Greece: Dozens Missing After Boat Carrying Migrants Sinks

• 11, 01, 2022
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Greek authorities have launched a major search and rescue operation for dozens of migrants missing after a boat they were traveling on from Turkey overturned and sank in rough weather overnight between the islands of Evia and Andros.

The coast guard said Tuesday that nine people, all men, had been found on an uninhabited rocky islet in the Kafirea Straits between the two islands, which lie east of the Greek capital. The survivors, who were picked up by a coast guard patrol boat, told authorities there had been a total of about 68 people on board the sailing boat when it sank, and that they had initially set sail from Izmir on the Turkish coast.

Authorities were initially alerted by a distress call in the early hours of Tuesday from passengers saying the boat they were on was in trouble, but they did not provide a location. Weather in the area was particularly rough, with gale force winds. The coast guard said a helicopter, a coast guard patrol boat and two nearby ships were participating in the search and rescue operation.

A separate search and rescue operation was also ongoing since Monday off the coast of the eastern Aegean island of Samos for eight people reported missing after an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants overturned. Four survivors were rescued Monday from that incident. A coast guard aircraft and patrol boat, two nearby ships and a vessel from the European border patrol agency Frontex were participating in the search, authorities said.

Thousands of people fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa, Asia and the Middle East attempt to enter the European Union through Greece each year. Most make the short but often perilous crossing from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands in inflatable dinghies. Others opt to attempt to circumvent Greece in overcrowded sailboats and yachts heading straight to Italy.

Earlier this month, at least 27 people drowned in two separate incidents. In one, 18 people died when a boat that had set sail from Turkey sank off the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos, while in the other, a yacht carrying about 100 people sank in a gale, killing at least nine and leaving six missing.
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Ukraine Calls for Isolating Russia After Latest Missile Attacks

• 11, 01, 2022
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Ukrainian officials called for Russia to be isolated from international bodies after Russian forces carried out attacks on infrastructure targets in multiple Ukrainian cities.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said Tuesday Russia should be expelled from the G-20 group of nations and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to this month’s G-20 summit in Indonesia should be revoked.

“Putin publicly acknowledged ordering missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure,” Nikolenko tweeted. “With his hands stained in blood, he must not be allowed to sit at the table with world leaders.”

In his nightly address Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia “should have no place” on the U.N. Security Council.

“Terror against Ukrainian energy facilities, moreover against the background of Russia’s attempts to exacerbate the global food crisis, clearly indicates that Russia will continue to oppose itself to the entire international community,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine’s army said Russia’s attacks Monday included more than 50 cruise missiles. The strikes cut off water and electricity to much of Kyiv, but Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Tuesday those services had been restored.

Putin said Monday’s attacks were in response to Kyiv allegedly carrying out drone attacks on Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

In response to a journalist who asked if the bombardment was an answer to the recent events on the Black Sea, Putin said, “Partly, yes. But it’s not all we could have done.”

Ukraine has not confirmed or denied attacking the Russian fleet, which Russia cited Saturday as its reason for suspending its participation in a U.N.-led grain initiative.

A senior U.S. military official said the United States is tracking the report of an alleged attack against Russian navy vessels in Sevastopol and said, “We do assess that there were explosions there.”

Putin said Monday that Ukraine fired drones at Russia’s fleet through a zone that was meant to ensure the safety of ships carrying grain.

U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths told the U.N. Security Council Monday that no ships involved with the U.N. grain deal were in the corridor when the alleged attack took place.

Russia announced Saturday it was suspending its participation in the U.N.-brokered initiative to allow grain exports from Ukraine.

Amir Abdulla, the U.N. coordinator for the Black Sea Grain Initiative, is continuing talks with the governments involved in the program — Russia, Ukraine and Turkey — “in an effort to resume full participation,” the U.N. said Tuesday.

The U.N. also said three vessels carrying 84,890 metric tons of grain and food products left Ukraine on Tuesday and were bound for Germany, Libya and Morocco.

VOA U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this story. Some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Observers: China’s Chip Talent Hurdle Worsens After Layoffs at US Firm Marvell

• 11, 01, 2022
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Santa Clara, California-based chip producer Marvell Technology has confirmed that it is eliminating research and development staffs in China – the third U.S. chipmaker that has done so this year as the U.S.-China tech rivalry intensifies.

