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Israeli military plans to transfer law enforcement in occupied West Bank to police

Israel’s defence minister wants to transfer law enforcement powers for Israelis in the occupied West Bank over to the police, a plan that Palestine’s vice-president described as a “flagrant violation of international law” and step towards full Israeli annexation. Israel Katz announced that he had ordered the military to draw up plans for the handover of responsibility for policing Israeli settlers amid domestic and international criticism of the army’s failure to tackle militants besieging three Palestinian families. The Palestinian vice-president, Hussein al-Sheikh, called for international intervention to enforce international law and stop a move that would “entrench the illegitimate annexation of Palestinian land”. Katz unveiled his plan as a settler siege in the Palestinian village of Qusra entered its sixth day. The Israeli army has proved unable or unwilling to remove the group of militants trying drive out Palestinian residents through a campaign of terror. Leading Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard said a transfer of law enforcement powers could constitute a major step towards formal annexation. “The military can delegate enforcement but not responsibility (of the law),” Sfard said. “If they want to create a normative legal framework that absolves the army from responsibility and transfers it to police, that would be another brick, a very major one, of annexation.” However, Israel could also legally expand police powers in the occupied West Bank under the current occupation framework, he added, and the lack of detail in Katz’s statement indicated it may have been driven more by politics than clear policy. “This is a cowardly statement made by a minister of defence who is under scrutiny, because the army that reached Syria, Iran and Lebanon and annihilated Gaza cannot evacuate a few Jewish terrorists that invaded a Palestinian home in an area under occupation for six decades.” There has been a surge in attacks on Palestinians and construction of new settlements across the occupied West Bank, as extremists backed by the most far-right government in Israel’s history intensify a campaign of ethnic cleansing ahead of national elections set for October. On Thursday Katz celebrated the re-establishment of a settlement evacuated by Israel in 2005, under then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan. “Here, this is the land of Israel. Here, we are staying forever,” Katz said at the ceremony in Ganim, where two dozen prefabricated homes have already been installed, and the hillside is being levelled to make space for more. On the road that leads to the settlement the army had levelled Palestinian property and used piles of rubble were used to block access roads for Palestinian communities. On Friday the commander of Israeli forces for the occupied West Bank, Gen Avi Bluth, made a second visit to Qusra. Two days earlier he told Palestinians the army would remove the settlers, but soldiers retreated from confrontation with the group. Instead they forced one of the Palestinian families out of their home, saying they needed it as a base for the unsuccessful military operation against the settlers. One of the homes is owned by a US citizen, and US ambassador Mike Huckabee described the Israelis besieging it as terrorists, and said he had requested the Israeli police and army act to remove them. The US envoy, who supports the settlement movement’s vision of establishing a “Greater Israel” on land seized from Palestinians and neighbouring countries, said the militants in Qusra represent a “very small minority” of the settler movement. State and settler violence has driven a surge in displacement of Palestinian communities in the past three years. Since October 2023, Israel has forcibly displaced 64 entire Palestinian communities and parts of 15 additional communities, affecting nearly 5,000 people, according to data from Israeli rights group B’tselem. On Friday Israeli gunmen opened fire at a group of unarmed Israeli and Palestinian activists as they attempted to peacefully reclaim Palestinian land seized by settlers in Beit Sahour, just outside Jerusalem. A Catholic bishop and journalists covering the event were also targeted by the attackers. Israeli settlers had put a large Star of David and Israeli flags on the roof an old, dilapidated house, owned by Palestinians, just 500 meters from a Palestinian family home. Mia Biran, from the group Combatants for Peace, said: “They are all the time threatened by the settlers. We were about a hundred activists, our goal was to clean the