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Happening Today

NATO foreign ministers will meet virtually today, following a Thursday meeting of G-7 foreign ministers that resolved not to recognize any Taliban government until it demonstrates its commitment to international norms.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Moscow today to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin, before heading to Ukraine to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. According to the U.S.-Germany deal on the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, Merkel must convince Russia to keep shipping gas via Ukrainian pipelines through 2024. Her other problem: EU gas storage facilities are filled to only 60 percent capacity,

America’s trade union movement is expected to today name Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuleras its new President, to complete the term of Richard Trumka, who died recently.

Kabul: French forces have reentered the city’s green zone to rescue civilians stuck behind Taliban lines. U.S. Major Gen. Hank Taylor said Thursday afternoon that there are now more than 5,200 U.S. troops in Kabul, evacuation flights are running hourly 24 hours a day. More 7,000 have been evacuated since Aug. 14, and more than 12,000 since July 31.

NEXT WEEK, TODAY

Italy’s Mario Draghi is pushing for a G-20 meeting next week (a G-7 leaders meeting is already planned).

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will make his first trip as prime minister to the White House for a Thursday meeting. Top of the agenda will be Iran.

Vice President Kamala Harris departs 9.15 p.m. tonight for her second international trip since taking office, to Singapore and Vietnam. While it’s a Veep script writer’s dream, the unofficial point of the trip is to keep China on notice, with the new additional task of convincing her hosts that America is a reliable partner and protector.

GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS

ALLIES COORDINATING TO HOLD OFF TALIBAN RECOGNITION

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement late Thursday that he and his counterparts from G-7 countries and the European Union “agreed that the international community’s relationship with the Taliban will depend on their actions, not their words.” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament that allies and Pakistan agree “it would be a mistake for any country to recognize any new regime in Kabul prematurely or bilaterally.”

In an interview with Global Translations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. would “certainly not” recognize a Taliban-led government that does not live up to international commitments and human rights standards, and expects “an intense discussion with our allies on the recognition issue,” adding “we’re not there yet.”

Thomas-Greenfield also wants “to ensure that the U.N. continues to be an active participant inside of Afghanistan” — if that’s to be achieved, the U.S. and others will need a working relationship of some kind with the Taliban. She downplayed suggestions the Taliban would be ready and interested to apply for U.N. accreditation in time for the annual General Assembly leaders week Sept. 20-26. “I don’t imagine that this is going to come up by middle of September,” she said, “they haven’t even formed the government yet. I’m not even sure that they themselves will want to be on the international stage that quickly.”

What the Taliban wants

“I do know that they do want: recognition. And if they want recognition, they’re going to have to abide by the international norms that we all live by. And that is respecting international humanitarian standards and respecting human rights,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

Thomas-Greenfield says she remains in “regular touch” with Ghulam Isaczai, ambassador of Afghanistan’s elected government to the U.N.: “We were communicating with each other today [Thursday] and I am very supportive of him.”

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism — an industry group launched by Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft “to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms” and which calls “universal and fundamental human rights” its central mission — has not taken a position on whether to let the Taliban take over the Afghan government’s official social media handles or verify the accounts of its leaders, and how to address the regime’s communications on encrypted platforms like WhatsApp. Those calls, the coalition says, are best left to the platforms themselves.

FINANCIAL SCREWS TURN ON TALIBAN: The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday it will no longer release $450 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent to Afghanistan next week — Afghanistan’s share of a $650 billion issue of “special drawing rights,” an asset that can be converted to government-backed money. The U.S. Treasury cut off access to Afghanistan’s central bank assets ($7 billion are held in the U.S. Federal Reserve), and more than a billion dollars (22 tons) of gold in a New York vault is frozen.

WHAT’S NEXT ECONOMICALLY — POOR AFGHANISTAN, RICH TALIBAN: Here’s what the deposed Afghan central banker Ajmal Ahmady thinks: Taliban implements capital controls, currency drops, causing food price rises that hurt the poor.

Afghanistan’s state has depended on foreign governments and NGOs for around 75 percent of its income — indeed Afghanistan has been the single largest beneficiary of EU development funding in the world. But that doesn’t mean the Taliban itself is poor.

