#hamid karzai

[gregor-samsung]

Eravamo insieme davanti alla televisione mentre sullo schermo scorrevano le immagini della ritirata degli americani dall’Afghanistan, anno di grazia 2021, e l’arrivo dei talebani in varie città del paese. Le ragazze di Kabul fuoriuscivano dallo schermo, con i loro quaderni, i loro zaini, le loro matite, la loro voglia di non perdere l’istruzione e la vita che in quei decenni di relativa calma avevano ottenuto a suon di sacrifici. Quelle ragazze di un’altra latitudine le sono scoppiate letteralmente nel cuore. E ho visto hooyo [=mamma] tremare di rancore. Più volte si è alzata in piedi e si è avvicinata alla televisione. Più volte, con un gesto tanto meraviglioso quanto inutile, ha cercato di sorreggere quelle ragazze stanche e affamate di un altro continente con le sue mani minute che accarezzavano il vetro dello schermo. La vedevo mentre cercava di tendere loro il braccio per teletrasportarle sulla pista dove aerei dalla pancia grossa si dirigevano verso una salvezza qualsiasi. Le facevano troppo pena quelle ragazze giovani e intraprendenti, immerse come grumi di merda nel canale di scolo che costeggiava l’aeroporto internazionale Hamid Karzai.

“Dovrebbero stare in un’aula, davanti a una maestra o a un maestro,” mi ha detto con voce sconvolta, adirata. “Davanti a una lavagna, con in mano un gesso, una penna, una possibilità. Accidenti, devono stare in classe con una maestra o un maestro che gli apre una finestra sul mondo.” “Invece, hooyo,” sussurro io, “sono grumi di merda in un canale di scolo.” Grumi di merda destinati a diventare grumi di sangue. Sì, sangue e materia cerebrale. Quando il telegiornale ha dato la notizia di persone assiepate all’aeroporto di Kabul, ho visto la rabbia di hooyo trasformarsi prima in furia e poi in lacrime. Per giorni ha camminato nervosa dentro casa, per strada, nelle terre della sua fantasia, alla ricerca di qualcosa che riuscisse a calmare le raffiche del suo cuore ferito. Era arrabbiata per la triste sorte che stavano subendo le ragazze di Kabul, ma era arrabbiata anche per se stessa. Si era rispecchiata in quelle giovani dagli occhi da cerbiatto, ragazze con quaderni e penne in mano, e si era chiesta perché a molte persone, più donne che uomini, sia ancora proibito sognare.

Igiaba Scego, Cassandra a Mogadiscio, Bompiani (collana Narratori Italiani), 2023¹; pp. 148-149.

[reportwire]

Today in History: December 7, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

Today in History: December 7, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

Today in History Today is Wednesday, Dec. 7, the 341st day of 2022. There are 24 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Dec. 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched an air raid on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as well as targets in Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines and Wake Island; the United States declared war against Japan the next day. On this date: In…

[sgtgrunt0331-3]

U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Crisis Response - Central Command, take a moment to rest during the evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan on August 21, 2021.

Five days later, 13 of their comrades would lose their lives in a suicide bombing. We shall never forget their courage and sacrifice. Semper Fi.

(Photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla)

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Brendan O’Neill

And yet there is something off, even something nauseating, in all the Western finger-wagging. It isn’t only Cameron. US president Joe Biden has also weighed in, saying he is ‘outraged’ by the killing of the aid workers. You can’t help but wonder whether he directed similar outrage at his own nation’s military when 37 Afghanis at a wedding party, mostly women and children, were killed by mistake in a US airstrike.

‘Stop killing Afghan civilians’, the then president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, said to the newly elected US president, Barack Obama. And who was Obama’s vice-president? Biden, of course. You would think a man whose own military has killed huge numbers of people in error would understand that these things happen, even if every decent person would rather they didn’t.

Vast numbers of civilians have been killed by accident by the US in recent years. At another wedding party in 2004, this time in Iraq, 11 women and 14 children were killed by American fire. Was there a ‘full, transparent explanation’ for that calamity?

Terrible accidents happen in war. That’s because war is hell. If you hate the war in Gaza, as you should, then you should aim your ire at Hamas, the virulently anti-Semitic terror group that started this war with its pogrom against the people of southern Israel on 7 October. The seven decent souls of World Central Kitchen would be alive today had Hamas not taken the decision to visit its racist barbarism on the Jewish State.

For once war starts, error becomes unavoidable. There are few wars in history – none, perhaps – in which innocents have not perished in the violent maelstrom. What is striking about Israel’s mistake is that it is not being treated as ‘friendly fire’ at all. Instead it is held up as proof of Israel’s evil, evidence of its malevolence.

