Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Monday all foreign forces will eventually leave the war-torn country – a key Taliban demand – as talks with the armed group progressed.

Ghani said based on an international agreement, foreign troops will not be required in the future.

“No Afghans want foreign forces in their country for the long term,” Ghani said in a televised address.

“The current presence of foreign forces is based on need, and this need has always been contemplated and will be contemplated… And according to an exact and arranged plan, we are trying to bring down that number to zero,” he said.

The president’s comments came as both US and Taliban officials hailed progress after six days of talks in Qatar ended on Saturday.

A senior US government official told Reuters news agency on Monday that Washington was committed to the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan after 17 years of war.

The official, who declined to be identified, described “significant progress” in discussions last week with Afghan Taliban leaders in Qatar on a foreign troop pullout, but more negotiations were needed on a ceasefire and its timing.

“Of course we don’t seek a permanent military presence in Afghanistan,” the official said in the capital Kabul.

“Our goal is to help bring peace in Afghanistan and we would like a future partnership, newly defined with a post peace government. We would like to leave a good legacy.”

There could not be a withdrawal without a ceasefire, the official added.

Ceasefire deal?

The US peace envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, shared details of his latest round of talks with the Taliban in Qatar with the Afghan president and other government officials in Kabul, a statement from the president’s office said Monday.

It said Khalilzad noted he discussed a ceasefire deal with the Taliban but there was no progress so far on the issue. Khalilzad did not confirm the statement and there was no immediate comment from the US Embassy.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a former Taliban official and currently a member of the High Peace Council, an independent body of clerics and respected Afghan figures, said he believes the Qatar talks resulted in a “good understanding between both sides” but more discussions are needed in the coming weeks or months.

“Afghanistan’s problem is not so simple that it can be solved in a day, week or month, it needs more time and more discussions,” Mujahid told The Associated Press. “What is clear right now he said is that the US is fed up with the war in Afghanistan and wants an end to it.”

Ongoing bloodshed

The Taliban have been staging near-daily attacks targeting Afghan forces, causing scores of casualties every week. Their offensive has not let up despite the severe Afghan winter and the Taliban now holding sway over nearly half of the country.

That has made peace an even more pressing issue. Khalilzad met with the Taliban on a number of occasions in recent months – most recently last week in Qatar where the Taliban have a political office – in the latest bid to end the United States’ longest war.

The US invaded Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks to topple the Taliban, which was harbouring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda fighters, who stand accused of carrying out assault with hijacked airliners that killed about 3,000 people.

Paris, France – Youcef Brakni was preparing to hit the send button on his Facebook post when he took a moment to reconsider.

Finally, his organisation, the Adama Committee, an anti-racism and anti-police-violence group, had decided to join the yellow vest movement. But Brakni wasn’t sure his voice would be heard.

“We’re always associated with violence,” he said later. “Whether you stay out of protests or get involved, you’re associated with violence.”

Finally, he decided to push the button and join the protests.

Critical of French President Emmanuel Macron‘s socioeconomic policies and worried about unemployment and rising poverty in his neighbourhood, he found common ground with the yellow vest protesters.

Yet his group stands out.

Despite suffering from high living costs and difficult access to benefits, minorities have been reluctant to join the yellow vest movement, with few seen in demonstrations.

Their absence noticed by newspapers and TV stations across France.

It’s a white movement. The question of minorities and their specific concerns are not central to yellow vests.

Rafik Chekkat, law expert and editor of website Etat d’Exception

“Banlieues are hesitant to join yellow vests” read a Le Monde article, referring to the impoverished dwellings outside urban centres, which are overwhelmingly represented by minorities.

“There’s been an underrepresentation of immigrants, people from North Africa or the rest of Africa,” said Dominique Sopo, president of SOS Racisme, an anti-racism organisation.

With immigrants and minorities suffering from disproportionate rates of unemployment and poverty, similarities with yellow vests when it comes to pay and work are obvious.

“It’s the France that’s forgotten, the France that’s left behind,” said Brakni.

Yet a study by sociologist Herve Le Bras suggested that yellow vest protesters are overwhelmingly from rural areas, where there are few minority groups.

“It’s a white movement,” said Rafik Chekkat, a law expert and editor of the website Etat d’Exception.

“The question of minorities and their specific concerns are not central to yellow vests.”

The protests, which began late last year, have gathered momentum on issues of the erosion of people’s purchasing power, the widening of the wealth gap and a proposed tax on cars’ fuel consumption.

They are not focused on racism nor have they embraced minorities, said Chekkat.

“If you look at the [2017] presidential elections, racial questions were never discussed,” said Chekkat. 

