WAR The Continuing Conflict in Afghanistan - Fighting in the Panjshir Valley 9/3/21

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Afghanistan: US offers to pay relatives of Kabul drone attack victims
Published
18 minutes ago


A photograph showing the destroyed car and damage around it

Image caption, The aftermath of the drone strike in the Afghan capital, Kabul
The US government has offered financial compensation to the relatives of 10 people mistakenly killed by the American military in a drone strike on the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August.
An aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the strike.
The Pentagon said it was also working to help surviving members of the family relocate to the US.
The strike took place days before the US military withdrew from Afghanistan.
It came amid a frenzied evacuation effort following the Taliban's sudden return to power and only days after a devastating attack close to Kabul's airport by IS-K, a local branch of the Islamic State (IS) group.
US intelligence had tracked the aid worker's car for eight hours on 29 August, believing it was linked to IS-K militants, US Central Command's Gen Kenneth McKenzie said last month.

The investigation found the man's car had been seen at a compound associated with IS-K, and its movements aligned with other intelligence about the terror group's plans for an attack on Kabul airport.
At one point, a surveillance drone saw men loading what appeared to be explosives into the boot of the car, but these turned out to be containers of water.
Gen McKenzie described the strike as a "tragic mistake" and added that the Taliban had not been involved in the intelligence that led to the strike.
The strike happened as the aid worker - named as Zamairi Ahmadi - pulled into the driveway of his home, 3km (1.8 miles) from the airport.
The explosion set off a secondary blast, which US officials initially said was proof that the car was indeed carrying explosives. However, an investigation found it was most likely caused by a propane tank in the driveway.
One of those killed, Ahmad Naser, had been a translator with US forces. Other victims had previously worked for international organisations and held visas allowing them entry to the US.


Media caption, Emal Ahmadi: "Ten people died here... including my daughter, she was two years old"
The compensation offer was made on Thursday in a meeting between Colin Kahl, the under-secretary of defence for policy, and Steven Kwon, the founder and president of an aid group active in Afghanistan called Nutrition and Education International, the Pentagon said in a statement.
Mr Kahl noted Mr Ahmadi and others who were killed "were innocent victims who bore no blame and were not affiliated with ISIS-K or threats to US forces", said a statement attributed to Defence Department spokesman John Kirby.
He reiterated Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin's commitment to the families, including "condolence payments".
Mr Austin has apologised for the botched attack, but Mr Ahmadi's 22-year-old nephew Farshad Haidari said that was not enough.
"They must come here and apologise to us face-to-face," he told the AFP news agency in Kabul.
When the US started to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban managed to seize control of the country within about two weeks in a rapid offensive. Kabul fell on 15 August.

It sparked a mass evacuation effort from the US and its allies, as thousands of people tried to flee. Many were foreign nationals or Afghans who had worked for foreign governments.
The security situation was further heightened after the IS-K attack on the airport. A suicide bomber killed up to 170 civilians and 13 US troops outside the airport on 26 August.
Many of those killed had been hoping to board evacuation flights leaving the city.
The last US soldier left Afghanistan on 31 August - the deadline President Joe Biden had set for the US withdrawal.
More than 124,000 foreigners and Afghans were flown out of the country beforehand. But some people were unable to get out in time, and evacuation efforts are ongoing.

video on site
www.bbc.com

Afghanistan: US offers to pay relatives of Kabul drone attack victims

Ten people were mistakenly killed by the US military in a drone strike on the Afghan capital.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Doomer Doug

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Looks like these taleban thugs ain't doing too good on the governmental stability thing a ma jig they promised.

I think it is official now. Biden has created the worst military, political, diplomatic and economic disaster in US history. Nobody else even comes close. Well, the imminent break out of World War Three over Taiwan, with nukes and all that will soon beat his Afghanistan shenanigans, but till then, biden holds the baton for failure hands down.

Nukes from China anybody?
 
jward

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passin' thru
O I wouldn't say Biden's a failure at all. They were always clear that this was O's third term, and there was never any doubt about that commie shit stains agenda, so, unfortunately, this has been a rousing and rare successful meeting of objectives.

..and to think we had the time, warning, and space to have nipped it in the bud and instead let it come to fruition. Biden's not the only one who needs wear the scarlet F, we all get ours too imo.
 
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The Taliban Can’t Take on the Islamic State Alone - War on the Rocks
Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines

18-22 minutes


The Islamic State in Afghanistan’s six-year fight against the Taliban is now entering a new phase following America’s withdrawal. The group’s Aug. 26 Kabul Airport bombing, as well as a recent series of attacks against the Afghan Taliban in Nangarhar province, suggest that this new phase will almost certainly be a bloody one. Worse, the Islamic State in Afghanistan now enjoys a number of new advantages that will be difficult for the Taliban to overcome.

The Kabul airport attack was designed to garner regional and international publicity, demonstrate the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s operational prowess by targeting American personnel, and undermine the Taliban’s legitimacy in the eyes of Afghans and the world. The United States responded with an erroneous airstrike on alleged terrorist operatives, which only served to facilitate the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s propaganda and the self-righteousness of its message. The Nangarhar attacks, on the other hand, are a resumption of the group’s direct clashes with the Afghan Taliban. Given the Taliban’s peace deal with the United States and transition into a legitimate political entity, the Islamic State in Afghanistan now has the opportunity to frame the Taliban not only as illegitimate due to its links with the Pakistani state but also as an incompetent collaborator of the West – incapable of providing security and governance for the Afghan people. The Islamic State in Afghanistan has also benefited from the recent escape of thousands of members from prison. It is well-positioned to exploit tensions between the Taliban, who subscribe to the Hanafi school of Islam, and Afghans who adhere to the Salafist ideology, also referred to as Wahabbism. Additionally, the group has focused on sustaining its network of urban attack cells in Afghanistan and operational alliances with other regional jihadist groups. In short, while the Islamic State in Afghanistan has been significantly weakened in previous years by the loss of territory, fighters, and leadership, it has many factors working in its favor as well.

Top U.S. intelligence officials recently testified that although the Islamic State in Afghanistan, like al-Qaeda, may be motivated to attack U.S. interests, the risk is limited in the short term given the group’s recent losses and degraded capacity. Statements by the Taliban’s political spokesman and some Western analysts also suggest that the Taliban is able to tackle the Islamic State in Afghanistan independently. But a look back at the group’s origins and evolution, as well as the successes and failures of its fight against the Taliban, strongly suggest this faith is misplaced. Instead of waiting for the Taliban to defeat the Islamic State in Afghanistan on its own, Washington should engage more proactively in an inclusive, regional strategy. This would involve bringing together countries like China, Russia, Pakistan, and even Iran which have stakes in Afghanistan’s sociopolitical stability and in preventing the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s growth. A primary objective around which these countries could converge would be stemming cross-border militant movement, recruitment, alliances, and funding sources.

Origins and Goals of the Islamic State in Afghanistan
The Islamic State in Afghanistan first made headlines in early 2015 when the group announced itself as ready soldiers of the caliphate in the so-called Khorasan region. Historically, “Khorasan” referred to parts of present-day eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, but the Islamic State’s conception of Khorasan also includes Pakistan and some of India. Although that larger region remains part of the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s strategic vision, the group initially focused its operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, using the latter more as a logistical hub. Founding members from the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan , and other jihadist groups coalesced around a heavyweight former Pakistani Taliban commander named Hafiz Saeed Khan. He was the group’s first governor (referred to as either vali or emir) and was appointed by then Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi to oversee the group’s expansion into the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

Not long after its official founding, the Islamic State in Afghanistan consolidated territorial control (tamkin, a requirement for recognition as an Islamic State province) in a number of rural districts in northeast Afghanistan. Over time, breakaway commanders from the Taliban and other groups tried to establish similar fronts in other provinces across the country and occasionally they succeeded. For almost seven years now, the group has launched highly lethal attacks in major cities and their surroundings, targeting government personnel and institutions. In addition to attacking international aid workers and journalists, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has also leveraged a sectarian strategy of violence similar to its namesake in Iraq and Syria, targeting minority groups like Afghanistan’s Hazara and Sikh communities and Pakistan’s Sufi and Zikri communities. By 2018, the Islamic State in Afghanistan was one of the top four deadliest terrorist organizations in the world.
Over time though, U.S.-led coalition operations and Afghan Taliban mobilizations (sometimes displaying a degree of tacit cooperation) whittled away at the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s territory, leadership, and rank-and-file member base. The group suffered a series of visible setbacks throughout 2019. The Islamic State’s core leadership sent a delegation to replace the failing governor Mawlawi Zia ul Haq and reorganized the movement by creating separate provincial entities (wilayat) for Pakistan and India (likely to ease management and to avoid internal disputes). Then, at the end of the year, hundreds of fighters and their families surrendered to the Afghan government, totaling almost 1,500 people by the start of 2020. Many experts even began to declare that the organization had been defeated.

Despite these losses, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has managed to survive, reconsolidate, and — now — resurge. Its operational alliances with other experienced regional groups and its ability to poach members of other organizations continues to enhance its operational capacity. While the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s initial ranks were swelled by disgruntled former Pakistani Taliban fighters, the group has proved capable of recruiting well beyond this. Organizations like the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, for example, have not only contributed to the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s local know-how but have also facilitated recruitment from within Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Thousands of recruits have also come from the Afghan Taliban, as well as from hardened Salafists in Afghanistan’s northeast, young Afghans in urban areas, and fighters across the border in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In the past, the Islamic State in Afghanistan also received substantial financial and logistical support from the Islamic State core leadership in Iraq and Syria.

Last year, a new governor named Shahab al Muhajir was appointed to oversee the organization’s resurgence strategy. Al Muhajir is an alleged expert in urban warfare with experience both as a Haqqani network commander and as an al-Qaeda member. His goal has been to guide the organization out of this period of relative decline first by doubling down on sectarian attacks against vulnerable minorities and then by launching a revitalized war against the Afghan Taliban. Under new leadership, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has been featured in the Islamic State-Central’s propaganda as a high-performing affiliate, with particular emphasis on high-profile and sophisticated operations such as the 20-hour prison siege in Jalalabad in August 2020.

The Taliban: A Necessary Rival
The Islamic State in Afghanistan has always viewed the Afghan Taliban as its ideological enemy, smearing the Taliban’s political project in Afghanistan and some of its governing practices as heretical. In 2015, then-spokesman for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Abu Muhammad al Adnani, issued a damning statement decrying the Taliban that set the stage for the violence to follow. More recently, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has updated its propaganda to defame the Taliban as collaborators of the United States. For example, a Telegram post on Aug. 26, 2021 stated, “History will record that these mercenary Talibs have become America’s protectors, soldiers, protégés and spies! Is there anything more humiliating than this?!!” In an editorial published in al-Naba, the Islamic State’s official weekly newsletter, following the Kabul attack, the Islamic State appealed to supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to repent and embrace the “true” jihadist group.
The continued rivalry between these two groups is firmly rooted in their incompatible agendas and goals, and serves to create space for the Islamic State in Afghanistan in an otherwise saturated militant landscape. The Taliban’s goals are limited in nature. They were primarily interested in expelling Western forces from Afghanistan and establishing a government in line with their view of sharia. The Islamic State in Afghanistan, on the other hand, not only seeks to acquire the same territory as the Taliban but actively recruits other groups’ militants, challenges al-Qaeda, instigates sectarian violence, and targets multiple state actors.
One major avenue through which the Taliban-Islamic State in Afghanistan rivalry has played out is defections. Since its inception, the Islamic State in Afghanistan has poached hundreds of commanders and rank-and-file members from the Taliban. We have tracked dozens of mid- to senior-level Taliban commanders who swapped white flags for black, well over 30 of whom were later reported killed, captured, or surrendered to U.S.-led Afghan forces. Some of these commanders enjoyed greater success than others. Qari Hekmat (Hekmatullah), a former Uzbek Taliban commander, joined his forces with the Islamic State in Afghanistan and came to lead the group’s northern territorial project in Jowzjan province for an extended period of time. However, other former Taliban commanders like Saad Emarati — whose fledgling efforts in Logar province were dismantled in a matter of weeks — were quickly killed, captured, or forced to flee. Some even re-joined the Taliban when offered amnesty. Given the benefits derived from poaching Afghan Taliban members in the past, the Islamic State in Afghanistan is likely to capitalize on any internal divisions and disagreements within its ranks to find new recruits.
 
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continued.. .. ..

The Military Dimension
Of course, the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s rivalry with the Taliban has also taken more violent form. Figure 1 shows the number of clashes and fatalities incurred between the two groups between 2015 and 2020. Overall, the data show a dramatic escalation in clashes (armed engagements with at least one reported casualty) from 2016 through 2018, then a sharp fall in 2019 continuing through 2020. Despite facing an onslaught from Taliban forces, as well as airstrikes and ground operations from U.S. and Afghan forces, the Islamic State in Afghanistan still managed to match the Taliban in strikes initiated during 2017. By 2019, however, a decline in both attacks and their lethality is noticeable. This may be the result of losses dealt to the group by U.S.- and Afghan-allied operations.
Figure 1: Islamic State in Afghanistan-Afghan Taliban Clashes and Fatalities Over Time
ISA-1.png
ISA-3.png

Sources: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, Uppsala Conflict Data Program
Figure 2 shows the distribution of clashes across Afghanistan’s provinces from 2015 to 2020. Geographically, the Islamic State in Afghanistan and the Taliban have clashed in at least 16 provinces, with the heaviest fighting falling in Nangarhar, Kunar, and Jowzjan. Notably, these are the provinces where the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s most significant consolidation and expansion efforts occurred and, as a result, where U.S. and Afghan coalition forces have most heavily targeted the group. This is not to say that major mobilizations of Taliban fighters and “special forces” units did not play a role in clamping down on the Islamic State in Afghanistan in these areas, but, in general, these efforts tended to coincide with state-led operations against it. For example, the Taliban routed the Islamic State in Afghanistan in early 2015 in Helmand, Zabul, and elsewhere, but these efforts piggy-backed on tactical U.S. strikes that eliminated its senior leadership.
Overall, it is clear that the Taliban has demonstrated some efficacy in limiting the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s expansion efforts, but the nature of these engagements also shows that the Taliban have benefited from coalition air power and direct action raids. While it is possible that any future territorial control by the group could be dismantled by the Taliban, historical trends suggest that this would come at a high cost in terms of casualties, possibly causing prolonged battles in the absences of coalition strikes and ground operations.