area, plant some trees, to show presence and to stand with the residents who are very scared. We were on private Palestinian land.” They heard gunshots just a few minutes after they started work, the group heard gunfire from the settler outpost and were forced to take cover. One gunman moved close to the group, opened fire in the air and aimed the gun at activists, in an attack videoed by the group. He was later joined by three or four others. “We screamed in Hebrew ‘do not fire’ and then they understood there are Israelis among the crowd,” Biran said. “I called the police to tell them we are threatened by settlers, the activists who were at the roof saw there was a military Jeep all the time in the area who did nothing.” After they withdrew from the area, settlers visited the nearby Palestinian home and threatened to burn it down, she added. Settlers regularly launch arson attacks on Palestinian homes. One such attack in 2015 killed a baby and his parents, orphaning their only surviving son. Quique Kierszenbaum and Sufian Taha contributed reporting

French court blocks Macron’s social media ban for under-15s

France’s top court has blocked a ban on social media access for under-15s, ruling that it infringed freedom of expression and privacy. The decision is a blow to President Emmanuel Macron as momentum builds around the world for Australian-style restrictions on children’s use of social media. A law approved by parliament in July would have barred under-15s from opening social media accounts from the beginning of September. Tech platforms would also have been required to close existing accounts within four months and use age-verification tools approved by ⁠France’s privacy regulator. However, the constitutional council found that while the law required users to provide proof of age, it failed to specify the “conditions and limits” ‌under which this should happen. It also found that the restrictions infringed freedom of expression and privacy. “The council holds that the contested provisions, on ‌the one hand, disproportionately infringe upon the freedom of expression and communication and, on the other, fail to provide the legal safeguards necessary to ensure the right to respect for private life,” it said. Several countries have followed the example of Australia, which barred under-16s from leading social media platforms in December last year. Indonesia and Malaysia have introduced restrictions for under-16s on certain platforms, while the UK is preparing to block leading apps for the same age group next year. In Australia, the affected platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube. The EU has also said it plans to seek stronger protections for children from harmful social media features, building on the digital services act that already sets rules for tech platforms. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said last month that “it is clear we need age-appropriate restrictions to platforms”. She did not refer to a specific age limit, instead raising the prospect of “phased and gradual access for different age ranges”. Social media companies generally oppose blanket bans, arguing that they already have measures to protect younger users, including a minimum age of 13. They ⁠have also said they would comply with government restrictions. Macron, who in April urged teenagers to turn off their devices and read in order to become better citizens, has asked the French prime ‌minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to rework the legislation to address the constitutional council’s concerns, according to the Élysée. The Élysée said Macron remained determined for the reform to take effect before spring 2027, when France holds its presidential election. Macron is ineligible to stand for a third term.

Hundreds arrested on suspicion of arson in France as wildfires rage across Europe

Almost 500 people have been arrested on suspicion of starting wildfires in France since the start of the summer, authorities have said, as firefighters in half a dozen European countries tackle ferocious blazes amid a record-breaking heatwave. A fire engulfed ⁠homes in a Croatian holiday resort on Friday, killing one person, injuring 40 and forcing 1,200 to evacuate, officials said, as the EU warned that pockets of “very extreme” wildfire conditions stretched across the continent. Hundreds more people were evacuated from villages in western Germany and south-west France, while stranded holidaymakers were picked up from beaches threatened by flames in Greece, and the army rescued historic relics in Spain. With three in five Europeans facing temperatures of at least 30C on Friday and about 150 million enduring 35C or more, France’s interior