WAR US to leave troops in Afghanistan beyond May, 9/11 new goal

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U.S.-Europe Communiqué on the Afghan Peace Process


Media Note

Office of the Spokesperson

May 7, 2021




The following is the text of a communiqué issued by the United States of America, European Union, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, Norway, and the United Kingdom on the Afghan Peace Process.

Begin Text:
Special Envoys and Special Representatives of the United States of America, European Union, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, Norway, and the United Kingdom met in Berlin on May 6th, 2021.
Respectful of the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan, participants exchanged views on the current status of the Afghanistan peace process and discussed ways to support the Afghan people’s desire for a just and lasting peace. To that end, participants:

1. Acknowledged the widespread and sincere demand of the Afghan people for an end to the war and a fair and lasting peace, and confirmed that such a peace can only be achieved through an inclusive, negotiated political settlement among Afghans. Participants affirmed their commitment to UNSC resolution 2513 (2020) and emphasized that they oppose the establishment in Afghanistan of any government by force which would constitute a threat to regional stability.
2. Highlighted the need to accelerate the pace of the Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace negotiations and committed to work with the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Taliban, and other Afghan political and civil society leaders to reach a comprehensive and sustainable peace agreement and political compromise that ends the war for the benefit of all Afghans and that contributes to regional stability and global security.
3. Expressed appreciation to the Government of Qatar for its long-standing contribution to facilitate the peace process, including hosting and supporting Afghanistan Peace Negotiations since September 12th, 2020, and underlined their support for the continuation of discussions between the parties’ negotiating teams in Doha. Appreciated the offer from the Republic of Turkey, the United Nations, and the State of Qatar to co-convene a senior-level peace conference in Istanbul and welcomed plans for related events to channel civil society voices into the process. Urged the immediate resumption, without pre-conditions, of substantive negotiations on the future of Afghanistan with the aim to develop and negotiate realistic compromise positions on power sharing that can lead to an inclusive and legitimate government and a just and durable settlement.
4. Welcomed an expanded role for the United Nations in contributing to the Afghanistan peace and reconciliation process, including by leveraging its considerable experience and expertise in supporting other peace processes.
5. Strongly condemned the continued violence in Afghanistan for which the Taliban are largely responsible and demanded all parties to take immediate and necessary steps to reduce violence and in particular, to avoid civilian casualties in order to create an environment conducive to reaching a political settlement. Participants further called on all parties to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law in all circumstances, including those related to protection of civilians, and urged all sides to immediately agree on steps that enable the successful implementation of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.
6. In this regard, participants called upon the Taliban to stop their undeclared spring offensive, to refrain from attacks against civilians, and to stop immediately all attacks in the vicinity of hospitals, schools, universities, mosques and other civilian areas. In particular, participants demanded an immediate end to the campaign of targeted assassinations against civil society leaders, the clergy, journalists and other media workers, human rights defenders, healthcare personnel, judicial employees and other civilians.
7. Following the April 14 announcement by the United States and NATO that U.S. and Resolute Support Mission forces will conduct an orderly, coordinated, and deliberate withdrawal from Afghanistan, to be concluded by September 11, 2021 participants reiterated that during the withdrawal, the safety of international troops must be ensured and that any Taliban attacks on our troops during this period will be met with a forceful response. Participants stressed that the process of the troop withdrawal must not serve as an excuse for the Taliban to suspend the peace process and that good-faith political negotiations must proceed in earnest.
8. In light of this withdrawal of forces, the participants recommitted to a strong and enduring partnership with Afghanistan, its governing and security institutions and its people. Participants also agreed that substantial international development assistance will be needed for Afghanistan’s stability during peace negotiations and reaffirmed their commitment to mobilize international support for reconstruction following a peace agreement, based on the conditions as laid out in the outcome documents of the 2020 Geneva Conference, including the preservation and respect for the rights of all Afghans, including women and minorities. Participants underscored their commitment to conditional civilian assistance to Afghanistan beyond a military withdrawal with the aim of ensuring a better future for the Afghan people.
9. Reaffirmed that any peace agreement must protect the rights of all Afghans, including women, youth, and minorities, and must respond to the strong desire of Afghans to sustain and build on the economic, social, political, and development gains achieved since 2001, including greater adherence to the rule of law, respect for Afghanistan’s international obligations, and improvements in inclusive and accountable governance. Highlighted that the Afghan parties’ ownership and leadership of intra-Afghan negotiations is important for a successful outcome. Reiterated that a stable, safe and prosperous Afghanistan is dependent on women playing full and meaningful roles in the peace negotiations and all parts of society, including in government.
10. Underscored that the Taliban and the Government of the Islamic Republic must fulfill their counterterrorism commitments including to prevent al-Qaida, Daesh, or other terrorist groups and individuals from using Afghan soil to threaten or violate the security of any other country; not to host members of these groups; and to prevent them from recruiting, training, or fundraising.
11. Reiterated that diplomatic personnel and property are inviolable, and that the perpetrators of any attack or threat on foreign diplomatic personnel and properties in Afghanistan must be held accountable.
12. Underscored that – while fully respecting the right of the Afghan people to self-determination – the countries and organizations represented at this meeting strongly advocate a durable and just political resolution that will result in the formation of a sovereign, unified, peaceful and democratic Afghanistan, free of terrorism and an illicit drug industry, which contributes to regional stability and global security.
13. Reaffirmed that current and future support to any Afghan government relies on the adherence to the principles set out in the Afghanistan Partnership Framework and progress towards the outcomes in the Afghanistan National Peace and Development Framework II as decided upon at the November 2020 Geneva donor’s conference.
14. Participants called upon the Government of the Islamic Republic to effectively fight corruption and promote good governance, and to implement anti-corruption legislation. Participants stressed their conviction that widespread corruption undermines the foundations of the Republic as well as the ability of the international community to continue to support Afghan institutions.
15. Urged the Taliban to facilitate access for delivery of humanitarian aid, without preconditions and in accordance with international humanitarian law, to the parts of the country under their effective control.
16. Stressed the importance of fighting illegal drug production and trafficking and urged both sides to eliminate the drug threat in and from Afghanistan.
17. Agreed that continued international support to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces will be necessary to ensure Afghanistan can defend itself against internal and external threats.
18. Encouraged all concerned countries, in particular Afghanistan’s neighbors and countries of the region, to continue to support the Afghan people and constructively contribute to a lasting peace settlement and sustainable economic development in the interest of all.
19. Thanked the negotiating team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the negotiating team of the Taliban for their important contributions to today’s meeting via video and for the frank and open discussion on challenging issues.
20. Expressed their appreciation to the German government for organizing these consultations and agreed to set the date and venue of the next meeting through diplomatic channels.

End text.

U.S.-Europe Communiqué on the Afghan Peace Process - United States Department of State

Respectful of the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan, participants exchanged views on the current status of the Afghanistan peace process and discussed ways to support the Afghan people’s desire for a just and lasting peace.

www.state.gov

 

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1TVNewsAF
@1TVNewsAF


Afghanistan's Defense Ministry says 250 Taliban militants killed, 106 others injured in clashes and counterattacks over the past 24 hours in nine provinces of the country.

 

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BNO News
@BNONews


BREAKING: Explosion hits high school for girls in Kabul, killing at least 25 people, including children

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1391032821381312512

View: https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1391032821381312512?s=20


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9:10 AM CDT
Asia Pacific
Blast near Afghan school in Kabul kills 25, injures 52

Reuters

1 minute read
An explosion near a school in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more, the interior ministry said.
Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said at least 52 people, most of them students, were injured in the blast.
He did not specify the cause or the target of the explosion.
Ghulam Dastagir Nazari, spokesman for the health ministry, said 46 people had been taken to hospitals so far.

Kabul is on high alert since Washington announced plans last month to pull out all U.S. troops by Sept. 11. with Afghan officials saying Taliban have stepped up their attacks across the country.
No group has claimed responsibility for Saturday's blast.

It took place in western part of Kabul, a heavily Shi’ite Muslim neighbourhood that has frequently been attacked by Islamic State militants over the years.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-05-08/blast-near-afghan-school-in-kabul-kills-10-injures-dozens-security-official

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UPDATED:
reuters.com

Afghan school blast toll rises to 58, families bury victims
Reuters

2-3 minutes


People stand at the site of a blast in Kabul, Afghanistan May 8, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer
The death toll from an explosion outside a school in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul has risen to 58, Afghan officials said on Sunday, with doctors struggling to provide medical care to at least 150 injured.

The bombing on Saturday evening shook the city's Shi'ite Muslim neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi. The community, a religious minority in Afghanistan, has been targeted in the past by Islamic State militants, a Sunni militant group.
An eyewitness told Reuters all but seven or eight of the victims were schoolgirls going home after finishing studies.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Saturday blamed the attack on Taliban insurgents but a spokesman for the Taliban denied involvement, saying the group condemns any attacks on Afghan civilians.
Families of the victims blamed the Afghan government and Western powers for failing to put an end to violence and the ongoing war.

Bodies were still being collected from morgues as the first burials were conducted in the west of the city. Some families were still searching for missing relatives on Sunday, gathering outside hospitals to read names posted on the walls, and checking morgues.

"The entire night we carried bodies of young girls and boys to a graveyard and prayed for everyone wounded in the attack," said Mohammed Reza Ali, who has been helping families of the victims at a private hospital.
"Why not just kill all of us to put and end to this war?" he said.

The violence comes a week after remaining U.S. and NATO troops began exiting Afghanistan, with a mission to complete the drawdown by September 11, which will mark the end of America's longest war.
But the foreign troop withdrawal has led a surge in fighting between Afghan security forces and Taliban insurgents with both sides trying to retain control over strategic centres.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

At least 68 killed in Afghan school blast, families bury victims

The death toll from a bomb attack outside a school in the Afghan capital Kabul has risen to 68, officials said on Sunday, with doctors struggling to care for 165 injured victims and families searching desperately for missing children.

www.reuters.com

 

[Housecarl]

And this is a Pakistani news site......

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Troops’ drawdown from Afghanistan without peace deal to dent regional security: experts

Islamabad : The geopolitical experts from different countries in the region have warned of the worst consequences of pulling out the US-Nato troops from Afghanistan without any sustainable peace...

www.thenews.com.pk

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Afshan S Khan

May 9, 2021

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Troops’ drawdown from Afghanistan without peace deal to dent regional security: experts


Islamabad : The geopolitical experts from different countries in the region have warned of the worst consequences of pulling out the US-Nato troops from Afghanistan without any sustainable peace deal. It would lead the region to geopolitical chaos, instability and rise of insurgency as seen on the first day of the drawdown from the Kandahar airfield.

About 150 lives perished in an armed fight between the Afghan soldiers and Taliban to capture the vacated airfield. They said the investment made for almost 20-years in Afghanistan against terrorism and lives sacrificed are likely to go waste in hurriedly withdrawal of the troops. Somehow, it seems intentional and strategic on part of the US and Nato to dent the ever increasing Chinese, Russian and Iranian strategic and economic interests in the region. Economically weaker, Pakistan has to suffer more with the rise of insurgency particularly on its border areas with Afghanistan.

Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) and DTN organized the regional webinar on ‘Pulling out the US-NATO troops from Afghanistan without any sustainable peace mechanisms – Repercussions for the Region’ here on Saturday.
The guest speakers included former ISI chief and geopolitical analyst Lt. General (r) Muhammad Asad Durrani, former senator Farhatullah Babar, senior journalist from Pakistan Rahimullah Yousafzai, Beijing-based China Centre for Globalisation chief Victor Gao, senior journalist from Washington Anwar Iqbal, geopolitical commentator and broadcaster from UK Reham Khan, PhD scholar on Afghanistan affairs from India Chayanika Saxena, and Dr. Somaye Morovati, an expert from Iran on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Devcom-Pakistan Executive Director Munir Ahmed conducted and hosted the webinar.

Lt. General (r) Muhammad Asad Durrani said a sustainable peace mechanism post the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is indeed desirable but also an uphill task. Several rounds of talks were managed but the parties could not agree to the mechanisms proposed. Taliban were not convinced on the power-sharing as proposed and discussed in the larger perspective. He said foreign occupation creates some serious contradictions, and the polity gets divided between the freedom-fighters, a warrior class and the opportunist collaborators. Same has happened in Afghanistan about two decades of war against terrorism. A prolonged war of resistance gives rise to a war economy, and its beneficiaries were unlikely to be pro-peace. The resistance believes it won against a powerful external aggressor, who understandably strives to get a good post-exit deal for its client regime. Victors of war too split over the spoils of victory. Some might favour a general amnesty – the others would rather hang the ‘traitors.’ He said the onus is thus on the neighbours with stake in the stability of the war ravaged country and on credible figures within, to restore peace. Pakistan and some others in the Region had plenty of time to position themselves for this purpose. It’s all up to them now.

Rahimullah Yousafzai said the 20-year war is not won by the US and Nato but Taliban won the Doha negotiations, the pull out is the result of that. Without ensuring their fair role in the future of Afghanistan, Taliban will not accept anything but may join the Istanbul talks afterwards. There is fear of a surge in the radicalization in Afghanistan and its spillover to neighbouring countries. So, all the countries and stakeholders in the region shall join hands for a consolidated peace deal.

Farhatuulah Babar said only a political solution would ensure peace in the region. The big players of the region such as Russia, China, and also India have to play their positive role. Otherwise the spillover of racialisation would not spare anyone at all. Victor Gao suggested urgently the UN Security Council meeting to discuss the issue as the US cannot leave Afghanistan in such an irresponsible way. There is a huge task of reconstruction and rebuilding of the economy by engaging natives and Taliban. America shall allocate sufficient funds for post drawdown development in Afghanistan. He said China is also the victim of spillover of the radicalization emerging from Afghanistan to some parts of China. The Chinese government would be willing to contribute to the economic development and engagement of the natives including Taliban.

Reham Khan said the war that was started to end terrorism has ended rather unceremoniously with America leaving those they accused of terror activities, the Taliban, with a dominant role in Afghanistan. While the US is selling the withdrawal of American troops at home as their success in bringing their boys back home safely and honouring campaign promises of the Trump manifesto, the fact is that it is a crushing defeat of the narrative of eradicating terrorism peddled years ago by America. Afghanistan and its neighbours, Pakistan, India and regional big players Russia and China would bear the brunt of the destruction left behind.

Anwar Iqbal said America cannot stay in Afghanistan for a lifetime to manage the forces there. They need to strike a win-win situation while the regional peace should be taken up by all other stakeholders too. Pakistan is likely to suffer the most post-drawdown of the troops. It may offer US airfields in Pakistan for good bucks to support its nose-dived economy if desired by the Biden government. Chayanika Saxena said the impending US-Nato withdrawal from Afghanistan has come when the entire world is reeling under the impact of a contagious virus. It comes as no surprise then that both the wherewithal and interest of the international actors, including the US, to deal with the simmering conflicts in Afghanistan have taken a hit.

Thus, while it is only rational to have expected an eventual American departure, it could not have come at a worse time than this. She said in the circumstances of increasing attacks against the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) to killing of young representatives of progress and peace and media persons, it is crucial for the international and regional powers to shore up their support for the Afghanistan government. The High Council for National Reconciliation shall make sure to bring Taliban back to the table of talks to give the ongoing conflict a sustainable end.

Dr. Somaye Morovatti said Iran’s role is very crucial in the post withdrawal but always undermined. Iran can play a strategic role in bringing Taliban to a meaningful peace solution and to abide by the defined parameters. A larger agreement to work together is required in the given circumstances.

