protesters and detained several people.

Thousands converged on a central neighbourhood Wednesday for a protest that combined women’s rights with the staggering toll of the deadly quake that hit Turkey and Syria a month ago.

Organizers had been forbidden - for the second straight year - from marching down the popular Istiklal pedestrian avenue in Turkey’s biggest city where Women’s Day marches were held since 2003. Police blocked demonstrators’ access to the avenue. An Associated Press journalist saw officers detain at least 30 people and use tear gas after the group ended their demonstration at 2100 local time.

Local authorities banned the march, saying the area was not an authorized demonstration site. They also claimed the march could “provoke” segments of Turkish society, lead to verbal or physical attacks, be misused by terror groups and threaten national security - as well as curtailing freedom of movement in the cultural and tourist area.

Metro stations in the vicinity were closed.

Lale Pesket, a 28-year-old theatre student, said that was unfair.

“We are not harming anyone, but unfortunately, we are faced with police violence every time,” she said.

“Our only concern is the emancipation of women, we want free spaces in a world without violence and better economic conditions, especially for women.”

Protesters held banners reading “we are angry, we are in mourning” for the more than 46,000 people who died in Turkey in buildings widely considered unsafe and the hundreds of thousands left homeless in the Feb. 6 quake.

One banner read “control contractors, not women,” referring to contractors killed 170 Afghans and 13 US servicemen and women.

Vargas-Andrews said Marines and others aiding in the evacuation operation were given descriptions of men believed to be plotting an attack before it occurred. He said he and others spotted two men matching the descriptions and behaving suspiciously, and eventually had them in their rifle scopes, but never received a response about whether to take action.

“No one was held accountable,” Vargas-Andrews told Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the committee. “No one was, and no one is, to this day.”

US Central Command’s investigation concluded in October 2021 that given the worsening security situation at Abbey Gate as Afghans became increasingly desperate to flee, “the attack was not preventable at the tactical level without degrading the mission to maximize the number of evacuees.” However, that investigation did not look into whether the bomber could have been stopped or whether Marines on the ground had the appropriate authorities to engage.

McCaul has been deeply critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal. “What happened in Afghanistan was a systemic breakdown of the federal government at every level, and a stunning failure of leadership by the Biden administration,” he said.

Last month, US InspectorGeneral for Afghanistan John Sopko concluded again that actions taken by both the

Trump and Biden administrations were key to the sudden collapse of the Afghan government and military, even before US forces completed their withdrawal in August 2021.

That includes President Donald Trump’s one-sided withdrawal deal with the Taliban, and the abruptness of Biden’s withdrawal of both US contractors and troops from Afghanistan, stranding an Afghan air force that previous administrations had failed to make self-supporting.

The report blamed each US administration since American forces invaded in 2001 for constantly changing, inconsistent policies that strived for quick fixes and withdrawal from Afghanistan rather than a steady effort to build a capable, sustainable Afghan military.

The witnesses testifying Wednesday urged action to help the hundreds of thousands of Afghan allies who worked alongside US soldiers and who are now in limbo in the US and back in Afghanistan.

“If I leave this committee with only one thought it’s this:

It’s not too late,” said Peter Lucier, a Marine veteran who now works at Team America Relief, which has assisted thousands of Afghans in relocating. “We’re going to talk a lot today about all the mistakes that were made, leading up to that day, but urgent action right now will save so many lives.”

One of those solutions discussed Wednesday would be creating a pathway to citizenship for the nearly 76,000 Afghans who worked with American soldiers since 2001 as translators, interpreters and partners. Those people arrived in the US on military planes after the withdrawal and the government admitted the refugees on a temporary parole status as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the largest resettlement effort in the country in decades, with the promise of a path to a life in the US for their service.

Congress began a bipartisan effort to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would have prevented Afghans from becoming stranded without legal residency status when their two years of humanitarian parole expire in August. The proposal would have enabled qualified Afghans to apply for US citizenship, as was done for refugees in the past, including those from Cuba, Vietnam and Iraq.

But that effort stalled in the Senate late last year due to opposition from Republicans.

“If we don’t set politics aside and pursue accountability and lessons learned to address this grievous moral injury on our military community and right the wrongs that have been inflicted on our most at-risk Afghan allies, this colossal foreign policy will follow us home and ultimately draw us right back into the graveyard of empires where it all started,” Mann, the retired green beret, said to lawmakers.