[mariacallous]

Of the many missteps the United States made in its two-decade war in Afghanistan, one of the early ones involved a missed opportunity with the Taliban. In December 2001, just weeks after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban made an offer to the Bush administration: Its fighters would be willing to lay down their arms, provided they could live “in dignity” in their homes without being pursued and detained.

The offer was made in the form of a message to Afghan political leader Hamid Karzai. Had it been accepted, it may have prevented years of bloodshed and a long American occupation that ended in ignominy. But the United States at the time was reeling from the attacks of 9/11 and determined to eviscerate the group that had hosted al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and refused to hand him over. U.S. officials did not even respond to the offer.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a U.S. diplomat who dealt with Afghanistan for years, had a chance to ask the Taliban about that early truce offer while negotiating with the group much later—in 2021. He was struck by the response. “They thought that 20 years of war and all the loss of life on all sides was due to that mistake, as they saw it.”

This week marks three years since the Taliban marched on Kabul and regained control of Afghanistan. The hasty American retreat—and specifically the scenes of chaos at the Kabul airport—stand as a foreign-policy debacle for the Biden administration.

But America’s failure in Afghanistan is a much longer story. To try to understand it, Foreign Policy set out to explore why for two decades some of the world’s most experienced negotiators failed to reach an agreement that would have brought lasting peace to the country. The result of the reporting is a seven-episode season of our podcast, The Negotiators, produced in partnership with Doha Debates, and including interviews with key U.S., Afghan, and Taliban figures. You can hear it on our website or on any of the podcast platforms.

Based on conversations with the main actors, it is a story of misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and complacency—coupled with an American predilection for military action over diplomacy following the shock of 9/11. And while the Taliban were no pacifists themselves, they did at least show an early readiness to negotiate.

The misunderstandings and missed opportunities began to stack up in the closing stages of the U.S. invasion, when the Bush administration had the Taliban on the run and its focus was starting to shift toward Iraq. Uninterested in what it called “nation-building,” the administration asked the United Nations to shoulder the task of creating a new political order.

The result was a hastily convened conference in December 2001 in the German city of Bonn, which anointed Karzai as the new interim leader. But in line with U.S. wishes, the Taliban were excluded from the cross-section of Afghan political groups invited to attend.

For the U.N. and most of the Afghan delegates, the meeting was an opportunity to launch a peace process that would end the country’s forever war—which had been underway since the Soviet invasion in the late 1970s.

But for the Bush administration, the Bonn conference was simply a means “to consolidate victory in the war on terror,” according to American political scientist Barnett Rubin, who was then advising the U.N. envoy in charge of the meeting. “You can look through all the statements of all U.S. officials,” he said. “You will not find a word about peace in Afghanistan.”

That new order, agreed upon at the Bonn conference, did include plans for elections and a new constitution enshrining—among other things—rights for women. It also ushered in a period of optimism in Afghanistan, with millions of Afghan exiles returning home over the next few years, hopeful at that point that their country was on a path to stability with the West’s support.

But the Bonn agreement, patched together quickly, ended up cementing old divisions and creating new ones. “The underlying political issues were not even articulated at Bonn, let alone resolved,” Rubin said. It led directly to the Taliban taking up arms again, aided by the group’s sponsors in neighboring Pakistan, who also felt sidelined.

In response, the United States doubled down on its counterterrorism goal of trying to destroy the Taliban. Even figures who had been trying to maintain a dialogue were arrested, such as the Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef.

In the years that followed, a weak, fractured, and aid-dependent Afghan government would struggle as the Taliban’s insurgency expanded. Their support grew as the death toll from U.S. night raids and airstrikes rose. But it was the Taliban, along with some of America’s European allies, who were first to revive efforts to talk.

One of those allies was Norway, which had troops in Afghanistan but also experience mediating in other conflicts. Lisa Golden, director of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry’s Peace and Reconciliation Department, said her government had quickly concluded that “a purely military solution wasn’t going to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan.” The ties it built up with Taliban representatives led to a series of meetings in hotel rooms, “with the fruit basket that they provided between us,” Golden recalled.

To show his support for the talks, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar dispatched a trusted aide in 2009 to establish contact with both U.S. and European officials.

But nearly a decade into the Afghan war, entrenched American attitudes toward the Taliban made it difficult to get any talks started. Because of the risk that the United States would detain him and bundle him off to Guantánamo Bay, the aide, Tayyab Agha, had to work through intermediaries and travel clandestinely to the Middle East to set up meetings.

President Barack Obama had inherited the war by now and appointed veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke as his envoy for the region. Part of Holbrooke’s brief was to weigh talking to the Taliban, and he brought in Rubin as one of his advisors. But the United States still had “no policy toward a political settlement,” said Rubin, nor on how to engage with the Taliban.