Taliban has trade routes, opium income and cash reserves: The Taliban was “well positioned to negotiate and buy rather than fight their way to successive conquests, itself an Afghan tradition,” argues Douglas London, the CIA’s former counter-terrorism chief in Afghanistan. GZERO Media cataloged how the Taliban “has been raking in a lot of dough, allowing the group to streamline its operations and self-fund its insurgency,” including $464 million from illegally mining iron ore, marble, copper and rare earths in 2020. Most of Afghanistan’s opium income — 85 percent of the global supply — goes directly to Taliban coffers.

Informal taxation (bribes) collected by Taliban militia in exchange for safe passage of goods and people can bring in $235 million annually in a single Afghan province, researchers found, more than what foreign aid brings in. Taliban has stopped imports and exports with India,per the Federation of Indian Export Organisation — possibly a tactic to extract more cash.

REPUBLICANS FURIOUS ABOUT U.S. MILITARY EQUIPMENT IN TALIBAN HANDS: “Among the items seized by the Taliban are Black Hawk helicopters and A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft.” Republicans couldn’t be angrier. A group of Republican senators writes: “it is unconscionable that high-tech military equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayers has fallen into the hands of the Taliban and their terrorist allies,” the senators wrote. Full text of the letter.

Reality check: While there’s plenty of adversaries that would love to get their hands on American military tech, having a Black Hawk helicopter doesn’t mean the Taliban will be able to keep it operational in Afghanistan’s harsh conditions.

TALIBAN REALITY CHECKS: Whatever the image makeover conducted by Taliban big shots, that doesn’t mean the regular militants have absorbed the message. The reports are numerous:

— a female doctor dragged from her taxi and beaten (she took the taxi to avoid being beaten for driving).

— Taliban fighters hunting a Deutsche Welle journalist have “shot dead a member of his family and seriously injured another.”

— The Committee to Protect Journalists reports Taliban barred at least two female journalists from their jobs at the public broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan, and physically attacked two others.

— We’ve also seen mothers throw babies over airport barbed wire, in desperation, to British soldiers, as they are beaten by militants. Some of the babies didn’t make it.

ISIS REALITY CHECK: Linda Thomas-Greenfield reminded the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that in June ISIS attacked a humanitarian group working to rid Afghanistan of landmines, killing 10 and injuring 16. “We’re deeply worried by the (U.N.) Secretary-General’s assessment that ISIS continues to expand throughout Africa, especially in various parts of West Africa and the Sahel, in addition to Central and East Africa. To neutralize that expansion, the United States is providing critical counter-terrorism assistance to disrupt, degrade, and respond to terrorist activity perpetrated by ISIS.” LTG said that the next important step is choking ISIS finances.

COVID VACCINE BOOSTERS — POLITICS, MORALS AND NUMBERS

WHO ON VACCINE BOOSTER SHOTS: The World Health Organization has dialed up its aggressive rhetoric. “We’re planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while we’re leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket,” said Mike Ryan, WHO’s emergencies boss.

Who is he talking about? U.S., France, Germany, the U.K., Israel, Hungary, Turkey and Chile have announced plans for third doses, with some of them already doling them out.

Changing numbers game: Five billion vaccine doses have been administered globally. In 56 countries at least half the population has received one dose, including countries from South, East and South-East Asia, Central and Southern America, the Middle East and the Caribbean; In 100 countries, 25 percent of the population has received at least one dose. It’s not good, but it’s getting better.

— Covid deaths are back over 1,000 a day in the U.S., and we’re seeing rising numbers of unvaccinated Americans infecting those who did get a shot, and more young people struggling with Covid in hospital. Those numbers will keep rising as an individual’s level of vaccine effectiveness drops over time.

— The U.S. will be giving about 100 million boosters in the coming months and will send 200 million doses abroad, said Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator.

— While there are strong arguments for the U.S. allowing commercial vaccine exports, and for all rich countries to do more to vaccinate the world (given the relative costs of lockdowns and deaths almost no investment in vaccines is too high), those arguments don’t invalidate the case for booster shots in countries with huge outbreaks.