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Post-withdrawal Afghanistan

On April 14, US President Joe Biden extended the utopian deadline of May 1st, 2021 for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan that was negotiated between the Trump administration and the...

www.thenews.com.pk

Muhammad Abdul Basit

May 9, 2021

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Post-withdrawal Afghanistan

On April 14, US President Joe Biden extended the utopian deadline of May 1st, 2021 for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan that was negotiated between the Trump administration and the Taliban.

The three months of White House analysis has allowed Biden to formally announce the ending of the “forever war”. The new date for withdrawal of foreign troops is now September 11, 2021 – marking 20 years of the 9/11 attack that significantly changed the world. The US landed on Afghan soil after the Afghan Taliban rejected the American demand of handing over Osama bin Laden. The war started with widespread international support, but it too became a long and bloody slog. Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires for a reason. But is this graveyard of empires destined to be a graveyard for human freedom in a post-American withdrawal Afghanistan?

While there has been a lot of scepticism of what is about to happen next, it is pretty clear that the West-backed Afghan government has not been able to strengthen itself in the last two decades to rule the country. And now Afghanistan will probably be back into the hands of the Taliban. As a first step, the Taliban would be demanding the release of roughly 7,000 Taliban prisoners that are held by the government in Kabul. The US is leaving Afghanistan with a weak and fragile Kabul government which stands on charges of corruption and internal rifts. In the first two weeks of America’s announcement of pulling its troops back, violence increased. More than 100 hundred security personnel have been killed amid the clashes in Afghanistan in the past few weeks.

As the US withdraws, its Secretary of State Antony Blinken says while talking to CNN that America is not disengaging from Afghanistan, and that they are deeply engaged in diplomacy in support of the Afghan government and its people. American engagement while being far off the land would not be fruitful for the Afghan government. Even in the years of its rule, the American backed Kabul government could hardly rule half of the country. Most of the provinces were ungoverned and left onto the Taliban to exercise their powers. Ungoverned spaces are an asset for the flourishing of extremism.

As the US withdraws, the Taliban will be all set to achieve the dreams of establishing their self-hypothesized version of an Islamic regime. “Our guns and bombers are ready to strike on [the] remaining forces in Afghanistan and the puppet regime”, said a Taliban leader and ex-governor in Eastern Afghanistan while talking to the Financial Times. Human rights are destined to be crushed in a post-withdrawal Afghanistan: free speech curbed, women ousted from the public sphere, harsh punishments enacted and little to no religious freedom.

The Afghan war has not been a success for the United States. Around 2,500 American troops lost their lives, and the financial cost goes beyond two trillion dollars. Afghan society remained caught between the brutal influence of Taliban and power brokerage by the US. Generations have paid the price of the cold-war politics that did not end with the cold war and rather backfired on the Afghans themselves. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Frankenstein's monster created by the American CIA with the help of Pakistan to fight against the Red Bear was not easy to deal with. The Taliban became strong, and Afghan society disintegrated. The price of such strategic miscalculations has to be borne by the common people.

When the Americans entered on to Afghan soil in 2001, they made two strategic mistakes. First, they tried social engineering in Afghanistan which is rarely successful in any part of the world. It is even impossible when a group of people have been armed with ideology as well as guns to be used for a vested interest. The Taliban were an asset to the US back in the cold war. Trying to convert Afghanistan into a modern Western-style democracy after empowering those who disregard any prospects of democracy was an act of negligence by the US.

Second, the Americans diverted their attention by landing into another war in Iraq simultaneously, and that too on false charges of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Putting one foot in Iraq and another in Afghanistan at the same time was a perfect recipe for failure. The use of military force for social engineering in foreign soils is a blunt tool that is unable to achieve its aim; rather it makes the matters worse. Resultantly, America weakened its soft power while dealing with Afghanistan.

Liberal internationalism is impossible to sustain. Democracy has unfortunately been on a retreat worldwide and even imperiled in the United States itself. America must realize that its era of grand strategy is coming to an end. The unipolar moment is arguably seeing its last days. With the rise of a peer competitor, China, it was evident that Washington had to wind up the aimless war in Afghanistan and concentrate on the rise of the dragon. Has the US done the right way? Probably not.

China might take the advantage of US withdrawal and look forward to making investments in Afghanistan. The major issue till now for China to invest in Afghanistan was that of instability in addition to excessive American involvement. Now that American engagement in Afghanistan will be significantly reduced, it is to be seen how China utilizes the Afghan situation for its advantage. China already is investing in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and aims to make extensive investments of $400 billion in Iran. The whole region can come under Chinese sphere of influence as China connects with the oil-rich Central Asian Republics (CARs).

It is too early to predict the future of Afghanistan and its relations with neighbors. But it is equally difficult to say if Afghanistan can find peace in near future after a significant reduction of American involvement.

The writer is a freelance contributor.
Email: abdulbasit0419@gmail.com

 

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thediplomat.com

Treacherous Triangle: Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan After US Withdrawal
By Umair Jamal for The Diplomat

13-16 minutes


Features | Security | South Asia
After the last American soldier departs Afghanistan in September, India and Pakistan will be left with some very difficult, unsavory, choices.

Credit: Flickr/ResoluteSupportMedia

U.S. troops in Afghanistan have begun packing gear after President Joe Biden announced last month that all American troops will leave Afghanistan by September 2021, after a nearly two-decade-long military presence in the country.
Defending his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan, Biden said, “With the terror threat now in many places, keeping thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country and across the billions [of dollars spent] each year makes little sense to me and to our leaders.”

“I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats,” he added. “I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth.”
Biden called on regional countries, particularly Pakistan, to do more to support Afghanistan. The international community, including the U.S., has often accused Pakistan of supporting militant groups in Afghanistan, including the Afghan Taliban, which have to some extent undermined Washington’s war efforts.
In 2018, then U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that Washington had “foolishly given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years,” but Islamabad had, in return, given “safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help.” In another speech laying out his Afghan policy, Trump singled out Pakistan, saying that the U.S. “cannot be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations.”

Fearing the possibility of punitive action from the U.S. and seeing the international community’s attempt to engage the Afghan Taliban as a win for its own Afghanistan policy, Pakistan has been supporting the United States’ peace talks with the Taliban.
Trump started negotiations with the Taliban in 2018, aimed at ending the 18-year-long war in Afghanistan. An agreement known as the Doha Accord was signed in early 2020 between the U.S. and Taliban that proposed a roadmap for the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan within 14 months and paved a way for the start of intra-Afghan negotiations.

Pakistan played an important role in pushing the Taliban to sign the agreement with the U.S. “Their [Pakistan’s] support has been very important in directing the Taliban to come to negotiations and their continued support is going to be very important as we go to this difficult period of deciding [if] the Taliban [is] actually serious about this and [that] they are going to live up to their commitments,” General Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command told a U.S. Senate panel last year.
Pakistan shares a treacherous, 2,670-kilometer border with Afghanistan. The mountainous border region has long served as a safe haven for many militant groups including the Afghan Taliban. The group ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and offered sanctuaries to al-Qaeda. Since the early 1990s, Pakistan has supported the Taliban in Afghanistan in an attempt to push its regional security interests. Pakistan was one of the few countries that established diplomatic relations when the Taliban’s government came to power in Kabul.

While the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 may have forced the Taliban out of power, the group has fought to expel international troops from Afghanistan in a bid to return to power, something that Pakistan has always wanted and supported despite international backlash.
For decades, Pakistan has supported militant groups in Afghanistan rather than elected governments. This policy choice has created an image problem for Pakistan in Afghanistan and elsewhere, making Pakistan part of the problem rather than a solution. Arguably, U.S. forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan offers Pakistan an opportunity to reorient its international image by playing a key role in encouraging regional cooperation to ensure stability in Afghanistan. The development offers Pakistan an opening to demonstrate to the international community that the country has made a clean break from its previous pattern of supporting militant groups in Afghanistan.

“Pakistan will have to build trust with all Afghan ethnicities and political forces, rather than just being seen as ‘Taliban supporters’ or by many Afghans as ‘Taliban sponsors’,” Hassan Abbas, the author of “The Taliban Revival: Violence and Extremism on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier,” told The Diplomat.
Since the beginning of the peace talks three years ago, Pakistan has earned a good reputation by playing an effective role as a mediator. However, this effort on Islamabad’s part may have also exposed the limits of the country’s influence on the group. Pakistan reportedly told the Taliban recently that the group may lose its support if it doesn’t show flexibility in the ongoing peace process. “Enough is enough” were the words reportedly used by the Pakistani leadership to convey its displeasure to the Taliban.

That said, Pakistan’s role in the Afghan peace process may largely become irrelevant if the anticipated volatility in Afghanistan becomes a bigger security headache for the country. Analysts warn that the U.S. troop withdrawal all but ensures heightened instability in Afghanistan – with potentially troubling security implications for Pakistan itself. “Increased instability in Afghanistan will produce spillover effects – increases in refugee flows, a more robust drug trade, the heightened risk of cross-border terrorism – that Pakistan won’t want,” Michael Kugelman, an analyst with the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C, told The Diplomat.
“Another major concern for Pakistan would be that Taliban advances – and especially a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan – could galvanize Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, including an already-resurgent Pakistani Taliban. These would be very problematic scenarios for Islamabad.”

Echoing Kugelman’s views, Abbas said that “any civil war in Afghanistan [following the U.S. withdrawal] will be terrible for Pakistan in terms of instability in Pakistan’s tribal belt and an opportunity for various militant groups to use war-torn areas for their activities and hiding.”
Meanwhile, concerns have continued to mount about the ability of Afghan forces to hold the Taliban at bay without U.S. forces present in the country. A classified U.S. intelligence agencies assessment prepared during Trump’s time in the White House warned that Afghanistan could be taken over by the Taliban within two to three years if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan without ensuring a power-sharing deal among the warring factions in Afghanistan.
If this happens and the peace process falls, Pakistan will be forced to return to its decades-old policy of supporting the Taliban. For decades, one of Pakistan’s key goals in Afghanistan has been to keep India at bay with the help of militant groups like the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network. It should not come as a surprise that Pakistan has continued its support for the Taliban despite the fact that the country has paid a heavy price economically, combated militancy on its own soil, and earned bad will abroad. Islamabad should be expected to double down on its policy of supporting militant groups if the country sees other players doing the same.

“Islamabad’s role in a post-withdrawal Afghanistan will depend on the status of the peace process. So long as the peace process is still happening, Pakistan will do what it can to support it – because it has a strong interest in the peace process leading to a political settlement, and because unending war could have undesirable spillover effects in Pakistan,” said Kugelman.
“If the peace process collapses, Pakistan – and other regional actors – would fall back on the empowerment of proxies. Islamabad would scale up support to the Taliban to give it an upper hand against rival groups supported by the likes of India and Iran,” he added.

This scenario directly threatens India’s political, security, and economic interests in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It is about time that India reorient its policies in Afghanistan, particularly its relationship with the Taliban in the wake of the U.S. forces’ withdrawal if the country wants to safeguard its interests. India has long supported the government in Kabul while distancing itself from the Taliban. From the 2001 Bonn conference, which paved the way for the formation of an interim government following the collapse of the Taliban regime up to the present day, India has continued a consistent policy of engaging with successive Afghan governments. In the 1990s, New Delhi supported the Northern Alliance against the Pakistan-supported Taliban and has continuously opposed the return of the Taliban to power in any form.

The U.S. withdrawal, however, is guaranteed to make the Taliban stronger – either by giving it the upper hand in negotiations with Kabul, by giving it a major battlefield advantage, or both.
The changing dynamics in Afghanistan indicate that New Delhi may be considering opening talks with the Taliban. Addressing the intra-Afghan talks last year, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar reiterated his country’s support for an “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned, and Afghan-controlled” peace process and refrained from offering any view on the Taliban’s participation. Perhaps Washington would also like India to follow this policy approach given that the group is poised to return to power in one form or another, and India’s engagement with the Taliban can ultimately serve the United States’ interests as well. Last year, Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation, called on India to engage with the Afghan Taliban and “directly discuss its concerns related to terrorism,” adding that Washington wants New Delhi to “take on a more active role in the Afghan peace process.”

Meanwhile India maintains categorically that it will not support a Taliban government in Kabul, as was clear from a May 4 joint EU-India press statement on Afghanistan.
While the Indian government is likely to be concerned about the rise in violence and the likelihood of pro-Pakistan Taliban’s return to Kabul, the country is yet to decide on the issue of engaging the Taliban. “The Indian government is likely concerned about what the withdrawal of American troops means for the political future of Afghanistan given Pakistan’s close relationship with the Afghan Taliban. A takeover by the Afghan Taliban, and Afghanistan hosting terrorist groups on its soil – especially India-focused jihadists – are India’s top concerns,” said Amira Jadoon, a professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

However, she said there is an opportunity for India here as well. “There is evidence that Pakistani influence on the Afghan Taliban has waned over the years, as the Afghan Taliban have sought new patrons, diversified their sources of support, and gained territorial control,” Jadoon said.
“If intra-Afghan talks are successful in setting up a power-sharing arrangement, then India’s relationship with the Afghan government can provide it with an opportunity to redefine its political and diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan,” added Jadoon.

It is possible that the Afghan Taliban will welcome rapprochement with India for three reasons. First, India’s engagement with the Taliban offers the group greater political and diplomatic legitimacy; second, it further diversifies its international linkages; and third, it fosters the organization’s independence and makes it less reliant on Pakistan’s support or demands.
“Establishing ties with Afghanistan’s most powerful non-state actor could put New Delhi in a better position to convey and negotiate its goals and interests in Afghanistan,” said Abbas.
That said, New Delhi has a long road ahead of it. Pakistan will likely oppose and undermine any Indian engagement with the Afghan Taliban. Amidst this highly volatile and uncertain situation, the possibility of a proxy war between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan is very much possible.

“All this said, if the peace process collapses after the U.S. withdrawal, India may find itself having to fall back on old policies by backing anti-Taliban units, such as the Northern Alliance,” said Kugelman.
“So there’s a good chance that Afghanistan could once again become an India-Pakistan proxy battleground. And the stepped-up violence entailed by this would mean that the Afghan people, as always, pay the biggest price,” he added.
Echoing Kugelman’s views, Abbas notes that India “is naturally worried given its strong relations with the prevailing political elite in Kabul. India has invested in Afghan reconstruction in a big way and will not be willing to allow it to be discarded.”
“It will put up a fight in support of its friends leading to prospects of an intense India-Pakistan proxy war in Afghanistan,” he added. “That will be a terrible outcome, especially for Afghans.”
You have reached the limit of 5 free articles a month. You have read 3 of your 5 free articles this month.

Posted for fair use

Treacherous Triangle: Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan After US Withdrawal

After the last American soldier departs Afghanistan in September, India and Pakistan will be left with some very difficult, unsavory, choices.

thediplomat.com

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

85 killed in Afghanistan girls' school bomb attack

Officials said most of those killed were schoolgirls. Some families were still searching hospitals for their children on Sunday.

www.wpsdlocal6.com

85 killed in Afghanistan girls' school bomb attack

• CNN
• May 10, 2021 Updated 4 hrs ago

(CNN) — The number of deaths in a bomb attack that targeted schoolgirls in Kabul on Saturday has risen to 85, Afghan officials told CNN on Monday.

Another 147 people were wounded in the attack in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school, said Danish Hedayat, head of media for the second vice president of Afghanistan.

A car bomb was detonated in the neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, and two more bombs exploded when students rushed out in panic.