When U.S. officials finally got the go-ahead to meet, it was only Agha, the Taliban emissary, who had a set of proposals and demands—the American side came empty-handed. Holbrooke’s sudden death, in late 2010, again stalled this tentative U.S. attempt to talk to the Taliban. And when his replacement was appointed, Rubin and his colleagues found themselves undermined by leaks from the Pentagon and the intelligence community, who were putting their hopes in the U.S. troop surge then underway, not peacemaking. “Most of the government was against us,” Rubin said.

And so it went, with misunderstandings and disagreements snarling efforts to promote talks, while the bloodshed mounted. A deal for the Taliban to open a political office in Qatar in 2013 fell apart when the Afghan government objected to its quasi-official status. By then, it was two years since the United States had killed bin Laden and the Pentagon was reducing its troop count, with plans for Afghan government forces to take the lead. But as their spokesperson, Suhail Shaheen, boasted at the time, the Taliban’s power had only increased.

President Donald Trump brought a different approach to the White House—a determination to withdraw American troops no matter what it meant for the Afghan government. But by then, U.S. leverage had weakened. “Instead of trying to negotiate at the apex of U.S. power and the nadir of Taliban power and capability in Afghanistan, we finally got serious about it as the U.S. was clearly on the way out the door and the Taliban was making steady advances,” said Laurel Miller, who served as acting U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the start of the Trump administration.

Trump instructed Khalilzad to negotiate a withdrawal—but that meant that the chief U.S. concern was getting out safely, not achieving an Afghan peace settlement. This was underlined by the fact that only American and Taliban negotiators met in the early stages, consigning the Afghan government to the sidelines. The arrangement mirrored the way the Taliban were left out at Bonn in 2001.

The United States and the Taliban did manage to strike a deal: the Doha Accord, which was signed in February 2020. It was supposed to be followed by power-sharing negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government. But since the United States had already agreed on a date for withdrawing its forces, the Taliban had no real incentive to bargain further. “It made it very easy for the Taliban just to wait us out,” said Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command from 2016 to 2019.

Hamdullah Mohib, who served as the national security advisor to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the time, accused Khalilzad of going behind the Afghan government’s back in his negotiations, calling it colonial behavior.

Khalilzad, in an extended interview for the podcast, rejected these accusations and insisted he kept Ghani and his officials fully informed. But he acknowledged “there was a conscious decision” not to tie America’s withdrawal to an agreement between the Ghani government and the Taliban, because of concerns that any linkage would delay its exit. Ghani’s government struggled to adjust to the new reality created by the agreement—and failed to strike a deal with the Taliban.

For older Afghans who had lived under the first Taliban regime and others who had prospered under the umbrella of the 20-year U.S. occupation, the group’s dramatic return to power in August 2021 was devastating. Many Afghans swarmed the Kabul airport to board evacuation flights. Afghan women braced for a new reality—with severe restrictions imposed on their everyday lives.

Three years later, girls above grade six are still not allowed to attend school. While the international community pressures the Taliban to relax the restrictions, the group chafes at the West’s continued embargo and its refusal to recognize its government.

In the interview, Khalilzad conceded that Afghanistan had been a lesson for the United States in “the limits of what military force can achieve.” Washington had made many mistakes in its war on terror after 9/11, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. “The policies that we pursued, the forces we strengthened, in a significant way contributed to the changes that were inconsistent with our values and, arguably, at least after a certain period, with our interests as well.”

[dertaglichedan]

Trump Honors Afghanistan Troops as ABC, CBS, NBC Morning Shows Ignore Anniversary

President Donald Trump paid his respects to the 13 U.S. troops who were killed three years ago during President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan — while the morning shows on the major networks ignored the anniversary.

Monday, August 26, 2024, marked three years since the day a suicide bomber affiliated with the local branch of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) killed 13 American service members and wounded dozens more at Kabul’s airport — while also murdering roughly 170 local civilians who were trying to flee the country.

Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, laying a wreath alongside Marine Corporal Kelsee Lainhart, who was partially paralyzed by the blast.

NewsBusters.com noted that ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored the three-year anniversary on their Monday morning shows:

Monday marked three years since the deadly Islamic terror attack in Kabul, Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport that murdered 13 American soldiers, 170 Afghans, and left over 150 people wounded. Instead of even briefly acknowledging this painful day for American families in what became the symbol of the Biden-Harris’s administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, ABC, CBS, and NBC completely ignored it on their flagship morning news shows. To repeat: not a word from ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, and NBC’s Today about the sacrifice of the brave Americans standing guard at Abbey Gate. The networks shamefully adopted the mold of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in being radio silent (aside from paper statements released from their handlers). In contrast, cable news shows that aired during that same block — Fox Business Network’s Mornings with Maria, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, Newsmax’s Wake Up America, NewsNation’s Morning in America, and even CNN News Central — all mentioned it multiple times.

Neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris visited Arlington, though both issued statements.

