#President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bowtochris · 5 years ago

Text

So Much Fucking Shit Happened This Month OMG

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

March

1st: Afghan president Ashraf Ghani rejects a clause in the U.S.–Taliban deal setting the release of Taliban prisoners Former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg suspends his presidential campaign.

2nd: Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar suspends her presidential campaign Two dozen more cases are reported in the U.S., bringing the total number of infected Americans to 102.

3rd: Three tornadoes, two at least EF 3 in strength, rip through downtown Nashville and surrounding towns, killing 25 people. Myanmar turns a Silversea Cruises cruise ship away due to fears of coronavirus

4th: The United States Armed Forces says it has carried out its first airstrike against the Taliban since a peace deal was signed on February 29, 2020. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg suspends his presidential campaign. The United States confirmed 11 total deaths, with the first death outside of Washington state in California. California's total of infections has jumped to 51. The country confirmed 33 new cases, bringing the total number to 159.

5th: The Republican-controlled Arizona House of Representatives passes a bill banning transgender females from women's sports. In total, the US confirmed 69 more cases, bringing the total number to 228. Three more deaths were reported, bringing the total number to 14.

6th: SpaceX successfully launches a Dragon spacecraft in orbit to resupply the International Space Station. Florida confirms its first two deaths from the coronavirus.

7th: The Xinjia Express Hotel, which was being used for quarantining those with COVID-19, collapses in Quanzhou, Fujian, China. Ten people were killed and twenty-three are trapped. Thirty-eight have been rescued alive. The total number confirmed cases of for the US increased to 444. There was 1 new death, 11 in total.

8th: California U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris endorses former Vice President Joe Biden in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson endorses Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. The first COVID-19 death is confirmed in Canada.

9th: Black Monday - Prior to opening, the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures market experienced a 1,300 point ... This predicted 1,300 point drop would establish 9 March as being among the most points the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped in a single day. By the end of the day, it fell a total of 2,013.76 points. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit confirms a 2016 ruling that Led Zeppelin's 1971 song "Stairway to Heaven" was not unlawfully copied from Spirit's instrumental "Taurus". The United Kingdom's largest retailer Tesco say they will be restricting the sale of essential food and household items in response to fears of mass panic buying.

10th: Vladimir Putin backs a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain in power after 2024 and make a lifetime presidency possible. Iran reports 881 new confirmed cases and 54 more COVID-19 deaths, the highest number of deaths in a single 24-hour period in the country to date, bringing the total to 8042 cases and 291 deaths.

11th: The bond market falls, in the first time since the financial crisis of 2007–08 that the stock and bond markets moved in the same direction. American film producer Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in prison for two felony sex crimes. The world's largest annual video game industry event E3 2020 is officially cancelled due to concerns over the coronavirus.

12th: Black Thursday - All three major United States trading indexes fall 7% during early trading, leading to a 15-minute trading halt. They all closed over 9% down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 10%, the largest one-day percentage drop since ... 1987. First day where every story on Wikinews is coronavirus-related.

13th: Delta Air Lines says it will cancel all flights to Europe for the next 30 days. Florida, Arizona, Illinois, and Ohio will proceed having Democratic Party primaries despite the coronavirus outbreak. Astronomers discover 139 new "minor planets" in the Solar System that are beyond the orbit of Neptune.

14th: A total of 16 U.S. states have closed all of their schools. Italy's Ministry of Health reports 250 more deaths from COVID-19, the highest number of deaths in a single 24-hour period in the country to date. The Mayor of Bergamo Giorgio Gori says churches are now being used to store dead bodies as the city's morgues are full.

15th: The first one-on-one debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries takes place between former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders in Washington, D.C., instead of Arizona as originally scheduled and without an audience as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues a recommendation to suspend gatherings of 50 or more people for the next two months. The governors of five states: California, Ohio, Illinois, Washington and Massachusetts, order bars and restaurants to close in response to the pandemic.

16th: The Dow closes 2,997 points or 12.9% lower - its largest daily points movement. The U.S. has 4,459 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of today, resulting in 86 deaths. West Virginia remains the only state with no confirmed cases.

17th: The Senate of Spain ratifies North Macedonia's accession protocol for NATO, becoming the last of NATO's 30 members to do so. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady announces he will not re-sign with the team, and will instead select free agency. West Virginia confirms its first case of COVID-19, becoming the last U.S. state to do so. Governor Jim Justice ordered restaurant dining rooms, bars, and casinos to close for two weeks.

18th: An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7 hits Salt Lake City, Utah, with several aftershocks reported and tens of thousands of residents left without power. The earthquake is the largest in the state since the 1992 St. George earthquake. COVID-19 cases in Washington exceed 1,000. The United States reports its 150th death from COVID-19, with a total of at least 9,400 confirmed cases nationwide.

19th: Tulsi Gabbard ends her presidential campaign in the 2020 presidential election U.S. President Donald Trump calls for the Syrian government to release journalist and veteran Marine Austin Tice, arguing the "U.S. has done a lot for Syria". U.S. Senate Republicans unveil a $1 trillion economic stimulus package proposal to aid businesses and the American public during the coronavirus pandemic.

20th: The parliament of Ghana votes to legalize the medical and industrial use of cannabis. Madagascar confirms its first cases of COVID-19. The United States moves Tax Day from April 15 to July 15 due to the spread of the coronavirus.

21st: China reports zero domestic cases of COVID-19 for a third consecutive day. Yonhap News Agency reports that North Korea has fired two projectiles from Pyongan Province into the Sea of Japan. Ketchikan, in Southeast Alaska, shelters in place after six people test positive for COVID-19 in the town of 8,000 residents.

22nd: Pope Francis, in a call for a worldwide prayer, announces he will hold a special service to pray for the end of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. Senate votes down a coronavirus relief stimulus bill. Former film producer and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein tests positive for COVID-19. He is put in isolation at the Wende Correctional Facility.

23rd: Colorado abolishes the death penalty and commutes sentences of death row inmates. The ancestor, Ikaria wariootia, of all animals with a bilateral body plan is discovered as a fossil in rocks of South Australia. Rapper-turned-informant 6ix9ine requests an early prison release over fears of COVID-19.

24th: I'm allowed to work from home starting today. In Lynchburg, Virginia, Liberty University reopens, despite the coronavirus. The 2020 Summer Olympics has been postponed to 2021 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

25th: Turkey indicts 20 Saudis for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. None of them are Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The United States has its deadliest COVID-19 day to date, with 223 related deaths. New York City records 81 more deaths from COVID-19, bringing the city's death toll to 280. Mayor Bill de Blasio has warned that more than half of all New Yorkers could become infected.

26th: The United States Space Force launches its first satellite into space aboard a Atlas V rocket. A bomb explodes near a Sikh crematorium in Kabul, wounding a child and disrupting funerals for 25 people bombed and shot the day prior. 2020 G20 Riyadh summit - World leaders convene virtually to coordinate a response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. reaches 1,200. The total number of cases in the country is 83,097. The U.S. has surpassed China in number of active cases, making it the country with the most cases in the world.

27th: Pope Francis delivers a special Urbi et Orbi blessing in an empty Saint Peter's Square, praying for the end of the coronavirus pandemic and offering a plenary indulgence to repentant sinners. The House of Representatives passes a $2 trillion stimulus relief bill as an effort to save the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump signs the bill. Uzbekistan reports the first death from COVID-19, a 72-year-old woman with underlying health conditions in the city of Namangan. The USNS Mercy, which has 1,000 beds, arrives in Los Angeles to offer assistance during the COVID-19 crisis.

28th: In a televised address, Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi offers to release five Saudi prisoners of war in exchange for the release of dozens of Palestinian activists convicted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. New York postpones its primary from April 28 until June 23 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

29th: North Korea fires two short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean, the latest in an unprecedented flurry of launches. Both South Korea and Japan condemn the launching. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo extends the stay-at-home order for non-essential workers to April 15.