There has been no official claim of responsibility yet. The Taliban has denied being behind Saturday evening's blasts.

Conflict is raging in Afghanistan, with security forces in daily combat with the Taliban, who have waged war to overthrow the foreign-backed government since they were ousted from power in Kabul in 2001.

Although the United States did not meet a May 1 withdrawal deadline agreed in talks with the Taliban last year, its military pullout has begun, with President Joe Biden announcing that all troops will be gone by Sept. 11.

But the foreign troop withdrawal has led to a surge in fighting between Afghan security forces and Taliban insurgents. Critics of the decision say the Islamist militants will make a grab for power and civilians live in fear of being subjected once more to brutal and oppressive Taliban rule.

Some of the girls 'could not be found'

The area where the blasts happened is home to a large community of Shiites from the Hazara ethnic minority, which has been targeted in the past by Islamic State, a Sunni militant group.

AD

Officials said most of those killed were schoolgirls. Some families were still searching hospitals for their children on Sunday.

"The first blast was powerful and happened so close to the children that some of them could not be found," an Afghan official, requesting anonymity, told Reuters.

On Sunday, civilians and policemen collected books and school bags strewn across a blood-stained road now busy with shoppers ahead of celebrations for Eid al-Fitr next week.

Bodies were still being collected from morgues as the first burials were conducted in the west of the city. Some families were still gathering Sunday outside hospitals to read names posted on the walls, and checking morgues.

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"The entire night we carried bodies of young girls and boys to a graveyard and prayed for everyone wounded in the attack," said Mohammed Reza Ali, who has been helping families of the victims at a private hospital. "Why not just kill all of us to put an end to this war?" he added.

Nekbakht, 18, was one of the pupils killed while studying at the school on Saturday. Her brother Mukhtar, 20, told CNN that the family lives close to the school and came rushing out when they heard a loud explosion — only to see another blast.

On Sunday the family buried Nekbakht near their house. "It was a tough day," Mukhtar said. "We are fed up with this situation. Every day we face terrible incidents — especially we Hazara people."

Another schoolgirl, 12-year-old Zahara, was also injured in her arm and head in the attack.


AD

Her uncle, Sadeq Baqhere, who lives a few hundred meters from the school, told CNN she was admitted to hospital for surgery and returned on Monday.

Baqhere described hospitals overwhelmed with hundreds of injured and dozens of killed patients. He said the family "totally blames the government" for not providing security for its people.

"Our enemies are stronger than before," he said, adding that the situation would continue to deteriorate as foreign forces left the country.

Mukhtar believes the situation will get worse as US troops exit Afghanistan.

AD

"We want everyone to enroll their children in schools, and show them that they cannot prevent us from education," he said of the perpetrators.

Security was intensified across Kabul after the attack, but authorities said they would not be able to provide protection to all schools, mosques and other public places.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Saturday blamed Taliban insurgents, but a spokesman for the group denied involvement and condemned any attacks on civilians.

Pope Francis called the attack an "inhuman act" in remarks to pilgrims in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City on Sunday.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned the attack and expressed his deepest sympathies to the victims' families and to the Afghan government and people.

On Sunday, the Taliban announced a three-day ceasefire through Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday observed at the end of Ramadan.

World powers weigh in

The United States condemned what it described as the "barbarous attack" at the school and called for an "immediate end to violence and the senseless targeting of innocent civilians."

"We will continue to support and partner with the people of Afghanistan, who are determined to see to it that the gains of the past two decades aren't erased," the statement from the US State Department said.

On Twitter, China's ambassador to Afghanistan, Wang Yu, said the abrupt US announcement of a complete withdrawal of forces had led to a succession of attacks throughout the country.

"China calls on foreign troops in Afghanistan to take into full account the security of people in the country and the region, pull out in a responsible manner and avoid inflicting more turmoil and suffering on the Afghan people," he said.

Condemning the killing of civilians, India's foreign ministry said the bombing represented an attack on the future of Afghanistan.

"The perpetrators clearly seek to destroy the painstaking and hard-won achievements that the Afghans have put in place over the last two decades," a statement said.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

About 1300 Items of U.S. Military Equipment Destroyed in Afghan Withdrawal

The Western official familiar with the packing up process said U.S. forces face a dilemma: Hand off largely defunct but intact equipment and risk having it fall into the hands of enemy forces, or trash them and anger Afghans.

www.newsweek.com

At Least 1300 Pieces of U.S. Military Equipment Destroyed Amid Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal
BY LAUREN GIELLA ON 5/10/21 AT 11:20 AM EDT

As the final American and NATO troops leave Afghanistan after a two-decade war, they are leaving behind tons of military equipment to be destroyed in scrap yards.

The U.S. military is breaking up the Bagram Air Base and anything that is not taken home or given to the Afghan military is being dismantled.

According to a statement from the U.S. military, about 1,300 pieces of equipment have been destroyed so far. One official told the Associated Press that there will be more destroyed before the final deadline for departure on September 11.

This process is done as a security measure to ensure that the equipment does not fall into the hands of militants. However, scrap sellers across Afghanistan see this as a waste.

"What they are doing is a betrayal of Afghans. They should leave," Baba Mir told the Associated Press. "Like they have destroyed this vehicle, they have destroyed us."

The Afghans feel abandoned to a legacy they blame at least in part on the Americans — a deeply corrupt U.S.-backed government and growing instability that could burst into a brutal new phase of civil war.

The bitterness of the scrapyard owners is only a small part of that, and it's based somewhat on self-interest: They feel they could have profited more from selling intact equipment.

It's been a common theme for the past two traumatic and destructive decades in which actions that the U.S. touted as necessary or beneficial only disillusioned Afghans who felt the repercussions.

At Bagram, northwest of the capital of Kabul, and other bases, U.S. forces are taking stock of equipment to be returned to America. Tens of thousands of metal containers, about 20 feet long, are being shipped out on C-17 cargo planes or by road through Pakistan and Central Asia. As of last week, 60 C-17s packed with equipment already had left Afghanistan.

Officials are being secretive about what stays and what goes. Most of what is being shipped home is sensitive equipment never intended to be left behind, according to U.S. and Western officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to talk freely about departing troops.

Other equipment, including helicopters, military vehicles, weapons and ammunition, will be handed over to Afghanistan's National Defense and Security Forces. Some bases will be given to them as well. One of those most recently handed over was the New Antonik base in Helmand province, where Taliban are said to control roughly 80% of the rural area.

Destined for the scrap heap are equipment and vehicles that can neither be repaired nor transferred to Afghanistan's security forces because of poor condition.

The practice is not new. The same was done in 2014, when thousands of troops withdrew as the U.S. and NATO handed Afghanistan's security over to Afghans. More than 387 million pounds (176 million kilograms) of scrap from destroyed equipment and vehicles was sold to Afghans for $46.5 million, a spokeswoman for the military's Defense Logistics Agency in Virginia said at the time.

Last month, around the time President Joe Biden announced that America was ending its "forever war," Mir paid nearly $40,000 for a container packed with 70 tons of trashed equipment.

He'll make money, he told The Associated Press, but it will be a fraction of what he could have made if they'd been left intact, even if they weren't in working condition.

The vehicle parts would have been sold to the legions of auto repair shops across Afghanistan, he said. That can't happen now. They've been reduced to mangled pieces of metal that Mir sells for a few thousand Afghanis.

Sadat, another junk dealer in Bagram who gave only one name, says other scrap yards around the country are crammed with ruined U.S. equipment.

"They left us nothing," he said. "They don't trust us. They have destroyed our country. They are giving us only destruction."

The Western official familiar with the packing up process said U.S. forces face a dilemma: Hand off largely defunct but intact equipment and risk having it fall into hands of enemy forces, or trash them and anger Afghans.

To make his point, he recounted a story: Not so long ago, U.S. forces discovered two Humvees that had found their way into enemy hands. They had been refitted and packed with explosives. U.S. troops destroyed the vehicles, and the incident reinforced a policy of trashing equipment.

But Afghan scrap yard owners and dozens of others who sifted through the junk in the yards wondered what dangers could have been posed by a treadmill that was torn apart, the long lengths of fire hose that were cut to pieces, or the bags once used to create large sand-barrier walls with their powerful mesh fabric now sliced and useless.

Dozens of tents cut and sliced sat in piles on the floor. Nearby were fuel bags and gutted generators, tank tracks and gnarled metal that looked like the undercarriage of a vehicle.

"They destroyed our country and now they are giving us their garbage," said gray-bearded Hajji Gul, another junk dealer. "What are we to do with this?"

READ MORE

• Afghan Government Calls for Permanent Truce with Taliban
• EU Reiterates That Aid to Afghanistan Dependent on 'Rebuilding the State'
• Will China Replace the U.S. in Afghanistan?
• Afghani Military Will Face 'Challenge' to Fight Taliban Alone, Austin Says

 

[jward]

Wars on the Brink
@WOTB07
3h


Today, Pakistan has categorically stated it will not provide air bases to the U.S after their troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

 

[jward]

other videos at source

FJ
@Natsecjeff
May 11


NEW: Taliban officially claims capturing Nerkh district HQ in Wardak including police HQ, intelligence (NDS) HQ and military base. Video circulated by Taliban show captured vehicles being paraded in the district center. Taliban also claim to have captured several soldiers.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1392127810819575810

View: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1392127810819575810?s=20

Collapse of Nerkh district of Wardak to the Taliban has been confirmed. #Afghanistan
Taliban tunnel bombing in Nerkh, Wardak. #Afghanistan

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1392644768350539780

View: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1392644768350539780?s=20

Another video from Nerkh, Wardak, published by pro-Taliban channels. #Afghanistan

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1392647078120235013

View: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1392647078120235013?s=20

ANDSF sent SOF reinforcements to Nerkh, Wardak, which were ambushed by the Taliban. Multiple casualties were reported by local sources. #Afghanistan

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1392685685119803392

View: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1392685685119803392?s=20

 

[Oscar Wilde]

Respectful of the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Afghanistan, participants exchanged views on the current status of the Afghanistan peace process and discussed ways to support the Afghan people’s desire for a just and lasting peace. To that end, participants:

should stfu and gtfo ... not another word!

O.W.

 

[Plain Jane]

Let's see if this truce holds.

Taliban, Afghan forces start Eid cease-fire – DW – 05/13/2021

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered security forces to respect the temporary ceasefire with the Taliban and called for a permanent end to hostilities.

www.dw.com

Taliban, Afghan forces start three-day Eid ceasefire
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered security forces to respect the temporary ceasefire with the Taliban and called for a permanent end to hostilities.




The ceasefire will give respite to Afghans celebrating the festival of Eid

A three-day ceasefire between the Taliban and Afghan forces came into effect on Thursday as Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the festival to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
The Taliban had announced the nationwide ceasefire last week. Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani, ordered security forces to respect the ceasefire and called for a permanent ceasefire.

Shortly before the ceasefire came into effect, the Taliban had captured Nirkh — a strategic district close to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.

Ceasefire an exercise to showcase Taliban's power
This is the fourth ceasefire in the last 20 years of conflict. It is expected to give respite to Afghan families celebrating Eid and allow people to visit relatives in Taliban-controlled areas.
According to experts, ceasefires in the past have been seen as an exercise by the Taliban to show that they have firm control over several parts of the country.

Violence has increased across Afghanistan this year amid plans by foreign troops to pull out. The United States is scheduled to pull out from Afghanistan in September.

Experts have said the withdrawal of foreign troops would leave Afghan civilians at the mercy of Islamists.

The Taliban are not the only threat to Afghan forces; militant groups such as the "Islamic State" (IS) have also gained a foothold.

"The Taliban are stronger than ever. IS and other terrorist groups have gained a foothold in Afghanistan. Therefore, the consequences of a hasty and irresponsible withdrawal from Afghanistan could be dangerous not only for Afghanistan but also for the region and the world," Raihana Azad, a member of the Afghan parliament, told DW.
am/sms (dpa, AFP)

 

[jward]

The U.S. Is Leaving Afghanistan? Tell That to the Contractors.
Lynzy Billing

9-11 minutes


American firms capitalize on the withdrawal, moving in with hundreds of new jobs.

Photo: Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images


The skies above Kabul have been abuzz over the past week with massive cargo planes flying out equipment amid the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some are flying out of Bagram Air Base, a monster American stronghold once home to 40,000 military personnel and civilian contractors at the peak of the war here. Today, there are 3,300 U.S. troops in the entire country, who, like their NATO colleagues, are all scheduled to leave by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Yet contractors who make up America’s largest force in Afghanistan are beefing up their presence just in time to plug the vacuum that will be left behind.

“So far, nothing is changing,” said a contractor working for a U.S. company based in Bagram. News from the Pentagon has yet to trickle down. “I am not aware of any changes to my job or of any contracts being passed to the Afghan government. These are American companies and these contracts will remain under private payroll.”

“I don’t have much to share because no one has told us shit,” says another. “If there is an endgame, no one has told it to us. It’s like the Pentagon is scrambling to build some sort of ‘get out’ plan as we are walking it.”

Contractors are a force both the U.S. and Afghan governments have become reliant on, and contracts in the country are big business for the U.S. Since 2002, the Pentagon has spent $107.9 billion on contracted services in Afghanistan, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis. The Department of Defense currently employs more than 16,000 contractors in Afghanistan, of whom 6,147 are U.S. citizens — more than double the remaining U.S. troops.

General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, has said contractors will come out as the U.S. military does, but many do not work for the military to begin with — rather, for other departments and a string of private entities. For instance, both the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are retaining contractors for ongoing programs outside Kabul, despite the withdrawal. “McKenzie was talking about U.S. contractors on DoD contracts but not necessarily the other agencies or other nationalities,” says another contractor at Bagram. “There are a lot of ‘if’s and potential exceptions in that line from him.”

But as some Americans leave, others are also arriving at Bagram, which senior Afghan military officials have confirmed will be the remaining hub for contractors. In April, 70 American security and defense firms started advertising more than 100 new security and intelligence positions, some with year contracts that go beyond September 11, 2021.

One such company is Triple Canopy, which is owned by Constellis, a company that also owns Academi, the most recent iteration of Erik Prince’s notorious Blackwater private-military contractors. Triple Canopy is hiring armed guards at Bagram to provide security for remaining U.S. personnel at four sites across the country. Raytheon Technologies is posting for logistics and intelligence analyst positions in Bagram. CACI and BAE Systems both posted jobs for signals intelligence specialists for an estimated term of 12 months. SOSi posted openings for intelligence analysts for yearlong deployments, where “the work environment could require 100 percent of time spent outdoors.” PAE, Inc., who scored nearly a billion dollars’ worth of contracts with the Pentagon over four years, is hiring for a contract for the State Department. Fluor Corporation is hiring for technicians, armed guards, and intelligence analysts working for both the U.S. and the private sector. Louis Berger, who built and maintains the country’s largest power plant, inside Bagram, is posting more than 20 new positions at the base.

“U.S. technical teams will continue to help Afghan forces in some sections beyond September 11, some from Bagram,” said a contractor with knowledge of the new jobs. The contractor has worked for a private agency at Bagram for 15 years and renewed his contract for three years in mid-April. Other contractors, he said, will be based outside the country “but visit from time to time,” in line with the Pentagon’s plans for “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism missions. Either way, he said, the “U.S. business portfolio in Afghanistan will continue.”