[ladyglenda]

🔥 This is about as blatant as it gets!

Someone please explain to me why Donald Trump just participated in the wreath laying ceremony at Arlington for the 3rd anniversary of the Kabul Airport attack in Afghanistan???

They’re putting it right in everyone’s face. The REAL Commander in Chief.

🔗 https://apnews.com/video/donald-trump-afghanistan-kamala-harris-joe-biden-hamid-karzai-e4d1fedf7b604801b2c11893347632d3

🇺🇸🟨🇺🇸

[captain-price-unofficially]

A Danish soldier holds up a Danish flag to identify families during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, 21 August 2021

[warsofasoiaf]

Without lionizing Gaddafi (who by all accounts was a real piece of work), how well would you say the western intervention in Libya generally? Not having studied in closely, it seems to be a disaster twice over. First, because it destabilized North Africa specifically and the Mediterranean more generally, and second it sent every strong man in the world a clear message: "Do not give up your nukes. The nukes are all that prevents them from doing you the same way."

I don't think criticizing foreign action, whether specific mistakes or in general, is lionizing Gaddafi. I think that's a binary thought process - either you're pro-foreign intervention or pro-Gaddafi, where there's actually a whole gulf of possibilities not in either camp. This isn't a new problem, though, straw manning is an old rhetorical device, and it's not going away any time soon.

I disagree that the message "Do not give up your nukes. The nukes are all that prevents them from doing you the same way," was communicated by this though. Countries that have desired nuclear programs (Iran, North Korea) have sought to develop them regardless of Libya nuclear dismantlement - Iran's program was ongoing when Libya agreed to dismantle them in 2003, same with North Korea. Arguably, Cold War deterrence theory has already established that message. Similarly, plenty of non-nuclear equipped strongmen and kleptocrats have maintained their brutal stranglehold on their countries without the aid of nuclear weapons, usually through seeking a foreign military patron, selling a valuable resource (often extracted under near-slave working conditions), or just not being worth the hassle. Also, nuclear weapons are notoriously difficult to use, particularly for a small country, and they're a one-shot pistol. A country with a tiny nuclear weapons program can't be guaranteed of successful employment, cannot be guaranteed of secrecy, etc.

It's not an easy question for serious examination, not just because of politically-charged nature of the question but because "Western intervention" in terms of the NATO mission ended in 2011 and the Second Libyan Civil War erupted into violence in 2014. So in that sense, what is attributable to the power vacuum left by Gaddafi's death and what was not. A large-scale uprising against Gaddafi was almost inevitable given the context of the Arab Spring and reprisal against Gaddafi's repressive regime. The protests weren't sparked by foreign intervention (despite Gaddafi's claims and frequently-online claims of "CIA color revolutions" that always crop up), and Gaddafi was certainly killing a lot of protestors when intervention was authorized. In the narrow mission scope of preventing Gaddafi from murdering his own civilians, that's successful, but that's a bit like saying the War in Afghanistan was successful when Hamid Karzai was installed: the aftermath matters, especially to the civilians that live there. The GNC was unable to address Libyan civilian concerns and factional fighting (supported by various factions including Russia, Turkey, Egypt, etc.) erupted again. If we measure the western intervention's success against its mission goal of "prevent a humanitarian catastrophe," then it succeeded in the short-term only, and helped create the conditions for a humanitarian catastrophe. In that sense, it can't be seen as a success.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[grandmaster-anne]

Court Circular | 22nd March 2023

Buckingham Palace

President Hamid Karzai (former President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) visited The King this morning.

Kensington Palace

The Prince of Wales this morning departed from Royal Air Force Northolt for Poland and was received this afternoon upon arrival at Rzeszow-Jasionka International Airport by His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Republic of Poland (Her Excellency Ms Anna Clunes). His Royal Highness then met British troops at the Airport. The Prince of Wales later visited a Polish Military Base in Rzeszow. His Royal Highness afterwards visited British troops providing support to Poland and Ukraine. The Prince of Wales this evening met Ukrainian refugees living in temporary accommodation in Warsaw. Mr Jean-Christophe Gray, Mr Lee Thompson and Commander Robert Dixon RN are in attendance.

[msexcelfractal]

Heads of State who were USA assets

Is there a list somewhere of heads of state who were USA/CIA assets? It's just that there have been so many:

Sanford Dole (1894-1903) The US overthrew native rule and annexed Hawaii as a territory for business purposes under Dole's leadership.

William Taft (1901-1903) The US assumed control of the Philippines with Taft as Governor after suppressing a people's revolution there.

Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) This president of Guatemala allowed US-owned fruit plantations to exploit Guatemalan land and labor. Defeated in a peoples' rebellion!