5 notes · View notes

exclusive-review-issue · 6 years ago

Video

youtube

A Conversation with Mohammad Ashraf Ghani President of the Islamic Repub...

#afganistan #peace

2 notes · View notes

onkar · 3 years ago

Text

Portraits of Failed Leadership: Rhee Syngman and Mohammad Ashraf Ghani

By Tei Kim A few years before the Korean war, World War II ended in 1945, releasing Korea from the 35 year reign of Japanese control. The Soviet Union had control over North Korea while the United States had control over South Korea. On July 20th, 1948, Rhee Syngman was elected as president of South Korea in a landslide victory. In South Korea, a president would be elected if they were to…

View On WordPress

0 notes

educrat-ias-academy · 3 years ago

Text

Taliban issue in Afghanistan

The Taliban has taken control of Afghanistan, as of 16th August 2021. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on 15th August, 2021. The Islamic fundamentalist political and military organisation has dominated the Afghan polity for quite a long time. They were removed from power in Afghanistan by US-led forces in 2001. However, Afghanistan has been plunged into chaos after the Taliban took over in the wake of the pull out of American forces from the country.

About Taliban

The Taliban are predominantly a Pashtun, Sunni fundamentalist organization that is involved in Afghan politics. The Taliban has remained in power for three quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001. They were known for their strict implementation of the Sharia law. This period can be marked as the period of widespread abuse of human rights where women were targeted especially. The Taliban officially refers to itself as the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.

Origin of Taliban and how did they rise to power

The origin of Taliban is somewhere started with the great game. The Great Game was a political and diplomatic confrontation that existed for most of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century between the British Empire and the Russian Empire, over Afghanistan and neighboring territories in Central and South Asia. It also had direct consequences in Persia and British India. Britain feared that Russia planned to invade India and that this was the goal of Russia’s expansion in Central Asia, while Russia feared the expansion of British interests in Central Asia. As Britain did not want Russia to reach British India, it invaded Afghanistan thrice; in 1838, 1878, 1919. The principal objective to attack Afghanistan was to make it a buffer state.

In 1838, the British were defeated, but in 1878 the British won the battle. Now Afghanistan has become a protectorate of the British. In the third Anglo-Afghan war, 1919, the British were defeated. In 1921, Afghanistan emerged as an independent country. Between 1921-1936, Amanullah was the emirate of Afghanistan. Later he announced himself as the king of Afghanistan. In 1933, Zahir Shah became the new king. He ruled for 40 years and brought stability to the country.

In 1953, Mohammad Daud Khan who was the cousin of the king, became the Prime Minister of Afghanistan. He was a pro-communist in his ideology and introduced several reforms in Afghanistan.

In 1965, the Afghan Communist Party was formed by Babrak Kamal and Nur Mohammad Taraki. In 1973, Daoud Khan overthrew Zahir Shah and abolishes the monarchy by establishing The Republic of Afghanistan with close ties with the USSR. Daoud Khan’s government introduced many reforms for modernisation. He proposed for a new constitution that grants women rights and works to modernise large communist state. According to the experts, Daoud Khan’s government was the puppet of the USSR. India was the only country in South-Asia to recognise this government which was backed by USSR.

In 1978, Daoud Khan was killed in a communist coup. Reforms introduced by the Daoud Khan’s government was considered to be too radical by the traditional power structures and rural areas. Mohammad Taraki, who was also a believer of communism, took control of the country as the President. He proclaimed independence from Soviet influence and declared their policies to be based on Islamic Principles. This was the time when the conservative islam and ethnic leaders revolted to restore the social order.

In 1979, Taraki was killed by those who supported Hafizulla Amin. Now, at this time USSR intervened and deployed the Soviet Army. They orchestrated a coup killing the ruling President Hafizullah Amin.

Babrak Karmal was declared President. The USSR installed their ally as the President. The USA and other western nations saw this as an invasion by the Soviet Union. As it was the period of cold war, the USA supported the Mujahideen. When the towns were under Soviet control, the rural areas were still under the control of Mujahideen. Mujahideen were supported by the USA, China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in their fight against the USSR. In 1989, the USSR withdrew their troops at the cost of lakhs of Afghan lives. This was the time when the government of Afghanistan had to fight the Mujahideen alone as USSR withdrew their troops from the country.

However, there was a civil war between the Mujahideen also in 1992 as they were divided into factions. In 1994, a group of students seized control of the city of Kandahar and started a battle for power to control the entire country. They were called the Taliban. They were Islamic fundamentalists. In fact, many of them were trained in camps in Pakistan where they were refugees. In 1995, the Taliban captured the province of Herat and in 1996, Kabul. By 1998, almost the entire country was under the control of the Taliban. Some of the Mujahideen warlords fled to the north of the country and joined the Northern Alliance who were fighting the Taliban. The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, to remove the Taliban from power as they were hosting alQaeda terrorists, who were the main suspects of the September 11 attacks. This marked the start of the United States’s War on Terror. The War in Afghanistan (2001-present) is between Afghan Army troops, backed by additional United States troops, fighting against insurgents of the Taliban. NATO has also been involved in this war. In 2001 some 1300 NATO troops arrived in Afghanistan for the first time which grew to around 1 lakh by 2010. After US and NATO intervention, Hamid Karzai became the first ever democratically elected head of state in 2004 and the current President is Ashraf Ghani, since 29 September 2014. Since 2001, the US policy on Afghanistan relied on permanent presence in the country to ensure smooth transition of Afghanistan towards democratic governance; however US’ prolonged intervention in Afghanistan started gathering criticism for its failure to usher in political stability, for failing to check the resurgence of Taliban and for the innumerable loss of lives on the foreign soil.

India’s approach towards Afghanistan

India’s Afghanistan policy, especially after 1979, was based on the promise that an external friendly power would do the heavy lifting in Afghanistan’s security and political sector. India, meanwhile, would invest in soft sectors, such as infrastructure development, and would limit its involvement in the security domain. India was the only South Asian nation to recognize the Soviet backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. However, USSR’s withdrawal in 1989 reduced India’s presence in Afghanistan. India had no engagement with the Taliban directly and became one of the key supporters of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. India’s active involvement in Afghanistan has been discouraged to cater to Pakistani wishes. India was not invited to the Bonn conference 2001, where the post-Taliban order in Afghanistan was discussed. Pakistan emerged as an all-important country in USA’s war on terror due to its proximity to the Taliban heartland and its strong leverage over the militant group.

However, India’s relation with Afghanistan improved markedly under the Karzai presidency and New Delhi invested heavily in developmental and infrastructural projects in Afghanistan which built India’s soft power and led to recognition of India as a key partner in solving the Afghan problem. In 2011, Afghanistan signed its first Strategic Partnership Agreement with India, after Karzai had rejected a similar offer from Pakistan.

India’s contribution in Afghan development

Infrastructural development

Parliament building in Kabul

Zaranj Delaram Highway (Connecting western Afghanistan to Chabahar port in Iran)

Salma Dam Project (India-Afghan friendship dam)

India has also signed a trilateral preferential trade agreement with Afghanistan and Iran.

Defence and administrative support

Strengthening Afghan public institution and supporting them with technical advisers

Training for Afghan public servants, soldiers and policemen

Supplying military hardware (Mi-25 and Mi-35 choppers for the air force.)

Education, health and medical sector

India has provided multiple scholarships to Afghan students with thousands of Afghan nationals studying in India along with providing vocational training and skill development classes to Afghan women and youth.

India’s liberal visa policy has made it easier for Afghan patients to travel to India which has further enhanced people-to-people interaction between the two countries.

India has bestowed an amount of 5 million USD for the Afghan Red Society Programme to treat congenital heart disease in children.

Cultural efforts

Bollywood movies display the cultural links between India and Afghanistan and Indian cinema has a large market in Afghanistan.

India’s involvement and contribution to the development of cricket in Afghanistan has been one of its primary means of soft power influence in the nation.