Post-withdrawal, the biggest issue will be force protection. The U.S. Embassy is most likely to house remaining CIA personnel and contractors, who could face security risks such as kidnapping. The Embassy will retain a modest military presence, as is standard, but contractors would probably rely on U.S. contractors for security. “Many international firms are likely to be leery of entrusting Afghan security forces without supplementary measures of their own,” said Andrew Watkins, senior analyst on Afghanistan for the International Crisis Group.

Like CIA personnel, contractors can be untraceable, and by design, they exist uncounted while they support the military with logistical roles such as transportation. Some have murkier roles in the shadowy world of proxy dark ops and mercenaries. Others help operate the billion-dollars’ worth of U.S. equipment and heavy weaponry within the Afghan military: Contractors provide all of the maintenance for the Afghan Air Force’s U.S.–made Black Hawk helicopters and C-130 cargo planes. The air traffic controllers at the country’s airports are international contractors, said Watkins, with no organic local labor pool of Afghans trained up for the job to draw from.

“So many contracts extend beyond the withdrawal deadline and between what U.S. officials say and what the immense needs are on the ground, something doesn’t add up and something’s got to give,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate at The Wilson Center. “Hence the likelihood that the contractor footprint will remain entrenched, to some degree.”

That demand could be filled by the billion-dollar industry of private military contractors, since they don’t count as “boots on the ground” but offer the same level and range of skills — all at a much lower political cost and with a dose of secrecy. The lines that differentiate such contractors from mercenaries are blurry: While private military contractors are considered legal, mercenaries are banned by international and U.S. laws, something which caused trouble for Prince when he was found to be training and constituting private armies in Iraq and Libya, and who had plans to privatize the war in Afghanistan.

“This is really sensitive territory, and these folks will need to carry out a very delicate dance with their activities to avoid running afoul of the law,” said Kugelman. “The administration wants to draw down and move on to other things, with any remaining security presence largely kept out of the public eye. The last thing it wants is another contractor controversy and will need to be very careful in all decisions about how to handle remaining contractors post-September.” It’s possible that some contracts could face early termination, but that could entail large penalties or legal hurdles for amending or breaking them.

Beyond maintaining the airports and bases, equipment and planes, both the military and contractors rely on a force of Afghan contractors and locals for labor, such as cooks, laundry staff, drivers, and translators — staff who will face the largest financial hit from the withdrawal. At the war’s height, it was estimated that more than 12,000 Afghans worked at Bagram. Today, about 1,700 remain. “After four years as a translator, I am worried I will be let go. All of us are worried. We saw this happen before and in what felt like a day, hundreds of us walked out of the bases for the last time,” says an Afghan contractor working at Bagram. “I was lucky, but I am not betting on keeping my job this time. I might have already seen my last paycheck. We are all preparing for the worst.”

Many U.S. contractors who have dedicated years of their lives on the ground in a war that has cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars are ready to get out. “If they offered me an early termination on my contract, I’d take it,” said a contractor at Bagram. “**** this place, I mean, good luck to the Afghan guys left here with the Talibs, to be honest, they deserve more, but all I can say is, they are ****ed.” For those still at Bagram, the U.S. war isn’t ending with a U.S. military exit just yet, and for the newcomers about to step foot in Bagram, a new, important, and perhaps more covert mission is about to begin.
U.S. Is Leaving Afghanistan? Tell That to the Contractors.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/u-s-contractors-in-afghanistan-are-hiring-amid-withdrawal.html?utm_source=tw

 

[Housecarl]

Wars on the Brink
@WOTB07
3h


Today, Pakistan has categorically stated it will not provide air bases to the U.S after their troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Well, no surprise there.....

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Biden’s Failed Afghanistan Policy

Buckle up for Biden’s failed Afghanistan policy. Shockwaves are about to begin and will continue until intervention is again required. If the goal was to create maximum instability, kill the peace option, inflame Afghans, incite Tal...

www.americanthinker.com

May 13, 2021
Biden’s Failed Afghanistan Policy
By Robert B. Charles


Buckle up for Biden’s failed Afghanistan policy. Shockwaves are about to begin and will continue until intervention is again required. If the goal was to create maximum instability, kill the peace option, inflame Afghans, incite Taliban, encourage ISIS and Al Qaida, empower China to take rare earths, and set up another 9/11 attack, Biden could not have done better. Unfortunately, those are not U.S. foreign policy goals.

Under Trump, the U.S. government agreed -- as leverage for peace between Afghans and Taliban, and to prevent a future terrorist state -- to pull U.S. troops by May 1, 2021. The goal was understood, the peace process underway, engagement full. Then came Biden.

Biden’s team pulled the plug on peace, disincentivizing all parties, and declared they were walking away -- a complete U.S. and NATO troop pullout -- by September 11, 2021. No conditions. Gone was the basis for peace, sustained tripwire engagement.

Afghanistan is not on a trajectory for internal peace without US and NATO engagement. Quite the reverse: Despite all blood and treasure spent, without peace Afghanistan will devolve into a terrorist haven.

The future of Afghanistan -- without three-way peace talks enforced by military and intelligence presence -- will be more unstable than what preceded it, which precipitated 9/11.

Specifically, the Taliban, al Qaida, and ISIS will vie for power. Terrorism will be resurgent, each actor moving into the vacuum. Weak Afghan leaders, with no backstop, will be storm-tossed. warlords and mass drug trafficking (heroin) will return and finance newly empowered terrorist organizations and ambitions.

All that was spent, lost, and given since that fateful day in 2001 when so many Americans died at the hands of Afghanistan-based terrorists, will be lost. While the honor of individual soldiers and nobility of aim remains, the objective three presidents had in sight -- peace -- will be forsaken.

That goal – a fragile, enforceable peace -- long sought, hard fought, nearing culmination -- was within reach. After Biden’s ill-conceived “9/11/21” troop pullout announcement, the goal is essentially beyond grasp, almost certainly beyond an abandoned, weak Afghan government.

The folly of this Biden act -- the notion that foreign policy can be centered on wishful war-weary thinking -- is that we will pay a terrible price for what amounts to political cowardice.

The price will be layered, immediate, and prolonged. Initially, delayed troop pullout will bring Taliban sniping, targeted attacks on U.S. and allied forces. Then an infection of instability will spread to the government. Next internecine warfare between terror groups, warlords, heroin traffickers, and hybrids will begin.

From that chaotic mess, three outcomes are predictable. First, civil order -- all the hope that attached to democratic forms, anti-corruption, rule of law, institution, and capacity building -- will all go away. That will be Casualty Number One of Biden’s abandonment.

Second, will be the return of terror bases in the country, followed by ambitions for new power projection against the West. The Taliban, al Qaida, ISIS, and peripheral groups -- including those with ties to Iran -- do not have our interests, or those of the Afghan people, at heart.

Third, China will capitalize on our absence to secure Afghan rare earths by direct force or bribery of those in control, once we are gone. Ironically, China already controls most of the world’s rare earths -- vital for semiconductors used from weapons systems to cars. This will give China a leg up.

A final irony – a bitter pill that shows Biden’s timidity, short-sightedness, or stupidity -- is the false idea that Biden can declare “peace in our time” (to quote Chamberlain) on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. How absurd, inapt, and pathetic. That date is burned in our minds – as a date we stand up to terror, not walk away from it. Why would we cower, retreat, and disengage on that date?

No, this whole Biden push to get out of Afghanistan without anything to show for heavy losses and our commitment to securing the future, the idea that we can look away from the world’s worst outposts, ignoring what abandonment means, hoping for the best -- is pure folly. Unfortunately, odds are we will pay dearly for disengaging -- as history teaches. Buckle up, prepare for shockwaves, and know t this poor decision comes with extended costs.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, a former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, a ten-year naval intelligence officer, author of Narcotics and Terrorism (2003), Eagles and Evergreens (2018), and is the National Spokesman for the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) a 2.3 million-strong, non-partisan group for Americans 50+.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

How China Views the U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan - War on the Rocks

On May 8, a bomb attack outside a school in Kabul killed at least 68 people. More than 160 people were injured. Although no one has claimed

warontherocks.com

HOW CHINA VIEWS THE U.S. WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN
YUN SUN
MAY 13, 2021
COMMENTARY

On May 8, a bomb attack outside a school in Kabul killed at least 68 people. More than 160 people were injured. Although no one has claimed responsibility, the bombing has cast a shadow over the future of Afghanistan as the U.S. withdraws its troops from the country by Sept. 11, 2021.

China’s reaction was quick and harsh. In a public statement the next day, the Foreign Ministry condemned the violent attack. However, it also made a heavy-handed accusation against the “sudden announcement by the U.S. of its complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to a series of bomb attacks in many locations in Afghanistan.” This biting comment raises the question: What are China’s views on the U.S. withdrawal?
Beijing has long criticized the American presence in Afghanistan and the prospect of a destabilizing withdrawal. The foreign policy community in China remains deeply skeptical about U.S. intentions in the region as it withdraws its troops and harbors serious concerns about the prospect of chaos and instability along its western frontier.

China’s Contradictory Attitude over the U.S. Troop Withdrawal
For the past 20 years, China has demonstrated a contradictory attitude toward the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. On the one hand, China has seen America’s war, presence, and “manipulation” or “distortion” of Afghan politics as the cause of instability. In Beijing’s view, the war has long deviated from its original goal of counter-terrorism and morphed into a plan to control the heart of Eurasia and China’s backyard. Therefore, across the board, the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has been portrayed in a highly negative light and as a source of regional instability and concern.

Ironically enough, China holds an equally if not more critical attitude toward the U.S. troop withdrawal. Just as it did with the Foreign Ministry’s statement after the bombing on May 8, China causally attributes the deterioration of Afghanistan’s security to the U.S.-announced plan of troop withdrawal and blames Washington for its “irresponsible” behavior. China rarely misses an opportunity to blame the United States for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan — especially in its urban areas — and the potential explosion of a civil war.

The contradictory attitude of China toward the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan demonstrates Beijing’s multifaceted calculations. China would like to see the U.S. bogged down and bled out in “the longest war in American history” as the war erodes U.S. national wealth and moral superiority in the region and across the globe. Indeed, China has consistently seen the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as godsends that blessed China with a golden “window of strategic opportunity” to develop its strength without alarming the United States after 2001. Thus, the U.S. war in Afghanistan is viewed with both negativity and schadenfreude in China.

China — which was looking to inject some positivity into U.S.-Chinese relations — has hoped that Afghanistan could be an area of cooperation. In fact, the U.S. and China have maintained an official channel of consultation on Afghanistan in the past years. In addition, Beijing believed it could use “issues of shared concern”, including Afghanistan to neutralize America’s “hostile” policy toward China through “issue linkage” — in other words, it could offer cooperation in exchange for U.S. concessions in other areas. According to Chinese analysts I spoke with in Track II meetings in the past several months, China prepared for potential American “asks” at the very beginning of the Biden administration, including on North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, and climate change. Chinese interlocutors were very clear that Beijing was prepared to work with Washington if the new administration was willing to be more accommodating of China’s policies in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Tibet. However, the potential for cooperation dimmed significantly after the contentious bilateral meeting in March in Alaska between National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Chinese Politburo member Yang Jiechi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Nevertheless, Beijing still hopes that Washington will turn to China for assistance (and probably will eagerly respond if it does).

Beijing’s Skepticism and Cynicism: What Is America Withdrawing?
China’s narrative about the U.S. withdrawal, one striking feature is a consistent and persistent skepticism of the U.S. withdrawal. The essential question remains: What precisely is the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan? From China’s perspective, even if the U.S. withdraws its formal military forces, it will not likely withdraw its security presence or, more importantly, its influence as represented by private security forces, defense contractors, and local partners. Currently, there are 2,500 American troops in Afghanistan — 3,300 if special forces are also included. Such a small number of troops is not in a position to play a determining military role on the battlefield. Instead, the U.S. presence projects a political and symbolic message that the U.S. remains involved and committed. Therefore, the withdrawal of troops is only symbolic as well.

Chinese analysts have identified multiple ways that the U.S. will continue to exert influence. China believes the United States will maintain a sizable contingent of “unofficial” U.S. security personnel. In addition, Washington will continue to exert influence in Kabul via its extensive political networks and partnerships. The United States has established a sophisticated and comprehensive network of partnerships, relationships, and patron-client arrangements with political elites in Afghanistan. These relationships will continue to play an important role in the politics of the country. As the U.S. tries to coordinate with allies and partners in South Asia, Beijing clearly sees an attempt by the United States to retain its central position in the future arrangement regarding the country.

For China, the troop withdrawal announced by President Joe Biden is aimed at closing “a humiliating chapter” in U.S. politics and absolving the United States from its material and moral responsibility to Afghanistan without having to abandon practical U.S. influence or agenda-setting on the ground. It will liberate Washington from the symbolic and political burden of its “longest war” but give the U.S. operational freedom with less public scrutiny and reputational concern. From China’s perspective, this approach reduces America’s political, financial, and reputational liability but maintains almost the same benefits of influencing the situation inside Afghanistan.

Challenges and Opportunities
This is certainly not considered good news in China. Once the U.S. absolves itself from the material and moral responsibilities to Afghanistan, its approach to the country could become more flexible, pragmatic, and tactical in serving a broader agenda. China and the need to focus on great-power competition appears to have factored significantly into the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. Blinken’s recent comment that the United States now has to focus its energy and resources on other very important items, including its relationship with China, serves as a solid confirmation to China that the U.S. strategic retrenchment from Afghanistan will free up its capability to compete more vigorously with China.

This has significant implications for China on several levels. A less distracted United States is not seen as a blessing by Beijing. And it also means that the U.S. will not easily abandon its leverage and influence in Afghanistan even just to counter China’s potential role. What is possibly more critical and alarming for China is that once the U.S. formally ends its war in Afghanistan, it could once again use the country for tactical purposes in the region — and China remains fully convinced, no matter how erroneously, that it was the United States that trained, financed, and armed Osama bin Laden and his supporters during the Soviet occupation to counter Moscow’s expanding influence. While China may never be so bold as to invade Afghanistan, such American capabilities have serious implications for China’s homeland security in Xinjiang and beyond. Within the framework of U.S.-China great-power competition, the prospect of Afghanistan becoming a battlefield for not only political influence but also security competition has grown significantly.

What Will China Do?
China’s policy community appears to diverge on whether the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan presents more challenges or opportunities for China in the region. First of all, most Chinese analysts seem to be pessimistic about the outlook for Afghan politics after the withdrawal. In their view, the government of Ashraf Ghani doesn’t stand much of a chance of surviving the power struggle with the Taliban in the years, if not months, to come. But the process of that power contest could easily drag the country back to a civil war, leaving China vulnerable to its spillover effects, including that of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism. In this sense, there is a shared view that Afghanistan will face an intense period of instability after the United States leaves, and the region, including China, will need to deal with the mess left behind.

But compared to a year ago, China has grown increasingly resigned to the prospect of instability in Afghanistan after the withdrawal. China has been actively and vigorously laying the groundwork for what appears to be an inevitable fallout. The China-Afghanistan-Pakistan foreign minister/vice foreign minister dialogue mechanism has been ongoing since 2017. It has emerged as a primary channel for China to advance strategic dialogue, counter-terrorism security consultations, and cooperation dialogues among the three sides. China has consistently participated in the Istanbul Process and has remained engaged in negotiations in Doha and Moscow. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit last November, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of the Afghanistan Contact Group in the peace and post-conflict reconstruction process in Afghanistan.