ministry said 474 people, including 183 minors, had been detained over wildfires in the country since 1 July. About 70% of those arrested were suspected of deliberately starting fires and the rest of doing so accidentally. French media said a 15-year-old boy had been detained in connection with a fire near Bordeaux airport that killed two firefighters in July. French authorities on Friday evacuated more than 525 people from the village of Luglon in the south-west region of Landes after a new wildfire tore through almost 1,100 hectares (2,700 acres) of tinder-dry pine forest in less than 24 hours. “The situation is unfavourable and the fire remains raging,” Gilles Clavreul, a regional official, told reporters, adding that 500 firefighters were tackling ‌the flames and six water-dumping aircraft ‌had been sent to assist. Roads to the village were closed. Luglon is about 62 miles (100km) south-east of the popular holiday destinations of Arcachon Bay and the Lège-Cap-Ferret peninsula where two huge wildfires destroyed more than 50,000 hectares in late July, forcing the evacuation of as many as 220,000 people. Scientists say climate breakdown is causing more frequent and more extreme weather events, evaporating soils and waterways, fuelling wildfires and leading to thousands of excess deaths in France. Europe is heating at about twice the global average rate. The EU’s Copernicus climate change service warned in its weekly outlook of “very extreme” conditions across a large area of central and eastern Europe, with other pockets over southern Britain, Ireland, northern France and southern Sweden. The average high across western Europe on ‌Friday was forecast to be 31.2C, which is 8C above what was typical from 1961 to 1990, data from the Reuters Climate Monitor showed. The temperature for Europe as a whole was 1.6C above the 1961-1990 norm. In western Germany, more than 2,000 people fled their homes early on Friday morning to take shelter in a nearby primary school after a ⁠wildfire in the nearby Hürtgen forest spread to within a few hundred metres of the village of Gey. “This forest fire threatens to hit the local ‌community hard,” Mona Neubaur, the deputy premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, posted on social media. Unexploded second world war ordnance was also hampering firefighting efforts. The news agency dpa reported explosions could be heard as munitions detonated in the flames, forcing firefighters to stay out of the area, not far from the Belgian border, for safety. German army tanks and helicopters were providing support. In Croatia, a wildfire driven by strong winds descended on the tourist town of Lokva Rogoznica on the Dalmatian coast overnight. Police said they had located the body of one person while searching burned areas on Friday afternoon. Emergency shelters opened in several nearby towns. Of 36 people treated by ambulance services in the city of Split, about 15.5 miles to the north, 14 were admitted to hospital and seven had life-threatening injuries, local health officials said. “It was a strong fire, it swept everything on ‌its way ... there has been huge material damage,” Slavko Tucaković, the regional chief fire commander, said on Friday, adding that the blaze appeared to have calmed by Friday morning. The country’s prime minister, Andrej ‌Plenković, said on a visit to nearby Omiš, where the evacuees were sheltering in a sports hall, that the blaze was “one of the worst fires in recent years” but “most importantly” there were no confirmed fatalities so far. In north-east Spain, an army unit removed the remains of three 11th-century Aragonese kings from the San Juan de la Peña monastery after it was threatened by a wildfire and took them to a museum in nearby Huesca. The fire, which began on Monday, intensified on ⁠Thursday, authorities said, driven by higher temperatures and strong winds that have enabled it burn through more than 9,000 hectares, forcing the evacuation of 16 towns and villages. A much larger wildfire in southern Spain also worsened on Thursday. It has so far burned 31,000 hectares in the province of Huelva and forced the evacuation of about 700 people. In northern Greece, a fleet of small boats evacuated about 500 holidaymakers from beaches on Thursday as a forest fire threatened Siviri and Fourka, two popular resorts on the Halkidiki peninsula, south of the city of Thessaloniki. The 2-mile-long fire front, with flames up to 30 metres (98ft) high, was brought under control later in the day, the regional civil protection chief said, though crews remained on alert for flare-ups. Two injured firefighters were taken to hospital, the fire service added. A maximum level-five alert for fires was issued for much of the Greek mainland and local officials in Halkidiki have banned access to the region’s dense pine forests. Winds of up to 62 mph are forecast for Friday. In the UK, wildfires raced across the West Midlands, burning several houses to the ground in “one of the most significant” incidents the region’s fire service has ever had to deal with, the regional fire chief, Simon Tuhill, said. Reuters and Agence-France Press contributed to this report