India’s stand on Taliban

Although India has signaled a shift in its position on engaging with the Taliban by participating in the commencement ceremony of Intra-Afghan talks between the Afghanistan government and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, it still does not recognise the Taliban. India believes any peace process must be Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled.

Its implications are as follows:

To respect the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Afghanistan and promote human rights and democracy.

To preserve the progress made in the establishment of a democratic Islamic Republic in Afghanistan.

India supports an “independent and sovereign” Afghanistan. These words indicate that Pakistan and ISI should not be a controller of Afghanistan. Indian interests include the Indian Embassy and Indian companies and workers in Afghanistan, should be protected. The interests of minorities, women and vulnerable sections of society must be preserved and the issue of violence across the country and its neighbourhood has to be effectively addressed.

0 notes

xtruss · 3 years ago

Text

'Convenient Scapegoat': Imran Khan Urges West Against Blaming Pakistan For 'Unwinnable' Afghan War

— Sangeeta Yadav - Sputnik International | September 29, 2021

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has addressed several reports which claim that Islamabad is actively supporting the Taliban and that the terrorists could not have been successful in their offensive without the country's assistance.

In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post on Monday, Khan criticises the Afghan and Western governments for making his country "a convenient scapegoat" for the outcome of the war in Afghanistan.

"Let me put it plainly. Since 2001, I have repeatedly warned that the Afghan war was unwinnable. Given their history, Afghans would never accept a protracted foreign military presence, and no outsider, including Pakistan, could change this reality," he writes.

Khan hits out at successive Pakistani governments and former military chief Pervez Musharraf, saying that they had sought to please the US instead of pointing out the flaws of a military-driven approach in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf agreed to every American demand for military support after 9/11. This cost Pakistan, and the United States, dearly," he stresses.

Citing an incident of the US support for the Afghan Taliban way back in the 1980s, PM Khan points out how then US President Ronald Reagan hosted them at the White House during the days when the CIA and Pakistan's spy agency ISI trained them to fight against the Soviets.

"Once the Soviets were defeated, the United States abandoned Afghanistan and sanctioned my country, leaving behind over 4 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and a bloody civil war in Afghanistan. From this security vacuum emerged the Taliban, many born and educated in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan," he argues.

"Fast forward to 9/11, when the United States needed us again — but this time against the very actors we had jointly supported to fight foreign occupation," adds Khan.

He laments how General Musharraf, who was then ruling over Pakistan, turned a blind eye to US drone attacks and gave the CIA a foot hold in Pakistan.

He also regrets how Pakistani troops were sent into the semi-autonomous tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, "which had earlier been used as the staging ground for the anti-Soviet jihad."

"The fiercely independent Pashtun tribes in these areas had deep ethnic ties with the Taliban," he writes.

Between 2005 and 2016, Khan shares, about 16,000 terrorist attacks were conducted against Pakistan by over 50 militant groups, who viewed Washington and Islamabad as collaborators.

"We suffered more than 80,000 casualties and lost over $150 billion in the economy. The conflict drove 3.5 million of our citizens from their homes. The militants escaping from Pakistani counterterrorism efforts entered Afghanistan and were then supported and financed by Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies, launching even more attacks against us," he says.

Pakistan "a Convenient Scapegoat"

Calling former Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari "the most corrupt man to have led my country," Khan has blasted both him and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, accusing them of not worrying about the collateral damage caused by US drone strikes.

"In Afghanistan, the lack of legitimacy for an outsider’s protracted war was compounded by a corrupt and inept Afghan government, seen as a puppet regime without credibility, especially by rural Afghans," he says.

Khan highlights that Islamabad offered Kabul a joint border visibility mechanism, suggesting biometric border controls, advocated fencing the border, and other measures. However, each and every idea was rejected.

"Instead, the Afghan government intensified the 'blame Pakistan' narrative, aided by Indian-run fake news networks operating hundreds of propaganda outlets in multiple countries," the article continues.

Khan says that the collapse of the Afghan Army and the Ashraf Ghani government could have been avoided if a more realistic approach was adopted.

"Surely Pakistan is not to blame for the fact that 300,000-plus well-trained and well-equipped Afghan security forces saw no reason to fight the lightly armed Taliban. The underlying problem was an Afghan government structure lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the average Afghan," he adds.

'Engage With New Afghan Government'

Khan opines that the "right thing" right now for the world to do would be to engage with the new Afghanistan government for the sake of peace and stability, and by assuring constant humanitarian aid, the Taliban will have greater incentive to honour the global community's demands.

"Providing such incentives will also give the outside world additional leverage to continue persuading the Taliban to honor its commitments," he adds.

"If we do this right, we could achieve what the Doha peace process aimed at all along: an Afghanistan that is no longer a threat to the world, where Afghans can finally dream of peace after four decades of conflict. The alternative — abandoning Afghanistan — has been tried before," warns the Pakistan Prime Minister.

On 15 August, Taliban insurgents took control of the last government-controlled border crossing, leaving Kabul Airport as the only route out of the country. They subsequently surrounded and captured the Afghan capital after the city surrendered without a fight, and Ghani fled for the UAE.

On 6 September, the Taliban announced that the last resisting province, Panjshir, had come under their control. Shortly after, the group announced the formation of a new interim government of Afghanistan. Mohammad Hasan Akhund, who has been on the UN sanctions list since 2001, became the head of the new cabinet.

Opinion: Imran Khan: Don’t Blame Pakistan for the Outcome of the War in Afghanistan

— The Washington Post | September 29, 2021

A man surveys the site of the blast targeting the government girls school in Tank, Pakistan, on Sept. 22. (Saood Rehman/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Imran Khan is the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Watching the recent Congressional hearings on Afghanistan, I was surprised to see that no mention was made of Pakistan’s sacrifices as a U.S. ally in the war on terror for more than two decades. Instead, we were blamed for America’s loss.

Let me put it plainly. Since 2001, I have repeatedly warned that the Afghan war was unwinnable. Given their history, Afghans would never accept a protracted foreign military presence, and no outsider, including Pakistan, could change this reality.

Unfortunately, successive Pakistani governments after 9/11 sought to please the United States instead of pointing out the error of a military-dominated approach. Desperate for global relevance and domestic legitimacy, Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf agreed to every American demand for military support after 9/11. This cost Pakistan, and the United States, dearly.

Those the United States asked Pakistan to target included groups trained jointly by the CIA and our intelligence agency, the ISI, to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Back then, these Afghans were hailed as freedom fighters performing a sacred duty. President Ronald Reagan even entertained the mujahideen at the White House.

Once the Soviets were defeated, the United States abandoned Afghanistan and sanctioned my country, leaving behind over 4 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and a bloody civil war in Afghanistan. From this security vacuum emerged the Taliban, many born and educated in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.

Fast forward to 9/11, when the United States needed us again — but this time against the very actors we had jointly supported to fight foreign occupation. Musharraf offered Washington logistics and air bases, allowed a CIA footprint in Pakistan and even turned a blind eye to American drones bombing Pakistanis on our soil. For the first time ever, our army swept into the semiautonomous tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, which had earlier been used as the staging ground for the anti-Soviet jihad. The fiercely independent Pashtun tribes in these areas had deep ethnic ties with the Taliban and other Islamist militants.

For these people, the United States was an “occupier” of Afghanistan just like the Soviets, deserving of the same treatment. As Pakistan was now America’s collaborator, we too were deemed guilty and attacked. This was made much worse by over 450 U.S. drone strikes on our territory, making us the only country in history to be so bombed by an ally. These strikes caused immense civilian casualties, riling up anti-American (and anti-Pakistan army) sentiment further.

The die was cast. Between 2006 and 2015, nearly 50 militant groups declared jihad on the Pakistani state, conducting over 16,000 terrorist attacks on us. We suffered more than 80,000 casualties and lost over $150 billion in the economy. The conflict drove 3.5 million of our citizens from their homes. The militants escaping from Pakistani counterterrorism efforts entered Afghanistan and were then supported and financed by Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies, launching even more attacks against us.