Observers say this will hobble China’s chip ambitions and worsen its talent shortfall in the field of designing and manufacturing cutting-edge computer chips.

“China is definitely going to be at a loss when it comes to American companies like Marvell essentially redesigning their workforce, because China still hasn’t reached a point where it’s able to pump out the same level of chip talent as America or the UK or Israel,” Abishur Prakash, a co-founder at Center for Innovating the Future (CIF) in Canada told VOA over the phone.

China becoming off-limits

These tech giants are aware the era when companies could set up supply chains and move talent around the globe freely is coming to an end and “China is becoming off-limits for Western companies,” added Prakash, the author of five books including the latest one, titled “The World is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization.”

Marvell’s decision came weeks after the Biden administration, in early October, imposed additional curbs on China-bound exports of advanced chips, as well as the technology and equipment to produce 14-nanometer chips or better. 

The new rules also prohibited “U.S. persons” including U.S. citizens and green card holders from working at Chinese chip firms, in an apparent move to stem the flow of U.S.-trained tech talent to China. 

“In China, we will focus our R&D [research and development] investments on local customers and the China market,” Stacey Keegan, vice president of Corporate Marketing at Marvell told Reuters in a statement last Thursday. “As a part of this realignment, several of our business units and functions are announcing changes to their global location strategy that will result in the elimination of roles in China,” he added without specifying how many staff it is cutting.

U.S. memory chip giant Micron announced in January it would close its 100-member DRAM design operations in Shanghai, while Texas Instruments in May moved its microcontroller unit R&D team in Shanghai to India.

And more companies may follow suit to downsize their China operations, CIF’s Prakash said.

‘Unplugging from China’

“The worst is yet to come because China is going to be forced to adapt to the new design of globalization that’s emerging. And American companies are essentially at the precipice of a new phase, where instead of plugging into China, they’re unplugging from China,” he added.

Prakash argued that global chipmakers face multiple conundrums. First, they’re forced to take the U.S. side in political disputes because they use American tools and systems. Secondly, they have to deal with multiple regions in the world, including the EU, India and even Saudi Arabia, which want to become global chip hubs. 

That leads to their third problem: how to insulate themselves from U.S.-China geopolitical tensions while ensuring profitability in China?

“The way to do that is to build a dual-track strategy, one for within China and one for outside of China. But it’s not just going to be dual-track. There’s going to be far more tracks because multiple countries are there, not just China,” Prakash said.

China lacks leverage

The tech analyst said the possibility can’t be ruled out that Beijing may make a drastic move and ban American companies that comply with U.S. sanctions on selling to China. 

But Frank Lee, a senior partner of Blue Ocean Capital in Beijing, says such a move would be a “bad idea, which will only serve the U.S.’s purposes,” that is, a U.S.-China tech de-coupling.

He said China has been hit badly by the U.S. sanctions that first cut off chip supplies to China and now limit China’s access to top-tier chip talent.  

Lee formerly served as an executive at China’s Lenovo Group, the world’s largest maker of personal computers.

In the short run, he says, China, whose chip sector is still lagging behind its U.S. rival by at least 20 years, will face an uphill battle in fighting a chip war with the U.S.  

“The biggest problem is that China doesn’t have too much leverage to retaliate against the U.S. when it comes to chips,” Lee told VOA.

Lee said that China may one day leapfrog the U.S., though, because some Chinese firms enjoy advantages in the development of future devices, powered by 5G or 6G mobile chips.

Citing a Beijing Daily report, Lee said a Chinese firm, Zhongke Xintong Microelectronics, is slated to mass-produce next-generation, super-fast photonics chips in 2023. That would potentially free the company and some of its peers from reliance on extreme ultraviolet machines currently needed to make advanced chips. The EUV machines are made by a Dutch firm, ASML, which is honoring the U.S. sanctions.

Without such a breakthrough, China can neither produce advanced chips nor incubate local talents because it takes years for engineers to master the equipment and the production of advanced chips, said Lin Tsungnan, professor of electrical engineering at National Taiwan University in Taipei.