Canadian plasma clinics pause collections after deaths of two donors

A chain of private plasma donation clinics in Canada has said it is pausing collections after the deaths of two donors and a new government investigation into potential unsafe practices. Grifols, a Spanish healthcare company which runs 17 clinics in Canada and is the country’s only private clinic for plasma donation, said it informed Health Canada of its decision to temporarily pause collections on Wednesday. On the same day, the agency had issued a formal notice of non-compliance for failure to follow blood regulations, a senior official told the Globe and Mail newspaper. The two deaths occurred after plasma donations in October 2025 and January 2026, Health Canada said in March of this year. The donors, both of whom were in the province of Manitoba, went into “distress” while donating, people familiar with the cases said. Though Health Canada did not release the identities of the donors, friends said one was Rodiyat Alabede, 22, an international student and aspiring social worker who donated plasma in Winnipeg on 25 October. Patient advocates reported at the end of May that there were concerns about whether Alabede had been properly screened. “They had staff taking plasma from donors who did not know how to extract plasma in a safe manner,” alleged Kat Lanteigne, a safe blood campaigner who represents Alabede’s family. “The [failures] were so egregious that … now we have more questions than answers,” she said in May. An autopsy showed Alabede died of cardiac arrest shortly after donating. Health Canada reported that it found “no link” between Alabede’s death and plasma donation. Patient advocates have called for a new inquest into her death, however, after alleging that “significant medical discrepancies” had been uncovered between her autopsy, which was completed two days after her death, and the medical summary drafted by Health Canada published on 27 March of this year. The Guardian has also seen Health Canada inspection reports from May that found deficiencies at Grifols clinics, including inadequate training for staff, failures in standard operating procedures, poor record-keeping and a failure by Grifols to remedy past issues. The Health Canada report also found that staff did not stop plasma collection when alarms went off, and described the company’s reporting as “incomplete” and “inaccurate”. Prior to the newly announced pause, donations were permitted at Grifols twice a week. The company paid donors up to C$100 (£55) for each donation. Plasma is a pale yellow, protein-rich liquid in blood that assists in moving red and white blood cells, along with platelets, through blood vessels, according to Canadian Blood Services, the non-profit that operates Canada’s national blood supply. Plasma also helps prevent excessive bleeding and is used to create medications for a variety of conditions including haemophilia, liver disease and various cancers. The plasma donation process differs from donating blood overall. A medical device called an apheresis machine draws the blood, separates it into individual parts, collects the components needed and then returns the remaining blood back into the body, according to Canadian Blood Services. The process takes about 90 minutes, whereas a general blood draw takes about 10. In Canada, provinces and territories decide whether paid plasma clinics are permitted. British Columbia and Quebec do not allow the practice, for example, but Manitoba, where the deaths occurred, does not prohibit companies from paying donors for plasma. Grifols said it decided to pause collection “proactively and voluntarily” due to what it deemed “unfounded attention”. It said the pause would allow it to work with Health Canada and Canadian Blood Services. The company has denied the two deaths were connected to plasma donation. On Friday, Health Canada said it found “various deficiencies” specifically at the Taylor Avenue Grifols location in Winnipeg. A spokesperson for that location said it was working closely with the company so that it could return to operations. “Canadians can be assured that this decision will have no impact on the safety and security of Canada’s blood and plasma supply,” Grifols said.