Ideally, China would like to see a transitional government in Afghanistan followed by a general election to create a coalition government that encompasses both the current Ghani administration and the Afghan Taliban. This would constitute the default definition of “Afghan-led, -owned, and -controlled.” In the worst-case scenario that an organic political reconciliation fails and that all the regional frameworks are unable to bring about a solution, China would likely reach out to the United Nations, including asking for a potential U.N. intervention, to stabilize Afghanistan. The recent message from Chinese analysts about China potentially sending peacekeepers to Afghanistan “under the terms of U.N. Charter if the security situation in the South Asian country poses a threat to Xinjiang after American troops pull out” is a signal and a testing of the waters in this regard.
It is entirely conceivable that China’s own security presence along the border — and even inside Afghanistan under the banner of bilateral cooperation — will intensify. In recent years, evidence of these activities include China helping Afghanistan patrol the Wakhan Corridor and the widely reported arrest of a Chinese intelligence network in Afghanistan this past January.

China still holds out hope that economic development could stabilize Afghanistan. Although it’s realistic about the security situation, China would like to incorporate Afghanistan into the Belt and Road Initiative, or even make it an organic addition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. This proposal was first made in 2017 and in the past year has seen “encouraging signs” as Afghanistan re-export trade through the Gwadar port in Pakistan commenced in 2020. China understands that economic development in Afghanistan and regional integration will remain challenging after the U.S. withdraws. Nevertheless, this is a policy objective that Beijing will likely continue to pursue.

China’s geo-economic interests in Afghanistan are consistent with Pakistan’s aspiration to turn itself into a regional trade hub. And Chinese support of that reflects Beijing’s continued conviction that Pakistan has an essential role to play in the stabilization of Afghanistan upon the withdrawal of troops by the United States. China is perfectly aware of how Pakistan exaggerates its control of the situation and plays competing sides of the conflict to advance its own interests. However, from China’s perspective, Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan — even if exaggerated — is a political reality that cannot be ignored. Moreover, Chinese and Pakistani objectives in Afghanistan are aligned, if not identical. And that is particularly true in terms of countering India’s influence.

Looking Ahead
Broadly speaking, China’s reaction to American troops withdrawal from Afghanistan is complicated. In the short term, Beijing is concerned that without the U.S. military, Afghanistan will soon descend into chaos and will inevitably serve as a haven for Islamic extremism. But in the long run, the Chinese policy community remains deeply skeptical of U.S. intentions, and it assumes the United States will retain and use its influence in Afghanistan to advance its interests. Moreover, Beijing fears that the United States — freed from its on-the-ground military commitment in Afghanistan — will now use the country to undermine China’s regional position and key interests.

BECOME A MEMBER

Yun Sun is the director of the China Program and co-director of East Asia Program at the Stimson Center.

CORRECTION: A previous version of the article stated that China considered the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq as a “window of strategic opportunity” to develop its strength without alarming the United States after 2011. This was incorrect. The “window of opportunity” began in 2001, not 2011.

 

[jward]

"old" but included as capturing part o what's being thrown into the soup pot...

Real-World Options for Afghanistan
Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy

36-46 minutes


May 10, 2021
It is time for the U.S. to face its real-world options in Afghanistan and to do so without false optimism or “spin.” The U.S. has not lost the war in a military situation, but it now faces a situation where there is little value in continuing it and equally little chance of creating a meaningful peace settlement or a stable peace.
The U.S. and its allies have already chosen that the most important option is protecting its withdrawal, and Afghanistan risks becoming a new case in point. They have sent in additional hundred troops to protect withdrawing units, and the U.S. has deployed additional combat aircraft to the region as well.
The key questions that affect the future, however, are not protecting the withdrawal, but what role – if any – the U.S. will play in:

• Dealing with the fact that the fighting between the Taliban and Afghan central government continues, and Taliban forces continue to make gains in many areas against the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF).
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• Tying final withdrawal to the success of the peace process in actually reaching some form of peace settlement.
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• Ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a center for Al Qaeda, Taliban, or other extremist attacks on the U.S. and potentially its allies.
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• Guaranteeing a peace agreement if the Taliban violates it or resumes the conflict.
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• Continuing to train and protect the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) after the new deadline for U.S. and allied withdrawal on September 11, 2021.

So far, the answers fall short of any practical action. U.S. withdrawals now border on being unconditional and are occurring regardless of the ongoing fighting between the central government and the Taliban, the failure to define any real-world options for a viable peace agreement, and even whether a peace agreement is reached and put into force. Official reassurances lack credibility, but so do most outside proposals for any practical effort to create a real peace.
The strategic arguments for remaining in Afghanistan to either enforce a peace or support the central government and the ANDSF also ignore the scale of the military and civil failures of the Afghan government and forces. They exaggerate the threat that Afghanistan will become a center of extremist violence as well as the real options for some continuing some form of internal or external support of the ANDSF that will actually work.

The reason for continuing U.S. military support is also generally defined as a terrorist or extremist threat to the U.S., but it is far from clear that a post-withdrawal Afghanistan will be a great threat to the U.S. or major U.S. strategic interest than the threat of extremism in many other fragile or failed states. Most such movements focus on taking control of largely Islamic countries, and no clear policy has been stated as to what U.S. response – if any – would occur if an extremist or Taliban attack took place on a neighboring state.

There has, however, been no official definition of what kind of post-withdrawal Taliban support of extremism, terrorism, or action outside Afghanistan would trigger a U.S. or NATO response. The current policy seems to be a plan for U.S. use of precision air strikes, but this has not been stated officially, and some U.S. official statements are ambiguous.
There has been no practical official discussion of what kind of peace settlement would or would not be acceptable to the U.S., of any key U.S. terms for such a settlement, of what will happen if September 11th arrives without a settlement, of meaningful U.S. security guarantees for a peace settlement, or of any post-withdrawal U.S. action to protect the Afghan central government if no formal peace agreement is reached or violated.

Some U.S. policy makers and senior military officers do advocate a continuing U.S. military role. Such proposals include the use of U.S. airpower and IS&R forces from outside Afghanistan and/or the option of retaining a small cadre of U.S. train and assist forces– sometimes arbitrarily defined as 4,000 personnel. Others include providing contractors to support the ANDSF in country, and still others involved creating some kind of rapid U.S. intervention capability. So far, however, major withdrawals continue, and the credibility of such options diminishes with each passing week.

The end result has failed to tie current U.S. and allied withdrawals to any clear goals or degree of conditionality. They have failed to set any clear goals for a peace process, an actual peace, or its enforcement. They have failed to guarantee a peace agreement if one is reached, and they have focused on what may well be an unrealistic threat that the key post withdrawal threat is an extremist attack on the U.S. or the West.

The Best Taliban Pre-Withdrawal Strategy Is the Present War of Attrition
The reality is that the current “peace process” is actually an ongoing civil war between the Taliban and the Afghan central government, and one that favors the Taliban. U.S. policy fails to honestly address the fact that the February 2021 peace agreement has not produced a ceasefire and that the Taliban has already made significant military gains while the U.S. and its allies reduce their forces and provide steadily less support.
As a result, the main impact of the February agreement has been to minimize Taliban attacks on U.S. and NATO forces as well as to focus them on fighting a carefully managed war of attrition against the Afghan central government and ANDSF forces that cannot stand on their own.

So far, the Taliban has good reasons to let the peace process and ongoing withdrawals proceed and then to exploit the post-withdrawal situation as best it can. It can make its safest gains by keeping up a constant pace of lower level attacks that weaken the ANDSF and Ghani government by using such attacks and political pressure to divide the government and opposition power brokers. It can also use these attacks to keep up pressure on the U.S. to withdraw by being careful not to threaten the U.S. or its allies at levels that might lead it to halt its withdrawals.

There are no guarantees that the Taliban will continue to show such restraint, and it might seek to win some cosmetic battles against the U.S. before final U.S. and NATO withdrawal. The Taliban may also miscalculate and seek to win control of major population centers by force or react with extreme force based on an ideological basis. Moreover, no one can predict the future level of cohesion, restraint, or effectiveness that the Taliban will show.
So far, however, the Taliban has kept its attacks on U.S. and allied forces at a minimum, and it seems uncertain that the U.S. will see more than sporadic clashes between the U.S. and the Taliban before a full U.S. withdrawal by September 11, 2021. Here, the timing of an accelerating U.S. withdrawal may present major problems.

The Taliban may only limit its attacks on the central government and the ANDSF until so many U.S. and NATO forces and facilities have left that any return of outside forces seems improbable even if the Taliban steps up its attacks and seizes some provincial capitals. This is a level of reductions which current U.S. plans indicate may be reached by mid-July, although some reports indicate that NATO allies have asked the U.S. to slow its pace to give them more time and security in making their withdrawals.
Some of the Taliban’s actions since March 2021 also indicate that they may seek such major victories or even try to create some kind of formal Taliban government in parts of the country. The Taliban launched serious attacks on the government and the ANDSF in the South in Lashkar Gah in Helmand province in April. It seized two districts in Baghlan in the North in May, and then the Dahla Dam in Southern Kandahar.1

More broadly, the Taliban has steadily isolated smaller army and police posts, and it has made gains in Zabul, Ghazni, Logar, and Farah – and done so with steadily dropping U.S. response in the form of air strikes and varying limited response from the Afghan Air Force.2 The Taliban also has made steady gains in other rural areas, in its efforts to isolate cities and population centers, in its attacks on officials and symbols like girls’ schools, and in its targeted attacks in the capitol in Kabul.3
An estimate by Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal in early May estimated that the Taliban already controlled 78 out Afghanistan’s 407 districts, and it is actively fighting the central government in another 193.4 It also has steadily expanded its targeted attacks in Kabul and increased its checkpoints and control over most of Afghanistan’s major roads. It may now go on to try to capture some provincial and district capitals to increase the pressure on the Afghan government and the ANDSF.

The Taliban is making these steady gains without having to actually capture and hold major towns and cities and without having to deal with the costs of protecting and serving their populations. The Taliban also has no clear reason to force a crisis with the U.S. and its NATO and other allies before they have reduced their forces to levels which make it extremely difficult or impossible to return.
This scarcely, however, creates any incentive for the Taliban to accept a real ceasefire, much less a real peace. The Taliban has good reasons to continue fighting its present war of attrition against the Ghani government and the ANDSF. It can steadily weaken the central government and the ANDSF without conducting major attacks on U.S. and NATO allied forces or on their bases in ways that might alter their pace of withdrawal. Moreover, the Taliban continues sporadic attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in ways that demonstrate its power, and then it simply accepts any limited losses to U.S. airstrikes.

It is also far from clear that more intense U.S. air attacks on Taliban forces will have any decisive effects. The loss of limited numbers of Taliban fighters as well as some key Taliban leaders and facilities will not offset the pace of their victories in the countryside or enable the central government to survive.
The Taliban has also probably already reached the point where keeping some form of limited U.S. train and assist presence in Afghanistan and limited outside U.S. use of airpower would have little effect. The Taliban can probably ride out limited U.S. training and support of the ANDSF from outside Afghanistan, as well as ride out any limited effort to continue the U.S. presence in Afghanistan – particularly if the remaining U.S. effort is the near-token 4,000 personnel referred to in many proposals and one that does not involve direct forward support of key Afghan units in combat.

As is discussed shortly, the latest reports to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), and the Lead Inspector General of the Department of Defense (LIG) all seem to make it make it clear that outside training, small U.S. and allied cadres, and bombing cannot ensure the survival of forces that cannot service and maintain its key combat equipment and combat aircraft, and effectively support even its more elite combat units in the field.

Exploiting the Fact That a Withdrawal Process Is Not a Peace Process
The Taliban has also shown it can exploit the peace process – or lack of it. In fact, the peace process seems to have become a largely political struggle to avoid any peace agreement that could strengthen the central government relative to the Taliban as well as a following struggle over whether – and how – a peace agreement is actually implemented.
So far, the only “peace” in the peace process consists largely of the U.S. and NATO being able to leave without the Taliban launching serious attacks on their departing forces or affecting the speed with which the U.S. and its allies are now closing bases, removing or destroying their equipment, and reducing support capabilities outside Afghanistan.

The Taliban has a growing advantage in such a political and diplomatic struggle, and it would even maintain an advantage if it did eventually seem to agree to a shell of the same peace that it never really took seriously. The Ghani government remains divided, weak, and ineffective. The U.S. is not maintaining the military leverage needed to force the Taliban to accept a peace settlement it does not want. It is steadily losing any military options that could coerce the Taliban into signing an effective agreement – and actually implement it once U.S. and NATO forces are withdrawn. Moreover, it is far from clear that any credible amount of U.S. forces can now save the current central government from its own military and civil failures.

Moreover, the U.S. has so far only offered the vaguest security guarantees and promises of future military or civil aid. No senior U.S. official has explicitly stated that the U.S. would even try to intervene to deal with major violations of a peace agreement if there ever is one and it is specific enough to matter; if the Afghan central government began to lose decisively once U.S. and allied forces are actually gone; if the Taliban launched a coup and took over; or if the country fragments into Taliban, central government, ethnic/power broker, or new extremist factions – the violent or de facto equivalent of federalism.
There may be more merit in the U.S. offering enough civil aid to help push for the Taliban into making some compromises on a peace settlement. However, it is far from clear that the U.S. can make such offers politically or that they would do much more than lead the Taliban into making cosmetic changes in accepting an agreement or in its post withdrawal behavior.

Dealing with a Hollow Peace
Moreover, there is all too great of a prospect that U.S. and allied withdrawal will take place without a peace settlement or on the basis that it is more than a reassuring pile of scrap paper. Even if any such agreement seems to be more serious and does try to define what actually comes next in meaningful terms, this also does not mean it will be implemented with real guarantees and some kind of enforcement effort.

Past peacemaking efforts tend to have many of the same grimly repetitive lessons as actual warfighting. History warns that many seemingly serious peace efforts failed or ended in transforming the nature and process of conflict. All too often, actual implementation of a peace agreement ended in becoming war by other means.
The resulting power struggles change the lead political and military figures, the nature of key factions on each side, and the nature of a country’s government. They open up a whole new series of political battles, power struggles, and kinds of fighting. This seems particularly likely to be the case in Afghanistan, where U.S. withdrawal is not only proceeding without a peace, but without any real peace process.

In fact, Afghanistan may already have become a case in point. The U.S. passed its original deadline for total withdrawal by May 1, 2021 without any substantive meeting taking place between the Afghan central government and the Taliban. No one has defined what a peace will be or for what new form of national, provincial, district, and urban political system and government could emerge.
There has been vague talk about new Afghan elections, but largely in ways that have exposed the deep divisions in the Afghan central government without even involving the Taliban. In short, there is zero proven progress for the entire year of the original peace process, and the new deadline for U.S. withdrawal is now September 11, 2021 – less than five months away.

The Ghani government clearly remains deeply divided at the top and in the ways that it approaches peace negotiations and the Taliban. The central government does not control many rural areas and district governments; is extremely corrupt; is highly dysfunctional; and depends almost completely on outside aid from the U.S. to function, subsidize its civil role, and fund the ANDSF.
There has been no planning for a new justice system and police force to define the legal status and nature of an “Islamic” state or to plan how the economy will function. There is no evidence of a plan for how the security forces will be reshaped and potentially include the Taliban or on any other practical aspect of a working peace.