— The African Union and its members aren’t doing all they can to vaccinate their own. South Africa is allowing the export to Europe of J&J vaccines produced in the country,after also suspending rollout of the J&J vaccine for several months earlier in 2021.

— Vaccine boosters could also be targeted: at select age groups or categories of workers, to allow for more donations and exports from rich countries.

COVID — WHO SEIZES FAKE VACCINE SHOTS: Counterfeits of India’s duplicate version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, known as Covishield, have been seized in multiple raids in July and August, BBC reported.

CANADA — HOW TRUDEAU COULD LOSE ELECTION: The ruling Liberal party is leading in polls, and expectations for the Conservative opposition are low, but “Afghanistan is collapsing, British Columbia is on fire, and Covid cases are rising fast in some parts of the country. This is no slam dunk,” reports Nick Taylor-Vaisey. Trudeau should know: he rose from third place in polls in 2015 to seize power. Conservatives are hoping for a split on the left between the Liberals and the left-wing NDP, and need to plant themselves firmly in the political center to seize similar momentum. Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer thinks the odds are still stacked in Trudeau’s favor: “The benefit of the doubt is with big government solutions in a way that I haven’t experienced before,” he said.

CUBA — WHITE HOUSE STICKS TO HARD LINE: Cuban-born Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met Thursday with prominent Cuban-American activists in Miami and announced new sanctions on Cuban regime officials, cementing a shift toward Trump-era policies, and away from those of Barack Obama.

TECH — TOYOTA LATEST AUTOMAKER TO CUT PRODUCTION: The world’s largest automaker is cutting production by 40 percent (from 900,000 cars to 540,000 in September) — joining the second-biggest Volkswagen — as a result of the global microchip shortage. Apple has been affected for months by the problem. President Biden directed his administration to work with companies to solve the shortage back in February.

SUSTAINABLE RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT

SUSTAINABILITY … BUT NEXT YEAR — GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY SUMMIT POSTPONED: The United Nations COP15 biodiversity summit has been partially pushed back to spring 2022. World leaders were expected to agree to a new global framework to reverse biodiversity loss by 2050 at a summit in October 2020. That was postponed until May 2021, and again until October, due to Covid.

Now, the conference will be held in two parts: a high-level ministerial in-person segment in China in October, with negotiations continuing in 2022 with a full-scale summit from April 25 to May 8 in the Chinese city of Kunming.

Work will continue: The first draft of the COP15 agreement will be discussed in a virtual meeting starting Aug. 23. Leaders are also slated to discuss the issue at the privately organized World Conservation Congress in Marseille from Sept. 3 to 11.

GLOBETROTTERS

SCHEDULED: The United Nations Food Systems Summit will take place virtually on Sept. 23, the U.N.confirmed, during leaders week at the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

NOMINATED: Scott A. Nathan, as Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Nathan spent two decades with The Baupost Group, a private investment partnership and served at the State Department under President Obama to protect U.S. economic interests abroad.

LAUNCHED: Yet another attempt at low-cost transatlantic flights. From Freddie Laker’s Skytrain to Virgin Atlantic to Norwegian, many have tried and nearly all have failed to squeeze a profit out of low-cost cross-continental flying. Now it’s JetBlue’s turn. It’s trump card: single aisle Airbus planes — the a321lr — which are relatively cheap to run but can make the Atlantic crossing.

STUCK: (and loving it) Zoe Stephens flew to Tonga for a weekend. Eighteen months later, she’s still stuck there.

SHRUG: Just 95 bankers on a million-plus salary moved to the EU from Britain ahead of Brexit — many had predicted a bigger exodus.

FAST LANE: Vaccinated travel lane set to open between Germany and Singapore, meanwhile Singapore dropped plans for travel bubble with Hong Kong.

BRAIN FOOD

The Return of the Taliban, the documentary of Australian BBC host Yalda Hakim — herself an Afghan refugee in the 1980s. Hakim is the journalist who took a call from the Taliban leadership while live on air this week, conducting this widely-praised interview.

Inside Biden’s five days of panic over Afghanistan, by POLITICO staff.

The case for Biden was Right, by Charles Kupchan.

Thanks to editor John Yearwood and Kate Day.

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