“Amid heightened U.S.-China tech rivalry, when its access to top-tier talent is limited, China will have a shortage. China can certainly train its local talent, but that’s only possible for mid- to low-end chip talent,” Lin told VOA over the phone.

This article originated in VOA’s Mandarin Service.
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Turkey-Libya Deal Inflames Turkish-Greek Tensions

• 11, 01, 2022
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October’s Turkish energy deal with Libya’s Government of National Accord is the latest flashpoint in growing tensions between Turkey and Greece. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, the effects of the rivalry are spreading in regions of Europe and the Mideast.
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Russia Recruiting US-trained Afghan Commandos, Former Generals Say

• 11, 01, 2022
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Afghan special forces soldiers who fought alongside American troops and then fled to Iran after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal last year are now being recruited by the Russian military to fight in Ukraine, three former Afghan generals told The Associated Press.

They said the Russians want to attract thousands of the former elite Afghan commandos into a “foreign legion” with offers of steady, $1,500-a-month payments and promises of safe havens for themselves and their families so they can avoid deportation home to what many assume would be death at the hands of the Taliban.

“They don’t want to go fight — but they have no choice,” said one of the generals, Abdul Raof Arghandiwal, adding that the dozen or so commandos in Iran with whom he has texted fear deportation most. “They ask me, ‘Give me a solution. What should we do? If we go back to Afghanistan, the Taliban will kill us.'”

Arghandiwal said the recruiting is led by the Russian mercenary force Wagner Group. Another general, Hibatullah Alizai, the last Afghan army chief before the Taliban took over, said the effort is also being helped by a former Afghan special forces commander who lived in Russia and speaks the language.

The Russian recruitment follows months of warnings from U.S. soldiers who fought with Afghan special forces that the Taliban was intent on killing them and that they might join with U.S. enemies to stay alive or out of anger with their former ally.

A GOP congressional report in August specifically warned of the danger that the Afghan commandos — trained by U.S. Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets — could end up giving up information about U.S. tactics to the Islamic State group, Iran or Russia — or fight for them.

“We didn’t get these individuals out as we promised, and now it’s coming home to roost,” said Michael Mulroy, a retired CIA officer who served in Afghanistan, adding that the Afghan commandos are highly skilled, fierce fighters. “I don’t want to see them in any battlefield, frankly, but certainly not fighting the Ukrainians.”

Mulroy was skeptical, however, that Russians would be able to persuade many Afghan commandos to join because most he knew were driven by the desire to make democracy work in their country rather than being guns for hire.

AP was investigating the Afghan recruiting when details of the effort were first reported by Foreign Policy magazine last week based on unnamed Afghan military and security sources. The recruitment comes as Russian forces reel from Ukrainian military advances and Russian President Vladimir Putin pursues a sputtering mobilization effort, which has prompted nearly 200,000 Russian men to flee the country to escape service.

Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Yevgeny Prigozhin, who recently acknowledged being the founder of the Wagner Group, dismissed the idea of an ongoing effort to recruit former Afghan soldiers as “crazy nonsense.”

The U.S. Defense Department also didn’t reply to a request for comment, but a senior official suggested the recruiting is not surprising given that Wagner has been trying to sign up soldiers in several other countries.

It’s unclear how many Afghan special forces members who fled to Iran have been courted by the Russians, but one told the AP he is communicating through the WhatsApp chat service with about 400 other commandos who are considering offers.

He said many like him fear deportation and are angry at the U.S. for abandoning them.

“We thought they might create a special program for us, but no one even thought about us,” said the former commando, who requested anonymity because he fears for himself and his family. “They just left us all in the hands of the Taliban.”

The commando said his offer included Russian visas for himself as well as his three children and wife who are still in Afghanistan.

Others have been offered extensions of their visas in Iran. He said he is waiting to see what others in the WhatsApp groups decide but thinks many will take the deal.

An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Afghan special forces fought with the Americans during the two-decade war, and only a few hundred senior officers were airlifted out when the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan. Since many of the Afghan commandos did not work directly for the U.S. military, they were not eligible for special U.S. visas.

“They were the ones who fought to the really last minute. And they never, never, never talked to the Taliban. They never negotiated,” former Afghan army chief Alizai said. “Leaving them behind is the biggest mistake.”
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