 

[jward]

continued

How Long Can Afghan Forces Survive Without the Past Levels of U.S. and NATO Aid
The uncertain ability of the ANDSF to survive U.S. and NATO withdrawal is disguised by favorable official spin about success in the ANDSF force development process, reporting on meaningless data on independent operations,” and the classification of data that might reveal the full extent of Afghan weaknesses.5

This makes it difficult to estimate how bad things will get for the ANDSF as the last remnants of U.S. and allied forces disappear. The main official U.S. exception has been SIGAR. And, the SIGAR Quarterly Report to Congress for the first quarter of 2021 provides some key indications that many critical aspects of the Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan Air Force (AAF), and Afghan National Police (ANP) forces have left them all too weak and that key force improvements are well behind schedule.
Some warning signals did emerge in the SIGAR report, however, that came all too close to warning about the problems in the ANDSF before their collapse, and they were assessments made before the September 11th deadline was imposed and major reduction of contractors were accelerated:6

DOD contractors provide maintenance services for ANDSF ground vehicles and train ANDSF technicians under the 2018 National Maintenance Strategy-Ground Vehicle Support (NMS-GVS) contract. The contractors also develop ANA and ANP maintenance capacity through a work-share plan intended to have the ANA and ANP performing 90% and 65%, respectively, of their maintenance by the end of the five-year contract in 2023….

CSTC-A reported this quarter that although the ANDSF dramatically improved its share of the work, it is still falling well below benchmarks for its share of the maintenance work orders they—rather than contractors—are supposed to perform. According to CSTC-A, the ANA filled on average just over 46% of maintenance work orders from January through March 2021, which more than doubled the average from last quarter (20%). Their goal for the period, however, was to complete 80% of maintenance work orders. Similarly, the ANP filled an average of more than 26% of maintenance work orders during this same time period, more than double last quarter’s 12%, but also well below its 35% goal.

… most AAF airframes had nowhere near the number of qualified personnel (instructor pilots, copilots, mission system operators, etc.) needed to man the aircrew positions each airframe requires. Only the C-130 had more than half of its aircrew positions filled (four of seven) with the required number of qualified personnel. The AC-208 fared worst with only two of seven positions filled with the required number of qualified personnel (p. 78).
… the AAF is limited in the amount of aircrew it can train due to the number of personnel in its training pipeline, a lack of qualified pilot candidates, and COVID-19 impacts throughout Afghanistan. The latter issue has caused a “bubble” of pilots who received aircraft training but have not been able to complete mission training. Additionally, they said that trained pilots have not had sufficient time to gain experience to qualify them as instructor and evaluator pilots (p. 79).

… For its ongoing Police in Conflict report, SIGAR found that after two decades of international support, Afghanistan currently has a small number of highly trained specialized police forces that have emerged under the tutelage of international advisors. At the same time, the Afghan government still lacks a police force that can legitimately enforce the rule of law on a day-to-day basis. The Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP), responsible for this civilian policing mission, are largely illiterate and poorly trained. Further, many AUP are considered abusive, predatory, and corrupt (p. 82).

It is equally important to note just how large the U.S. and NATO force levels supporting the ANDSF still were during the last quarter of 2020 that is covered in the SIGAR report and before President Biden set a new September deadline for U.S. withdrawals.

While U.S. military spokespersons implied the ANDSF only had the support of some 2,500 U.S. troops in April 2021, SIGAR reported that the full level of U.S. and NATO support was close to ten times higher. It reported that there were “approximately 2,500 U.S. service members and 7,092 non-U.S. Coalition forces,” and noted that,7

As of April 2021, there are 16,832 DOD contractor personnel supporting agency operations in Afghanistan. This includes 6,147 U.S. citizens, 6,399 third-country nationals, and 4,286 Afghan nationals. These contractors continue to provide an array of functions, including logistics and maintenance support and training for ANDSF ground vehicles and aircraft, security, base support, and transportation services… Although General McKenzie testified to Congress on April 20 that all U.S. defense contractors will also depart Afghanistan as part of the withdrawal, it is unclear who, if anyone, will replace them or perform their work after their withdrawal…

The same SIGAR Quarterly Report to Congress provided indicators that the ANDSF might not survive any post U.S. withdrawal fighting against the Taliban if the Taliban attempted a military takeover. The SIGAR Report warned that,8

The complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and U.S. defense contractors from Afghanistan will test whether the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) can sustain themselves and defend the Afghan government without direct U.S. and Coalition military support. Defense officials expressed concern about these issues throughout the quarter.

…On February 20, 2021, General Kenneth F. McKenzie, in a meeting with Pakistani officials, warned that an early U.S. pullout could risk the collapse of the Afghan government… On March 13, the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, General Austin Scott Miller, warned that a U.S. withdrawal would leave the Afghan security forces without vital support, especially for its air force, which relies on contractors to maintain its planes and helicopters. “When you start talking about removing our presence ... certain things like air, air support, and maintenance of that air support become more and more problematic,” he added.

…As recently as February 20, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that an end to the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan must be linked to a reduction in Taliban attacks. “The violence must decrease now,” he said, stressing that the level of violence was too high in Afghanistan and that more progress was needed in the Afghan peace negotiations…

While violence is typically low in Afghanistan in the first quarter of the calendar year (January–March), enemy-initiated attacks from January 1 to March 31, 2021, increased nearly 37% compared to the same quarter last year… Both NATO Resolute Support (RS) and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also recorded strikingly high civilian casualties during January–March 2021, compared to the same period last year…

Removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan also impacts the United States’ primary mission there—to ensure that terrorists in the country cannot threaten the U.S. homeland. In a hearing on April 14, CIA Director William Burns told lawmakers, “Our ability to keep that threat in Afghanistan in check ... has benefitted greatly from the presence of U.S. and Coalition militaries on the ground.” He added, “When the time comes for the U.S. military to with- draw, the U.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish. ... That is simply a fact.” Burns said the CIA will “retain a suite of capabilities” in Afghanistan once troops leave, with some already in place and others to be developed, to help provide threat warnings to U.S. officials.

…The Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, issued April 9, 2021, states that prospects for a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban “will remain low during the next year,” and that “the Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the Coalition withdraws support.” The assessment also concludes that the ANDSF “continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.”

Dealing with Terrorist and Extremist Threat
The U.S. may not face any serious post-withdrawal Afghan support of extremist threats to the United States, even if the Taliban does take over. It is all too true that the Taliban continues to talk to the remnants of Al Qaeda, as do elements of the Pakistani military. It is unclear, however, that these remnants of Al Qaeda focus on attacks on the U.S., and the Taliban does seem to oppose ISIS. It is also unclear that the Taliban will host other extremist movements that focus on attacking the U.S. or states outside the region.

It is unclear that any key element of the Taliban has an interest in such attacks on the United States. Even Al Qaeda now focuses largely on objectives inside Islamic countries, and it is unclear that some other major extremist force will emerge in Afghanistan that do not focus on regional threats and on taking over vulnerable, largely Islamic states.

At the same time, one needs to be careful about the assumption that the U.S. can defeat any such threats by launching precision air and missile strikes against extremist targets. It is unclear that the forces in Afghanistan involved in any small covert attacks on the U.S. will be easy to target and cripple if they do emerge. The Taliban is unlikely to tolerate major training camps and facilities for extremist forces, and any such strikes will present major problems for the U.S. if the extremist threat consists of scattered small facilities and small expert cadres that shelter among the Afghan population.
A continuing U.S. ability to target and kill some key Taliban leaders and fighters also does not mean that the risk of such strikes will deter future Taliban willingness to let small, extremist strike groups conduct well-focused, well-planned strikes on U.S. or allied territory, especially if such groups in Afghanistan sponsor attacks on the U.S. or it strategic partner by strike units or cadres based in other countries.

At the same time, it does seem more likely that the Taliban, and/or any independent extremist groups, will focus largely on Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, and the other “-Stans.” In any case, it is far from clear that keeping small amounts of U.S. military and intelligence cadres in Afghanistan – or U.S. air forces outside Afghanistan – will be able to offer decisive help.

The Civil Realities that Undermine the Afghan Central Government and Change the Future Nature of the Struggle
The civil realities in Afghanistan present another – and equally critical – set of problems. In many ways, the Afghan central government is as much a threat to a successful peace as the Taliban. Civil issues are less important when a conflict has a clear winner that either maintains or inherits an existing system that is workable on a national basis. However, this is not the case in Afghanistan.

Worse, media reporting – and reporting by the IMF; World Bank; UN; Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR); and the Lead Inspector Generals (LIG) of DoD, State, and USAID – make it all too clear that the failures of the current central government do pose a major threat to the Afghan people.

Such reports show that the central government is extremely corrupt and has failed to bring employment and decent living conditions. They also show that many Afghans do fear the Taliban’s extreme conservatism and interpretation of Islam. Others do not, and Afghans in rural areas turn to the Taliban for justice – and they see no difference between paying off the Taliban and paying off the central government.9

The central government has issued many civil reform plans since 2001, but development has failed, and the government gets some 60% of its civil and security revenues from outside aid. More broadly, Afghanistan is effectively bankrupt as a result of Covid-19, failed past reform efforts, war, and major population increases in spite of decades of war.

Afghanistan has seen its percentage of the population below the poverty level of income increase from a low of around 39% to well over 65%.10 The CIA World Factbook estimates that 13.2 million Afghans have severe food insecurity, 8.5 million of which live in a humanitarian crisis, and 4.3 million of which live under emergency conditions.
Afghanistan is also a nation under acute population pressure and has massive unemployment. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population has grown from 8.3 million in 1950 to 22.6 million in 2001, to 37.5 million in 2021. It projects it will be 45.5 million in 2030 and 62.3 million in 2050.11

Any real peace will have to cope with an extremely young population (41% is 14 years of age or younger) that is desperate for real jobs and where youth unemployment was well over 18% even before Covid-19. Afghanistan has no major sector of economic growth other than drug exports, and it now is 26% urbanized with the rate rising at 3.3% a year. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, imports total some ten times the value of exports.

The World Bank Overview for Afghanistan cannot as of yet take full account of the impact of the Covid-19 crisis, but it summarized the state of the Afghan economy on March 30, 2021 as follows:12

Afghanistan’s economy is shaped by fragility and aid dependence. The private sector is extremely narrow, with employment concentrated in low-productivity agriculture (44 percent of the total workforce works in agriculture and 60 percent of households derive some income from agriculture). Private sector development and diversification is constrained by insecurity, political instability, weak institutions, inadequate infrastructure, widespread corruption, and a difficult business environment (Afghanistan was ranked 173rd of 190 countries in the 2020 Doing Business Survey). Weak institutions and property rights constrain financial inclusion and access to finance, with credit to the private sector equal to only three percent of GDP. Weak competitiveness drives a structural trade deficit, equal to around 30 percent of GDP, financed almost entirely from grant inflows. Grants continue to finance around 75 percent of public spending. Security expenditures (national security and police) are high at around 28 percent of GDP in 2019, compared to the low-income country average of around three percent of GDP, driving total public spending of around 57 percent of GDP. The illicit economy accounts for a significant share of production, exports, and employment, and includes opium production, smuggling, and illegal mining.

… A range of factors have since slowed economic and social progress, with the economy growing by only 2.5 percent per annum between 2015-2020, and gains against development indicators slowing or – in some cases – reversing. Aid flows decreased from around 100 percent of GDP in 2009 to 42.9 percent of GDP in 2020 (with the number of international troops declining from more than 130,000 in 2011, to around 15,000 by end-2014, to around 10,000 today). Declining grants led to a protracted contraction of the services sector, with an associated deterioration in employment and incomes. The security situation deteriorated, with the Taliban insurgency gaining control over increased territory and intensifying attacks on military and civilian targets, with civilian casualties totaling more than 10,000 per year between 2014 and 2019. The impacts of declining grants and worsening security were exacerbated by political instability following the disputed outcome of the 2014 presidential elections. The formation of the National Unity Government under an extra-constitutional power-sharing agreement led to administrative disruptions and slowed reform progress.

… At the Geneva conference held in November 2020, donors renewed their commitment to aid support to Afghanistan for 2021-2024. However, several major donors provided only single-year pledges, with future support made conditional upon the government achieving accelerated progress in efforts to combat corruption, reduce poverty, and advance ongoing peace talks. Aid support is now expected to decline by around 20 percent from the previous pledging period (US$15.2 billion over 2016-2020) but could fall even lower if conditions are not met or if major donors further reduce commitment levels amid domestic fiscal pressures. Afghanistan now faces daunting challenges in sustaining recent development gains in the face of mounting political uncertainties, declining international grant support, and continued insecurity. Policy options are narrowed by the weak implementation capacity of government agencies, reflecting governance constraints, and tightly constrained macroeconomic policy options in the context of narrowing fiscal space and weak monetary transmission mechanisms.

The tragedy is that the Taliban may well impose approaches to social and economic development that are even worse that today’s divided and corrupt central government. Once again, however, it is also all too clear that no amount of U.S. military aid will prevent massive civil unrest and possible conflict in the face of these challenges.
Moreover, Afghanistan now faces the challenge of coping with security and stability in the face of ongoing cuts in aid and the near certainty of far more serious cuts in aid if some effective government and peace do not emerge. It may be possible to bomb a country back to the stone age, but it is clearly not possible to bomb one into development, unity, and stability.

The Bottom Line
Put bluntly, it is probably too late to salvage either the civil or military situation in Afghanistan. It almost certainly is too late to salvage it with limited in-country U.S. forces, outside U.S. airpower and intelligence assets, and with no real peace agreement or functional peace process. Limited military measures are not the answer, and neither is simply reinforcing the past processes of failure. Tragic as it may be, withdrawal may not solve anything and may well make conditions worse for millions of Afghans, but reinforcing failure is not a meaningful strategy.

This commentary entitled, Real-World Options for Afghanistan, is available for download at https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazon...hanistan.pdf?dk.enubITtEm_ergwOErh8rRrRwpOpMS
Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant on Afghanistan to the United States Department of Defense and the United States Department of State.

Real-World Options for Afghanistan

The United States must consider its future role—if any—that it will have in Afghanistan following its withdrawal in September 2021, writes CSIS’s Burke Chair in Strategy.

www.csis.org

 

[jward]

Hmm.

US envoy: Fear of Taliban conquering Kabul are overblown
By ROBERT BURNS

5-7 minutes


WASHINGTON (AP) — Predictions that the Taliban will quickly overrun Afghan government forces and conquer Kabul once U.S. and coalition forces have fully withdrawn are unduly pessimistic, Washington’s special envoy to Afghanistan said Tuesday

“I personally believe that the statements that their forces will disintegrate and the Talibs will take over in short order are mistaken,” Zalmay Khalilzad told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose members expressed deep worry that President Joe Biden’s decision to fully withdraw by September will lead to chaos and intensified civil war.

Lawmakers are not alone in their skepticism that a fractious Afghan government can withstand a potential Taliban onslaught. Some senior U.S. military leaders had preferred keeping a U.S. troop presence as a hedge. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has held out hope that Afghan forces can hold up if Washington continues some forms of support, but he told reporters as the U.S. withdrawal began May 1 that he envisioned a range of scenarios.
“On the one hand you get some really dramatic, bad possible outcomes,” Milley said May 2. “On the other hand, you get a military that stays together and a government that stays together.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and withdrawal critic, asserted that there is zero chance” the Taliban will abide by the commitments their leaders made in a February 2020 agreement with the Trump administration, which included engaging in sustained peace negotiations and severing all forms of cooperation with and support for al-Qaida.
“It seems all but certain the Taliban will try to overrun the country and return it to a pre-9/11 state after we have withdrawn,” McCaul said. “They’ve already ramped up their attacks, taking new territory and bases since the (Biden) announcement was made. Without a military presence in country, the U.S. is giving them room to deepen their relationship with terrorist groups like al-Qaida, who may seek to launch external attacks on us and our allies from the country once again.”