Carlos Castillo Armas (1954-1957) After the newly-created CIA defeated the people's rebellion in Guatemala, Castillo Armas exterminated the survivors and returned the land to the US fruit company. He was shot dead by a leftist assassin, Romeo Vásquez Sánchez, but Chiquita Banana sadly stayed in control of the country.

Syngman Rhee (1948-1960) He exterminated the labor movement in South Korea for the CIA and retired to Hawaii.

Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (1965-1975) President of South Vietnam. He failed to defeat the Viet Cong rebels and had to retire to Massachusetts. The commies won in Vietnam :)

Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) Dictator of Chile for 17 years after a US backed coup deposed Chile's elected president, a leftist. Pinochet tortured and murdered tens of thousands of leftist activists.

Hamid Karzai (2004-2014) and Ashraf Ghani (2014-2021) Presidents of Afghanistan under US occupation who permitted the US to run torture camps there and to extract gluts of oil and opium.

Juan Guaido (2019-2023) UN backed provisional president of Venezuela who supports US mineral extraction. He lost power to Maduro in January so as of today (July 2023) land reform is back on the table there.

[williamkergroach55]

The CIA sets up Daech in Afghanistan

The Central Intelligence Agency's control of the international heroin market was the main reason why the boys got killed all those years in Afghanistan. The sale of heroin provided a hidden financial windfall to America's real bosses on Wall Street. The secret weapon that the globalists were counting on to help them cope with the worst stock market crisis in their history were the poppy fields of Helmand. But, snap! The Yanks got kicked out of Kabul! Fortunately, Langley (CIA headquarters) found a new opportunity to do harm: to create a new caliphate on the doorstep of China and Russia.

The "godfather" Karzai

After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, all was well: opium production in Afghanistan had resumed dramatically, overseen by "President" Hamid Karzai, a dedicated CIA agent. Washington had military bases in Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia, Bagram, Kandahar and Shindand, in Herat, only 100 kilometers from the Iranian border. They were within striking distance of Russia and China. But since the Taliban chased American soldiers out of their country, nothing is going to happen anymore: Wall Street will not be able to count on the manna brought by Afghan heroin in the face of the stock market tsunami for which it is responsible.

A promising pipeline

The so-called war on terror, led by the United States in Afghanistan, was the usual American politician's blabla. It was all a pretext to threaten Central Asia militarily. The U.S. air bases built in Afghanistan were positioned to strike Russia, China, Iran and eventually the oil-rich countries of the Middle East if they strayed. Afghanistan was right in the path of the oil pipeline that would carry oil from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. The U.S. oil companies, Unocal, Enron and Halliburton (the company of vicious Vice President Dick Cheney), had arranged a juicy deal: they had managed to secure exclusive rights to a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron's natural gas-fired power plant in Dabhol, near Mumbai, India. That's where the American Deep State was! Happy as a piranha in troubled waters.

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, a flop

Al Qaeda, too, was a "brilliant" idea of William Casey, the CIA director - Ronald reagan's campaign manager in the 1980s. The idea was to pick up the most fanatical Muslims from all countries and send them to fight the Russian troops in Afghanistan. It was hoped to create a "new Vietnam" for the Soviet Union. The CIA financed the Taliban and Al Qaeda equally, as long as they broke the Communists.

Yet despite the dollars, al Qaeda had recruitment problems. James Jones, President Obama's former national security adviser, was forced to admit under oath to the U.S. Congress that al Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan was "very small." With only 100 members, no more, in the entire country, and not even an operational base, al Qaeda simply did not exist. The "terrorist threat" in Afghanistan was therefore bogus.

Islamic destabilization

After its defeats in Iraq and Syria against the Russians, the CIA is now striking back with a new terrorist state in Afghanistan. Islamic State sleeper agents, are being flown into Afghanistan by helicopter from Pakistan, Iraq and Syria as we speak. Since September 2018, Russian and Kyrgyz political officials have been warning about the arrival of these Islamist troops in Central Asia. The objective of CIA strategists is to sow, as usual, the seeds of trouble in the region. The installation of an Islamic state in the middle of Central Asia would be a new threat to the Russians and the Chinese. The United States is very happy about this, because it will never give up on Central Asia. This region is too important for its destiny as a world power. To achieve this, they need to find an instrument to destabilize the region that serves their geopolitical goals well. An Islamic State is the ideal instrument. 

Islamic State, the American know-how.

The American deep state has a long experience in building terrorist organizations. One recalls that to serve as cadres for the Islamic State in Syria, officers of Saddam Hussein's army had previously been opportunely released from prison by the American military. Washington had then released an obscure preacher named Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi from Camp Bucca, the American prison in Iraq, around 2009. Al Baghdadi was to serve as a messianic figure for a Muslim world heated up by the attacks and massacres in Palestine. Iraqi officers, in particular the former Iraqi intelligence colonel, Hadji Bakr, had designed the structure of Daech. So the Iraqis kept the store running until our scum got Russian bombs on their bearded faces.