Because minorities were left out of politics, they have not been accommodated space in demonstrations either, said Chekkat.

“There’s nothing new in the fact that people of colour stay out of protests.”

Another deterrent is how the media describes minorities, specifically in how they come from the banlieues, Chekkat said.

The term is at times meant pejoratively and brings back memories of the 2005 uprising when young people in these neighbourhoods burned cars to protest police brutality and inequality under then-President Nicolas Sarkozy – who in return described them as “racaille”, or scum.

“There’s something almost racist in using that term [banlieues] to talk about race as if people of colour were one homogenous group,” said Chekkat.

Banlieues were, in other cases, accused of starting the yellow vest movement; minorities are seen as troublemakers, rioters and thugs, said Chekkat.

Referring to the rise of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who made it to the second and final round of the 2017 vote, SOS Racisme’s Sopo added: “France has not been immune to the rise of populism in Europe.”

To him, the question of racism has become unpopular across the political spectrum and has been replaced with discussions on identity and nationalism.

Racist outbursts

The yellow vest movement, meanwhile, has witnessed outbursts of racism.

In one instance, white yellow vest protesters forced a black woman out of her car and insulted her in front of her children, telling her to “go back to [her] country.”

“It’s white France that’s suffering,” said Jean-Yves Le Gallou, a self-proclaimed yellow vest member and far-right politician. 

“Bourgeois France duped us, telling us migrants are poor,” added Eric Zemmour, a right-wing writer. 

Minorities have been reluctant to join a movement that might very well turn against them, said Sopo.

“When you’re of foreign descent, you know that populism can easily turn against you,” he said. “A movement with anger at its roots can easily turn it on migrants and their kids.”

Some minorities in urban areas have found the rallying call around tax on car oil irrelevant to them. 

Others were worried that joining protests would cast a negative light on a population already marginalised and attacked by state institutions.

“Justice in France is not colour blind,” said Chekkat, who explained that a friend of his of Arab descent was sentenced to days in prison for participating in yellow vest protests in Marseille.

Minorities face tougher sentences, with immigrants comprising 30 percent of France’s prison population despite accounting for less than six percent of the overall population, according to a 2015 study.

Brakni decided to join the movement to use the momentum of the yellow vests to shed light on his organisation’s specific concerns.

The Adama Committee was created to stop police violence against minorities. It was launched after the death of Adama Traore, a 24-year-old man of Malian descent, who died in 2016 in police custody.

“There’s systemic racism, at the highest level of the state,” said Brakni. “Police target people from former colonies. They marginalise us. They hit us, sometimes to death.”

With police responding violently to protests after Macron promised a crackdown, police brutality has come in the spotlight.

“People see things differently now,” said Brakni.

Yet, while the yellow vest demonstrators have made progress with Macron walking back some of his policies, including the tax on car oil consumption, neither the movement nor the government have addressed systemic racism or discriminatory police violence.

Looking at Macron’s letter to start a national debate earlier this month, the focus was put on identity and immigration, not on racism.

“Regarding these issues,” said Brakni on systemic racism, “we’ll see. It’s too soon to tell.”

Germany is Europe’s economic powerhouse but it’s running low on steam as one of its biggest export markets – China – slows down. Now, another event closer to its shores could add to those headwinds: the UK’s possible exit from the European Union without a trade deal.

The UK is already bearing the cost of Brexit uncertainty as companies delay, divert or halt investment ahead of its scheduled EU divorce date of March 29. But if Britain crashes out of the bloc without a deal, a so-called “hard Brexit”, the resulting trade barriers could also spell trouble for Germany’s export-driven economy.

The German Economic Institute (IW), a liberal think-tank, estimates that Germany’s exporters would face extra tariffs of nearly $3.8bn if the UK leaves the EU without a trade deal.

“In the worst case this could reduce German-UK exports by over 50 percent,” IW Director Michael Huther told Al Jazeera. “As these exports are 2.6 percent of German GDP, the impact on the German economy could be severe.” 

German companies, large and small, worry about the possibility of disruptions to supply chains, the movements of raw materials and parts involved in the manufacture of complex products.

Many companies send components back and forth across the UK’s borders several times before they are assembled into their final products.

Currently, this not a problem because there are no tariffs imposed on goods moving between EU countries. But if the UK leaves without a trade deal, cross-border tariffs may have to be levied, requiring customs inspections at borders, slowing manufacturing down and increasing the costs of production.

“Even in the case of a relatively smooth withdrawal from the European Union, we still expect to face permanently higher costs,” Nicholas Peter, chief financial officer of German auto giant BMW, said in a statement last month.