But preventing the Islamic State in Afghanistan from holding territory is just one of the challenges the Taliban faces. For now, at least, the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s strategy no longer appears to prioritize the costly struggle for territorial control. Instead, it is focused on leveraging operational assets to attack the Taliban, thereby signaling its resolve and boosting recruitment and outreach.
The question now is whether the Taliban will be able to engage in protracted counter-terrorism efforts while governing the country. The Islamic State in Afghanistan has embraced the same method of insurgency as its namesake in Iraq and Syria, one geared towards anti-state competition. This includes methodically infiltrating governing institutions, recruiting and politicking behind the scenes to form alliances, assassinating moderate voices of opposition within targeted recruitment populations, and launching attacks against both minority communities and state targets. With the Taliban now in power, it is Taliban personnel and institutions that, alongside civilians, will bear the brunt of the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s strategy.
Figure 2: Number of Islamic State in Afghanistan-Afghan Taliban Clashes by Province
ISA-2.jpg

Sources: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, Uppsala Conflict Data Program
What’s Next?
While the Taliban will no longer face the resource drain of waging an insurgency themselves, they do face the burden of transitioning into a state actor, constraining opposition to their rule, and extending governance across the country at a time of tremendous economic and humanitarian strain. The Taliban are heavily burdened with running the country and lack resources to ensure security for the Afghan population. Any effort to tackle the Islamic State in Afghanistan by the Taliban themselves will be prolonged and deadly, likely generating instability at both the national and regional levels.
On the other hand, with the U.S., NATO, and Afghan security forces now out of the picture, the Islamic State in Afghanistan can focus the vast majority of its operational resources squarely on the Taliban — especially its highly lethal attack operations — instead of splitting those resources to resist multiple actors. With experts widely assessing that the over-the-horizon capabilities of the United States are limited, the environment may rapidly become more advantageous for the Islamic State in Afghanistan to reinvigorate its terror campaign in the days ahead.

How might this play out? First, it is evident from the group’s recent propaganda campaign that the Islamic State in Afghanistan is highly likely to continue encouraging defections, particularly from the Taliban. If the Taliban, once in government, offers concessions or leniency on ideological matters, they risk losing fighters to their rival. If the Taliban are increasingly perceived to be pawns of outside powers, especially through counterterrorism cooperation with the United States or others, they again risk losing fighters to defection campaigns. Any level of counterterrorism cooperation with the United States is likely to trigger internal disputes within the Taliban, which could further increase the appeal of the Islamic State in Afghanistan among dissenting members. Defectors from the Afghan Taliban in particular can provide significant intelligence, which would facilitate more sophisticated attacks.
The potential resurgence of a resilient Islamic State in Afghanistan raises security concerns not just for the United States but for many regional state actors including Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia. Even if the United States engages in some counter-terrorism operations, without a sustained regional approach any gains are likely to be short-lived. For now, countries like China, Russia, Pakistan, and even Iran, which hold major stakes in Afghanistan’s future and hope to pursue their geo-economic interests there, may be best placed to jointly tackle the problem posed by the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

Although bringing these countries together around a security strategy would certainly be challenging, they could potentially find common ground in targeting cross-border militant movement, recruitment, and funding. Groups like the Islamic State in Afghanistan depend on foreign fighters for example. Regional coordination and intelligence sharing could allow governments to better track the movement of foreign fighters between conflict zones. Cooperation could also focus on tracking and disrupting cross-border alliances, which are a key source of the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s attack capabilities. They could also collaborate in identifying important nodes in the transnational smuggling of opium, timber, and minerals. Pakistan, China, Russia, and Iran have all put considerable stock in their future relationship with the Taliban. Washington can leverage this to make sure they all give the Taliban the support it needs to defeat the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

Amira Jadoon, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Combating Terrorism Center and the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Follow her on twitter @AmiraJadoon. (The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the official policy or position of the Combating Terrorism Center, U.S. Military Academy, Department of Defense, or U.S. Government).
Andrew Mines is a research fellow at The Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He tweets at @mines_andrew.
Image: Xinhua
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The Taliban Can’t Take on the Islamic State Alone - War on the Rocks

The Islamic State in Afghanistan’s six-year fight against the Taliban is now entering a new phase following America’s withdrawal. The group’s Aug. 26
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Afghan Taliban's victory boosts Pakistan's radicals
The Taliban win in Afghanistan is giving a boost to militants in neighboring Pakistan
By KATHY GANNON Associated Press
17 October 2021, 23:08

FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2021 file photo, Pakistan Army troops patrol along the fence on the Pakistan Afghanistan border at Big Ben hilltop post in Khyber district, Pakistan. The Taliban win in Afghanistan is giving a boost to militants in neighboring

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FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2021 file photo, Pakistan Army troops patrol along the fence on the Pakistan Afghanistan border at Big Ben hilltop post in Khyber district, Pakistan. The Taliban win in Afghanistan is giving a boost to militants in neighboring Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, have become emboldened in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed, File)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- In Pakistan’s rugged tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan, a quiet and persistent warning is circulating: The Taliban are returning.

Pakistan’s own Taliban movement, which had in years past waged a violent campaign against the Islamabad government, has been emboldened by the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

They seem to be preparing to retake control of the tribal regions that they lost nearly seven years ago in a major operation by Pakistan’s military. Pakistani Taliban are already increasing their influence. Local contractors report Taliban-imposed surcharges on every contract and the killing of those who defy them.

In early September, for example, a contractor named Noor Islam Dawar built a small canal not far from the town of Mir Ali near the Afghan border. It wasn’t worth more than $5,000. Still, the Taliban came calling, demanding their share of $1,100. Dawar had nothing to give and pleaded for their understanding, according to relatives and local activists. A week later he was dead, shot by unknown gunmen. His family blames the Taliban.

Pakistan’s Taliban, known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban or TTP, is a separate organization from Afghanistan’s Taliban, though they share much of the same hardline ideology and are allied. The TTP arose in the early 2000s and launched a campaign of bombings and other attacks, vowing to bring down the Pakistani government and seizing control in many tribal areas. The military crackdown of the 2010s managed to repress it.

But the TTP was reorganizing in safe havens in Afghanistan even before the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15.

“The Afghan Taliban’s stunning success in defeating the American superpower has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban...They now seem to believe they too can wage a successful jihad against the Pakistani ‘infidel’ state and have returned to insurgency mode,” said Brian Glyn Williams, Islamic history professor at the University of Massachusetts, who has written extensively on jihad movements.

The TTP has ramped up attacks in recent months. More than 300 Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks since January, including 144 military personnel, according to the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.

The events in Afghanistan have also energized the scores of radical religious parties in Pakistan, said Amir Rana, executive director of the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies.

These parties openly revile minority Shiite Muslims as heretics and on occasion bring thousands on to the street to defend their hardline interpretation of Islam. One party, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, has a single agenda: to protect a controversial blasphemy law. The law has been used against minorities and opponents and can incite mobs to kill simply over an accusation of insulting Islam.

Already buffeted by a growing religiosity, Pakistani society is at risk of transforming into one similar to Taliban-run Afghanistan, Rana warned.

A Gallup Pakistan poll released last week found 55% of Pakistanis would support an “Islamic government” like the one advocated by Afghanistan’s Taliban. Gallup surveyed 2,170 Pakistanis soon after the Taliban takeover in Kabul.

Pakistan has shied away from offering unilateral recognition to the all-Taliban government in Afghanistan, but has been pushing for the world to engage with the new rulers. It has urged the United States to release funds to the Afghan government, while urging the Taliban to open their ranks to minorities and non-Taliban.

Pakistan’s relationship with the Afghan Taliban is a constant source of angst in America, where Republican senators have introduced a law that would sanction Islamabad for allegedly working against the U.S. to bring the Taliban to power. The charge has angered Pakistan, whose leaders say it was asked and delivered the Taliban to the negotiation table with the U.S., which eventually led to an agreement paving the way for America’s final withdrawal.

Pakistan’s ties to many of the Afghan Taliban go back to the 1980s when Pakistan was the staging arena for a U.S.-backed fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In particular, the Haqqani group, possibly Afghanistan’s most powerful Taliban faction, has a long relationship with Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI.

Pakistan has turned to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister in Afghanistan's new Taliban government, for help in starting talks with the Pakistani Taliban, said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Some TTP figures in North Waziristan -- a rugged area the group once controlled -- are ready to negotiate. But the most violent factions, led by Noor Wali Mehsud, are not interested in talks. Mehsud’s Taliban want control of South Waziristan, said Mir.

It’s not clear whether Haqqani will be able to get Mehsud to the table or whether Afghanistan’s new rulers are ready to break their close ties with Pakistan’s Taliban.

In the attempts to put together negotiations with Islamabad, the TTP is demanding control over parts of the tribal regions and rule by its strict interpretation of Islamic Shariah law in those areas, as well as the right to keep their weapons, according to two Pakistani figures familiar with the demands. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media and because they fear retaliation.

Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a U.S.-based think tank, said Pakistan is opening talks with the Taliban to stop the increasing attacks on its military, but he warned that “the government is opening Pandora’s box.”

“The TTP will not be satisfied with ruling a small portion of Pakistan, it will inevitably want more than what it is given,” Roggio said. “Like the Afghan Taliban wanted to rule Afghanistan, the TTP wants to rule Pakistan.”

———

Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Afghan Taliban's victory boosts Pakistan's radicals - ABC News (go.com)
 
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Russian, Tajik troops hold joint drills near Afghan border
Russian and Tajik troops have conducted joint drills near Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan, as part of efforts to prepare for possible security threats issuing from Afghanistan
By KOSTYA MANENKOV Associated Press
22 October 2021, 13:01

In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Soldiers aim their weapons during joint war games conducted by Russian and Tajik troops at the Momirak firing range about 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) north of the Afghan bor

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In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Soldiers aim their weapons during joint war games conducted by Russian and Tajik troops at the Momirak firing range about 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) north of the Afghan border, Tajikistan, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021.(Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

MOMIRAK FIRING RANGE, Tajikistan -- Russian and Tajik troops conducted joint drills Friday near Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan, as part of efforts to prepare for possible security threats issuing from Afghanistan.

The exercises at the Momirak firing range about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Afghan border involved armored vehicles and helicopter gunships. It was part of weeklong war games that brought together about 5,000 troops and over 700 armored vehicles from Russia, Tajikistan and several other ex-Soviet nations, which are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-dominated security pact.

Tajik Defense Minister Sherali Mirzo said the drills were decided amid the “catastrophic changes after the withdrawal of the international coalition” from Afghanistan.

“Terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan ... have obtained many modern weapons, significantly improved their positions and using the current situation create conditions for its transformation into a foothold for further destructive actions in the region,” Mirzo added.

Russian officials said they trusted the Taliban’s pledge that they wouldn’t threaten neighboring countries, but noted that the Islamic State group, al-Qaida and other militants in northern Afghanistan could try to destabilize the neighboring ex-Soviet Central Asian nations. They also said drug trafficking from Afghanistan will continue to present a challenge.

Moscow has vowed to provide military assistance to its ex-Soviet allies in Central Asia to help counter possible threats and held a series of joint drills in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which neighbor Afghanistan.

Russia has a military base in Tajikistan, its largest military outpost in the former Soviet Union. It also maintains an air base in Kyrgyzstan, and jets based there took part in this week’s war games.

Lt. Gen. Yevgeniy Poplavsky, deputy commander of the Russian armed forces’ Central Military District who oversaw the drills, described them as part of training to counter possible security challenges.

The fighting between the Taliban and the Islamic State in northern Afghanistan raised fears of IS fighters and other militants flowing into Central Asian nations.

“(The Taliban) will try to push all pro-ISIS military groups out its territory or to destroy them and to become the only one (in power),” Poplavsky said. “That’s why we don’t exclude the option that they will push them to Tajikistan’s territory.”

The Soviet Union fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with its troops withdrawing in 1989. In recent years, Russia has made a strong diplomatic comeback as an influential power broker on Afghanistan, hosting several rounds of talks with various Afghan factions.

Russia had worked for years to establish contacts with the Taliban, even though it designated the group a terror organization in 2003 and never took it off the list, Unlike many other countries, it hasn’t evacuated its embassy in Kabul after they took over the Afghan capital in August.

On Wednesday, Russia hosted another round of talks that involved the Taliban along with senior diplomats from China, Pakistan, Iran, India and the former Soviet nations in Central Asia.

Speaking during a panel with international foreign policy experts on Thursday, Russian President Vladmir Putin said that the international community “is getting close” to officially recognizing the Taliban as the new rulers of Afghanistan, saying the decision must be made by the United Nations. He emphasized the need for the Taliban to recognize the interests of all Afghan ethnic groups and respect human rights, but noted its efforts to combat the Islamic State group and other militants.

———

Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Russian, Tajik troops hold joint drills near Afghan border - ABC News (go.com)
 
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State Dept 'Off-the-Record' Call Reveals Biden Admin is Lying About True Number of Americans Trapped in Afghanistan


7-8 minutes


The U.S. State Department recently hosted an ‘off-the-record’ call that reveals the true number of Americans the federal government believes are trapped in Afghanistan are as many as six times what the public has been told.

The White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and State Department spokespersons have insistent for weeks that the number stranded in Afghanistan is around 100 Americans. The actual figure of approximately 600 Americans was revealed in an ‘off-the-record’ State Department call that was reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Biden administration is in touch with nearly 400 Americans who are stranded in Afghanistan, a figure that far exceeds the administration’s claims that about 100 Americans were left in the nation following the United States’ hurried exit from Kabul, according to a senior congressional source who was briefed Thursday by the State Department.

With Afghanistan in the administration’s rear-view mirror, U.S. officials are providing exact figures on the number of Americans who are still stranded and want to leave—although they are doing so in private, off-the-record forums—according to two senior congressional aides, who relayed the contents of the non-public call to the Washington Free Beacon.

These 400 U.S. civilians have been at the mercy of the ruthless Taliban government and possible terrorist reprisal, despite the president’s promise to rescue them or leave a military presence that would secure their safe exit. The Free Beacon provides further details on what its Capitol Hil sources told it:

The United States is in touch with 363 Americans who are stuck in war-torn Afghanistan and around 176 U.S. permanent residents who are asking to be evacuated immediately, Biden administration officials said on the call with congressional staff, according to the source, who requested anonymity to discuss non-public information. These figures demonstrate that senior Biden administration officials routinely misrepresented the number of stranded Americans to the public and Congress for nearly two months.