Today, the Islamic State is redeploying to Afghanistan. Daech's forces in Central Asia are estimated to already number more than 10,000 men, in Islamist movements such as Hizb ut-Tahrir in Uzbekistan, or Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Islamic Jihad Union in Pakistan. Many of the fighters of Daech in Syria and Iraq come from Central Asia.

Divided Taliban

The Taliban in Afghanistan are divided against this new "Made in America" threat. It is a country of clans. And among them, there are the conservatives, who want to remain among the Pashtuns; the Pakistani agents; and those who favor an alliance with the Islamic State. The latter believe that the Taliban must "modernize" the jihad. The Islamic State in Khorasan (EIK) seeks to absorb the latter to lead the fight against enemies... That Washington will designate for them. Right now, the targets are Iran, China, Russia and their Central Asian allies.

It is in this context that the recent assassination, proudly announced by the Taliban, of the head of the Daech cell responsible for the attack on the Kabul airport, which cost the lives of 13 American soldiers and nearly 170 Afghan civilians in August 2021, takes on all its importance. The war between the Taliban and Daech-K is raging in the newly liberated country.

Daech, an existential threat to the Taliban

Since its inception in 2015, the Islamic State-Khorassan Province (ISIL-KP or ISKP) has taken hold in Afghanistan and has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against government forces and religious minorities. With the Taliban coming to power in August 2021, the group found an opportunity to reorganize and regain ground, particularly in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. But the Taliban quickly crushed Daech's men in Farah, Logar and Zabol provinces. As a result, Daech is retreating to urban terrorism, targeting mainly government forces and religious minorities, such as the Hazaras. Since the departure of U.S. troops, EI-K has already committed at least 119 attacks, mostly against Taliban officials and fighters. Although the Taliban are Sunni of the Hanafi rite, EIIL-K calls them infidels. Daech also, of course, attacks Shiite minorities, such as the Hazaras. The Islamic State thus seeks to challenge the doctrinal purity of the Taliban, in an Islamist overkill familiar to those who know these circles. Although the Taliban have, for the moment, a superiority in terms of numbers and weaponry, the EIIL-K remains an existential danger for the new Taliban government.

That said, despite EIIL-K's offensive in Afghanistan, the Salafist ideology advocated by the terrorist organization is struggling to gain a lasting foothold in the country. The fanaticism and universalist vision of the EIIL-K are repulsive to an Afghan population that would like all these foreigners to finally leave them alone. The Taliban have set up a counter-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan which shows that they know how to deal with the problem: Salafists are eliminated without trial.

[planetarybound]

Hurt (Johnny Cash) but you're evacuating Kabul Airport

HistoryFeels 146K subscribers 375,631 views Mar 24, 2022 I hurt myself, today. To see if I still 𝓕𝓮𝓮𝓵

The United States Armed Forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on 30 August 2021, marking the end of the 20-year long war in Afghanistan. On 15 August 2021, the Taliban seized the capital city of Kabul as the Afghan government under President Ashraf Ghani dissolved, the speed of which surprised the US government. With Taliban fighters surrounding the city, the US embassy evacuated and retreated to Hamid Karzai International Airport. On 26 August, there was a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport, killing 11 Marines, one Navy Corpsman and upwards of 70 Afghan citizens. A 13th US service member succumbed to his wounds the next day. Following the last US flight, Taliban soldiers entered the airport and declared victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdra…

https://www.patreon.com/HistoryFeelshttps://discord.gg/4rsXbZ7bYT

Many, many thanks to Patrons!

Hokin Sheba Kristian Nico Captain Max Sasson Idris AlexInTheOcean DSoulCrusher

[sgtgrunt0331-3]

Sgt. Nicole Gee, a maintenance technician with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, cradles an Afghan infant during the evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 24, 2021.

The 23 year-old wrote "I love me job" on her Instagram caption, as her unit was tasked with processing thousands of Afghan and American evacuees through the airport gates.

Just two days later, on August 26, 2021, Sgt. Gee and 12 of her fellow service members were killed in a suicide bombing at the airport.

Fair winds and following seas to Sgt. Gee and those who gave their lives to help protect and save others. Your sacrifice was not in vain and you will never be forgotten. Semper Fi. 🇺🇸

[darkmaga-retard]

Tanya Goudsouzian

Sep 10, 2024

Three years after the Taliban takeover, the images still haunt those who watched as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan met a catastrophic end.

The president Ashraf Ghani and his close entourage fled to safety by private plane, while hours later young men would desperately cling to the wings of U.S. military aircraft taking off from Hamid Karzai International Airport. Several fell to their deaths or were flattened under the wheels of planes on the tarmac.