Some worry that a Taliban takeover could lead to repression of women and reprisals against Afghans who helped the U.S. mission over the years.
Khalilzad argued that the Taliban have reason not to push for a military victory and instead pursue a negotiated political settlement that could give them international legitimacy and removal from certain American and United Nations sanctions. He recently met with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, as part of a round of consultations with interested parties.
“They say they seek normalcy in terms of relations — acceptability, removal from sanctions, not to remain a pariah,” Khalilzad said.

The Taliban seized power in Kabul in 1996 and defied President George W. Bush’s demand that they hand over Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader, after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. In October 2001, U.S. forces invaded and toppled the Taliban at the outset of what would become the longest war in U.S. history.
Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Kabul who led negotiations on the February 2020 deal, told the committee that while he is not fully convinced, Taliban representatives have told him their views have changed since the 1990s. He said they have acknowledged not being prepared to govern at that time and that their governance was a failure.
“We are all skeptical, of course,” he said, wondering if the Taliban are “just sugar-coating what they actually will do.”

He said the Taliban have not interfered in any substantial way with the U.S. military withdrawal, and added, “We expect that to continue.” He said diplomatic efforts are under way to seek agreements with neighboring countries to position U.S. counterterrorism forces within strike distance of Afghanistan to able to respond to future threats.
U.S. Central Command said Tuesday the military withdrawal is as much as one-fifth complete and that five military facilities have been turned over to the Afghan ministry of defense. The U.S. has set no hard date for completing the pullout; it is due to be finished no later than Sept. 11, but officials have suggested it could be done weeks before that.
In a related matter, officials representing defense contractors said billions of dollars in contracts meant to support Afghanistan through U.S. government agencies are at risk during the military drawdown, and that the risk is worsened by a lack of coordination in Kabul and Washington. They recommended creating “collaborative forums” in Kabul and Washington to ensure better planning for the drawdown and to support post-withdrawal U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

“Contractors need up-to-date information from USG (U.S. government) officials on the constantly changing drawdown impact on USG missions in Afghanistan and on the security environment for contractor operations,” they wrote. “Better communications and prudent planning that includes contractors can help protect our people while executing the drawdown and achieving defense, development, and diplomatic goals.”
The letter was signed by heads of the National Defense Industrial Association, the International Stability Operations Association, and the Professional Services Council.
There are thousands of U.S. contractors in Afghanistan, most or all of whom are expected to depart in the military withdrawal.

US envoy: Fear of Taliban conquering Kabul are overblown

Washington’s special envoy to Afghanistan says predictions that the Taliban will quickly overrun Afghan government forces and conquer Kabul once U.S. and coalition forces have fully withdrawn are unduly pessimistic.

apnews.com

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Taliban has ‘surrounded’ five Afghan provincial capitals | FDD's Long War Journal

FDD's Long War Journal has assessed that 17 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces are under direct Taliban threat.

www.longwarjournal.org

Taliban has ‘surrounded’ five Afghan provincial capitals
BY BILL ROGGIO AND CALEB WEISS | May 19, 2021 | bill.roggio@longwarjournal.org |


The Taliban has “surrounded” five provincial capitals in Afghanistan as of Feb. 2021, according to the Lead Inspector General for Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.

FDD’s Long War Journal has assessed that 17 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces are now under direct Taliban threat. For information on districts controlled and contested by the Taliban, see LWJ report, Mapping Taliban Control in Afghanistan.

The Lead Inspector General for Operation Freedom’s Sentinel report, which was released on May 18 and covers the first three months of 2021, painted a bleak picture of security situation in Afghanistan. The groundwork for the Taliban’s efforts to reestablish its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan by force of arms has been laid over the past several years with its successful effort to gain control of rural district that surround provincial capitals. Now, the Inspector General noted, the Taliban is preparing for “large-scale offensives against provincial centers.”

“This quarter, the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] reported that the Taliban’s military strategy very likely focuses on preparation for large-scale offensives against provincial centers, complex attacks against ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] and National Directorate for Security (NDS) installations, and degrading ANDSF capabilities,” the report noted.

Five provincial capitals, Pul-I-Khumri (Baghlan) and Kunduz City in the north, as well as Kandahar City, Lashkar Gah (Helmand), and Tarin Kot (Uruzgan) in the south, have been “surrounded” and the Taliban “has conducted attacks against military and intelligence targets” as of Feb. 2021.

These cities, and 12 others, remain under direct Taliban threat, according to an ongoing study of the security situation in Afghanistan’s districts.

The Taliban has followed a classic guerrilla strategy of gaining control of or contesting areas outside of urban centers in order to prepare for the next phase: taking control of the cities. In each of these cities, the Taliban has either directly invaded and briefly seized control of the city centers (Kunduz, Farah, and Ghazni), controls neighborhoods within the cities, taxes citizens and imposes its harsh brand of Islamic law, or frequently attacks security outposts in and around the city.

In the north, the Taliban directly threatens the provincial capitals of Maimana (Faryab), Sar-I-Pul, Mazar-I-Sharif (Balkh), Aybak (Samangan), Pul-I-Khumri (Baghlan), Kunduz City, Taluqan (Takhar), and Fayzabad (Badakhshan).

In the south, the Taliban threatens Lashkar Gah, Kandahar City, and Tarin Kor (Uruzgan).
In the east, the Taliban threatens Ghazni City, Pul-i-Alam (Logar), Maydan Shahr (Wardak), and Mihtarlam (Laghman).

In the west, the Taliban threatens Maimana (Faryab), Farah City, and Qala-I-Naw (Badghis).
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal. Caleb Weiss is an intern at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributor to The Long War Journal.

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use......

Taliban overruns district in central Afghanistan | FDD's Long War Journal

With the fall of Dawlat Shah, the Taliban now control one of Laghman's five districts, and contest the other four. The Taliban is laying the groundwork for a potential siege of Kabul, which likely would take place if the Taliban could first secure the south and east.

www.longwarjournal.org

Taliban overruns district in central Afghanistan
BY BILL ROGGIO | May 20, 2021 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

The Taliban seized control of the district of Dawlat Shah in the eastern Afghan province of Laghman on May 19. The district is the fourth to fall to the Taliban in the past two weeks and the second in a province that borders Kabul, the ultimate prize for the Taliban in its efforts to reestablish its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

“Gulzar Sangarwal, a member of the Laghman provincial council confirmed to Khaama Press that the district has fallen to the Taliban,” Khaama Press reported. “ecurity forced retreated from the region on Wednesday night, as they had been under the Taliban siege for several days”.

“[T]he government forces retreated from the region due to lack of supplies, support, and backup,” after the district center was “under the Taliban siege,” Khaama Press noted.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid also noted the fall of the district and posted an image of the abandoned district center.

“This morning, the enemy soldiers escaped from the center, police headquarters and all defense posts of Dawlat Shah district of Laghman province, 2 tanks, one ranger, a lot of weapons and ammunitions were recovered,” Mujahid tweeted. “These areas came under the control of the Mujahideen …”

Like other provinces in eastern Afghanistan, the security situation in Laghman is dire. With the fall of Dawlat Shah, the Taliban now control one of Laghman’s five districts, and contest the other four, according to FDD’s Long War Journal‘s ongoing assessment of the security situation.

The Taliban currently threatens the security of 17 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals, including Mihtarlam, the capital of Laghman, and controls 88 of Afghanistan’s 407 districts and contests another 214. The number of districts it controls and contests has doubled since 2018. [See LWJ reports, Mapping Taliban Control in Afghanistan, Taliban control in Afghanistan expands significantly since 2018, and Taliban has ‘surrounded’ five Afghan provincial capitals.]

The Taliban is following a classic guerrilla strategy of gaining control of or contesting areas outside of urban centers in order to prepare for the next phase: taking control of the cities. The Taliban is well positioned in Laghman, as well as Logar and Wardak, two other provinces that border Kabul, and its districts are heavily contested or controlled by the Taliban. The Afghan government lost control of Nirkh in Logar last week, and efforts to retake the district have failed.

The Taliban is laying the groundwork for a potential siege of Kabul, which likely would take place if the Taliban could first secure the south and east.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

 

[Housecarl]

Something not pointed out often or strongly enough......

Posted for fair use.....

'Pakistan must end its proxy war in Afghanistan'

Following the recent truce between Israel and Palestine former Ambassador and Canadian Cabinet Minister Chris Alexander is asking the world to turn its eyes on

www.bignewsnetwork.com

'Pakistan must end its proxy war in Afghanistan'

Ottawa [Canada], May 23 (ANI): Following the recent truce between Israel and Palestine, former Ambassador and Canadian Cabinet Minister Chris Alexander is asking the world to turn its eyes on Pakistan's proxy war in Afghanistan.

Drawing parallels with the middle-east conflict that ended earlier this week, Alexander lamented on his Twitter, how little attention is given to civilians who get killed in Afghanistan.

"If thousands of civilians killed by bombs and assassination from Nangarhar to Herat got just a fraction of the attention given to Gaza's hundreds of victims, Pakistan's proxy war in Afghanistan would have ended long ago," Alexander tweeted on May 21.

In an earlier tweet, the former envoy had asked when will Pakistan end its proxy war in Afghanistan. "Israel is ending military operations in Gaza: when will Pakistan's military end its proxy war in Afghanistan".

Amid the final drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan, last week after President Ashraf Ghani has emphasised the need for a decision on peace and for Europe's much-needed role to "get Pakistan on board" on the ongoing peace talks with Taliban.

In March, Alexander had revealed the integral role of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as the principal and underlying cause of persistent war in Afghanistan. He detailed the proxy war strategies of Pakistan in an MLI paper titled "Ending Pakistan's Proxy Way in Afghanistan."Alexander argued that, instead of working to achieve stability under democratic institutions chosen by Afghans, Pakistan's post-9/11 military leaders have "sheltered Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda while working to scale up military and terrorist campaigns prosecuted by the Taliban's Quetta Shura, the Haqqani Network, and other groups."He also revealed that the Taliban and their allies have received unstinting support from Pakistan's military for decades. This state terror as statecraft has systematically resulted in the Taliban's capacity to continue engaging in terrorist activities.

Afghanistan has seen a spike in the incidents of violence in recent weeks, leading to casualties of Afghan security forces and civilians. US withdrawal from Afghanistan is underway and set to complete by September 11. (ANI)

 

[Housecarl]

Posted for fair use.....

Much about US pullout from Afghanistan remains unclear

Some of the unanswered questions are: What happens after the troops are gone? How will Afghan forces fare? Will the Taliban enlist Al-Qaida? And what about U.S. counterterrorism and diplomacy efforts?

www.stripes.com

ANALYSIS
Much about US pullout from Afghanistan remains unclear

By ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press | Published: May 22, 2021

WASHINGTON — When he pulled the plug on the American war in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden said the reasons for staying, 10 years after the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, had become "increasingly unclear." Now that a final departure is in sight, questions about clarity have shifted to Biden's post-withdrawal plan.

What would the United States do, for example, if the Taliban took advantage of the U.S. military departure by seizing power? And, can the United States and the international community, through diplomacy and financial aid alone, prevent a worsening of the instability in Afghanistan that kept American and coalition troops there for two decades?

The Biden administration acknowledges that a full U.S. troop withdrawal is not without risks, but it argues that waiting for a better time to end U.S. involvement in the war is a recipe for never leaving, while extremist threats fester elsewhere.

"We cannot continue the cycle of extending or expanding our military presence in Afghanistan, hoping to create ideal conditions for the withdrawal, and expecting a different result," Biden said April 14 in announcing that "it's time to end America's longest war."

A look at some of the unanswered questions about Biden's approach to the withdrawal:

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE TROOPS ARE GONE?
Predictions range from the disastrous to the merely difficult. Officials don't rule out an intensified civil war that creates a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan which could spill over to other Central Asian nations, including nuclear-armed Pakistan. A more hopeful scenario is that the Kabul government makes peace with the Taliban insurgents.

At a Senate hearing Thursday, a senior Pentagon policy official, David Helvey, was asked how he could remain optimistic when, in just the first few weeks of the U.S. withdrawal, hundreds of Afghans were killed.

"I wouldn't say that I'm optimistic," Helvey replied, adding that a peace agreement is still possible.

related articles

Defense officials confident US can fight terrorism in Afghanistan once forces leave; senators remain skeptical
[IMG alt="Dutch soldiers are packing their gear and preparing to leave Afghanistan after almost two decades in the country. The soldiers, who are soon withdrawing, held a ceremony at Camp Marmal in Afghanistan's north on May 16, 2021.
<br>AARON ZWAAL/Dutch Defense Ministry"]https://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs...e.jpg_gen/derivatives/150x100/image.jpg[/IMG]
Allies leaving rapidly as NATO ends Afghanistan training mission
HOW WILL AFGHAN FORCES HOLD UP?

The administration says it will urge Congress to continue authorizing billions of dollars in aid to the Afghan military and police, and the Pentagon says it is working on ways to provide aircraft maintenance support and advice from afar. Much of that work had been done by U.S. contractors, who are departing along with U.S. troops. The U.S. military also might offer to fly some Afghan security forces to a third country for training.

But none of those things — the training, the advising or the financial backing — are assured.

Also unclear is whether the U.S. will provide air power in support of Afghan ground forces from bases outside the country.

The Afghan air force is central to the ongoing conflict, yet it remains dependent on U.S. contractors and technology. The Afghans, for example, have drones but not the kind that are armed, making them less effective in battle.

WILL THE TALIBAN ENLIST OR ASSIST AL-QAIDA?
In a February 2020 agreement with the Trump administration, the Taliban pledged to disavow al-Qaida, but that promise is yet to be tested. This is important in light of the Taliban's willingness during their years in power in the 1990s to provide haven for bin Laden and his al-Qaida colleagues.

Joseph J. Collins, a retired Army colonel who has studied the U.S. war in Afghanistan since it began, notes that as recently as two years ago the Pentagon was alerting Congress to enduring links between al-Qaida and the Taliban. In a June 2019 report, the Pentagon said al-Qaida and its Pakistan-based affiliate, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, "routinely support, train, work, and operate with Taliban fighters and commanders."

Collins is skeptical that the Taliban have genuinely renounced ties to al-Qaida.

"I don't think that leopard has changed its spots at all," he said in an interview.

Earlier this month, the U.S. government watchdog for Afghanistan reported to Congress that al-Qaida relies on the Taliban for protection. The report, citing information provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency in April, said, "the two groups have reinforced ties over the past decades, likely making it difficult for an organizational split to occur."

WHAT BECOMES OF U.S. COUNTERTERRORIST EFFORTS?
The Pentagon says that all U.S. special operations forces will leave no later than Sept. 11. That will make counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, including the collecting of intelligence on al-Qaida and other extremist groups, more difficult but not impossible.

The administration's answer to this problem is to continue the fight from "over the horizon." This is a concept familiar to the military, whose geographic reach has expanded with the advent of armed drones and other technologies.

But will it work? The administration has yet to make any basing or access agreements with countries bordering Afghanistan, such as Uzbekistan. So it might have to rely, at least at the start, on forces positioned in and around the Persian Gulf, meaning response times will be much longer.

WHAT ABOUT DIPLOMACY?
The administration says it will retain a U.S. Embassy presence, but that will become more difficult if the military's departure leads to a collapse of Afghan governance.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters this past week that securing access to the Kabul international airport will be key to enabling the United States and other nations to maintain embassies. He said the U.S. and NATO allies are considering an international effort to secure that airport.