The State Department further claims to have airlifted 218 U.S. citizens and 131 long-term permanent residents out of Afghanistan since Aug. 31, when senior Biden administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, were publicly claiming that “around 100” Americans were still stuck in the nation. Psaki, for instance, said last month that only “a handful of American citizens” were trying to leave Afghanistan after the United States pulled its forces. The figures presented in Thursday’s briefing indicate the administration was citing the “around 100” talking point while privately being aware of nearly 600 Americans still inside Afghanistan.

“We now know this administration repeatedly lied to the world about the citizens of our country it abandoned in Afghanistan,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-CA), whose office has assisted with evacuating Americans, told the Free Beacon. “But it did something even worse: It broke a sacred bond of trust between Americans and their government. This isn’t close to over.”

In September, Becker News first reported that the State Department blocked private and humanitarian flights in and out of Afghanistan. Fox News later obtained leaked internal emails that provided further proof that the State Department hindered Americans’ efforts to exit the country.


Also in early September, a ‘hostage crisis’ was reported at Mazar-i-Sharif airport in Northern Afghanistan, where the Taliban grounded flights of U.S. civilians seeking to flee the country.

“CBS has learned multiple flights are being held on the ground at the Mazar-i-Sharif airport in Northern Afghanistan… by the Taliban,” Eena Ruffini reported. “An email from the State Department to members of congress — and viewed by CBS — acknowledged that charter flights are still on the ground at the Mazar-i-Sharif airstrip and have permission to land in Doha ‘if and when the Taliban agrees to takeoff’.’

“The State Department advised members of congress to tell groups seeking to evacuate out of Mazar-i-Sharif that the US does not have personnel on the ground in that location and does not control the airspace,” Ruffini added. “Congressional and NGO sources say here are at least two physical plans on the ground and six more with approved clearance. The obstacle is the Taliban — which controls the airport and is not letting people board or the planes take off.”

The Biden administration consistently downplayed there was any crisis in the wartorn country where the U.S. had fought for nearly two decades. In August, CNN debunked Psaki’s earlier claim that no Americans were “stranded” in Afghanistan.

CNN’s Jake Tapper fact checks Psaki for saying Americans are “not” stranded in Afghanistan.

“There are no doubt Americans who feel stranded in Afghanistan right now.” pic.twitter.com/MaaYR1gMiE

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 23, 2021
Click to expand...

In early September, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pressed on “Morning Joe” to reassure Americans the Biden administration was “close” to getting all Americans who wanted to leave out of Afghanistan.

“But is it fair to say you’re getting close with this flight and perhaps others to getting every American who wants to leave Afghanistan out of the country,” Willie Geist asked. “Are you close?”

“That’s what we’re working toward, absolutely,” Psaki said.

“And are you close now?” Geist pressed.

“We’re getting closer,” Psaki responded.

It is now late October. Soon it will be November. There has been an ongoing crisis in Afghanistan impacting Americans left behind by the Biden administration this entire time. President Biden not only didn’t believe this was enough of an urgent matter to bring to the full attention of the American people, it appears his administration has done very little to remedy the situation.

President Biden took a huge hit to his approval ratings beginning with the chaotic Afghanistan exit. The U.S. news media’s subsequent void on Afghanistan coverage followed these tanking Biden approval ratings. As Becker News reported exclusively earlier, multiple Pentagon sources reported there was a “lockdown” on all Requests for Information (RFIs) after the Afghanistan military withdrawal.

“The White House Counsel (via the National Security Council’s legal department) told multiple federal agencies and departments not to respond to Afghanistan correspondence, with more guidance to follow,” Pentagon sources confirmed.

The White House thus had issued the internal order to “ghost” the media seeking truthful and accurate information on Afghanistan. It appears the U.S. media have fallen in line and have left Americans in the dark and behind enemy lines.
trendingpolitics.com

State Dept 'Off-the-Record' Call Reveals Biden Admin is Lying About True Number of Americans Trapped in Afghanistan

The U.S. State Department recently hosted an 'off-the-record' call that reveals the true number of Americans the federal government believes are trapped in Afghanistan are as many as six times what the public has been told. The White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and State Department...
trendingpolitics.com trendingpolitics.com
 
Redleg

Redleg

Veteran Member
"It appears the U.S. media have fallen in line and have left Americans in the dark and behind enemy lines. "
Says it all about the media and how they protect the current White House occupants right there.
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
Afghan chess pieces moving fast and furious


5-7 minutes



Taliban-celebrate.jpg
Taliban supporters gather to celebrate the US withdrawal of all its troops out of Afghanistan in Kandahar on September 1, 2021, following the Taliban's military takeover of the country. Photo: AFP / Javed Tanveer

Afghanistan was the missing link in the complex chessboard of Eurasia integration. Now time is running out. After four long decades of war, getting the nation up and running as soon as possible is a pressing matter for all its neighbors.
The three key nodes of Eurasia integration are very much aware of the high stakes. Hence an all-out diplomacy drive from Russia, China and Iran to get the ball rolling.

A confab, officially named Second Meeting of Foreign Ministers – Afghanistan’s Neighbor Countries, was held on October 27 in Tehran uniting heavyweights China and Russia; Iran and Pakistan; and three Central Asian ‘stans: Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
Call it a sort of extended replay of the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit – where they were all discussing Afghanistan in detail. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian pointed to what everyone is aiming at. Peace, he tweeted, depends on an “inclusive government and respect for the will of the Afghan people.”
The joint statement once again revisited all the main themes: the necessity of a “broad-based political structure, with the participation of all ethno-political groups” in Afghanistan; the need for “non-interference in its internal affairs”; and an emphasis on “national sovereignty, political independence, unity and territorial integrity.”
And last but not least, the definitive red line, which is also an SCO red line: No support in any way, shape or form for any jihadi outfit.

The foreign ministers also re-emphasized what was already imprinted in the wide-ranging summit in Moscow: “Countries primarily responsible for the difficulties in Afghanistan should earnestly deliver on their commitment and provide Afghanistan with urgently needed economic, livelihood and humanitarian assistance to help realize a stable transition.”
afghan-neighbors-china.jpeg
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has his say. Photo: CGTN

The European Union has promised 1 billion euros in humanitarian assistance. So far, that’s just a promise. Washington has not sent any signs it might consider alleviating Kabul’s dire economic plight.
Nor has the Biden administration indicated it plans to release nearly US$9.5 billion in Afghan gold, investments and foreign currency reserves parked in the US that it froze after the Taliban’s takeover – despite rising pressure from humanitarian groups and others who say the punitive measure may cause the collapse of the Afghan economy.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, after meeting with the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, went no holds barred. He had already alleged, on the record, that the US was facilitating the expansion of ISIS-K in Afghanistan – a fast-flip irony, if true, considering the terror group was responsible for killing 13 US military service members and scores of others in a late August bomb blast at Kabul’s international airport.

Then the Iranian leader doubled down, claiming that the recent sequence of terror bombings during Friday prayers in Shiite mosques in large Afghan cities has also been supported by the US.
Raisi is voicing, at a very high level, an analysis that intel services of several SCO member-nations have been actively exchanging: There’s only one major geopolitical player who benefits, divide-and-rule-style, from the chaos generated by ISIS-K.

The Russians, Iranians and Chinese are all paying close attention to all matters Afghanistan. Before his current European tour, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi dropped by Doha on Monday for the first top-level China-Afghanistan meeting since the Saigon moment on August 15.
That also marked the return to the political stage of Mullah Baradar, the acting Afghan deputy prime minister, who seems anyway to be restricted to Doha political office business.
Wang once again made it very clear that it’s crucial to engage with the Taliban “in a rational and pragmatic manner” and emphasized, at the same time, that the Taliban should “demonstrate openness and tolerance.”
Beijing’s top priority is to start dealing with a functional government in Kabul as soon as possible. The integration of Afghanistan to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and also to the now fast-developing Iran-to-China corridor is a matter of urgency.

A handout picture made available by the Iranian Red Crescent on August 19, 2021, shows Afghan refugees gathered at the Iran-Afghanistan border between Afghanistan and the southeastern Iranian Sistan and Baluchestan province, as they try to enter the Islamic republic following the takeover of their country by the Taliban. Photo: Iranian Red Crescent via AFP / Mohammad Javadzadeh
But all that pales in comparison with the challenges facing a still far-from-inclusive government: the looming economic crisis, the already de facto humanitarian nightmare, and the ISIS-K terror threat.
Only two days after Wang’s meeting in Doha, and nearly simultaneously with the meeting in Tehran, Tajikistan approved the setup of a Chinese military base in its territory. So here we go again.
Expect a fierce campaign exposing “human rights abuses” by Dushanbe to pop up anytime soon.

Afghan chess pieces moving fast and furious
 
H

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
Just like what happened to various degrees in Iraq and Syria....

Posted for fair use....
www.wsj.com

WSJ News Exclusive | Left Behind After U.S. Withdrawal, Some Former Afghan Spies and Soldiers Turn to Islamic State

Hunted by the Taliban and lacking income, some members of Afghanistan’s disbanded security forces are enlisting in the only force currently challenging the country’s new rules.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com

Left Behind After U.S. Withdrawal, Some Former Afghan Spies and Soldiers Turn to Islamic State
Hunted by the Taliban and lacking income, members of disbanded security forces provide recruits for extremist group

By Yaroslav Trofimov

Updated Oct. 31, 2021 5:02 pm ET

KABUL—Some former members of Afghanistan’s U.S.-trained intelligence service and elite military units—now abandoned by their American patrons and hunted by the Taliban—have enlisted in the only force currently challenging the country’s new rulers: Islamic State.


The number of defectors joining the terrorist group is relatively small, but growing, according to Taliban leaders, former Afghan republic security officials and people who know the defectors..... (rest behind paywall, HC)
 
jward

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passin' thru
Hawley: Biden declaring Afghanistan success was 'most extraordinary' line from a president 'in my lifetime'
Sam Dorman

3-4 minutes


Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is sounding off on the Biden administration's handling of Afghanistan, arguing that claiming success was the "most extraordinary statement" he's heard from a president in his lifetime.
Fox News had asked what the thought was the "biggest political turkey" or "most ridiculous" thing he's seen in politics this year.
"I have to say – it's not funny, it's tragic – but I have to say that having Joe Biden go out and say that the evacuation of Afghanistan was an extraordinary success – after 13 service members lost their lives, including one from my home state, after hundreds of civilians lost their lives, and hundreds, maybe thousands of Americans were left behind to the enemy. That, to me, is the most extraordinary statement that I've heard from an American president in my lifetime," Hawley told Fox News on Sunday.
President Joe Biden presents his national statement during day two of COP26 on Nov. 1, 2021, in Glasgow. (Photo by Andy Buchanan - Pool/Getty Images)


President Joe Biden presents his national statement during day two of COP26 on Nov. 1, 2021, in Glasgow. (Photo by Andy Buchanan - Pool/Getty Images)
HALEY, BLACKBURN, OTHER REPUBLICANS CALL FOR BIDEN'S RESIGNATION OR IMPEACHMENT AFTER ATTACK AT KABUL AIRPORT
"I have never heard – I'm 41 years old this year – I have never heard an American president in my lifetime look at the camera and celebrate that kind of loss of life and that kind of devastation for the people of our country."
Sen. Josh Hawley arrives for a meeting with Republican senators at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 7, 2021, in Washington. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)


Sen. Josh Hawley arrives for a meeting with Republican senators at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 7, 2021, in Washington. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Missouri senator added that "whatever else happens, he has been a failure as president – because to say that that's a success – that's so far out of touch with reality, I don't even know what to say to it. And this is somebody that's not up to the job as commander in chief."
Hawley was just one of many Republicans to call for Biden's resignation or impeachment following the attack outside of Harmid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan.
A Taliban fighter sits in front of the Sakhi Shrine in the Karte Sakhi area of Kabul on Nov. 1, 2021. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP)


A Taliban fighter sits in front of the Sakhi Shrine in the Karte Sakhi area of Kabul on Nov. 1, 2021. (Photo by Hector RETAMAL / AFP)
Days after the attack, Biden touted the end of the "the longest war in American history."
https://www.foxnews.com/apps-products
He added that the "[w]e completed one of the biggest airlifts in history, with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. That number is more than double what most experts thought were possible. No nation – no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and the ability to do it, and we did it today."
"The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals."
www.foxnews.com

Hawley: Biden declaring Afghanistan success was 'most extraordinary' line from a president 'in my lifetime'

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is sounding off on the Biden administration's handling of Afghanistan, arguing that claiming success was the "most extraordinary statement" he's heard from a president in his lifetime.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com
 
Doomer Doug

Doomer Doug

TB Fanatic
Yes, Housecarl and being US trained commandos they will be especially lethal. The demoncrats are traitors plain and simple. America has handed itself over to its enemies. What a truly astounding turn of events. We give isis/taliban etc $80 billion in advanced weapons and provide them with trained operatives. Amazing.
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
Attack on Kabul military hospital shines spotlight on Taliban 'security'
By Salaam Times and AFP

4-5 minutes


KABUL -- At least 19 people were killed and 50 others wounded in an attack on a military hospital in Kabul on Tuesday (November 2), the latest assault to rock Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the entrance of the sprawling site, and then gunmen broke into the hospital grounds, firing their weapons there, the Taliban said.

"Nineteen dead bodies and about 50 wounded people have been taken to hospitals in Kabul," a Health Ministry official who asked not to be named told AFP.

The Taliban spent 20 years waging an insurgency against the Afghan government.

Now they face the struggle of bringing stability to Afghanistan, which has been hit in recent weeks by a series of bloody assaults claimed by the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) group's local chapter.

Tuesday's attack has not yet been claimed by any group.

"All the attackers are dead. The attack was initiated by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle who blew himself up at the entrance of the hospital," a Taliban spokesperson said.

"Some attackers entered the hospital compound."

Two explosions targeted the hospital area, he had earlier said in a statement.

AFP staff in the city heard a second explosion some 30 minutes after the first was reported.

"I heard a big explosion coming from the first checkpoint. We were told to go to safe rooms. I also hear guns firing," a physician at Sardar Daud Khan hospital in Kabul told AFP during the attack.

"I can still hear guns firing inside the hospital building. I think the attackers are going from room to room... like the first time it was attacked," the doctor added.
2nd attack in 4 years
In March 2017, ISIS gunmen stormed the hospital, killing at least 30 patients and staff.

On that day, the terrorists used tactics similar to those seen on Tuesday. A suicide bomber blew himself up at the rear entrance. Gunmen disguised as medical personnel stormed the hospital after the explosion. Afghan forces ultimately killed them all.