These images illustrate the betrayal felt by Afghans, not only toward the Americans who promised them the dream of democracy and prosperity for 20 years, but also toward their own leadership. Today, there is no appetite among the international community for another drawn-out war in Afghanistan, as violence rages in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, and Yemen. Engagement with the Taliban may be unpalatable but is seen as a serious option in several UN-brokered talks with the West, not to mention regional neighbors signing lucrative trade deals with the sanctioned and cash-strapped Taliban.

From an undisclosed location in Central Asia, Ahmad Massoud leads the only armed opposition movement against the Taliban under the banner of the the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan. The Iranian-educated and Sandhurst-trained son of a fallen Afghan hero, he was only 11-years-old when his father Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by Al Qaeda operatives disguised as journalists on September 9, 2001. Many view the assassination of the iconic “Lion of Panjshir” as linked to the tragic events of 9/11 that followed two days later.

[mariacallous]

With an Israeli offensive in Rafah looming, the United States continues to face several dilemmas in addressing the evolving humanitarian disaster in Gaza. A growing chorus of American citizens and policymakers alike are asking how the U.S. can support Israeli security while also protecting Palestinian civilians.

Coercing allies is tricky diplomatic business—especially when it comes to pushing policies that restrict a partner’s approach to national defense. Plus, the long-standing U.S. commitment to Israel diminishes U.S. bargaining power further. Far from feeling that they owe the Americans any favors, Israeli decision-makers in crisis are likely wagering that U.S. interests in maintaining an established strategic partnership against shared and emboldened enemies, including the Houthis and Iranians, will prevent Washington from pressing too hard on Israeli policymakers.

The most-often discussed pathway for the U.S. to pressure partners is making aid conditional on reforms. Last week, following mounting pressures from prominent Democratic lawmakers including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen, President Joe Biden signed a “historic” directive that would require all U.S. strategic partners to submit written confirmation certifying that U.S.-provided military assistance was being used in compliance with international law. However, it is unclear how this will impact Israeli policy or how the Biden administration will respond to violations. Part of the lack of clarity over what, if anything, this action does for Palestinians in Gaza or for U.S.-Israeli relations is a failure to appreciate the complications involved in making aid conditional on reform.

American diplomats have been here before. The U.S. is aiming to broadly support its partner while also protecting its interests, a challenge it has previously encountered with local allies in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, those alliances of counterinsurgency occupation were very different from the U.S.-Israel partnership, as Kabul and Baghdad had far more limited institutional and military capacity compared to Israel. Nevertheless, despite significant differences in the dynamics of those partnerships, Washington has had to figure out how to support a key ally while maintaining U.S. norms and interests, such as promoting democracy and protecting human rights.

History shows that in pressuring Israel to moderate its policies in Gaza, conditional aid may not work as well as an often-overlooked diplomatic tool: the threat of unilateral U.S. action.

In theory, “tough love” in the form of conditional aid allows the U.S. to trade material for influence. However, in reality, the politics of such approaches are more complicated and riskier for the U.S. than they appear.

First, limiting aid risks weakening the partner, which almost always runs against U.S. interests. If the partner fails, the United States is also in a less secure position vis-à-vis the shared threats that motivate the partnership in the first place. This in turn limits the credibility of such threats, as partners understand that the U.S. will also suffer consequences if Washington follows through.

In 2009, then-President Barack Obama publicly called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to crack down on corruption and the drug trade in Afghanistan. When asked why the U.S. did not withhold troops and aid to leverage said reforms, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan candidly called the argument “stupid.” This is because weakening Karzai risked emboldening the Taliban, extending the U.S. intervention, and setting back key nation-building benchmarks the U.S. had set for itself and its partners in Afghanistan.

Second, withdrawing aid potentially damages the future of the partnership. If partners decide that Washington has undermined their security, they may be motivated to seek alternative allies, including Russia in the case of Israel. The current Israeli mindset of insecurity and isolation means that unless it is done with exceptional skill, U.S. threats to significantly limit military aid during an ongoing Israel Defense Forces operation will likely be met with resentment and resistance by Israeli officials.

Third, unlike pundits, policymakers have the heavy responsibility of dealing with critical allies calling Washington’s bluff and refusing to comply with U.S. demands. Defiant allies create a lose-lose scenario for the U.S. Either American officials follow through on declared penalties and risk undermining strategic partners and possibly emboldening shared adversaries, or they fail to impose the costs and lose credibility and future leverage. Thus, despite reports that the Biden administration is willing to delay weapons delivery to Israel, it is unsurprising that the White House is yet to announce a clear plan.

These risks make aid conditionality a blunt tactic typically held in reserve by U.S. diplomats, as opposed to a sustainable diplomatic approach. The more the U.S. relies on a partner, the less attractive aid conditionality becomes. Admittedly, unconditional aid is also risky since it leaves the U.S. at least partially liable for the partner’s policies, even ghastly ones. For example, in Iraq, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s determination to resist U.S. urges to incorporate Sunni political forces into his government was a contributor to the insurgency that took over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Luckily, there is an alternative way to pressure partners.