Dicey economic times

The possibility of a hard Brexit is happening at an especially dicey moment for the German economy, which shrank by 0.2 percent in the third quarter last year; the first contraction since 2015.

The outlook for the fourth quarter and beyond also appears weak.

Unusually low water levels last summer in the Rhine river, a major artery for shipping raw materials and industrial components, hindered production for some German manufacturers.

Meanwhile, Germany’s third biggest export market, China, reported its slowest annual economic growth in almost three decades. The deceleration has already curbed Beijing’s appetite for German cars and industrial goods.

How much pain a hard Brexit could throw into the mix for German exporters varies widely depending on a firm’s geography and size.

The country’s hugely important small- and medium-sized industries, the so-called Mittelstand, could be particularly vulnerable.

Mittelstand make up more than 99 percent of German companies, employ over 61 percent of the country’s workforce and account for nearly 34 percent of the total turnover of German enterprises, according to the latest available official data.

“Large companies have their worst-case Brexit plans already in place and started relocating when a hard Brexit became possible,” said IW’s Huther. “In contrast, smaller Mittelstand companies are aware of the risks, but lack the manpower to address all scenarios. These companies will suffer the worst.”

Another concern is the potential knock-on effect a sharp slowdown in Germany could have on the rest of the EU.

“The German economy is really a lot larger than Germany,” said Erik Jones, director of European and Eurasian studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy.

“When we talk about the impact of Brexit on Germany, what we’re really talking about is the impact of Brexit on this very large and complex manufacturing construct that has evolved over the last two decades,” Jones told Al Jazeera.

Resilience and winners

Some believe the German economy is sufficiently resilient to withstand a hard Brexit even if manufacturing supply chains are disrupted.

“For those companies that are affected, this is a disaster,” said Stefan Kooths, head of the Forecasting Center at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “But not all companies are exposed to these risks,” he told Al Jazeera.

Brexit could even prove a boon for some sectors of the German economy. Case in point – the country’s financial services industry.

The lobby group Frankfurt Main Finance estimates banks are looking to move up to $900bn in assets from London to Frankfurt in the first quarter of this year. The group also predicts that as many as 10,000 financial jobs could relocate from London to Frankfurt by 2024.

That’s because a hard Brexit could result in financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies losing their rights to sell services across the region, a system known as passporting. Relocating to another financial centre within the EU would ensure they can continue to do business across national borders smoothly.

Singapore – A pristine white statue of a man in Western clothes, arms folded with the air of a conquering hero, stands on the banks of the Singapore River at the site where he is believed to have landed exactly 200 years ago on Monday.

The statue is of Sir Stamford Raffles, who cut a slippery deal with the locals in what was then known as Singapura to claim the island as a port for Britain’s East India Company.

Beneath it, a plaque pays tribute to his “genius and perception” and the way in which he “changed the destiny of Singapore from an obscure fishing village to a great seaport and modern metropolis”.

These days, the statue is popular with photo takers, but not everyone looks with pride on the memory of the white settler who brought the forces of imperial domination to an island that soon would be called by its Anglicised name, Singapore.

“Colonialism did bring trade, laws and infrastructure – for the prosperity of the British. For many of our forebears, it also marked poverty, pain and humiliation,” columnist Tee Zhuo wrote recently in the Straits Times.

“Few nations would fondly remember, much less glorify a former oppressor,” he added.

Nevertheless, on Monday the tiny Southeast Asian nation kicks off a year of commemorations to mark the bicentennial of Raffles’s arrival and what has long been portrayed as the founding of modern day Singapore.

Many on the tropical island, with its diverse Chinese, Malay and Indian population, bristle at the notion that they are celebrating the country’s colonial subjugation and exploitation.

‘Happy place’

Some harbour conflicted feelings over the British imperialists who they say ran roughshod over the locals until they reluctantly agreed to leave in the years leading up to Singapore’s independence in the 1960s.

While art student Goh Hui Ying has heard elders criticise Raffles as a “legal pirate”, she reflects a prevailing view that by creating a free port – without duties or taxes, midway between India and China – Raffles laid the foundation for what is now one of the richest cities in the world.

“I grew up accepting that the British and the East India Company helped us to get started,” said Goh, 32.

Others,meanwhile, are downright proud of the Raffles legacy.

“Colonialism is one part. But what we gain today is a beautiful country, a peaceful life, a happy place,” said Sundren Moorthi, 68, a retired police officer, as he strode by the Raffles statue with friends.

But Hazirah Helmy, 22, a history student, says it is important to question the traditional view of Raffles as a beneficent saviour, noting that when he landed in Singapore, Raffles exploited a succession dispute among local Malay rulers to cut a deal that allowed the British to establish a trading post.