Although both ISIS and the Taliban are hardline Sunni Islamist militants, they disagree on details of religion and strategy.

ISIS has claimed four mass casualty attacks since the Taliban takeover on August 15, including suicide bombings targeting Shia mosques.

In the 2017 attack on the military hospital, militants went room to room killing people, switching to knives when they ran out of ammunition.

That attack was claimed by ISIS, and the Taliban denied responsibility.

However, survivors told AFP that the attackers chanted "Long live the Taliban" in Pashtu and raided all but two wards on the hospital's first floor where Taliban patients were admitted.

An Italian NGO which runs a separate hospital in Kabul tweeted on Tuesday that it has received nine patients with injuries from the blast site.

Pictures shared on social media showed black smoke billowing into the air after the explosions, the first of which went off at about 1pm.

AFP journalists saw Taliban fighters racing to the scene in two armoured personnel carriers and pick-up trucks.

Roads near the heavily fortified "Green Zone" where several former Western embassies stand were closed off to traffic and Taliban guards scaled up searches.
afghanistan.asia-news.com

Attack on Kabul military hospital shines spotlight on Taliban 'security'

The latest attack that killed at least 19 is another reminder of the worsening security situation in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over responsibility for the country.
afghanistan.asia-news.com

++++++++++++++++
The Cavell Group
@TCG_CrisisRisks
53m

Afghanistan: Taliban Kabul Chief military commander Qari Hamdullah (Haqqani network) commander of Badri Brigade killed in the attack.
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
FJ
@Natsecjeff
Nov 7

Afghan outlet reports that Iranian troops have moved 400 meters into Afghan territory in Kahsan district of western Herat province and have created several new checkpoints on Afghanistan's soil.
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1457220781562384389
View: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1457220781562384389?s=20


Taliban sources confirm that Iranian forces have entered several hundred meters into Afghanistan territory in Islam Qala, Herat and have started building military fortifications. TB sources say TB units have reached the area and threatened military action if issue isn't resolved
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1458109836638498831
View: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1458109836638498831?s=20
 
jward

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passin' thru
Prospects for Sino-Russian Coordination in Afghanistan

Elizabeth Wishnick

November 8, 2021



The increasingly close bilateral relationship between China and Russia is one of the most interesting, consequential, and surprising geopolitical developments since the end of the Cold War. Beijing and Moscow — once bitter adversaries — now cooperate on military issues, cyber security, high technology, and in outer space, among other areas. While it falls short of an alliance, the deepening Sino-Russian partnership confounds U.S. strategists. Some have proposed driving a wedge between the two countries, but this seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.
Some have speculated that China and Russia might cooperate in Afghanistan to exploit the chaos left by the U.S. withdrawal. But is that true? Does the fall of Kabul to the Taliban pave the way for greater Sino-Russian coordination in Afghanistan?
In the immediate aftermath of the Taliban takeover, China and Russia seemed to have pursued shared interests and avoided undercutting each other. The two countries have engaged in some parallel actions of late by holding military exercises with Central Asian partners — both bilaterally and within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Russia has been expanding its economic cooperation and diplomatic outreach with Pakistan, while China perseveres in developing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a key artery of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Become a Member

Despite recent cooperation in the region, Chinese and Russian interests in Central and South Asia are not identical. China aims to integrate these regions economically into the Belt and Road Initiative, while keeping Indian influence at bay and addressing perceived security threats to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. By contrast, Russia’s objectives are to maintain its role as the primary security provider in what it sees as the greater Eurasian region and to balance its longstanding ties with India with a new approach to Pakistan. China and Russia share some positions on broader security considerations — such as a concern over the expansion of terrorism and drug-trafficking threats from Afghanistan — but they part company on certain key regional issues, notably the role of India, mechanisms for providing security in Central Asia, and recognition of the Taliban.
In Afghanistan, as in several other areas of their joint interaction, China and Russia project an appearance of coordination, but in practice their differing regional interests and identities set real limits.

Opportunities for Sino-Russian Coordination
At first glance, the U.S. exit from Afghanistan seems to present new avenues for Sino-Russian coordination. China claims to want to work with Russia on Afghanistan, or at least to appear to be doing so. On Sept. 16, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, that “China is ready to strengthen coordination with Russia to jointly handle the issue of Afghanistan.” Lavrov has spoken similarly of working with China to “jointly manage changes” in Afghanistan.
Just prior to the collapse of the Afghan government, China and Russia celebrated the 20th anniversary of their treaty of friendship, good-neighborliness, and cooperation, signed in July 2001. Since 2019, the two neighbors have proclaimed that they have established a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era, the epitome of strategic partnerships in the Chinese lexicon.
In some respects, China and Russia appear to share the same playbook on Afghanistan. Both blame the United States for the current chaos, and oppose U.N. measures to hold the Taliban to account on human rights. For instance, Beijing and Moscow voted against the appointment of a U.N. rapporteur for human rights issues in Afghanistan. They have also taken some complementary initiatives in Central Asia to boost their individual security cooperation with Central Asian states.

Impediments to Sino-Russian Coordination
Russia and China may seem to work in tandem on Afghanistan, but there are some real obstacles to substantive cooperation. Russia is engaging more with India on regional security, is cautious about recognizing the Taliban, and seeks to maintain its role as the primary security partner for Central Asia. This contrasts with China’s efforts to exclude India, increase its role in Central Asian security, and engage with Taliban in the interest of preventing security threats to Xinjiang.
Despite some positive public signaling, Russia’s preference seems to be to engage with the broader international community on Afghanistan, not just China. In a 25-minute speech at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Oct. 15, Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy to Afghanistan, suggested a need for a broader negotiation process led by the United Nations. Notably, he did not discuss working with China. Speaking at the same meeting, Alexander Sternik, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Third Commonwealth of Independent States Department, also did not mention greater Sino-Russian cooperation. Instead, he cast doubt on the merit of economic integration plans for Central Asia developed by outside powers and highlighted the risks from foreign military bases, which presumably could include China’s unofficial base located just south of Shaymak, Tajikistan, near the Afghan border. China is not alone in its interest in military basing in Central Asia. Nearly two decades ago, India established two bases in Tajikistan — the Gissar Military Aerodrome near Dushanbe and the Farkhor base near the Afghan border — though they appear to be used primarily by Russia. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly approached Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s General Staff, regarding U.S. basing access in Central Asia. During the June 16, 2021, summit between President Joe Biden and Putin in Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned U.S. officials that such a move would be unacceptable after the U.S. withdrawal.

China and Russia disagree on the role of India in the new environment in Afghanistan. Moscow views New Delhi as a longtime partner and a key market for Russian defense equipment — even as India improves ties with the United States — and likely considers a greater Indian role in Afghanistan as a net positive. In April 2021, Russia and India began a 2+2 dialogue of their foreign and defense ministers, and in September they signed an intelligence-sharing agreement for cooperation against terrorism and drug trafficking. A former Indian intelligence official suggested that Russia was now seeking closer defense and intelligence cooperation with India as a part of a broader strategy to boost Russian influence in the Indian Ocean and provide an alternative to other powers active in the region. Russia has been engaging simultaneously with its longtime partner India while opening up new avenues of cooperation with Pakistan, China’s key partner in the region.
The Taliban takeover is motivating greater cooperation between Russia and India. India was invited to an Oct. 20 meeting Russia organized about Afghanistan, though it was not included in previous meetings of the extended troika (Russia, China, Pakistan, United States) in 2021, ostensibly because at the time India lacked official contacts with both the Taliban and the Afghan government. India had been a key supporter of the previous Afghan government, providing $3 billion in aid over the course of twenty years, including $90 million for Kabul’s parliament building, completed just six years ago. Notably, New Delhi refused to hold official talks with the Taliban until Aug. 31, long after it was clear that they would rule Afghanistan.

China welcomes the marginalization of Indian influence in Afghanistan. Liu Zongyi, a Chinese South Asia expert, wrote in the nationalist tabloid Global Times, “If India is to play a role in Afghanistan, it is unlikely to play a positive one.” India has established increasingly close ties with the United States and its allies, deepened its participation in the Quad as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and is facing off against China in a tense border standoff. As a result, New Delhi’s possible emergence as a player in Afghanistan has the potential to introduce new complications for China. Chinese media outlets have been impugning India’s likely impact — the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily suggested that India’s involvement in Russia’s Central Asian backyard might make Russia uneasy, a statement that might just as easily be made about China. Global Times cited Chinese analysts warning India not to be “poison for [Shanghai Cooperation Organization] cooperation” as the group takes up the challenge of a Taliban-governed Afghanistan.
From China’s perspective, an effective multilateral response to emerging security threats from Afghanistan would be optimal, though one is not very likely. Xi Jinping, speaking by video link to the Sept. 17, 2021, Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, optimistically suggested that the organization lead a smooth transition in Afghanistan. Putin’s special representative for Shanghai Cooperation Organization affairs, Bakhtiyor Khakimov, rejected the prospect of a Taliban-governed Afghanistan joining the organization any time soon, however. He also pushed back against talk of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization acquiring a greater security role, stating that “in no case is the SCO talking about turning into a kind of military-political bloc.”
Notwithstanding the hope for an effective Shanghai Cooperation Organization role in Afghanistan’s security, China has been increasing its own security footprint in the region. Media reports in early October 2021 (interestingly picked up by a Russian website) that a Chinese military aircraft had landed at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan invited some unwanted scrutiny. According to an Indian website, a Chinese delegation flew in via Pakistan to explore setting up an intelligence-gathering facility. On Oct. 4, China’s ambassador to Kabul Wang Yu denied the report via Twitter, claiming that those who propagated it had ulterior motives.
 
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Chinese experts have told me repeatedly that China would never intervene unilaterally in Afghanistan and it remains to be seen whether the new situation on the ground will change this position. Pan Guang, the director of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies Centre at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, contends that the prospect of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (whose members include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan) creating a buffer zone on the lengthy border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan would be in China’s interest. Pan noted that China, which is not a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, could support such a zone indirectly through its intelligence-sharing cooperation framework with Collective Security Treaty Organization member Tajikistan, plus Shanghai Cooperation Organization member Pakistan. It remains unclear what will happen to this four-party cooperation (previously including the government of Afghanistan) with the Taliban takeover, and which countries would be responsible for security in this buffer zone. There have been reports since 2019 of troops from a Chinese paramilitary force, most likely the People’s Armed Police, patrolling the Tajikistani-Afghan border on their own.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tajik service reported that China’s unofficial base in Shaymak, Tajikistan, has been expanding the scope of its surveillance activities — including the use of drones — and appears to be connected to efforts within China to monitor developments which could affect Xinjiang. India Today had previously reported that since April 2020 China has been constructing an airbase in Tashkurgan on the Chinese side of the border with Afghanistan. Reid Standish of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty cited Alexander Gabuev, a senior China analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, saying that the Chinese initially proceeded cautiously in establishing their base in Tajikistan in an effort to avoid crossing any Russian red lines. China may have concluded that a limited unofficial presence in this one Central Asian country might be tolerable, assuming that it is connected to Chinese domestic security concerns.
Recognition of the Taliban’s regime is another thorny issue that has the potential to divide Russia and China. Despite formally listing the Taliban as a terrorist group, Russia had secret contacts with the group in 2007, ostensibly to prevent drug trafficking. In 2015, Russian officials began engaging with the Taliban openly on counter-terrorism issues and have held official talks with Taliban representatives since 2018. Russia, like China, has retained its embassy in Kabul and the Kremlin dispatched Maxim Shagoley to Kabul as an unofficial emissary. Shagoley works for Putin ally Evgeniy Prigozhin, whom the U.S. government accuses of interfering in U.S. elections in 2016 and 2018 (Prigozhin also is believed to facilitate the financing of the Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary group). Shagoley reportedly traveled to Afghanistan on a fact-finding mission about local attitudes towards the Taliban in an effort to explore avenues for engagement.
Russia refused to attend the Taliban’s planned inaugural ceremony on Sept. 6. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said his country “understood Russia’s position,” but Chinese officials refused to comment on China’s own response to the invitation. Ultimately, the Taliban decided not to hold the event at all.

Speculation about Sino-Russian differences over the Taliban continued during recent regional summits. When Xi announced he would not attend these meetings in person, some Tajikistani experts suggested that Putin’s last-minute cancellation of his own trip reflected differences with China over engagement with the Taliban, not COVID-19 precautions. At the joint Collective Security Treaty Organization-Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit on Sept. 16 and 17, Putin urged member states to “align their positions and build a dialogue” with the Taliban. Positions did indeed enter into greater alignment after these meetings, but the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s concluding document appeared to support the position of Tajikistan, which has called for a more ethnically inclusive Afghan government and has been opposed to recognition of the Taliban. Just days before the Oct. 20 meeting, Tajikistan’s president Emomali Rahmon issued a statement calling the Taliban a threat to regional security and urging the creation of a common Commonwealth of Independent States list of terrorist organizations.
Although Russia invited the Taliban to an Oct. 20 meeting in Moscow involving talks with China, India, Pakistan, and Iran, Kabulov, Putin’s envoy to Afghanistan, has stated that “it is not expedient to rush” to remove sanctions on the Taliban. Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, further commented that it is too early to speak of recognition of the Taliban, though the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement indicating that interaction with Afghanistan must take into account “the new reality” of Taliban control. This meeting was followed by a separate discussion among China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran, where Foreign Minister Wang Yi proposed the creation of a “joint assistance force” for Afghanistan and encouraged regional economic cooperation.

As the Taliban was solidifying its hold over Afghanistan, China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Geng Shuang, stated that China hoped that the group would “fulfill its commitments and completely cut off its ties with terrorist groups.” Despite misgivings about the reliability of the Taliban to uphold their promises on terrorism, Chinese officials have made a show of engaging with the Taliban, providing a small amount of aid ($31 million) and encouraging other states in the region to develop contacts with the group. Nonetheless, most experts see China facing more risks than opportunities in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover and only reluctantly engaging with the group due to a lack of alternatives. China finds itself in a tight spot — if it is seen as being too far in front on this issue this will likely impact relations with Central Asian states, where its soft power already faces challenges. China’s primary concern is the impact on its neighboring Xinjiang province. Thus far the Taliban appear to be saying and doing what China is requesting, though the realities on the ground may prove to be different.