Pakistan had to fight for its survival. As a former CIA station chief in Kabul wrote in 2009, the country was “beginning to crack under the relentless pressure directly exerted by the US.” Yet the United States continued to ask us to do more for the war in Afghanistan.

A year earlier, in 2008, I met then-Sens. Joe Biden, John F. Kerry and Harry M. Reid (among others) to explain this dangerous dynamic and stress the futility of continuing a military campaign in Afghanistan.

Even so, political expediency prevailed in Islamabad throughout the post-9/11 period. President Asif Zardari, undoubtedly the most corrupt man to have led my country, told the Americans to continue targeting Pakistanis because “collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.” Nawaz Sharif, our next prime minister, was no different.

While Pakistan had mostly defeated the terrorist onslaught by 2016, the Afghan situation continued to deteriorate, as we had warned. Why the difference? Pakistan had a disciplined army and intelligence agency, both of which enjoyed popular support. In Afghanistan, the lack of legitimacy for an outsider’s protracted war was compounded by a corrupt and inept Afghan government, seen as a puppet regime without credibility, especially by rural Afghans.

Tragically, instead of facing this reality, the Afghan and Western governments created a convenient scapegoat by blaming Pakistan, wrongly accusing us of providing safe havens to the Taliban and allowing its free movement across our border. If it had been so, would the United States not have used some of the 450-plus drone strikes to target these supposed sanctuaries?

Still, to satisfy Kabul, Pakistan offered a joint border visibility mechanism, suggested biometric border controls, advocated fencing the border (which we have now largely done on our own) and other measures. Each idea was rejected. Instead, the Afghan government intensified the “blame Pakistan” narrative, aided by Indian-run fake news networks operating hundreds of propaganda outlets in multiple countries.

A more realistic approach would have been to negotiate with the Taliban much earlier, avoiding the embarrassment of the collapse of the Afghan army and the Ashraf Ghani government. Surely Pakistan is not to blame for the fact that 300,000-plus well-trained and well-equipped Afghan security forces saw no reason to fight the lightly armed Taliban. The underlying problem was an Afghan government structure lacking legitimacy in the eyes of the average Afghan.

Today, with Afghanistan at another crossroads, we must look to the future to prevent another violent conflict in that country rather than perpetuating the blame game of the past.

I am convinced the right thing for the world now is to engage with the new Afghan government to ensure peace and stability. The international community will want to see the inclusion of major ethnic groups in government, respect for the rights of all Afghans and commitments that Afghan soil shall never again be used for terrorism against any country. Taliban leaders will have greater reason and ability to stick to their promises if they are assured of the consistent humanitarian and developmental assistance they need to run the government effectively. Providing such incentives will also give the outside world additional leverage to continue persuading the Taliban to honor its commitments.

If we do this right, we could achieve what the Doha peace process aimed at all along: an Afghanistan that is no longer a threat to the world, where Afghans can finally dream of peace after four decades of conflict. The alternative — abandoning Afghanistan — has been tried before. As in the 1990s, it will inevitably lead to a meltdown. Chaos, mass migration and a revived threat of international terror will be natural corollaries. Avoiding this must surely be our global imperative.

0 notes

newstfionline · 3 years ago

Text

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Caldor Fire ‘knocking on the door’ of Lake Tahoe area (USA Today) A rapidly expanding wildfire is approaching the outskirts of the Lake Tahoe basin and has become the nation’s No. 1 priority for firefighting resources, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The Caldor Fire, which is only 10 days old, has exploded to nearly 123,000 acres and taken out 632 structures including more than 450 homes. It helped spur evacuations and, along with several blazes across the state, led to the closure of nine national forests. Nearly 18,000 properties were still in danger from the blaze, which was 11% contained as of Tuesday evening. “It is knocking on the door to the Lake Tahoe basin,” said Chief Thom Porter, director of CAL FIRE. “We have all efforts in place to keep it out of the basin but we do need to also be aware that is a possibility based on the way the fires have been burning.”

Genocide prosecution of former president tests Bolivia’s justice system (Washington Post) On the day before Bolivian former interim president Jeanine Áñez was arrested and detained this year, accused of gaining power by fomenting a coup in 2019, she left her supporters with a message: “The political persecution has begun.” And in the five months since, as Áñez’s mental and physical health has deteriorated in jail, the conservative former leader has become a symbol of the deepening polarization in Bolivia. To some, she’s the victim of a vengeful, politically motivated justice system under her socialist successor, President Luis Arce. To others, she’s a usurper who staged a coup that dislodged longtime president Evo Morales, and then presided over systematic human rights abuses by police. On Saturday, a day after prosecutors announced new charges of “genocide” against her, Áñez cut her own wrist, in what her lawyer described as “a cry for help.” The question of whether and how to prosecute those responsible for the violence that followed Morales’s resignation and flight from Bolivia in late 2019—including shootings by police that left at least 20 people dead and 98 injured—is testing this politically volatile South American nation.

China to add 'Xi Jinping Thought' to national curriculum (Reuters) China will incorporate "Xi Jinping Thought" into its national curriculum to help "establish Marxist belief" in the country's youth, the education ministry said in new guidelines published on Tuesday. The Ministry of Education said Chinese President Xi Jinping's "thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era" would be taught from primary school level all the way to university. The move is aimed at strengthening "resolve to listen to and follow the Party" and new teaching materials must "cultivate patriotic feelings", the guidelines said. Since coming to power in 2012, the Chinese President has sought to strengthen the ruling Chinese Communist Party's role in all areas of society, including its businesses, schools and cultural institutions.

Japan further expands virus emergency areas as cases surge (AP) Japan expanded its coronavirus state of emergency on Wednesday for a second week in a row, adding eight more prefectures as a surge in infections fueled by the delta variant strains the country’s health care system. The government last week extended the state of emergency until Sept. 12 and expanded the areas covered to 13 prefectures from six including Tokyo. With four new prefectures added to a separate “quasi-emergency” status, 33 of Japan’s 47 prefectures are now under some type of emergency measures. Japan’s state of emergency relies on requirements for eateries to close at 8 p.m. and not serve alcohol, but the measures are increasingly defied. Unenforceable social distancing and tele-working requests for the public and their employers are also largely ignored.

Duterte confirms he’ll run for Philippines VP next year (AP) Tough-talking Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has confirmed rumblings that he will run next year for vice president, in what critics say is an attempt at an end-run around constitutional term limits. Philippine presidents are limited by the 1987 Constitution to a single six-year term. At least two former presidents, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, have made successful runs for lower public offices after serving as president, but not for vice president.

Kabul evacuation going at a 'significant pace' (BBC) Evacuations from Afghanistan's Kabul airport have picked up pace, with about 82,300 people now evacuated overall. The Pentagon says more than 10,000 are currently awaiting evacuation. Up to 1,500 Americans may still need evacuating, Secretary of State Blinken says, and US is "aggressively reaching out". Some US troops have already started to leave as the effort enters its final phase. Turkey is also pulling out troops, apparently abandoning plans to help secure Kabul airport.

Afghanistan ‘marching towards starvation’—UN food chief (Reuters) Millions of Afghans could soon face starvation due to a combination of conflict, drought and the coronavirus pandemic, the executive director of the World Food Programme said on Tuesday, calling on political leaders to act fast. “There’s a perfect storm coming because of several years of drought, conflict, economic deterioration, compounded by COVID,” David Beasley told Reuters in Doha. “The number of people marching towards starvation has spiked to now 14 million.” Afghanistan is facing economic collapse after foreign countries and institutions said they would withhold aid and monetary reserves after Islamist Taliban insurgents took control of the capital Kabul on Aug. 15. Beasley said the international community faced some very difficult decisions, warning it would be “hell on earth” for the people of Afghanistan if the economic situation deteriorated.