Belgian student strikes gold worth €9m while digging a new sewer

For a student with a summer job working on a Belgian building site, “money down the drain” has taken on a whole new meaning: excavating the trenches for a sewage system, he stumbled across a hidden trove of gold worth an estimated €9m (£8m). “We suddenly saw something lying there,” 18-year-old Kobe told the Belgian news network VTM. “At first I thought it was €1 coins. So we started digging them up. Then we saw a gold bar. It turned out to be a bit more than we thought.” The student, who has not been further identified, was working with colleagues on the site of a former brewery on Van Langenhovestraat in Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, about 19 miles (30km) north-west of Brussels, when they made the discovery on Tuesday. The hoard, which includes gold coins, nuggets and numbered bullion bars, was stashed in a bag in a bricked-in cellar wall beneath the grand villa originally built for the brewery’s owner, Theophilus Van Assche, in the late 19th century. Kobe said: “It’s just not something you expect when you’re working on a regular Tuesday morning,” adding that the treasure trove appeared to have been deliberately hidden. “It was really bricked in there – not in a safe or anything.” Brewing on the site began in 1899 and ceased in 1970, and the listed property – the wrought-iron gates of which still bear the initials “VA” – is being completely renovated by the social welfare organisation CAW Oost-Vlaanderen to create new offices and housing. “The Brouwershuis was a beautiful building, but it is being completely gutted,” Geert Hillaert, of CAW, told the news outlet HLN. “Ultimately, only the walls will remain. Labourers were laying drainage pipes when they stumbled across the gold.” Kobe and his colleagues called the police and notified CAW as soon as they came across the gold hoard. The treasure has since been transferred to a secure facility in Brussels pending a detailed official investigation to establish its legal ownership. Hanne Ollevier, of the East Flanders public prosecutor’s office, told HLN that authorities must first verify that the bullion was not stolen property or the proceeds of criminal activity, and was likely to spark a complex civil dispute. The building contractors, the welfare organisation and any descendants of the once-wealthy Van Assche family could all have a claim to part of the fortune. Belgian law requires finders to wait at least five years for potential owners to claim any treasure. A former mayor of Dendermonde, Piet Buyse, told HLN that the Van Assche’s fortune had “certainly stayed in the family. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they had decided to put at least some of it in gold, and then to hide it in a safe place.” For his part, Kobe said he and his colleagues had understood straight away that they had to hand over such a big find. “If it had been a few coins, maybe not,” he said. “But maybe we’ll get some kind of finder’s reward eventually.”

One dead, dozens injured and thousands evacuated in Croatian wildfires – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. At least one person died and 42 were injured in major wildfire near Lokva Rogoznica and Omiš on the Croatian coast (10:19, 11:25, 11:47, 13:15, 15:48, 16:58). 14 people were hospitalised, and seven remain in life-threatening condition, including four transported to specialist hospitals in Zagreb. Over 1,000 people were evacuated, including many tourists, with reports that Czech and Hungarian citizens were among those affected by the fire (11:25, 15:57). Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenković said it was “one of the worst fires in recent years,” as he hailed firefighters for their efforts to stop the blaze (11:47). Significant wildfires were also reported in England (9:39, 12:38, 13:54, 14:36), France (15:08), Germany (10:09), and Greece, among others. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Reckless ebike users put all of us at risk | Letter

There may be something in the argument identified by Andy Beckett that increased use of ebikes reflects broader changes in urban areas, including the cost of housing (Lime bikes hurtling around the city: is this the revenge of a priced-out generation?, 8 August). Yet none of that excuses the sheer impunity that radiates from ebike users, worsened by the design of city bikes which encourage the rider to sit back as if on a magic steed from which to survey their kingdom. Their irresponsibility imposes externalities on other road users and pedestrians: riding through red lights and across junctions with no heed to other traffic, wearing headphones (but seemingly never helmets), being on the phone or apparently scrolling while riding, carelessly weaving just to maintain a conversation, riding far too fast on paths shared with pedestrians, dropping bikes like litter. As for riding home after drinking in the pub – seriously? As a helmet-wearing cyclist, it is maddening to dodge people who seem barely familiar with a bike, let alone being in traffic. The behaviour needs to change. In the first instance, that must be through regulation and for riders and suppliers to be liable for the consequences of their actions, which sadly are sometimes serious. Kevin Lloyd Highbury, London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Abbas fought the Taliban alongside US and Australian troops. Now exiled in Iran, he feels abandoned