Differences between Russia and China on the Taliban-governed Afghanistan are unlikely to provide the United States any leverage over the Sino-Russian partnership. The relationship between the two countries is rooted in the enduring interests they share in ensuring the security of their lengthy border, countering their perception of Western pressure, and forging a normative agreement on the rules of authoritarian governance. Thus far Russia and China do not appear to speak with one mind on Afghanistan, nor should they be expected to do so, due to their different history in the region and the legacy of regional partnerships that ensued. Putin’s vision of a Greater Eurasian Partnership, based on Russian-led economic and security institutions, makes Russian acceptance of some sort of Pax Sinica in Afghanistan, or Central Asia more broadly — assuming China was interested and/or able to accomplish this — highly unlikely.

What to Look for Going Forward
Putin and Xi view Afghanistan from different vantage points, making their coordination improbable. In Afghanistan, there are three areas that will provide indications of the depth of Sino-Russian coordination.
First, Russia’s reaction to the expansion of China’s unofficial base in Tajikistan will indicate its tolerance of a greater role for China in Central Asian security. As one journalist wrote in Pravda, “why is Russia’s reaction calm?” If Russia seeks to deepen its military cooperation with China in Tajikistan, this would be an indication of greater security coordination. Conversely, a Russian effort to expand its own bilateral military cooperation with Tajikistan, or to expand multilateral cooperation, perhaps even involving India as well as Central Asian states but excluding China, would show Russia’s determination to stay in charge of the regional security portfolio.

Next, Russian engagement with India in Central Asia and Afghanistan will show which partnership — the Sino-Russian partnership or Russia’s longstanding relationship with India — takes pride of place and how Russia copes with their competing demands. Russia invited India to its Moscow format talks with the Taliban in October. Does this presage greater cooperation with India on Afghanistan, bilaterally or multilaterally? If so, it will be interesting to follow the extent of their interactions and Chinese responses.
Third, it will be a promising development for Sino-Russian ties if they jointly recognize the Taliban. Thus far, Russia appears to be following Tajikistan’s lead and slow-walking the prospect of international recognition for the Taliban. A joint initiative by Russia and China at the United Nations or within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to recognize the Taliban simultaneously would show a degree of policy coordination, though even there the two countries might take this step for different reasons.
Recently Alexander Lukin, a longtime scholar of the Sino-Russian relationship, argued that the partnership between China and Russia may have reached its peak. The changing circumstances in Afghanistan certainly will provide a new stress test for the partnership. How Russia and China address India’s role — and their own — in regional security and navigate the recognition of the Taliban as they each pursue their own regional agendas will provide key indicators of the parameters of future Sino-Russian coordination.

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Elizabeth Wishnick, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at Montclair State University and a senior research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. She is also a senior research scientist in CNA’s China and Indo-Pacific Studies Division. The views expressed are her own. She can be reached at www.chinasresourcerisks.com, where she writes a blog.
Image: Xinhua (Photo by Li Ziheng)
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Prospects for Sino-Russian Coordination in Afghanistan - War on the Rocks

The increasingly close bilateral relationship between China and Russia is one of the most interesting, consequential, and surprising geopolitical
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Doomer Doug

Doomer Doug

TB Fanatic
Housecarl, is it too soon to declare Afghanistan as a failed state?:lkick:
I'm waiting for the ISIS-K attacks inside of china using all the captured us weapons. Whatever deals the taliban made with china don't apply to ISIS-K. Uighur liberation army coming right up.
The Shia/Sunni thing lit up with shia/Iran now knawing on Afghanistan. Sheesh everybody but the US takes their border seriously.
 
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Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
Posted for fair use.....
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The Haqqani Network: The New Kingmakers in Kabul - War on the Rocks

In some ways, the Taliban that is now in power in Kabul looks a great deal like the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan in the run-up to 9/11. In their first
warontherocks.com

THE HAQQANI NETWORK: THE NEW KINGMAKERS IN KABUL

JEFF M. SMITH
NOVEMBER 12, 2021
COMMENTARY

In some ways, the Taliban that is now in power in Kabul looks a great deal like the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan in the run-up to 9/11. In their first weeks in office, the Taliban whipped women in public, tortured journalists, targeted minorities, executed former collaborators with the United States, and canceled female sports and secondary education.

In other ways, the Taliban, and its new leadership, looks very different. The recent focus on the Taliban’s human rights violations and the group’s escalating battle with the Islamic State in Afghanistan risks overshadowing a potentially bigger story: the bloodstained rise of Sirajuddin Haqqani and the Haqqani Network. A loyal proxy of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the network has been active in Afghanistan since the 1970s. Through brutal tactics and battlefield successes, the Haqqani Network — a terrorist group allied with, and increasingly embedded in, the Taliban leadership structure — has now established itself as a dangerous and influential kingmaker in Kabul.

Throughout the course of the Afghan War, the Haqqani Network was often responsible for the deadliest and highest-profile terrorist attacks on U.S. forces. It may be no coincidence that Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani, a terrorist with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was appointed to serve as the head of security in the Afghan capital one week before an August 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. soldiers and over 160 Afghan civilians. The fox was finally guarding the henhouse.

When the Taliban announced a new hardline government in September, several members of the Haqqani Network were given key ministerial positions, handing the terrorist group control of internal security in Afghanistan. It increasingly seems that the fall of Kabul was as much a victory for the Haqqani Network as it was for the traditional Taliban leadership. Indeed, within days of announcing the new government, senior Haqqani commanders engaged in a fistfight with a key Taliban leader, sending him fleeing from the capital to traditional Taliban strongholds in the south.

The ascendence of the Haqqanis has also been a victory for Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. As longtime Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin notes, today “Pakistan’s favored Taliban, the Haqqanis, dominate. Taliban leaders who sought to gain some independence from Pakistan or to seek a negotiated solution have been marginalized.”

A Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was already a nightmare scenario. The Haqqani Network, with its “track record of supporting overseas jihad,” is even more ideologically and operationally aligned with global jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan than the Taliban is. The Biden administration recently warned that both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan are intent on conducting terrorist attacks on the United States, and the latter could generate that capability in as soon as six months.

With limited access to Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the Biden administration should begin preparing for the worst — for the possibility that globally ambitious terrorist groups find either direct support or a more permissive environment to operate by an Afghan government heavily influenced by the Haqqani Network. It should lead international efforts to pressure the new Taliban-Haqqani government to abandon support for global terrorist groups, and it should seek to re-establish counter-terrorism capabilities in the country and broader region. Critically, it should do so while avoiding falling into a Faustian bargain with Pakistan, exchanging access to Afghanistan for acceptance of Pakistan’s support to the very same terrorist groups the United States is targeting.

Haqqani’s Aces

The origins of the Haqqani Network date back to a 1973 coup in Afghanistan that brought to power Prime Minister Daoud Khan. When Khan offered “shelter, training, and weapons to Baloch insurgents and Pakistani Pashtun nationalists alike,” Pakistani intelligence began mobilizing exiled Afghan dissidents like Jalaluddin Haqqani for “anti-regime operations.” From their base in Pakistan’s tribal areas, in 1975, Haqqani’s fighters launched their first attack in Afghanistan, killing 12.

After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence re-activated various Afghan mujahideen proxies, with Haqqani and his allies receiving an “extraordinary share” of the arms and aid. Pakistan accepted arms and aid from the United States and Saudi Arabia for the anti-Soviet jihad, even as Pakistani intelligence “controlled their distribution and their transport to the war zone,” while limiting contact between the CIA and the mujahideen. Nevertheless, CIA officers, who observed that Jalaluddin “could kill Russians like you wouldn’t believe,” idolized him.

Jalaluddin’s tribal connections, fundraising skills, and fluency in Arabic were key assets in his ascension. Haqqani’s Zadran tribe straddles the Afghan-Pakistani border where Loya Paktia meets Waziristan. The border crossings under its control provided the network leverage over the flow of drugs, trade, and fighters coming across the porous border, with additional revenue earned from smuggling, kidnapping, and extortion.

Jalaluddin further distinguished himself by drawing Gulf money and Arab fighters to the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad, even taking an Arab wife from the United Arab Emirates with which he had a son, Sirajuddin. According to Steve Coll, the “Haqqanis did more than any other commander network in Afghanistan to nurture and support Arab volunteer fighters, seeding al-Qaeda’s birth.” Indeed, al-Qaeda’s first training camp was established in Haqqani territory, though at the time Haqqani did not espouse a global jihadist ideology.

After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan was consumed by civil war. In the chaos, a movement of ultra-conservative Pashtun religious students (“Talibs”) arose seemingly out of thin air, vowing to end corrupt warlordism and implement strict Islamic law in Afghanistan. After a string of battlefield victories, in late 1994, Pakistan “threw its support behind the emerging Taliban movement” led by Mullah Omar. Initially opposed to the group, in 1995, Jalaluddin “defected” to the Taliban while maintaining his own power base in Loya Paktia. The following year, the Taliban seized control of Kabul and effectively ended the Afghan civil war. Jalaluddin was later appointed Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs in the Taliban government that ruled from 1996 to 2001.

After the 9/11 attack and U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, U.S.-allied forces cornered key Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, as well as Pakistani army officers and intelligence advisers, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. As Pakistan arranged an airlift to ferry these groups to its tribal areas, the Haqqani Network reportedly “served as [a] key conduit for the escape of al-Qaeda operatives into Pakistan.”

The Rise of Siraj

From his sanctuary in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Jalaluddin “began to remobilize his front, and [by late 2002] Haqqani fighting groups were operating in Paktia and Khost” in eastern Afghanistan. In 2003, the Taliban formed new regional leadership councils or “shuras.” The quasi-autonomous “Miram Shah shura,” headquartered in North Waziristan, was “composed exclusively of the Haqqani Network.”

Meanwhile, Sirajuddin (“Siraj”) began assuming operational control of the Haqqani Network from his aging father. By mid-2005, he was “spearheading the insurgency in Loya Paktia,” eventually overseeing an expansion of the network’s operations and stretching a campaign of terror to the Afghan capital.

Inside Pakistan, Siraj was making the Haqqani Network increasingly indispensable to Pakistani intelligence. In the mid-2000s, militant groups in the Haqqani stronghold of North Waziristan began turning their guns inward, targeting the Pakistani state and civilians, eventually coalescing under the banner of a new Pakistani Taliban in 2007. Pakistani intelligence leaned on the Haqqani Network to broker a series of peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban. Siraj used his connections to “pressure them to cease attacking [Pakistan’s] security forces — and attack Afghan and Western forces in Afghanistan instead.”

In 2007, the Haqqani Network became “officially affiliated” with the Taliban. Siraj was granted membership to the Taliban Leadership Council and was later appointed head of the Miram Shah Shura.

U.S. military officials began warning that the Haqqani Network were “becoming more violent and self-serving” under Siraj, who was part of a “younger, more aggressive generation” usurping power from traditional Zadran tribal elders. The Haqqani Network was the first among all Taliban factions to embrace suicide bombing tactics and is believed to have played a role in the July 2008 suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed over 50 people, as well as the December 2009 suicide bombing of a CIA outpost in Khost.

In 2011, the Haqqani Network orchestrated a suicide bombing at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul, wounded 77 U.S. soldiers in an attack on a U.S. military base, and assaulted the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The same year, Siraj published a violent manifesto advocating for global jihad outside Afghanistan’s borders, a departure from his father’s more traditional focus on eastern Afghanistan. It urged Muslims to travel to the West on student visas and attack soft targets, praising al-Qaeda and promoting suicide bombings and beheadings.

The Haqqani Network had by now positioned itself in the crosshairs of the United States, which began heavily targeting the group in Loya Paktia and, through drone strikes, in North Waziristan. However, Pakistani intelligence would reportedly “warn Siraj of an impending drone strike, after which he would seek shelter in the mountains surrounding Miram Shah,” limiting the United States’ ability to degrade the network’s capabilities in its Pakistani safe havens.

Frustrated U.S. officials began publicly and privately pressuring Islamabad to cut all ties with the network. In 2011, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen described the Haqqani Network as a “veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence. In 2012, the same year Siraj officially assumed control of the network from Jalaluddin, the U.S. State Department designated the group a terrorist organization.

Pakistan ostensibly “banned” the Haqqani Network in 2015. However, the following year Senator Bob Corker vented about how the group had simply moved from Pakistan’s tribal areas, where they were being targeted by U.S. drones, to Pakistan’s suburbs, where they were receiving protection and medical care.

Haqqani and the Taliban

When the Afghan government fell in August 2021, it should have been cause for a joint celebration by Taliban and Haqqani leaders. After all, Siraj had been named deputy emir of the Taliban in 2015 and, to the outside world, the Taliban and Haqqani Network appeared increasingly indistinguishable. Yet, within days of forming a new government, Haqqani and Taliban leaders were reportedly involved in a power-sharing struggle that descended into violence, sending a key Taliban leader fleeing the capital.

While the Haqqani Network is generally billed as an “autonomous but integral” part of the Taliban hierarchy, it has always maintained “distinct command and control, and lines of operations.” In 2010, U.S. assessments concluded Siraj “operates independently, choosing his own targets and only loosely coordinating with the Taliban’s supreme leadership.”

The Taliban is perhaps best seen as a conglomeration of roughly aligned Pashtun tribes of which the Haqqani Network is a part. However, the traditional Afghan Taliban leadership and the Haqqani Network are separated by geography and identity. Among others, legacy Taliban leaders like the late Mullah Omar, his son Mullah Yaqoob, and current Afghan deputy prime minister Mullah Baradar hail from the greater Kandahar region in southern Afghanistan. The Haqqani’s Zadran tribe lies to the more mountainous northeast.

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On TB every waking moment
Continued.....

According to Jeffrey Dressler, the Haqqani stronghold of Loya Paktia was “an area in which the southern Taliban were never able to gain influence because of a history of strong tribal independence and a fierce aversion to outsiders.” The Haqqani Network and the eastern Zadran tribes have historically resisted centralized authority, operating autonomously despite periods of intimate cooperation with the southern Taliban factions.

The announcement of Mullah Omar’s death in 2015 further propelled Siraj’s rise while exacerbating fissures between the Haqqani Network and the Taliban’s Kandahari leaders. Siraj was named deputy emir of the Taliban under Omar’s immediate successor, Mullah Mansour. When the latter was killed in a drone strike in 2016, a religious scholar, Haibatullah Akhundzada, was named the Taliban’s new emir. By one account, Akhundzada “intentionally split operational control of the Taliban’s military forces between [his two deputies] Haqqani and Yaqoob in order to prevent the two from creating potentially powerful breakaway factions.”