Some Afghans vow to resist Taliban from mountain enclave (AP) In a mountain valley north of Kabul, the last remnants of Afghanistan’s shattered security forces have vowed to resist the Taliban in a remote region that has defied conquerors before. But any attempt to reenact that history could end in tragedy—or farce. Nestled in the towering Hindu Kush, the Panjshir Valley has a single narrow entrance and is the last region not under Taliban control following their stunning blitz across Afghanistan. Local fighters held off the Soviets in the 1980s and the Taliban a decade later under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a guerrilla fighter who attained near-mythic status before he was killed in a suicide bombing. His 32-year-old foreign-educated son, Ahmad Massoud, and several top officials from the ousted Western-backed government have gathered in the valley. They include Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who claims to be the caretaker leader after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. But experts say a successful resistance is highly unlikely. While the Panjshir Valley remains as impregnable as ever, it’s unclear how long its residents can hold out if the Taliban besiege the area or attack it using the U.S.-supplied armaments they have seized in recent weeks. And Western countries are unlikely to help.

Leaked footage shows inmates abused at Iran’s Evin Prison, prompting rare official apology (Washington Post) The head of Iran’s prison authority apologized Tuesday after a hacker group released footage showing guards beating and kicking inmates at a notorious prison for political detainees and foreigners. The footage, from northern Tehran’s Evin Prison, was distributed to news outlets including the Associated Press, which first reported on the leaked video and said time stamps on the footage showed it was recorded in 2020 and this year. Scenes from the video showed what appears to be a suicide attempt by a man using glass from a bathroom mirror he smashed, guards dragging an emaciated man along floors and stairs and two men—a guard and what looks like another prison employee—engaged in a bloody fistfight, as other prison employees watch and try to separate them. The Associated Press said the group that shared the videos, called “the Justice of Ali,” claimed to have “hundreds” of gigabytes of data from a hack conducted several months ago. “I take responsibility for these unacceptable behaviors,” Mohammed Mehdi Haj-Mohammadi, the head of Iran’s Prisons Organization, said in a message posted on his Twitter account Tuesday, in a rare acknowledgment by the authorities of official abuse. “I will commit to not letting these horrific incidents being repeated, and deal seriously with law breakers,” he added. The prison, built in 1971 during the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, soon gained notoriety for human rights abuses. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran’s clerical rulers continued to hold political prisoners at Evin, which was the scene of mass executions in 1988.

Middle East Heat (Foreign Policy) This summer, several picturesque countries in the Middle East became tinderboxes. As extreme temperatures and severe droughts ravaged the region, forests burned, and cities became islands of unbearable heat. In June, Kuwait recorded a temperature of 53.2 degrees Celsius (127.76 degrees Fahrenheit), while Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia all recorded over 50 degrees (122 degrees). A month later, temperatures in Iraq spiked to 51.5 degrees (124.7 degrees), and Iran recorded a close 51 degrees (123.8 degrees). Worst of all, this is just the start of a trend. The Middle East is warming at twice the global average.

Through four wars, toll mounts on a Gaza neighborhood (AP) The electricity is out again tonight in what’s left of Zaki and Jawaher Nassir’s neighborhood. But from the shell of their sitting room, its wall blown open by Israeli missiles, twilight and a neighbor’s fire are enough to see by. Here, down a narrow lane called Al-Baali, just over a mile from the heavily fortified border separating northern Gaza and Israel, cinderblock homes press against each other before opening to a modest courtyard below the Nassirs’ perch. Until this neighborhood was hammered by the fourth war in 13 years between Israel and Hamas militants, the Nassirs often sipped coffee by a window, watching children play volleyball using a rope in place of a net. Other days, the couple looked out as relatives pulled fruit off the yard’s fig and olive trees. Now they spend day after day surveying the wreckage of the May 14 airstrike from broken plastic chairs while awaiting building inspectors, the gaping holes in surrounding homes serving as windows into their neighborhood’s upheaval. In the skeleton of one building, children play video games atop a slab of fallen concrete. In another, a man stares out from beside a bed covered in debris, ignoring the ceiling fan drooping overhead like a dead flower. The smell of pulverized cement and plaster dust hangs in the air. Each afternoon, demolition workers arrive to hack away at this real-life stage set so that the Nassirs and their neighbors can start rebuilding—again.

Algeria says cutting diplomatic ties with Morocco (Reuters) Algeria is cutting diplomatic relations with Morocco, Foreign Minister Ramdane Lamamra said on Tuesday at a news conference, accusing its neighbour of “hostile actions”. Morocco and Algeria have had strained relations for decades, mainly over the issue of Western Sahara, and the border between the two countries has been closed since 1994. Algeria last week said lethal wildfires were the work of groups it has labelled terrorist, one of which it said was backed by Morocco. Algeria backs the Polisario movement that seeks independence for Western Sahara, which Morocco regards as part of its own territory.

#headlines #news

0 notes

globalexpressnews · 3 years ago

Text

Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul with $169 million in cash

Image Source : AP/ REPRESENTATIONAL. Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul with $169 million in cash. Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Tajikistan, Mohammad Zahir Agbar, has claimed that President Ashraf Ghani had “taken $169 million with him” when he fled Afghanistan. He said that Ghani should be arrested and the wealth of the Afghan nation be restored, Ozodi reported. Speaking at a news conference in Dushanbe on…

View On WordPress

0 notes

9jabreed · 3 years ago

Text

Taliban: Why bandits can take over Nigerian government – Bamgbose

National Coordinator, Concerned Advocates for Good Governance, Olusegun Bamgbose, Esq has warned that bandits could as well take over Nigerian government in similar fashion to what Taliban perfected in Afghanistan. WITHINNIGERIA had reported that Taliban fighters entered the city of Kabul on Sunday, hijacked power, forcing President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani to flee the country. Bamgbose explained…

View On WordPress

0 notes

xtruss · 3 years ago

Text

Taliban fighters in Kabul Foto: Rahmat Gul / AP

A Trillion Dollar Illusion

The Entirely Predictable Failure of the West's Mission in Afghanistan

In early July, I met with a leading Taliban military commander. I asked when his fighters would arrive in Kabul. His answer: "They are already there." How the Afghanistan mission failed and what happens next.

— By Christoph Reuter | 08.02.2021 | Spiegel International

In early July, before the great storm broke over Afghanistan, Kabul was already surrounded by the Taliban. And nowhere were the Islamist fighters closer to the Afghan capital city than on the shores of the Qargha Reservoir, a popular getaway on the western edge of the city. People were saying that the Taliban had gathered in the villages behind the nearby hills. The last frontline, it was said, was on the shore of the reservoir at the amusement park.

During the day, families were still taking their children to the rides and the restaurants or going out on the water in swan-shaped paddle boats. A small, six-member special forces unit even enjoyed a picnic in a wooden pavilion on the shore. One of them had to stand guard at the gun turret of their armored Humvee as the rest smoked hookahs and drank colorful sodas.

The next day, I met one of the Taliban’s leading military commanders for Kabul, who received me in the middle of the city in an unremarkable office building. When asked how far the Taliban had to walk to get to the lakeshore, he responded: "Not far at all." He seemed perfectly calm, a clean-shaven emissary of fear. "They’re already there, after all. They are the security guards at the restaurants, the ride operators, the cleaning staff. When the time is right, the place will be full of Taliban."

Six weeks after our meeting, in the middle of August, the same man drove to the Presidential Palace along with 10 bodyguards and the senior commander responsible for the conquering of Kabul. He hadn’t lied when he said that his men had already infiltrated the park at the reservoir. What he had failed to mention, though, was that the Taliban were also already in the heart of the city.

Numerous witnesses in various neighborhoods of the capital following the fall of Kabul had similar stories to tell. "It started in April," says a longtime acquaintance from the western part of the city. "More and more outsiders were suddenly in the neighborhood. Some had beards, others didn’t. Some were well dressed, others wore rags. Completely different. That made them difficult to notice. But all of the locals realized: They aren’t from here." They had silently infiltrated Kabul. The outsiders also appeared in the northern and eastern parts of the city, telling those who asked that they had come to Kabul for a new job or for business reasons.