War is Abbas’s* earliest memory. As a child, the first iteration of Taliban rule forced his family to flee – with nothing but the clothes on their backs and what food they could carry – for the relative safety of far-distant hills. War became his profession. Joining republican Afghanistan’s fledgling army, Abbas fought alongside American, Australian and British troops, believing in the foreigners’ ultimately false promise that they could bring peace and prosperity to his homeland. Conflict is his constant attendant now, over Afghanistan’s border in neighbouring Iran, as the US, the country he fought with, rains bombs on the land of his exile. Back home, the resurgent Taliban – unreformed, unrepentant and firmly in charge – seek him still. The war – for all its varied complexions, it feels the same war – goes on. In the five years since Kabul dramatically fell back into the hands of the Taliban, those who served Afghanistan’s republican government have found themselves the targets of violent retribution. Those who took up arms against the Taliban are particular targets. Abandoned US military databases – containing Afghans’ personal and biometric data such as fingerprints, photographs, and home addresses – are being used to hunt former soldiers who served the “infidel” west. Social media groups share information of the latest atrocities, videos of former soldiers being whipped in the street, shot in summary executions, or dragged away in night raids to be tortured in Taliban prisons. *** Abbas joined the military – initially at least – for the money. For a poor boy from the provinces, the army represented a regular income and a full belly, a reliable way to support his family. That there was a war on was barely a consideration: there was always a war on. After basic training he passed a selection course to serve in the special forces. “At first I joined for money but when I entered the commandos everything changed,” Abbas tells the Guardian. “There were foreign forces teaching us … they gave speeches about global terrorism. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads “It was not about money any more. I became very committed, I just wanted to serve my country and fight Taliban and destroy the terrorist groups.” He spent 12 years in the Afghan national army, most of those wearing the distinctive red badge of the special forces, “and we fought many hard battles”. Abbas served alongside Australian troops in southern Afghanistan, night-time missions by helicopter in late 2011, in the restive and mountainous Khas Uruzgan district. “There were many forces we served with: Germans in Kunduz, French in Kapisa, and especially we were with Americans. The Australian forces were in Uruzgan, and we went there. We took part in combat alongside them, especially in Khas Uruzgan, we … executed two missions with them by air.” Abbas said he and his comrades “were always on the frontline”. “We spent many days and nights with foreign forces. I performed combat duties in [approximately] 20 provinces of Afghanistan.” He was wounded in a firefight in Laghman district, shot twice at close range. His bulletproof vest deflected the bullet that struck the left side of his chest, “but another hit my left arm, breaking the bone”. He was taken by US helicopter to Bagram hospital: “I still have a metal plate in my left arm.” Abbas remembers the camaraderie of his days serving alongside western troops with fondness: “We risked our lives to help each other on and off the battlefield and to rescue one another. They always called us brothers.” But he remembers too, the commitments that were made to him. “They promised they wouldn’t abandon us. But in the end, when they withdrew, they simply left us. And they did it in such a way that we were left with our hands tied, the entire army was disarmed. “Those who were high-ranking officials left, while the rest of us, sergeants like me, were left behind. No one even asked about us.” When Kabul fell, Abbas was forced to burn most of his documents and destroy photographs: incriminating evidence in the eyes of the Taliban. A bare handful remain secretly in his possession: pictures on patrol with western forces, certificates of appreciation from foreign militaries commending his “outstanding commitment, dedication and support” to their operations. Life since the fall, with a wife and young son, has been precarious, often dangerous. His has been a shifting, uncertain existence in the shadows. As the Taliban swept northwards across Afghanistan, expanding and consolidating its control from the major cities to smaller, more distant villages, there were fewer and fewer places to hide. With his family, Abbas fled over Afghanistan’s arid, inhospitable border into Iran. There, with no legal rights, he is vulnerable to exploitation and extortion: landlords demand thousands of dollars for tiny apartments that have been condemned as unfit for habitation; he has been forced to take dangerous, illegal work for far less than a living wage. When US bombs started raining down on Tehran, Abbas and his family fled once again for the mountainous countryside. “Our life in Iran is very difficult, refugees face a lot of problems. Especially for us former military personnel … we are still being threatened by Taliban groups