With Mullah Omar out of the picture, Siraj reportedly enjoyed final authority over the appointment of Taliban shadow governors while “Akhundzada’s relative lack of battlefield experience meant Sirajuddin had almost total autonomy over military strategy and operations.” By 2016, scholars observed that the “pre-eminence of Sirajuddin’s voice amongst the Taliban elite is palpable — so much so that certain critics have pointed to a ‘Haqqanization’ of the Taliban.”

When Kabul fell amid a chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, Haqqani leaders and Taliban Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Baradar sparred over the allocation of ministerial posts and who deserved credit for the Taliban’s victory: Baradar’s political negotiations with the United States in Doha or the Haqqani Network’s brutal battlefield tactics. The dispute was serious enough that Pakistan’s intelligence chief flew to Kabul to oversee negotiations. (There is a rumor that the Taliban’s reclusive Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhunzada was killed in Pakistan in 2020, but that is unconfirmed. The Taliban, for its part, claimed he made a public appearance last month.)

Four Haqqani leaders were ultimately given ministerial positions in the new Taliban government: Khalil (refugees minister); Najibullah (communications minister); Abdul Baqi (minister of education); and Siraj (interior minister). As head of the Interior Ministry, Siraj oversees internal security and the power to issue passports. He also secured the right to nominate governors for several eastern Afghan provinces.

Within days of forming the new government, Haqqani leaders and Baradar reportedly engaged in a fistfight, which sent Baradar and Mullah Yaqoob fleeing to Kandahar. Baradar later released what some said looked like a “hostage” video claiming the two sides had settled their differences. By October, he had returned to Kabul, apparently refusing a security detail from the Haqqani-led interior ministry.

Pakistan and the Haqqani Network

In this internecine rivalry, Pakistani intelligence has predictably “backed the Haqqanis over Baradar.” The Haqqani Network’s relationship with the Pakistani state is older, deeper, and less contentious than the Taliban’s.

Siraj’s uncle, Khalil Haqqani, reportedly enjoys “recurring” meetings with Pakistan’s army chief and was “a regular visitor to Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi.” By contrast, Pakistan arrested Baradar in 2010 for daring to explore early peace talks with the United States. “We picked up Baradar and others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” a Pakistani security official told the New York Times that year.

The Taliban’s relationship with Pakistani intelligence has been characterized by tactical cooperation and mutual dependency but also substantial mistrust. Strains of Pashtun nationalism within the Taliban’s ranks make Pakistan uncomfortable. As a result, Pakistani intelligence has sought to make itself indispensable to the group while populating it with more loyal operatives and factions, including the Haqqani Network. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, it categorically refused to recognize the Durand Line, the de facto Afghan-Pakistani border created by the British Raj in 1893 that divides the nearly 60 million Pashtuns in both countries. Mullah Omar is said to have grown irate with his Pakistani counterparts when the issue was raised. Since taking power last month, the Taliban has again withheld recognition of the Durand Line, complaining about Pakistan’s efforts to fence the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Notably, the Taliban has also rebuffed requests by Pakistan to pressure the Pakistani Taliban to cease attacks inside the country. “The issue of the [Pakistani Taliban] is one that Pakistan will have to deal with, not Afghanistan,” a Taliban spokesman explained in August. Since the fall of Kabul, the Pakistani Taliban has launched an escalating campaign of terror inside Pakistan from its base in North Waziristan. Initial Pakistani government efforts to secure a truce with the group failed, but a tentative peace agreement was reportedly reached in mid-November. The Pakistani government claimed the Afghan Taliban helped serve as a mediator in the peace talks but a Taliban spokesman denied the claim: “we have not been involved in such talks, nor are we aware of it.” As in the past, Islamabad is likely leaning on the Haqqani Network to serve as an interlocutor with the Pakistani Taliban and other restive militant groups in its tribal areas.

The Haqqanis and the Islamic State in Afghanistan

The Haqqani Network’s relationship with the Islamic State in Afghanistan is a hotly debated topic. Abdul Sayed and Colin Clarke recently argued that, while there are connections between the groups at lower ranks, “there is scant evidence of a more robust relationship or anything resembling organizational support.” However, other analysts have found evidence of significant operational links among the terrorist groups.

The shadowy regional offshoot of the Islamic State has become a point of concern for the international community since emerging in the region in 2017 and claiming responsibility for the deadly suicide bombing at the Kabul airport this August. Initially comprised of disaffected former members of the Pakistani Taliban driven out of North Waziristan by a Pakistani military offensive, the Islamic State in Afghanistan first established a base in eastern Afghanistan. From there it engaged in an increasingly bloody turf war with the Taliban, fighting over territory and recruits.

Continued.....
 
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Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
Continued.....

After a series of battlefield defeats at the hands of the Taliban and U.S. forces from 2017 to 2020, the regional affiliate of the Islamic State began reinventing itself. In 2020, the group appointed a former “midlevel Haqqani commander” as its new leader. A 2020 U.N. report noted “most attacks claimed by [the Islamic State in Afghanistan] demonstrated some degree of ‘involvement, facilitation, or the provision of technical assistance’ by the Haqqani Network.” In May 2020, the Afghan government busted a “joint cell” of Haqqani Network and Islamic State fighters. Reports that year suggested Pakistani intelligence was pushing the Haqqani Network to establish closer links to the group in order to “maintain plausible deniability in future terror attacks.”

Scholar Theo Farrell contends “the Haqqanis have the deepest links with [the Islamic State] of any faction within the Taliban,” noting that the Haqqani Network “sent hundreds of fighters to support [its] struggle in Iraq and Syria. Many of these ‘foreign fighters’ returned home to join [the group].”

Nevertheless, the Islamic State’s turf war with the Taliban has intensified since the fall of Kabul. The former has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks across the country in recent weeks, including a funeral ceremony attended by senior Taliban figures and an attack on a Shi’ite mosque that killed over 70. According to a Lowy Institute report, these attacks

are meant to distinguish [the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s] brand from the Taliban’s, cast doubt on the Taliban’s ability to govern and provide security, and signal their own resolve to various audiences—all of which can ultimately increase terrorist organizations’ longevity and serve as a recruiting tool. [It] also uses these attacks to paint its long-time Taliban rival as illegitimate collaborators with the West, incapable of delivering security to the Afghan people.
Click to expand...
The Haqqanis and Al-Qaeda

Finally, the Taliban and Haqqani Network both continue to maintain robust links to al-Qaeda. According to a 2021 U.N. report, the Haqqani Network “remains a hub for outreach and cooperation with regional foreign terrorist groups and is the primary liaison between the Taliban and Al-Qaida.”

Khalil Haqqani is “known to American intelligence as the Taliban emissary to Al Qaeda.” Stanford’s “Mapping Militant Organizations” explains that Khalil “has acted on behalf of Al Qaeda and facilitated its terrorist operations” and “organized the detention of enemy prisoners captured by [the Haqqani Network] and Al Qaeda.” Experts believe al-Qaeda and the Haqqani Network are today “intertwined, and it is highly unlikely they will cut ties.”

Last year, the U.S. Treasury Department concluded that, “as of 2020, al-Qaeda is gaining strength in Afghanistan while continuing to operate with the Taliban … Senior Haqqani Network figures have discussed forming a new joint unit of armed fighters in cooperation with and funded by al-Qaeda.”

Looking Ahead

America’s counter-terrorism options in Afghanistan, like its access to the landlocked country, are limited. The Biden administration could opt to take a hands-off approach, maintaining a modest over-the-horizon strike capability. Perhaps it believes predictable governance challenges, internal infighting, and fear of U.S. retaliation will mitigate the risk that Afghanistan will again be a platform for terrorist attacks against America or its interests and allies abroad. Perhaps in their desire for international recognition and aid, more pragmatic Taliban leaders intend to uphold their pledge to prevent terrorists from using Afghan soil to launch such attacks.

However, it is far from clear the Taliban has either the intent or the ability to enforce their commitments. In any event, it is the Haqqani Network — not the Taliban’s Doha negotiators — that is increasingly pulling the strings in Kabul.

Under Jalaluddin, the Haqqani Network was historically unconcerned with global jihad, confining its operations to Afghanistan. But this is a different Haqqani Network under new management. One that pioneered suicide bombing in Afghanistan. One that sent several hundred fighters to the Middle East to support the Islamic State’s efforts in Iraq and Syria. One that published a global jihadist manifesto. One that has refined a “signature brand of urban terrorist attacks and cultivated a sophisticated international fund-raising network.” One that maintains operational ties to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, as well as to India-focused Pakistani militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba. One that has developed a knack for hostage-taking in recent years, among them several American citizens. One that honors the families of notorious suicide bombers, doling out cash rewards and promising more attacks to come. One that just assumed key levers of power in a new government and whose ultimate intentions and capabilities are simply unclear at this point.

At the very least, the United States should prepare for the possibility that globally ambitious terrorist groups find either direct support or a more permissive environment in which to operate by an Afghan government heavily influenced by the Haqqani Network. “[The Islamic State in Afghanistan] and al Qaeda have the intent to conduct external operations including against the U.S.,” Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl testified in October 2021. “We could see [the Islamic State in Afghanistan] generate that capability in somewhere between six to twelve months … al Qaeda would take a year or two.”

To enhance its counter-terrorism reach into Afghanistan the Biden administration is reportedly exploring options for basing and overflight arrangements with neighboring countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. However, domestic resistance and Russian opposition make these unlikely prospects.

The Biden administration thus confronts the same tragic dilemma that has haunted U.S. policy in Afghanistan for 20 years: Fighting terrorists in the landlocked country requires cooperation with one of its neighbors. Since cooperation with Iran, China, and Russia is impractical, the only alternative is Pakistan, the key patron of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network for decades. In late October, CNN reported the Biden administration was in negotiations with Pakistan to use the country’s airspace for counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan “in exchange for assistance with [Pakistan’s] own counter-terrorism efforts and help in managing the relationship with India.”

While the Biden administration is unlikely to alter America’s burgeoning strategic partnership with India, it might consider an extension of the same Faustian bargain from the Afghan War: provide aid to Pakistan and tacitly accept its “double game” in exchange for U.S. access to Afghanistan. Such an arrangement risks trading short-term relief for long-term pain. Acceptance of Pakistan’s double game is arguably what got the United States in this position in the first place.

Breaking the cycle won’t be easy. Pakistan has skillfully leveraged Afghanistan’s cruel geography to position itself as indispensable to the United States. But U.S. policymakers have consistently failed to appreciate that Pakistan has far more to lose from an openly adversarial relationship with the United States than vice versa.

Over the past 20 years, Pakistan has squandered the substantial goodwill it once enjoyed in Washington. The frustration on Capitol Hill is palpable. U.S. lawmakers recently introduced a bill in the Senate under which “the US president will have the power to impose sanctions on individuals who provide military, training or logistical support to the Taliban or provide safe haven to their fighters.” It would open the door to a range of targeted sanctions on Pakistani military and civilian officials. Others have called for Pakistan to be listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S. also has substantial means to apply pressure via numerous international fora, including the Financial Action Task Force, an international terrorism financing watchdog.

Pakistan stonewalling the United States on counter-terrorism cooperation in Afghanistan would remove any remaining leverage and any remaining guardrails preventing the relationship from a vicious cycle of hostility and recriminations. By necessity, the Biden administration may seek a new aid-for-access arrangement with Islamabad, but the next chapter in Pakistani-U.S. relations can’t look like the last chapter. The foundations of any new pact should carry both carrots and sticks, including the specter of real, biting sanctions if Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies continues supporting the region’s most dangerous terrorist groups.



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Jeff M. Smith is a research fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

Correction: The article has been updated to reflect that rumors about the death of Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada are unconfirmed.
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
Afghanistan: Foreign Office chaotic during Kabul evacuation - whistleblower
By James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent

Published
38 minutes ago


Crowds queue at the airport near a plane surrounded by troops.
Image source, MOD via PA Media
The UK Foreign Office's handling of the Afghan evacuation after the Taliban seized Kabul was "dysfunctional" and "chaotic", a whistleblower has said.
Raphael Marshall said the process of choosing who could get a flight out was "arbitrary" and thousands of emails with pleas for help went unread.
The then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was slow to make decisions, he added.
A government spokesperson said staff had "worked tirelessly" on the "biggest mission of its kind in generations".
And a source close to Mr Raab said verifying identity and securing safe passage had been the major practical challenge - not the speed of decision making.
The UK airlifted 15,000 people out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the capital, Kabul. This included 5,000 British nationals, 8,000 Afghans and 2,000 children.

In written evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Marshall said up to 150,000 Afghans who were at risk because of their links to Britain applied to be evacuated - but fewer than 5% received any assistance.
"It is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban," he added.
Mr Marshall, who was a senior desk officer at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) until he resigned in September, said there was "inadequate staffing" at the department's crisis centre.
There was also a "lack of expertise" and a "lack of co-ordination" between the department and the Ministry of Defence, he added.
Mr Marshall also said Mr Raab took hours to answer emails and "did not fully understand the situation".
line

What are the allegations?
Key issues flagged by diplomat-turned-whistleblower Raphael Marshall include:

  • Only 5% of the 150,000 people who requested help received any
  • Nobody in the team dealing with requests had studied or had any detailed knowledge of Afghanistan, or had even worked there
  • No one spoke any Afghan languages, with calls to people asking for help conducted in English
  • Decisions about who to rescue were "arbitrary", and thousands of emails pleading for assistance were not even read
  • The IT system was dysfunctional, with eight soldiers drafted in to help left sharing one computer
  • Dominic Raab was slow to make decisions on difficult cases and "did not fully understand the situation"
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As the Taliban approached Kabul in August, there was one government scheme to evacuate those Afghans who had worked directly for the British government, and another to identify and help those who were at risk because of their broader links to the UK.
Mr Marshall worked for the team of officials handling a group known as "Afghan Special Cases".
These included Afghan soldiers, politicians, journalists, civil servants, activists, aid workers, judges - and guards who had worked indirectly for the UK government via subcontractors.
In the desperate days at the end of August as the Taliban advanced on Kabul many of these people were emailing the FCDO to get permission for a flight out of the country.
Mr Marshall said there were "usually 5,000 unread emails in the inbox at any given moment" and "in thousands of cases emails were not even read", including cases from MPs.
He said the process of prioritising the applicants was "arbitrary and dysfunctional". The criteria used by the government were "unhelpful" and "ambiguous", leading to confusion.