Then, last Sunday morning, "they came out of the buildings holding white Taliban flags, some of them armed with pistols," says a resident of an eastern district of the city. It was the ultimate victory over America’s high-tech military, whose air surveillance proved powerless against this army of pedestrians and motorcyclists that would overrun Kabul from within and from outside in the ensuing hours. Later that day, they would drive through the city streets in captured police cars – from the air, an image of perfect confusion.

How could such a thing happen? How was it possible to lose Afghanistan to exactly the same group that was defeated – destroyed, really – in just two months back in 2001?

An anti-Taliban protest in Kabul on Thursday: The Taliban rolled in like an avalanche. Foto: Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images

For 20 years, the U.S. – together with Germany, Britain, Canada and other countries – maintained a presence in the country with its dominant military superiority and, at times, with over 130,000 troops. The Afghan army and police were trained and outfitted over and over again for a period equivalent to an entire generation – only to ultimately capitulate almost without a fight to an offensive of pedestrians. The takeover happened in the morning hours of last Sunday, with the Taliban suddenly appearing in Kabul like a ghost army.

It seems as though all of the efforts made in the last two decades – all of the roads, schools, wells and buildings that were built, all of the over $1 trillion that flowed into the country – were not enough to decisively sway the majority of Afghans to the side of the country’s financial backers.

It was like an avalanche from the north, beginning with the loss of several northern districts only to ultimately crash over the entire country, crushing the established state within just a few weeks. The first districts to fall were those with names hardly anyone in the West had ever heard before, but they were followed by entire provinces. Day after day, cities surrendered to the advance: Kunduz, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar. The more dramatic the collapse grew, the quieter it became as resistance faded away – until Kabul, the capital city cowering in fear, simply gave up within a matter of hours.

The shock was followed by panic. Tens of thousands of people rushed the walls of the Kabul airport in a desperate effort to escape the city and the country. The Taliban had long since closed down most of the overland border crossings through which people might have been able to escape to neighboring countries. Soon, the metal fences at the airport gave way. The guards vanished and masses of people forced their way onto the tarmac.

If images from the fall of Kabul have been burned into the world’s collective memory, it will be these ones: Men running alongside a slowly accelerating C-17 military cargo plane, desperately clinging to the landing gear of the taxiing jet. And then, a short time later, small figures losing their grip on the plane and falling to their deaths from hundreds of feet.

People at the airport in Kabul climbing on a plane belonging to the Afghan airline Kam Air. Foto: Wakil Kohsar / AFP

And then the triumphant victors driving through Kabul in pickups, their Kalashnikovs thrust into the air. Sauntering into the Presidential Palace and posing there as if it had always belonged to them. Ensuring the Afghans that they had no reason to be afraid, that they should carry on with their daily lives and nothing would happen to them. All they had to do, the Taliban insisted, was adhere to their rules.

Who is to blame for this disaster? Is it U.S. President Joe Biden, as his predecessor immediately trumpeted to the world? "It will go down as one of the greatest defeats in American history," Trump said, ignoring the fact that the deal he signed with the Taliban in February 2020 paved the way for the U.S. withdrawal.

Others saw the fall of Kabul as the "result of a large, organized and cowardly conspiracy," as Atta Mohammad Noor, the warlord and former governor of Mazar-e-Sharif, raged on Facebook following his precipitous helicopter escape. Ashraf Ghani, now the ex-president of Afghanistan, complained in an interview with DER SPIEGEL back in May of an "organized system of support" operated by Pakistan that was destabilizing his country. "The Taliban receive logistics there," Ghani said. "Their finances are there, and recruitment is there."

The list of accusations could continue. But the causes of this failure stretch back to the beginning of the invasion. The grumblers of today were themselves involved in this debacle, the most expensive act of self-deception of the century so far. Only those who understand how this disaster came about will be able to understand how things are likely to progress.

The term self-deception isn’t often used in its plural form, but it should be in the case of Afghanistan. The misconceptions from the West started at the very beginning of the intervention, when Washington thought the military would be sufficient to pacify the country, to the end, when Berlin was still asserting that it would only take just a bit longer to reverse the situation. Another fallacy was the assumption that a nation could be built and protected if enough money was invested and enough training undertaken. The Afghans, too, were guilty of self-deception, with the government and a large share of the population believing for two decades that the U.S. would never pull out.

Some lies served to obscure the true state of affairs in the country, others were the product of ignorance, and still others were truly believed. It was a fatal, collective delusion that ended up costing a six-figure number of Afghan lives along with those of more than 3,500 foreign troops. A fallacy that unintentionally sent Afghanistan on a 20-year detour from one Taliban reign to the next. Meanwhile, an entire generation grew up in the country’s cities under the assumption that the freedoms guaranteed by the foreign powers would be theirs forever.

These lines are born of the experience of having traveled to Afghanistan repeatedly over the course of 19 years and of having lived in Kabul as a correspondent for three of them. And they come from the sad realization that I wrote of the predictable failure of this project back in 2009. "If you take a look at the progression of the last eight years in Afghanistan, the following conclusion is unavoidable: The longer the international engagement there has lasted, the worse the situation has become," was my verdict at the time, "no matter how many thousands of kilometers of roads have been built, how many schools constructed and how many wells dug."

Nobody planned to stumble into this situation. The trigger for the mission was the shock of Sept. 11, 2001. Even as smoke was still rising from the rubble of the Twin Towers in New York, the masterminds of the biggest terror attack in recent history were discovered in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden and his followers had developed a state within the "emirate" controlled by the Taliban. Washington’s primary goal was revenge and justice, not nation-building. Then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder promised Germany’s "unlimited solidarity."

It was a different era, marked by the successes and horrors of the millennium that had just come to an end. The aftershocks of the euphoric events of 1989, when the Eastern Bloc managed to escape Moscow’s iron grip and Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary returned to democracy. On the other hand, the atrocities of Rwanda, the slaughter of 800,000 people as the UN stood by and watched, reinforced the idea of "never again." The NATO mission in Yugoslavia, which was controversial in Germany, managed to stop the Serbs in Kosovo. The Islamist Taliban movement, which ruled over most of Afghanistan following years of civil war, had been merely a side note to the horrors occurring elsewhere.

That was the situation immediately following Sept. 11 when Washington issued an ultimatum to the Taliban, demanding that they arrest and extradite bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qaida leadership or face the consequences. The Taliban said no. Whether they really meant no, and whether they might have been open to a face-saving plan whereby they would stand aside and allow Osama and the other leaders to be captured, as some from Taliban leadership would later claim, remains unsettled. NATO invoked Article 5, the collective defense mandate. The UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1368, legitimizing the coming attack as an act of self-defense.

The attack began on Oct. 7 with ballistic missiles, warplanes and B-2 long-range bombers targeting Kandahar and other targets in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance, which joined the U.S. in the fight, arrived on horseback wielding Kalashnikovs. Kabul fell without a fight on Nov. 13 and Kandahar, where the Taliban got its start, followed on Dec. 7. The victory had taken just two months.

At the time, during this winter of fury, neither the voting public nor the government apparatus asked about plans for the future or the mission’s goals. In December 2001, the first Afghanistan Conference took place, an assembly of victors, some of whom dreamed of a return of King Mohammed Zahir Shah, who had been deposed in 1973. Missing from that initial gathering, as they would be from all subsequent meetings, were the Taliban. Nobody wanted them there.

I arrived in Afghanistan in the scorching hot summer of 2002, just after the U.S. Air Force had bombed a wedding party in the countryside. At least that’s what survivors said. The U.S. military spokesmen countered that gunmen onboard the U.S. aircraft had fired in self-defense after having been targeted from the ground.

That sounded so absurd that we went there ourselves, traveling unchallenged through the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan, the cradle of the Taliban. But they were no longer there. "You know," an Afghan man said one evening around a fire at a rural rest stop, "I was also with the Taliban! But they’re history now." His tone was laconic, and he didn’t sound particularly disappointed, since he could now plant poppies again, something that had been strictly forbidden under Taliban rule.