even here. We also fear that we might be deported to Afghanistan.” Abbas said his family’s future depends on being able to find a safe country, far from the reach of the Taliban, and the American war which has blighted his Iranian exile. “I am waiting to see what will happen, but I am hopeful … I will build a better life for my family, a better future for my son.” Many in Afghanistan feel as Abbas does – betrayed by the foreign forces in whom they placed their trust. *** On the day of his second inauguration as US president, Donald Trump halted all Afghan refugee resettlement by executive order. The shutdown left more than 1,000 Afghan former interpreters and soldiers stranded in a US-run camp in Qatar, and hundreds of thousands more vetted applicants stuck in neighbouring countries like Pakistan. In Germany, a new government sought to renege on a commitment to resettling hundreds of Afghan refugees it had identified as being at risk. The country’s highest court ruled it could not arbitrarily cancel hundreds of resettlement places it had already promised. And in Britain, a House of Commons committee report this month reported that a massive data breach from within the UK government’s Afghan relocations and assistance policy exposed thousands of Afghans to potentially life-threatening danger. Afghans still trapped inside the country are being told by the UK government to “self-move” to safe third countries, a policy that “risks excluding people the UK has promised to help,” the committee chair, Tan Dhesi, said. A spokesperson for Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said five years on from the fall of Kabul: “We stand firm in our pursuit to do all we can to protect the people of Afghanistan from the oppressive acts of the Taliban, particularly women and girls. “We also remain committed to assisting those who helped Australia’s mission in Afghanistan.” Until 2023 the Australian government ran a dedicated “locally engaged employee” (LEE) program for Afghans who worked for and with Australia “and are at risk of harm as a result of their work”. The program certified 2,059 Afghans – but only 1,208 of those have reached Australia, according to the latest government figures (along with 4,493 immediate family members). But hundreds of Afghans still living in hiding inside the country, or stranded in perilous situations elsewhere, say they were unable to apply before the LEE program closed, or had their applications rejected despite providing evidence of support for Australia, including fighting alongside Australian troops. A government review of the program found it was riven by “delays, double handling and confusion”, and it imposed an unreasonable administrative burden on those fleeing the Taliban seeking safety. Abbas has family in Australia, and, having fought alongside Australian troops on their missions in Afghanistan, he applied for LEE protection from Australia. He was rejected, the government ruling he had not been “in a direct employment relationship with defence”. “While the applicant might have worked alongside the coalition forces, including members of the Australian Defence Force in partnership on operations in Afghanistan, it does not appear that the applicant was ‘employed with’ the ADF,” the government decision states. Wong’s spokesperson said the current government had approved more LEE applications than any before it. “Since the Albanese government took office, Dfat has certified close to 650 applications from Afghan Locally Engaged Employees, more than the total approved under all previous foreign ministers combined since the program began in 2013.” Australia, too, has provided broader support – more than $310m in humanitarian assistance, through established partners and UN agencies – “to ensure our aid supports those most in need – not the Taliban”. *** Zaki Haidari, a former Afghan refugee who is now an Australian citizen, remains in close contact with dozens of former soldiers, interpreters and others who supported western nations in their failed two-decade mission in Afghanistan. “Almost every conversation I have with people inside Afghanistan is filled with fear, uncertainty and hopelessness. Families tell me they struggle to afford food, many have lost their livelihoods, and parents worry constantly about the future of their children,” Haidari, Amnesty International’s Australian refugee rights advocate, says. Haidari said women live under constant surveillance, fearing arrest for speaking out or failing to comply with the Taliban’s ever-tightening restrictions. Members of the Hazara ethnic and religious minority – for decades Taliban targets – are forcibly evicted from homes, and face discrimination and violence. Haidari said Australia’s LEE program “undoubtedly saved lives”, but there were still thousands endangered by their support and assistance for Australia. Hopes that a Taliban desperate for international legitimacy would temper their more repressive instincts have proven illusory: with global attention shifted to other conflicts, the Taliban has further entrenched their brutality across Afghanistan. Australia’s obligation to the people of Afghanistan “did not end with the military withdrawal”, Haidari says. “Many people who supported Australia’s mission remain at risk and continue to wait for protection. “Many fear for their lives every day.” *Name/s have been changed