'Chaotic system'
Staff in the crisis centre who previously worked for the Department for International Development could not access FCDO computers because "the DFID and FCO IT systems are not yet integrated. They were visibly appalled by our chaotic system".
Mr Marshall described how soldiers were brought in to help but many had not used the computer systems before and so mistakes were made.
The computers had to be shared because FCDO IT had not issued passwords to unlock them. At one point eight soldiers shared one computer.
People crowded outside Kabul airport
Image source, EPA
Image caption,
During the evacuation there chaotic scenes outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul
Telephone calls to Afghans were made only in English, Mr Marshall said. There was no one who spoke Dari or Pashto.
Mr Marshall said: "I believe no member of the Afghan Special Cases team had studied Afghanistan, worked on Afghanistan previously, or had a detailed knowledge of Afghanistan.
He added: "One was clearly scared of being asked to make hundreds of life and death decisions about which they knew nothing."
He said: "Most people in the FCDO crisis centre had a poor understanding of the actual situation at Kabul airport and the consequent urgency of calling people up as soon as possible."


Media caption,
Brigadier James Martin speaks about the UK's evacuation operation from Afghanistan
Mr Marshall's report states the FCDO crisis centre sent notes up to Mr Raab's office to get decisions on difficult cases.
But "it took several hours for the foreign secretary to engage on any of these notes" and when he did "he could not decide on individual cases" without seeing all the cases "in a well-presented table".
Mr Marshall concluded: "For the foreign secretary to make this request suggests he did not fully understand the situation."
He said on another occasion, "the foreign secretary declined to make a decision on whether to admit these people without a properly formatted submission with a table setting out multiple cases."
A source close to Mr Raab said: "We evacuated over 500 special cases, including journalists, women's rights activists and extremely vulnerable individuals.
"The major practical challenge to evacuation was verifying identity and securing safe passage to the airport, not the speed of decision making. At all times, the team's focus was on saving lives."

'Leadership questions'
Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat MP, said the evidence pointed to a "lack of interest, and bureaucracy over humanity" and "raises serious questions about the leadership of the Foreign Office."
A UK government spokesperson said more than 1,000 FCDO staff worked tirelessly to evacuate more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan within a fortnight.
"The scale of the evacuation and the challenging circumstances meant decisions on prioritisation had to be made quickly to ensure we could help as many people as possible," it said.
It said the government was still working to help others leave and since the end of the operation had helped more than 3,000 people leave Afghanistan.
"Regrettably we were not able to evacuate all those we wanted to, but our commitment to them is enduring," they added.
www.bbc.com

Afghanistan: Foreign Office chaotic during Kabul evacuation - whistleblower

Thousands of pleas for help went unread and the foreign secretary lacked urgency, an ex-official says.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
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www.dw.com

Former security officials face Taliban vengeance – DW – 12/06/2021

Human Rights Watch says that more than 100 former Afghan security personnel have disappeared or been killed by the Taliban since they came to power in August. The actual number could be much higher than that.
www.dw.com www.dw.com

ASIA
Afghanistan: Former security officials face Taliban vengeance
Human Rights Watch says that more than 100 former Afghan security personnel have disappeared or been killed by the Taliban since they came to power in August. The actual number could be much higher than that.

  • Date 06.12.2021
  • Author Ahmad Hakimi



An Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier keeps watch during an operation in Guzara district of Herat on October 18, 2009
Afghan soldiers were trained by NATO forces to fight the Taliban and other militant groups

Following the collapse of the Afghan government, thousands of former security personnel faced imminent danger from the Taliban, which now rules the country.
Rights organizations reported that scores of them have become victims of targeted killings, and that there are many more whose fate is unknown.

Human Rights Watch published a report in late November, documenting the killings and disappearances of former members of the Afghan army, police, intelligence services and pro-government militias, who surrendered to the Taliban between August 15 and October 31.

The global human rights watchdog says it gathered credible information about more than 100 killings or enforced disappearances from Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar and Kunduz provinces. The Taliban have rejected the reports and termed them "baseless."

Reluctance to comment
DW contacted many former Afghan soldiers and officers about the incidents, but they refrained from commenting on the issue on record. Although some confirmed murders and enforced disappearances across Afghanistan, they asked not to be named.

An Afghan journalist in the northern Balkh province told DW on condition of anonymity that many former Afghan security officials have been killed in Mazar-e-Sharif in the past few weeks.

"Most recently, a former National Directorate of Security officer was kidnapped from his house, and later his body was discovered elsewhere," he said.

The journalist added that security guards of two former ministers from Balkh, as well as some female civil society activists, have been found dead in the outskirts of Mazar-e-Sharif in the past few weeks.










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Watch video02:23
Germany honors soldiers who served in Afghanistan
How credible are Taliban amnesty claims?
After toppling Ashraf Ghani's government in August, the Taliban offered general amnesty to all former government employees and soldiers.

Human Rights Watch said the Taliban have gained access to employment records of former government employees and are using these to arrest and execute them.

"The Taliban leadership's promised amnesty has not stopped local commanders from summarily executing or disappearing former Afghan security force members," said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director with the group.

Local Taliban officials deny any involvement in these killings, claiming these incidents are a result of personal feuds. The Taliban also say they are investigating such incidents.

Responding to the report, Taliban officials say they have relieved 755 members who they have found guilty of murder, torture and illegal detention. But Human Rights Watch said no proof has been provided to corroborate that claim.

Sayeed Khosti, a spokesperson for the Taliban interior ministry, told DW in a video message that the report "lacks credible sources."

"Hundreds of former Afghan officials and soldiers who have killed scores of Afghans are living in Kabul and other parts of the country without any fear," he added.

Former drone pilots under threat
Jamal (whose name has been changed due to security concerns) was a drone pilot for US forces in Afghanistan. He confirmed four incidents of targeted killings and forced disappearances of former military personnel.










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Watch video04:30
Afghan civil society will be the victim of NATO withdrawal
"I have been living separately from my family since the Taliban came to power. I have no contact with my family," he told DW over telephone from an unknown location in Kabul.
Former Afghan drone pilots, who were trained by NATO forces, say they feel abandoned in the current situation.

"Two of my colleagues have been killed by the Taliban and two others are missing. We are in a miserable situation," Jamal said, adding that former drone pilots do not contact each other, fearing the Taliban could tap their phone calls and access their data.

Jamal said the Taliban amnesty claim is meant to fool the international community and hide their crimes.

Activists and judges face retribution
Former government officials and military personnel are not the only ones facing retribution from the Taliban. Rights activists and journalists say their lives are also at risk.

A female judge in the former Afghan government fled to Greece, along with six of her female colleagues and their families. By the end of October, they had moved to Brazil.

She told The Associated Press that she and the other judges still fear the Taliban, members of which had been sentenced for various crimes in their courts.

The woman, who had been a judge for almost 10 years before the Taliban toppled Ghani's government, said the Taliban recently searched her house in Kabul.

Under the former Western-backed government, Afghanistan had about 300 female judges. Most of them are in hiding now.

"We knew they [the Taliban] wouldn't allow women judges to work. They have released all criminals from jails; the criminals that we sent to prison."
  • Women and children at local market


    LIFE IN AFGHANISTAN UNDER THE TALIBAN
    New but old dress code
    Although it is not yet mandatory for women to wear a burqa, many do so out of fear of reprisals. This Afghan woman is visiting a local market with her children. There is a large supply of second-hand clothes as many refugees have left their clothes behind.
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Edited by: Shamil Shams
 
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www.longwarjournal.org

Pakistani Taliban emir says his group “is a branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” | FDD's Long War Journal

TTP emir Noor Wali Mehsud said that his group "is a branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" while traveling throughout Pakistan's northern areas.
www.longwarjournal.org

Pakistani Taliban emir says his group “is a branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”
BY BILL ROGGIO | December 15, 2021 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio
Screen-Shot-2021-12-15-at-10.39.06-AM-1024x580.png
TTP emir Noor Wali Mehsud addresses Pakistanis in a video.

The leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) said that his group “is a branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” during a tour of several of the group’s bases across Pakistan’s tribal areas and northern districts.

The Afghan Taliban, however, has denied Mehsud’s statement.

TTP emir Noor Wali Mehsud made the statement in a nearly hour-long video that documented his entourage’s travels in a large military convoy across what the TTP claims is significant swaths of Pakistan’s northern areas. The large TTP convoy openly flew its flag in broad daylight while traveling through the countryside.
Screen-Shot-2021-12-15-at-10.43.12-AM-1024x576.png
The large TTP convoy openly flies its flag while traveling throughout the countryside.
According to the video, the Taliban emir visited TTP headquarters in various districts and towns of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, including: Malakand, Bajaur, Peshawar, Mardan, Khyber, Dara Adamkhel, and Hazara.

Peshawar is the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Bajaur is one of several TTP strongholds in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Many of the areas visited by Mehsud were controlled at one time by the TTP between 2007 and 2012.

Hundreds of TTP members and fighters can be seen throughout the video, including dozens riding on Afghan police vehicles in Mehsud’s convoy.
Screen-Shot-2021-12-15-at-10.35.55-AM-1024x578.png
One of several police vehicles from the now-defunct Afghan National Police.

The presence of the Afghan police vehicles and other equipment have caused some to speculate the video was actually recorded in Afghanistan, however, this cannot be independently verified by FDD’s Long War Journal.

If the video was recorded in Afghanistan, it is yet further evidence of the close relationship between the TTP and the Afghan Taliban. Several top level TTP leaders were killed or captured in Afghanistan before the Afghan Taliban seized control of the country on Aug. 15, 2021. Thousands of TTP fighters fought alongside the Afghan Taliban during its campaign to conquer the country.

If the video was recorded in Pakistan, which is far more likely, it is evidence that the TTP is not as weak as claimed by the Pakistani military and government, which is currently attempting to negotiate a peace deal with the terror group.

At each TTP group headquarters, Mehsud can be seen greeting and praying with his fighters before preaching to the men. One speech, in particular, however, stands out.

At one point in the video, Mehsud very clearly stated that “the [TTP] is a branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan [the Taliban’s name for itself] and is part of that umbrella on this land.” He continued by saying that the TTP will fight until Pakistan, like Afghanistan, is also under Shari’a law.

Mehsud’s comment is unsurprising. The jihadist leader reaffirmed his allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada earlier this year following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban never rejected Mehsud’s oath of allegiance.

Other jihadist groups in the region, including the majority ethnic Uzbek Islamic Jihad Union, which has fought alongside the Afghan Taliban, have celebrated Mehsud’s statement on social media.

The Afghan Taliban, however, has insisted on downplaying Mehsud’s comment. Zabihullah Mujahid, the official spokesman of the Taliban, officially rejected Mehsud’s comment in an interview with Arab News late last week.

“They are not, as an organization, part of [the Islamic Emirate] and we don’t share the same objectives,” Mujahid said. “We advise TTP to focus on peace and stability in their country. This is very important so they can prevent any chance for enemies to interfere in the region and in Pakistan.”

Lastly, Mujahid demanded Pakistan to “look into their [TTP’s] demands for the better of the region and Pakistan.”

The Afghan Taliban has good reasons for separating itself from the TTP at this moment in time.

The Afghan Taliban is mediating peace talks between the TTP and the Pakistani government, which supported the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. The Pakistan Taliban’s video and claim came just days before the group also officially rejected the ceasefire with the Pakistani state.

Additionally, the Afghan Taliban is attempting to secure the release of funds frozen after the fall of the previous government in order to finance its nascent government. Admitting close ties with the TTP would sabotage both efforts.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.
 
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Asia Pacific
Exclusive: U.N. proposing paying nearly $6 million to Taliban for security
By Jonathan Landay

A Taliban fighter guards a street in Kabul, Afghanistan November 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ali Khara/

A Taliban fighter guards a street in Kabul, Afghanistan November 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ali Khara/
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WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The United Nations is proposing to pay nearly $6 million for protection in Afghanistan to Taliban-run Interior Ministry personnel, whose chief is under U.N. and U.S. sanctions and wanted by the FBI, according to a U.N. document and a source familiar with the matter.

The proposed funds would be paid next year mostly to subsidize the monthly wages of Taliban fighters guarding U.N. facilities and to provide them a monthly food allowance under an expansion of an accord with the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, the document reviewed by Reuters shows.


The plan underscores the persisting insecurity in Afghanistan following the Islamist Taliban’s takeover in August as the last U.S. troops left, as well as a dire shortage of funds hampering the new government because of a cutoff of international financial aid.

“The United Nations has a duty as an employer to reinforce and, where necessary, supplement the capacity of host states in circumstances where U.N. personnel work in areas of insecurity,” deputy U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq wrote in an email in response to Reuters’ questions about the proposed payments. He did not dispute the contents of the document.


Several experts said the proposed payments raise questions about whether they would violate U.S. and U.N. sanctions on the Taliban and their top leaders, and whether the United Nations could detect diversions of funds for other purposes.

“What it comes down to is there is no proper oversight,” said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter.


Those under sanctions include deputy Taliban leader and Interior Ministry chief Sirajuddin Haqqani. He heads the Haqqani network, a faction blamed for some of the bloodiest attacks over 20 years of war. The United States, which says Haqqani is close to al Qaeda, is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

The U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) budget is “currently under review,” but the mission “maintains full compliance with all U.N. sanctions regimes,” Haq said.

He did not respond to a question about whether the proposed payments would breach U.S. sanctions.

A U.S. Treasury Department official said the Taliban and the Haqqani network remain designated under the U.S. government's counterterrorism sanctions program and that unauthorized people supporting them "risk exposure to U.S. sanctions."

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to comment on the U.N. proposal.

FOOD SHORTAGES, ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

The proposed funds would bolster the cash-strapped Taliban’s ability to protect some 3,500 U.N. personnel in Kabul and 10 field offices. Many are striving to help the country of 39 million cope with food shortages amid a public services breakdown and an economic collapse accelerated by the evaporation of foreign financial aid.

The U.N. document says most of a proposed $4 million security budget for 2022 shared by the 20 U.N. agencies operating in Afghanistan “constitutes payments in respect of supplementing host nation resources for their primary responsibility to protect U.N. personnel (as foreseen in our SOMA).”

SOMA stands for a Status of Mission Agreement with the former government. Under the accord, the United Nations subsidized the costs to the Interior Ministry of police who protected U.N. facilities, the source said.

Most of the $4 million would boost the wages of individual Taliban members by $275-to-$319 per month and provide a monthly food allowance of $90 per person, “which was previously only paid in the regions but now also extended to Kabul,” the document said.

UNAMA would spend an additional nearly $2 million “for similar services” outside the security budget shared with other U.N. agencies, the document added.