“We have to reconsider what his legacy means,” she said. “It’s not been questioned, how we think about our colonial history. The picture has been oversimplified, the idea that he came and he imposed order.”

Bicentennial organisers stress that Raffles’s arrival was a “turning point” in a longer local history that goes back some seven centuries.

“In these 700 years, we went from being a place with a geographically strategic location, to a nation and people with unique characteristics,” they wrote in promoting the year-long celebration.

‘Unethical and corrupt’

Raffles’s legacy was to bolster trade and shipping with what Britain considered the Far East. Before his arrival in Singapore, Raffles engineered a violent 1812 overthrow of Yogyakarta, the Javanese cultural capital, in what is seen by historians today as an orgy of looting and sacking.

That incident was detailed in Raffles and the British Invasion, a book by historian Tim Hannigan.

“Colonialism was always inherently, fundamentally, structurally unethical and corrupt, even in its supposedly most ‘enlightened’ manifestations,” Hannigan told Al Jazeera. “A proper inspection of Raffles’s record in Southeast Asia makes it plain that any claims made for his own enlightenment and benignity are shaky, to say the least.”

Plans for the 2019 bicentennial inlcude a slew of events, museum exhibits, festivals and talks.

A publicity stunt kicked things off earlier this month: the statue at Raffles Landing was partially covered for several days in dark grey paint to create the impression it was “disappearing” into the backdrop of the financial district’s skyscrapers.

The Singapore Bicentennial Office said in a statement: “This optical illusion on the Sir Stamford Raffles statue is … an opportunity to engage Singaporeans in an open dialogue on the arrival of the British, and the contributions of those who came before and after.”

Following that, four additional statues were placed nearby to represent other key historical figures from the region.

Still, many remained sceptical.

“Raffles landing marked the start of colonisation of Singapore,” one Facebook user wrote on the Bicentennial’s official page on the social network.

“The appropriate commemoration is to observe a minute of silence just like how WW2 is being commemorated. To have any activity that is celebratory in nature is inappropriate and a disservice to Singapore pioneers who fought for Singapore independence.”

Another user added: “Don’t understand to why we celebrate colonialism … where local population been curtail of their freedom …. paying tribute and homage to oppressor…??? Maybe that the intention … to support oppression without question…  blind obedient!” 

‘A thorny issue’

Local academics insist the bicentennial has been successfully framed as a commemoration of history, not a celebration of colonialism.

“The organisers have been careful to emphasise that the events are not intended to celebrate the glories of colonialism through rose-tinted interpretations of the history of the past two hundred years,” Professor Tan Tai Yong, president of Yale-NUS College and a member of the bicentennial advisory panel wrote in the local media.

“They have also found it necessary to accept that Singapore has a history that far preceded the arrival of the British.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ngoei Wen-Qing, assistant professor of history at Nanyang Technological University, said organisers understood “that this is a thorny issue and don’t treat the bicentennial as a celebration of Singapore’s colonial heritage, but as an opportunity to inspire a conversation about Singapore’s history.

“They see it as a chance to rethink British colonialism’s entry into Singapore within a much longer timeline.”

On achieving independence, former British colonies such as India and neighbouring Malaysia moved to replace anglicised names the British occupiers left behind. 

Not so Singapore. It has kept the markings of its colonial past. English remains an official language, and British-sounding place names such as Victoria Street and Queenstown are still in use. The city-state is filled with streets, schools, hospitals and businesses named Stamford or Raffles.

With that historic precedent, many take the view that the bicentennial is a national teaching moment. That tone was set by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, whose People’s Action Party (PAP) has run Singapore since it left Malaysia and became independent in 1965.

“Had Raffles not landed, Singapore might not have become a unique spot in Southeast Asia, quite different from the islands in the archipelago around us, or the states in the Malayan peninsula. But because of Raffles, Singapore became a British colony, a free port, and a modern city,” Lee said in announcing plans for the bicentennial.

Kenneth Paul Tan, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, noted that the colonial narrative is useful for modern, self-governing Singapore.

“History textbooks often present the colonial government not as brutal, oppressive, and exploitative, but as incompetent and ineffective,” Tan told Al Jazeera. “This opens the way for the PAP government to be lauded, in contrast, as heroic in its efforts to transform Singapore ‘from third-world to first’, which has become a popular slogan.”

But given the unease about the bicentennial, and unlike the joyous celebrations around the 50th anniversary of Singapore as an independent nation in 2015, the ever pragmatic PAP is unlikely to use the festivities as a rallying point for general elections later that could take place as early as this year.