In the bombed village in Uruzgan, it quickly became apparent that the story behind the wedding bombing had unfolded rather differently. The Americans hadn’t just attacked from the air, but had rolled in with a convoy of heavily armed infantrymen. It hadn’t been self-defense at all, but a planned attack. Members of a Kandahar tribe had accused allies of President Hamid Karzai of being members of the Taliban.

If you couldn’t defeat the Americans, you could apparently use them for your own purposes. It was a pattern that would repeat itself over and over again, and which would contribute to the abject failure of the intervention. The great tribal council meeting in Kabul in June 2002 "was the moment when it failed," recalls Thomas Ruttig, who was a UN official from Germany at the time, but who later co-founded the Afghanistan Analysts Network. "The moment when U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad brought back the warlords." They were the men who had destroyed the country in the earlier civil war, but who had helped the U.S. government of President George W. Bush in the fight against the Taliban.

Khalilzad and others forced the tribal council to include 50 additional men on top of the elected representatives – militia leaders who had ruled with fear and aggression before the arrival of the Taliban. They were men like Mohammed "Marshal" Fahim, a Tajik leader who stood accused of perpetrating massacres and kidnappings. And Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek leader who murdered several hundred imprisoned Taliban and later had his opponents raped with bottles. Both of them would go on to serve as vice president of the country. The new holders of power remained uncompromising. They immediately set about exacting revenge on their former enemies and plundering the new government.

A U.S. soldier trying to clear the tarmac at the Kabul Airport on Sunday. Foto: Wakil Kohsar / AFP

Billions of dollars earmarked for construction projects, roads and power plants would vanish in the ensuing years. Court verdicts could be bought, and rampant corruption corroded the state. Farmers, at least in the Pashtun provinces, remained poor and were bullied by the militias of the new rulers. The fighters would show up to hunt down the Taliban, but would then cut down the farmers’ almond trees and plunder their villages.

American and German politicians justified the eternal continuation of the military mission by claiming that the Taliban were "still there." But that wasn’t true. They slowly reappeared after several years of absence, first in the south and then in the north. Starting in 2007, I spent months with a former mullah documenting the Taliban’s slow return in his home district of Andar, south of Kabul. "The ill will toward everything foreign, toward Americans, toward Tajiks, toward police, was seamlessly nourished by real wrongs, exorbitant excesses and invented slights," we wrote at the time.

In the north, the German military rhapsodized at the time about the quiet in the provinces under their watch. When a new police chief was then appointed and he established a regime of horror in Kunduz, beating farmers and destroying their market stands when they didn’t pay sufficient protection money, the German troops stood by and watched from their hill overlooking the city. They were, they pointed out, only there as the "International Security Assistance Force" for the Afghanistan government. That presaged the return of the Taliban in Kunduz, with the Islamists taking control of village after village, until the Germans didn’t even dare to make forays six kilometers from their base. In September 2009, the German military called in U.S. airstrikes in Kunduz that killed 91 innocent people who were looting fuel from two hijacked tanker trucks. The German commander thought they were insurgents.

By then, Germany and the U.S. had invested so much capital, both financial and political, that they had become hostages of their own project. For the lack of other achievements, the international aid community in 2009 sold the mere holding of elections as a great triumph. But when more and more evidence began emerging of election fraud orchestrated by Karzai’s entourage, the West found itself stuck in an insoluble conundrum. If they recognized Karzai’s fraudulent election victory, they would be supporting an illegitimate government. If they did not, they would have to force out a government that they had spent billions of dollars supporting.

In the search for a solution, Washington overrode Karzai’s objections and pushed through a second vote, one that would be monitored by UN election observers. What then took place is among the darkest examples of the opportunism exhibited by the U.S. government and the UN.

At daybreak of Oct. 28, three attackers launched an assault on the UN guesthouse in Kabul, shot the guards to death, pushed their way into the courtyard and set about slaughtering the almost 30 UN employees inside. But they unexpectedly met resistance. Louis Maxwell, a former U.S. soldier and security officer, was able to hold back the attackers from a rooftop for one-and-a-half hours. No help came from the Afghan police or the army – right in the heart of Kabul. Once the three attackers set off their suicide belts, Maxwell staggered out, while four other UN employees were calling others on the outside telling them they would also emerge from hiding.

Just minutes later, they were all dead, the four shot from the front. Maxwell was hit as he was standing on the street between two Afghan soldiers. Neither of them batted an eyelash. They then dragged his body into the courtyard. Months later, internal UN investigators only managed to make progress with their inquiry thanks to a chance video of Maxwell’s murder made by a German security officer from a rooftop several buildings away. But it was all supposed to remain confidential.

In summer 2010, an FBI investigator asked to meet with me in Kabul. When I asked what would happen next, he just shook his head. There would be no further investigations. Washington, he said, didn’t want to expose Karzai. Following the attack, half of the UN staff was pulled out of the country and the second election was cancelled. Hamid Karzai got the victory he wanted.

When Joe Biden announced a concrete date for the pull-out in April, many in Afghanistan still refused to believe that the Americans were leaving.

The Americans and the rest of the NATO allies consistently let Karzai off the hook, along with his corrupt family and his secret service. The British, for example, wanted to focus on combating drug production in the country. When soldiers from the elite British force SAS happened across a gigantic opium storehouse near Kandahar that belonged to the president’s half-brother, all British diplomats were ordered to keep quiet about it. When two German hikers were murdered on the Salang Pass north of Kabul in 2011 and evidence pointed to the entourage of a contract killer for the Afghan secret service NDS, secrecy was once again the order of the day.

It was the era of U.S. President Barack Obama – and his then-vice president, Joe Biden, who experienced the unfolding disaster firsthand for eight years. Just before he became vice president, Biden had abruptly stood up and left a dinner with Karzai in anger after the Afghan president, in response to questions about corruption in Afghanistan, told Biden that the U.S. is ultimately responsible for everything that goes wrong in the country.

Biden’s current stubborn insistence on a complete and rapid withdrawal from the country may be informed by the fury he felt in those years. He knew the situation was a disaster. But it ultimately became even more disastrous than expected.

Obama sought to bring the situation under control by steadily increasing the number of troops. By 2011, more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Afghanistan. They could be victorious anywhere in the country, but not everywhere at the same time. More than anything, though, the rapid increase in the number of U.S. attacks, the rising total of civilian victims and their insurmountable military superiority all fed into their opponent’s most powerful narrative – that the Americans were infidel occupiers who must be driven out.

This narrative of foreign occupation was so useful that it was deployed by the Taliban and the Afghan government alike, just for opposite reasons. It helped the insurgents with mobilization, and it was a source of comfort for those in power. Then-President Hamid Karzai, in particular, transformed the narrative into a kind of mantra: The U.S., he would insist, will never withdraw. Their interests in Afghanistan are simply too great: fantastic natural resources, geopolitical conspiracies and the rest of it. It allowed him to constantly agitate against the American occupiers while having Washington pay the bill.

This alleged powerlessness combined with grand patriotic gestures were the order of the day in Kabul. Even when Donald Trump announced his withdrawal deal with the Taliban in early 2020, many reacted with disbelief. When Biden announced a concrete date for the pull-out in April, many still refused to believe that the Americans were leaving. Even in late June, when Afghan President Ashraf Ghani flew to Washington, there were those in the Presidential Palace and in the ministries who were still hoping that Biden would change his mind at the last moment.

Meanwhile, the massive presence of foreign troops created deep dependencies well beyond the mission’s true aims. One of those was sending the Afghan economy down a dead-end road for more than a decade. The Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), as the headquarters of the individual NATO forces were called, wanted to buy peace in the provinces under their control. They contracted construction projects and sponsored local media outlets and security companies. Slowly but surely, the PRTs became the largest employer almost everywhere. In Faizabad in the northeast, a warlord received a five-figure sum each month for the protection of the army camp – so that he wouldn’t attack it himself.

The corruption, nourished by the billions of dollars being poured into the country, "threatens all U.S. and international efforts in Afghanistan," was the conclusion reached in March by John Sopko, who has been the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction for almost a decade. His reports have long provided a detailed look at the shocking situation in the country.

Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai (third from left) with a Taliban delegation. Foto: Abdullah Abdullah / Facebook / Reuters

The money attracted the greedy to both the government and the military, creating an elite that stubbornly dug in its feet against all efforts to put a stop to the corruption. Even as recently as July, with the collapse of the government imminent, the corruption continued to worsen, said Yama Torabi, the outgoing founder of Integrity Watch Afghanistan and the country’s best-known anti-corruption activist. "Everyone was trying to drag in money at the last moment," he says.

In early July, the U.S. secretly abandoned their gigantic airbases overnight, first in Kandahar and then in Bagram, north of Kabul. They didn’t even inform their Afghan guards of the coming withdrawal. The Americans’ No. 1 priority was "force protection." The precipitous pull-outs, though, only served to inflame growing resentment among the former allies. When withdrawing from a Special Forces base, the U.S. troops destroyed almost all of the armored vehicles at the site. "They’d end up on the black market anyway," the commander said. Only one vehicle was left intact.

The drama surrounding the withdrawal was certainly not Washington’s intention. But it triggered the internal collapse of the Afghan government, the Afghan military and, indeed, the entire Afghan state. "We have never really believed in anything," says the old militia leader Hadji Jamshid in the north, who already fought against the Taliban 25 years ago. "They fought for the wrong thing. But damn it, they’re prepared to die for it. We aren’t."

"They fought for the wrong thing. But damn it, they’re prepared to die for it. We aren’t.” — Former militia leader Hadji Jamshid

By July, there was hardly anyone in the Western secret services and militaries who had much faith in Afghan security forces. Kabul, though, according to increasingly pessimistic forecasts, would stay in government hands. In June, a prognosis from Washington suggested that Kabul would hold out for six more months. The BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, predicted 90 days on the eve of the city’s capitulation. Last Saturday, a high-ranking security official with an international organization in Kabul said the capital would hold out for 17 more days. The constant American air surveillance over the capital with drones and B-52 bombers, the official said, would prevent the Taliban from attacking Kabul until the U.S. withdrawal was complete.

But that’s not how things turned out. Since spring, the Taliban has been able to smuggle thousands of fighters into the capital, apparently undisturbed by Afghan security forces. During our July meeting in Kabul, the Taliban military commander accurately told me that Taliban fighters had long since taken up position at the Qargha Reservoir. On the day of the takeover, videos taken at the amusement park there show the fighters joyfully driving bumper cars and jumping on a trampoline.

But as accurate as his claims were about the Taliban’s presence at the amusement park, it remains unclear precisely what the new rulers plan to do with the power suddenly in their possession. The commander said that Taliban leadership was open to the idea of a joint transition government. Not even the higher-ups in the Taliban, it would seem, expected the country’s political leadership to implode so suddenly and President Ashraf Ghani to fly out of the city on Sunday, apparently finding shelter in the United Arab Emirates. The takeover of Kabul was "unexpected," Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the 53-year-old lead negotiator for the Taliban’s political arm, said in a video message.

Which of the quartet of Taliban leaders will ultimately end up at the top? Not even that is clear. Mullah Baradar, who immediately returned to Afghanistan from Qatar, helped found the Taliban with the legendary Mullah Omar and is the most senior of the four. Baradar was instrumental in negotiating the 2020 deal with Washington – talks to which the Afghan government was not invited – that laid the cornerstone for the Taliban takeover.

The Taliban’s true top-ranking "emir" still hasn’t even made a public appearance. Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who took over his current position when his predecessor was killed in a U.S. drone attack, is thought to be in Quetta, Pakistan, where numerous Taliban leaders reside.

That leaves two other members of the leadership quartet, one of whom is likely to have gained no small amount of prestige recently. Taliban military leader Mullah Mohammad Yakub, around 30 years old, propagated a military strategy of targeted attacks, long-term bribery and clever infiltration in recent weeks – an approach that proved fabulously successful. The son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, Yakub had long been considered too young, too inexperienced and too self-centered to lay claim to become a successor to his father.

That leaves Sirajuddudin Haqqani, commander of the terror network Haqqani, which is thought to maintain close relations with both the al-Qaida leadership and to the Pakistani secret service ISI. He is well known in Washington: He is on the FBI’s list of the world’s most-wanted terrorists and the CIA supported his father 40 years ago in his fight against Afghanistan’s Soviet occupiers.

Given this cast of characters, it is far too early to posit an answer to the key question being asked in the West: Will Afghanistan once again become a breeding ground of terror? What the Taliban want at all costs is power over Afghanistan. On that count, they are nationalists. Terror attacks overseas, though, as they learned to their detriment in 2001, can quickly lead to losing power. A lesson which has likely contributed to their becoming an organization that is obsessive about control, in contrast to the first time they ruled Afghanistan prior to the U.S.-led invasion.

Still, they are not able to decide on their own, nor can they rule the entire country alone. For the past several months, the Pakistani secret service has been assiduously developing jihad groups in the north and east of Afghanistan that could develop into terror threats to the rest of the world: The Islamic State, Jaish-e-Mohammed and others. Pakistan’s leadership, which has for decades been obsessed with the country’s conflict with India, would like to maintain Afghanistan as a dependent hinterland and intends to continue exerting pressure on the Taliban.

People stranded at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Foto: Akhter Gulfam / EPA

Installing Haqqani would likely give Pakistan significant leverage in the Afghan leadership. Mullah Baradar, by contrast – who spent eight years in Pakistani custody and was maltreated after he established unauthorized contact to the Karzai government – would likely be an embittered adversary. He was only released in 2018 because Washington hoped that it would be possible to reach an agreement with the Taliban if he was part of the negotiations. And that hope was fulfilled.

This week, the victorious Islamist radicals struck a more conciliatory tone in their statements and first press conference. Of course, they insisted, girls will be allowed to continue their schooling and women will be permitted to work. But such assurances mean little; the Taliban have proven in the past their proclivity for rapidly changing course. As soon as the last U.S. troops have left the Kabul airport for good and the Taliban have consolidated their power, that conciliation could be quickly abandoned.

TV moderator Shabnam Dawran, one of the country’s most prominent journalists, has already described her experiences with the new rulers in a video: "Today, I wanted to go to my work; I did not give up my courage." She was told to go home and that the rules had changed. "Our life is at great risk," Dawran says in the video, then asking the world for help.

Serious resistance to the Taliban rulers isn’t likely in the near future. To be sure, erstwhile Vice President Amrullah Saleh did not leave the country as Ashraf Ghani did, instead returning to his home in the Panjshir Valley, the last bit of the country that isn’t under Taliban control. But Saleh won’t be able to do much from there. The valley is legendary for being home to Ahmed Shah Masood, who was able to prevent both the Soviet military and the Taliban from taking the valley. Back then, he benefited from supply lines stretching into neighboring countries. Today, though, the valley is completely surrounded by the Taliban and also doesn’t have an airport.

Most pressing, though, could soon be the question as to how the Taliban can rule at all. Already, several million Afghans are dependent on food aid from the World Food Program. Western Afghanistan is currently suffering under the worst drought it has seen in a decade. The state coffers are empty and the central bank’s assets are largely stored outside the country, where they are inaccessible. Whether the West likes it or not, if aid deliveries are not made and assistance is not provided to the country’s health-care facilities, many people will die.

Soon, the humanitarian situation may force the West to do something it spent the last 20 years trying at all costs to avoid: Support Taliban rule in Afghanistan. This “Graveyard of Empires” is their country. They gave a deep f*** to the USA🇺🇸, UK 🇬🇧, Germany 🇩🇪 , France 🇫🇷, Italy 🇮🇹, Australia 🇦🇺, European Union 🇪🇺, North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) and all their “Scrotum Licker Puppets) withe their ‘Most Sophisticated War Machines of Modern Era’. They will not f*** with Afghanistan in an illegal wars again.

0 notes