Instead, the U.S. can shift partner behavior by threatening to implement policies that affect local politics unilaterally, with or without partner participation. The coercive message to partners is “either you implement X policy, or we will,” unlike the logic of aid conditionality that states “implement X policy, or the U.S. will cut your support.” The former message is focused on the specific policy in question, as opposed to threats of cutting key resources, which can harm the ally and alliance more broadly.

The threat of select unilateral action is not meant to propose wide-scale U.S. intervention but can instead be tailored to impact local policies that are specifically harmful to U.S. interests. Though allies will likely perceive it as a coercive threat to their autonomy and not welcome this message, the goal is to raise the stakes and pressure allies into reaching a compromise.

Threatening unilateral U.S. action in response to partner inaction often motivated local allies in Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan to comply with U.S. demands, at least in part, because unilateral action would have undermined local elites and put them in an increasingly isolated position. In Iraq, for instance, the U.S. was able to successfully use this approach to coerce Maliki into further engaging with Sunni groups in 2010 because the U.S. was credibly threatening to continue its engagement with amenable Sunni leaders—with or without the support of Shiite leaders in Baghdad. (However, Washington lost this leverage when it no longer threatened to support Sunni militias unilaterally as part of the 2011 U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.)

The U.S. was also able to pry concessions out of local partners in Saigon during the U.S. withdrawal because of credible threats that the U.S. would move forward with compromises to North Vietnam with or without South Vietnamese participation. In 2010, the U.S. was able to promote moderate anti-corruption reforms in Afghanistan by bringing in U.N. officials to report on progress. Rather than be sidelined, the Afghan government compromised and joined the oversight process, in part to keep tabs on it and shape policy along the way.

While taking unilateral action has a record of successfully nudging critical allies toward meeting U.S. demands, it can only be applied when the U.S. has the sole capacity to implement the requested policy. It cannot be used, for example, to coerce partners to change their domestic laws or disengage from offensive operations, because those are reforms that the U.S. cannot implement without partner participation.

This means the U.S. cannot use this approach to coerce Israel to be more selective with strikes in Gaza. However, Washington can, for example, threaten to unilaterally release detailed information regarding targeting in Gaza to motivate the Israelis to increase transparency and accountability in their campaign. U.S. policymakers can also propose to set up an independent inquiry into civilian deaths in Gaza as a form of oversight and monitoring or use American institutions to address the conflict. The recent U.S. decision to impose financial sanctions on four Israelis who incited violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is a step in this direction.

Regarding the current emergency in Gaza, the U.S. can threaten to unilaterally provide humanitarian aid should Israel impede this critical assistance. It can do so, for example, by dispatching a disaster response naval vessel such as the USNS Mercy or USNS Comfort to join the carrier strike groups assigned to the region. Naturally, there will be critics arguing that this measure may undermine Israel’s military campaign, but those positions are too comfortable with Israeli failures to distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas militants. The U.S. can signal its displeasure for the current offensive by offering to help civilians in Gaza secure their basic needs and survival. Sending U.S. unilateral aid to Gaza and informing the Israelis this will happen with or without their cooperation would send three important messages.

First, the historical record suggests that a credible threat of unilateral U.S. action can nudge Israel to move closer to U.S. positions to avoid being subverted by the U.S. Second, it boosts U.S. bargaining credibility regionally and reinforces that the U.S. is an autonomous actor in the conflict, as well as a committed Israeli ally. This may be increasingly important as the U.S. may need to press against sustained Israeli occupation of Gaza and strengthen its ties to key Arab partners such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Lastly, unilateral action will allow the U.S. to do more than just lament Palestinian civilian deaths. Just as the U.S. sprang into action to defend Israeli civilians brutally slaughtered on Oct. 7, the U.S. can also spring into action to defend Palestinian civilians currently facing what the U.N. calls “apocalyptic” conditions.

Like all tools of statecraft, this is only one of many approaches in the U.S. diplomatic toolkit. Even though it is rarely discussed compared to aid conditionality, threatening unilateral policy action to coerce a strategic partner to participate can be more subtle and less risky because it maintains the security alliance and material support for a partner, while also taking issue with specific partner policies. Additionally, threatening unilateral policy implementation in Gaza does not preclude the U.S. from also considering selective aid conditionality or additional pathways of pressure, including reconsidering blocking U.N. action that challenges Israeli positions.

Washington will need to be agile and purposeful in its diplomatic approaches as the U.S. seeks to both support and influence Israel—even as its policies, including the offensive in Gaza, violate U.S. interests. The U.S. can and should do more.