“The U.N. system provided allowances to personnel who perform supplementary security services which are critical to the safety of personnel and compounds, as well as operations and movements in the country,” said Haq.

Such funds, he said, are paid directly to recipients "and not through the de facto authorities.”

www.reuters.com

Exclusive: U.N. proposing paying nearly $6 million to Taliban for security

The United Nations is proposing to pay nearly $6 million for protection in Afghanistan to Taliban-run Interior Ministry personnel, whose chief is under U.N. and U.S. sanctions and wanted by the FBI, according to a U.N. document and a source familiar with the matter.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
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FJ
@Natsecjeff
5m

As per local sources, tensions between Afghan Taliban & Pakistani military continue to be very high at the Durand border following recent incidents of Taliban removing border fencing from different locations in Nangarhar, Kunar, Helmand and Nimruz. TTP also continues its attacks.
Sources on both sides of the border also tell me that a direct armed clash between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani military appears to be only a matter of time at this point. Domestic pressure is mounting on Pakistani military to act, thanks in part to videos that are surfacing.
While Pakistani military and Islamabad itself has been trying to downplay the situation at the border, these videos showing Taliban destroying and stealing the border fencing are being proudly uploaded and shared by Taliban accounts.
 
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www.bloomberg.com

Taliban Adding Suicide Bombers to Army Ranks to Bolster Defenses

The Taliban will officially recruit suicide bombers to become part of the army as the militant group tries to contain its biggest security threat from rival Islamic State since forming government in Afghanistan four months ago.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com

Politics
Taliban Adding Suicide Bombers to Army Ranks to Bolster Defenses
  • Suicide bombers to be used for ‘sophisticated’ operations
  • The Taliban aim to form an 150,000-strong army: Al Jazeera
By
Eltaf Najafizada
January 5, 2022, 11:46 PM EST

The Taliban will officially recruit suicide bombers to become part of the army as the militant group tries to contain its biggest security threat from rival Islamic State since forming government in Afghanistan four months ago.

Before sweeping into power last year, the Taliban used suicide bombers as a key weapon to attack and defeat U.S. and Afghan troops in the 20-year war. Now the group wants to reform and organize the scattered squads of suicide bombers across the country to operate under a single unit and protect Afghanistan, said the Taliban’s deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi.

Their main target now would be the local offshoot of the Islamic State, which has carried out at least five major attacks as the Taliban looked to consolidate power after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in August. Several of those attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.

“The special forces that include martyrdom seekers will be used for more sophisticated and special operations,” Karimi said by phone, without providing details.

The militant group is building a “strong and organized army to bolster defense” nationwide and at the borders with the suicide bombers becoming a integral part of the strategy, Karimi added. Some 150,000 fighters will be invited to join the military, Al Jazeera reported in November, citing the Taliban’s chief of staff Qari Fasihuddin.

The recruitment drive comes after the Taliban purged the military ranks to stop those who were conducting house-to-house searches to settle scores with opponents, according to spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed. The group also said it had begun to identify and capture possible Islamic State infiltrators within their own ranks.

Islamic State fighters have constantly challenged the authority of the Taliban, prompting concerns that Afghanistan could descend into another war. The group’s deadliest attack took place on Aug. 26 when a suicide bomber killed nearly 200 people including 13 U.S. marines in Kabul airport as desperate Afghans were waiting for U.S. evacuation flights to flee the country.
 
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www.nationalreview.com

Taliban Bring Back Radical Religious Policing | National Review

Men have been ordered to grow beards, prayers are mandatory, and women are forbidden from traveling significant distances unaccompanied.
www.nationalreview.com www.nationalreview.com

WORLD
Taliban Bring Back Radical Religious Policing
By DOMINIC PINO
January 7, 2022 4:20 PM

On August 17, national-security adviser Jake Sullivan was asked by a reporter, “Do you think the Taliban of 2021 is different than 2001?” His answer:
On what we expect from the Taliban going forward, that is something that will have to be watched and observed over time. Whether in fact they are prepared to meet their obligations to the basic human rights and human dignity of people, to the safe passage of people to the airport, to the fair and — fair and just treatment of civilians, that is something they’re going to have to show.
Click to expand...
I come at this with no expectations, but only a sense that they will have to prove to the international community who they ultimately are going to end up being.
Click to expand...
After a few months of observation, the similarities between the Taliban of 2001 and the Taliban of today are hard to mistake. Yesterday, Radio Azadi, part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported:
When the Taliban seized power in August, the militant group vowed it would not resurrect the violent religious policing it enforced during its first stint in power. The hard-liners claimed they would limit themselves to preaching Islamic values of modesty and dignity.
But nearly five months after regaining power, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has reclaimed its role as the enforcer of the group’s radical interpretation of Islamic law.
Click to expand...
In a spate of decrees issued in recent weeks, the ministry has imposed restrictions on the behavior, movement, and appearances of residents, particularly those of women and girls.
Click to expand...
During the Taliban’s first reign from 1996 to 2001, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice established one of the most brutal reputations of any organization in world history. Its enforcers are the ones who carried out the horrific human-rights abuses that characterized the Taliban regime before the U.S. invasion. From a Washington Post report on the ministry in September:
Accounts from the time detail forces patrolling the streets, shutting down shops and markets at prayer time. They beat people caught listening to music and frowned upon dancing, kite-flying and American-style haircuts.
Click to expand...
Squads of the ministry’s morality police punished those who disobeyed modesty codes, with beards too thin or ankles that showed. They banished girls from school and women from the workplace and the public eye. A woman could not venture outside without a male guardian.
Click to expand...
Radio Azadi reports that this time around, the ministry has ordered shopkeepers to behead mannequins in stores because they consider them idols, and Islam strictly forbids idolatry. (The report also quotes a more mainstream Muslim scholar who says this interpretation is incorrect because mannequins are not idols at all.)

The ministry in December said women who want to travel more than 72 kilometers should not be allowed to do so unaccompanied. It “also directed all vehicle drivers to refrain from playing music in their cars and not to pick up female passengers who did not wear an Islamic hijab covering their hair,” the report says. This order is being enforced by checkpoints all around Kabul.

Men have been ordered to grow beards, and prayers are mandatory. The Taliban “had ordered clerics at mosques in the capital to take a roll call and report those who failed to turn up,” the report says.
This part of the Radio Azadi story sticks out:
Rabia, a woman in Mazar-e Sharif who did not reveal her real name, said the Taliban was directing all its resources into controlling the lives of citizens rather than addressing the myriad of problems facing the country, including a freefalling economy and a devastating humanitarian crisis.
The Taliban “needs to pay attention to many more important issues we are grappling with,” she said.
Click to expand...
Back in August, Andrew Stuttaford wrote, “No government — particularly one with only a shaky claim to legitimacy, none of it democratic — will ever enjoy a sudden drop in its country’s standard of living. That is something the Taliban may shortly discover as they try to consolidate their hold over a society famously fragmented along ethnic lines.” It seems that Rabia has put her finger on that exact issue now that the economic collapse is well underway.

On August 11, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “The international community is going to watch closely how the Taliban behaves. They have a range of tools in their arsenal, as well, to take steps should they choose.”

Will Sullivan and Psaki revisit their comments in the face of the evidence? Have the Taliban not demonstrated clearly, in Sullivan’s words, “who they ultimately are going to end up being”? What were those tools in the arsenal that Psaki mentioned?

Are they even paying attention?
 
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defenseone.com

Private Group Keeps Afghanistan Evacuations Flying Despite Ground Halt
By Tara Copp Senior Pentagon Reporter, Defense One

8-10 minutes


Project Dynamo founder Bryan Stern, bottom right, takes a photo in front of one of the many chartered aircraft he's been able to use to fly Americans and U.S. legal residents out of Kabul since U.S. forces withdrew.

Project Dynamo founder Bryan Stern, bottom right, takes a photo in front of one of the many chartered aircraft he's been able to use to fly Americans and U.S. legal residents out of Kabul since U.S. forces withdrew. Courtesy Bryan Stern
While the U.S. government is working to re-establish a regular flow of chartered evacuation flights for the Afghan interpreters and Americans left behind, one small veteran group is pulling off flights on its own. But not everyone’s happy about it.
Project Dynamo’s latest set of evacuation flights got another 47 Americans and legal permanent residents out of Afghanistan last month. The group’s chartered planes took off from Kabul and landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Dec. 18.

Despite that success and others, the group has not been included among the larger #AfghanEvac coalition of more than 150 veterans groups that have been welcomed into U.S. interagency planning. The coalition has worked with the State Department to help several thousand Afghans and hundreds of Americans—including some of Dynamo’s evacuees—depart through land routes and on State Department-chartered flights since Kabul fell. The coalition is also looking at the long-term picture and the humanitarian needs of those left behind. Group leaders recently met with the National Security Council to discuss the way ahead.
Thousands more special immigrant visa holders and at-risk Afghans, along with some Americans, are still in Afghanistan. But in mid-December, the Taliban halted U.S. government-chartered flights after coalition officials refused to provide seats on the aircraft to members of the group.
Project Dynamo founder Bryan Stern thinks the window of opportunity to help those allies is closing fast. They say they’re going at it alone because the larger group is taking too long to act.

This has made Dynamo unwelcome among the coalition, members of which cited concerns about its rogue approach.
“We've got people that are feeding folks; we've got people that are doing safe transportation, safe houses, providing medical support, I mean, thousands and thousands and thousands of people,” said one member of the #AfghanEvac coalition who asked not to be identified. “This isn't ****ing Rambo. Nobody's Jason Bourne. This is a humanitarian effort. The military stuff is done; the spy stuff is done. We are trying to help these real-life humans get the help that they need.”
Dynamo’s Stern is a Navy reserve officer and an Army veteran with multiple deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Like other veterans driven to save their interpreters, Stern decided not to wait for the U.S. government to act to get them out. So he and a few others flew to Uzbekistan instead.
Unlike the other groups, Stern goes into Afghanistan himself to get the evacuees out.
“So Kabul is like my old stomping grounds, right? So when I work, when I deploy, I wear plainclothes, I work the street,” he said. “I'm not tactical. I'm not wearing a tactical backpack with all kinds of loops and patches all over it, with, you know, with wraparound Gators glasses and a huge giant watch with an altimeter on it.”
“I have spent the night in my own safe house,” Stern said. “I know if my toilets work. None of the rest of them can say that.”
Stern isn’t the only leader of an Afghan-focused veterans group who has decided to pull back from the coalition process. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret who founded Task Force Pineapple a day after Kabul fell, said his group was part of the larger coalition initially but has since refocused on keeping remaining allies and their families hidden, sheltered, and fed through the winter.

“There’s nobody in [Pineapple] that is at odds with Dynamo,” Mann said. “I didn’t get on an airplane and bring people back, so I sure as hell am not going to sit around and criticize it.”
“We’ve got to get over ourselves and focus on the massive herculean problem we have, which is helping green card holders and at-risk Afghans. We don’t have time for infighting.”
Stern said he’s been able to get his flights in by working old connections and by being pragmatic about who is now in power.
“I don't say, ‘Oh, the Taliban.’ I say, well, the new government of Afghanistan. Because that's exactly what they are, whether I like it or not. That's a fact of life.”
To date, Stern said he’s flown 150 Americans and other legal permanent residents back to the U.S. The December flight had a dozen kids on board, the youngest was 11 months old. Despite the U.S. government charter pause, Dynamo was able to get its aircraft out.

“I apply for landing rights the same way everybody else applies for landing rights. I just know how to ask the question the right way,” Stern said. “So because I understand the culture a little bit better, and the political scene a little bit better, and I make sure to talk to somebody who I know will also represent us well, and ask the question the right way, such that it's all okay. Not necessarily good. And maybe not necessarily safe. But I get to a ‘yes.’”
Stern thinks Afghanistan’s security situation is unraveling fast. To him, meeting with the larger coalition to discuss differences of approach is a waste of time.
He’s working additional evacuations now, including mustering the money and resources to pull them off. The aircraft for the December flights, for example, were made available by Texas-based defense contractor Berry Aviation. Stern said he’s “shamelessly” fundraising now to beat the clock.

“It's been a really, really, really long time, since an American was, you know, shot in the back or anything resembling anything like that [by the Taliban]. At some point that will change, and I think that actually changes pretty soon,” he said.
Stern is quick to emphasize he’s been going into Kabul as a private citizen acting on his own.
Defense One reviewed documents to confirm Stern’s military service. A Navy official who also confirmed Stern’s military service said the Navy is not involved and that Stern makes these trips on his own time.
That sensitivity mirrors what the Pentagon has been saying about civilians left behind since their official withdrawal on Aug. 31: The U.S. military is not in Afghanistan, and it will not lead an effort to get the remaining Afghan evacuees and U.S. citizens out.
“For the American citizens he’s pulled out of there, they’re obviously grateful, but DOD and the Navy hasn’t had any comments or reaction because he’s doing this as a private citizen,” the Navy official said.
A State Department official said any independent actor who moves evacuees outside of the established agreements risks U.S. diplomatic relationships in the region and could reduce the chances of securing a long-term process to get more people out.
“There have been significant challenges with some of these privately organized flights,” the State Department official said. In September, six chartered flights were grounded for days at Mazar-i-Sharif because of concerns about who was on the planes.
Inconsistencies on flight manifests “damages the bilateral relationship of the United States with the destination countries; and makes it more difficult for the U.S. government to rely on those partner countries to assist in future relocations out of Afghanistan,” the State department official said.
Stern said every thing he’s done has been aboveboard.
“I won't move anyone without the State Department at least knowing about it. Wrong to say ‘approve’ – too strong of a word. But every manifest we've ever done, I share it with State and ask for feedback. They usually don't give feedback.”
Stern has been focused on Afghanistan since the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the young Army corporal exited the New York subway at the World Trade Center stop on his way to a briefing. He’d begun assisting bystanders when the second plane struck; the collapse shredded his pants to his underwear.
Stern admits he never made a very good soldier.

“I’ve been a problem child my whole career,” he said. “I’m just not built that way to work with the government. I wish I was. But what drives me now is there are Americans saying, ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ And the State Department is saying, ‘Fill out your form in triplicate.’”
“In January 2022,” he said. “That seems just really hard to understand.”
www.defenseone.com

Private Group Keeps Afghanistan Evacuations Flying Despite Ground Halt

Group leader: “There are Americans saying, ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ And the State Department is saying, ‘Fill out your form in triplicate.’”
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