A related problem is the fate of Afghan civilians who might be targeted by the Taliban or other groups for aiding the U.S. war effort. Interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government or NATO can get what is known as a special immigrant visa, or SIV, but the application process can take years.

Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has told Congress the administration wants to protect those civilians, but that it is trying to avoid the panic that might erupt if it appeared the United States was encouraging "the departure of all educated Afghans" in a way that undermined the morale of Afghan security forces.

 

[jward]

 

[jward]

FJ
@Natsecjeff
4m

Pakistan has allowed the US military to use its airspace and given ground access so that it can support its presence in Afghanistan, according to David F. Helvey, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Indo-Pacific Affairs.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1396783270872981513

View: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1396783270872981513?s=20

 

[jward]

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

Posted for fair use.....

With Afghanistan's Future at Stake, US Courts Pakistan

More than three weeks into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington's plans to help ensure the country does not descend into chaos remain murky despite a ramped-up effort to get Afghanistan's neighbors — Pakistan in particular — to do more. The focus has been on rallying support, both...

www.voanews.com

With Afghanistan's Future at Stake, US Courting Pakistan
By Jeff Seldin, Nike Ching, Ayaz Gul
May 25, 2021 12:51 AM


PENTAGON/STATE DEPARTMENT/ISLAMABAD - More than three weeks into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington's plans to help ensure the country does not descend into chaos remain murky despite a ramped-up effort to get Afghanistan's neighbors — Pakistan in particular — to do more.

The focus has been on rallying support, both for the ongoing diplomatic push to keep talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban on track, and for military cooperation should instability make new U.S. counterterrorism operations necessary.

But the U.S. efforts to solidify plans for what comes next appear to have taken on renewed urgency in recent days, leaning on outreach from the White House and the Pentagon to overcome a decade of strained ties and start to win over Pakistani officials.

Already, U.S. officials have voiced some optimism that an initial meeting between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his Pakistani counterpart, Moeed Yusuf, on Sunday in Geneva, went well.

"Both sides discussed a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues of mutual interest," according to a statement issued by the White House on Monday, which made no reference to Afghanistan.

"Both sides agreed to continue the conversation," it said.

The Pentagon, likewise, expressed confidence following a call early Monday between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

"The secretary's discussion this morning was very useful," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters. "The secretary reiterated his appreciation for Pakistan's support for the Afghanistan peace negotiations and expressed his desire to continue to build on the United States-Pakistan bilateral relationship."

History of mistrust
Yet beyond the initial discussions, progress on both the military and diplomatic fronts appears to be elusive, complicated by years of mistrust, some of it dating back to May 2011, when Washington did not alert Pakistan to the U.S. special operations forces raid in Abbottabad that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

At the time, Islamabad warned the U.S. against any unilateral military action on Pakistani territory.

And Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Monday rejected the idea of allowing the U.S. to use Pakistan as a base for troops or as a staging point for potential airstrikes, dismissing speculation about the possibility of such an arrangement as "baseless and irresponsible."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1396883185775034368

View: https://twitter.com/jseldin/status/1396883185775034368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1396886315761905665%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.voanews.com%2Fsouth-central-asia%2Fafghanistans-future-stake-us-courting-pakistan


In an interview with VOA, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi cast further doubt on how much help will be coming from Islamabad when it comes to ensuring Afghanistan is as stable as possible after U.S. and coalition troops leave.

"We have no business interfering in their internal matters, but we are there to help if they require our help, and we will try and be as positive as we can," Qureshi told VOA's Urdu service.

"Afghanistan is a sovereign country. It's an independent country," he said. "Whatever we can (do) we will, but they will have to ultimately shoulder the responsibility."

U.S. officials, though, continue to hope Pakistan will, in the end, be willing to do more, even if just out of self-interest.

"It has always been the case that Pakistan has much to gain from peace in Afghanistan," a State Department spokesperson told VOA on the condition of anonymity, given the sensitive nature of the ongoing discussions.

Other officials have expressed cautious optimism that self-interest, combined with encouragement, will sway officials in Islamabad to be more proactive.

"I hope those with influence over the Taliban, such as Pakistan, do the right thing," Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, told U.S. lawmakers last week. "We are pressing them to do that."

Possible incentives
There are questions about how much leverage the U.S. can ultimately exert on Islamabad.
One option could be freeing up some $300 million in security aid to Pakistan that was frozen in 2018 under former U.S. President Donald Trump after his administration chastised Pakistan for a "dual policy of fighting some terrorists while supporting others" — a reference to Pakistan's ties to the Taliban and the Haqqani network.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/949340376619470851

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U.S. officials will not say whether such a move is even under consideration.
"We do not comment or speculate on policies that may or may not be under deliberation," a State Department spokesperson told VOA — and even if it was, the money may not be enough to change Pakistan's thought process.

"It's complicated," a senior Pakistani official dealing with national security matters said to VOA about the aid. "We are not asking. If we get it, of course we won't say no."

In the meantime, U.S. options may be narrowing for its military posture once the withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete.

Russia's presidential envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said Monday that Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will not allow the U.S. to establish military bases on their territories.

"They made it clear that this was impossible," he told the Russian news agency Sputnik, adding, "Our contacts with our Tajik and Uzbek partners indicate that there was no official request to them."

For their part, however, U.S. officials insist there is still time to work out agreements for the basing of troops and assets for when the pullout from Afghanistan is finally completed this coming September.

"These are obviously diplomatic discussions that are ongoing and are clearly not complete,' the Pentagon's Kirby told reporters. "We're exploring a range of options and opportunities to be able to provide a credible and viable over-the-horizon counterterrorism capability, and there's lots of ways you can do that. Overseas basing is just one of them."

Margaret Besheer at the United Nations, VOA Urdu Service contributed to this report.

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US Military Coy About Numbers of Troops Leaving Afghanistan
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Afghanistan's Abdullah: Foreign Troop Pullout Will Embolden Taliban
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By Ayesha Tanzeem
Sun, 05/02/2021 - 10:21 AM





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[jward]

WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Aircraft Carrier Leaving Asia to Help With Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal
Nancy A. Youssef and Gordon Lubold

5-6 minutes


The Pentagon is expected to move the only aircraft carrier currently based in the Asia-Pacific region toward the Middle East to support the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, defense officials said.
The USS Ronald Reagan, whose home port is in Yokosuka, Japan, will head toward Afghanistan beginning this summer, the officials said, and will operate there for up to four months.
While it is away, the Navy will go without an aircraft carrier presence in the Asia-Pacific region for at least part of that time, the officials said. The U.S. Seventh Fleet, based in Japan, has dozens of other ships and aircraft, but the redeployment of its only available aircraft carrier represents a significant diversion away from Asia, which President Biden has called a priority for the military.

Mr. Biden unveiled plans last month to pull all U.S. and coalition troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11. U.S. officials said then that they would keep a carrier and its accompanying ships, known as a strike group, in the area to provide security while the forces are moving out of Afghanistan.

The aircraft carrier currently operating in the region, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, has to leave by July to return to its home port in Norfolk, Virginia. The Eisenhower has been deployed twice during the past 36 months and cannot safely extend its deployment beyond that, defense officials said. The Eisenhower has been operating in the north Arabian Sea since April.

The U.S. Navy declined to comment.



0:00 / 0:00
President Biden said he will withdraw all U.S. troops from the country by Sept. 11, marking the second time in less than two years that an American president has set a date to end involvement in the Afghan conflict -- the longest war in U.S. history. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images (Video from 4/14/21)

The U.S. had said it hoped to remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by July, but the carrier deployment would allow for an extension of the withdrawal process.


Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, requested a carrier to replace the Eisenhower, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved it, defense officials said. Mr. Austin is expected to review the matter again in coming days, officials said.


The carrier moves reflect strains on the U.S. Navy as it aims to cover its missions around the world with limited available ships.


The Reagan had been in maintenance for a year until earlier this month and left its port for the first time last week. The move toward the Middle East is believed by defense officials to be the first time the carrier will leave the Pacific region since 20I5, when Japan became its home port.


“The reason we are in this position is because the Navy has deployed a carrier to Central Command almost continuously for the last several years, which has put a huge strain on the carrier fleet. The result is now, there are no carriers other than the Reagan available to support the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.


Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations, addressed the strains that maintaining a carrier presence in the Middle East had put on the Navy, saying he hoped the Biden administration’s push for a renewed nuclear deal with Iran could lead to a reduced requirement for a carrier strike-group presence in the Middle East.


During his speech unveiling the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden said he made the decision to return to talks over the nuclear agreement, in part, to free up resources for Asia.


The U.S. military is drafting plans for supporting Afghan national security forces from afar—rather than with personnel on the ground—including keeping ships and aircraft in the Gulf region. The decision to move the Reagan out of the Asia-Pacific region suggests those plans could strain U.S. commitments elsewhere.


“It’s another indication to Asian allies that the U.S. could always have to move its resources back to the Middle East,” Mr. Clark said.

Posted For Fair Use

WSJ News Exclusive | Sole U.S. Aircraft Carrier in Asia-Pacific to Help With Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal

The Pentagon is expected to move the USS Ronald Reagan toward the Middle East, leaving the Asia-Pacific without a carrier presence for first time in years.

www.wsj.com

 

[danielboon]

Oh what a perfect time for XI to attack Taiwan

 

[jward]

Taliban Warns Pakistan About Hosting US Military Bases
By Umair Jamal for The Diplomat

6-8 minutes


The Pulse | Security | South Asia
The coming weeks and months will reveal the exact role the United States envisions for Pakistan in Afghanistan after the U.S. military withdrawal is complete.

U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Espejo of the 66th Military Police Company, pulls security at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border at Torkham Gate on August 19, 2007.
Credit: Flickr/The U.S. Army

In a major development, the Afghan Taliban have warned their neighbors against allowing the United States military to operate bases on their soil.

“We urge neighboring countries not to allow anyone to do so,” the Taliban said in a statement.
“If such a step is taken again, it will be a great and historic mistake and disgrace,” the group said, adding that they would “not remain silent in the face of such heinous and provocative acts.”
The statement comes amid speculations that Pakistan may allow the United States to use its soil for counterterrorism operations after American troops complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan by September this year. Last week, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific affairs, David F Helvey, told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that Pakistan has allowed the U.S. military to use its airspace to support its presence in Afghanistan in the past.
“Pakistan had always allowed overflights and ground access to the U.S. to facilitate its military presence in Afghanistan and would continue to do so,” reported Pakistan’s newspaper Dawn, citing its sources.

Earlier this week, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, told the Senate that Pakistan would not offer its military bases to the U.S. for future counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan.
On Monday, Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson rejected reports claiming that the U.S. operates military bases in Pakistan as “baseless and irresponsible speculations.”
The spokesperson added that “Pakistan and the U.S. have a framework of cooperation in terms of Air Lines of Communication (ALOC) and Ground Lines of Communication (GLOC) in place since 2001.”
“No new agreement has been made in this regard.”

However, the records show that while officially Pakistan has rejected reports of offering military bases or allowing drone attacks in Pakistan, secretly such an understanding remained in place in one form or the other. For instance, in 2008, WikiLeaks revealed that Pakistan’s then government was not unhappy about U.S. drone strikes and quietly allowed U.S. Special Operations teams to operate on its soil.
In a cable filed in 2008, Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan at the time, narrated a meeting with then Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. Patterson wrote, “Malik suggested we hold off alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation. The PM brushed aside Rehman’s remarks and said, ‘I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.'”

Another set of documents released by The Washington Post in 2013 says that “Pakistan’s government have for years secretly endorsed the [drone] program and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts.”
These released documents indicate that Pakistan’s public or official stance on issues such as offering bases to American forces does not always reflect the country’s policy course.
The Pakistani foreign office’s statement from earlier this week that the country has air and ground lines of communication with the U.S. since 2001 may have a lot more to it. Moreover, when the foreign office says that no new agreement has been made with the U.S. to house troops on its soil, perhaps it means that no new agreement is needed.

Any government in Pakistan understands that publicly accepting or even endorsing such a plan could have serious implications. Such a proposal would be highly unpopular in Pakistan and may create trouble for whoever is in power. Thus, keeping such agreements under wraps and offering deniability if needed is perhaps best suited for all parties involved.
However, this time around, the Taliban’s threat has added a new ingredient to the mix. It essentially means that Taliban are not only unhappy about Pakistan’s previous policy to quietly host U.S. special ops but may now be willing to openly oppose it. Perhaps, from the Taliban’s perspective, the United States’ 2001 air and ground communications agreement with Pakistan aided the stay of American troops in Afghanistan. The statement from Taliban further shows that the organization’s autonomy, and ability to act independently of Pakistan’s influence, continues to grow, perhaps aided by the group’s recent diplomatic and military victories.
Pakistan’s policymakers may have effectively evaded public and media pressure in the past on the question of U.S. military bases and drone strikes. But the Taliban’s threats now mean the country has a lot to think about as the group wouldn’t shy away from naming and shaming Islamabad. If this happens, how it will impact Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban is something that remains to be seen.

Will the U.S. force Pakistan into hosting its troops, as it did in 2001 when the former President George W. Bush famously conveyed: “You are either with us or against us”? The U.S. has many options if it wants to pressure Pakistan, but will it act as it did following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks? Perhaps we will know more in the coming weeks as the U.S. accelerates its outreach to Pakistan to work out withdrawal plans.

posted for fair use

Taliban Warns Pakistan About Hosting US Military Bases

The coming weeks and months will reveal the exact role the United States envisions for Pakistan in Afghanistan after the U.S. military withdrawal is complete.

thediplomat.com

 

[jward]

Policy
US Planning to Evacuate Afghan Interpreters, Top US General Says
“There are plans being developed very, very rapidly here,” said Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.



By Tara Copp

Senior Pentagon Reporter, Defense One
State Department


ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT — The Pentagon and State Department are developing plans to evacuate Afghans whose work with the United States has placed them in danger of being killed by the Taliban after U.S. and coalition forces complete their withdrawal, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said Wednesday.
“We recognize that there are a significant amount of Afghans that supported the United States, supported the coalition. And that they could be at risk, their safety could be at risk,” Milley said.

“We recognize that a very important task is to ensure that we remain faithful to them, and that we do what’s necessary to ensure their protection, and if necessary, get them out of the country, if that’s what they want to do.”
About 18,000 interpreters are waiting for approval for a Special Immigrant Visa, which allows interpreters to bring their families to the United States, according to the veterans group No One Left Behind.

Milley spoke to reporters on his plane traveling back to Washington, D.C., after giving the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo. He did not offer specifics on how the United States would help those interpreters leave the country, such as through airlift, but acknowledged time was quickly running out to help them. U.S. forces are set to leave Afghanistan by September, but that timetable may be pushed up as soon as July, the New York Times reported this week.

Related articles
‘Guam or Bust’: America’s Helpers May Need a Halfway Destination as Afghanistan Pullout Nears
Time Crunch for Afghanistan Withdrawal Is Producing a Big Trash Pile
Lawmakers Scold Pentagon for Leaving Afghanistan Without ‘Over-the-Horizon’ Plan

Milley said the September deadline was “a no later than” date. “It was never a ‘no earlier than’ date.”
The State Department is leading the planning effort for Afghan interpreters and others who worked with the United States to leave Afghanistan, he said.
“There are plans being developed very, very rapidly here, for not just the interpreters but a lot of other people that have worked with the United States. So there’s a prioritization of categories of these folks. Part of it is the Special Immigrant Visa program, but that’s not all of it. The State Department is working through that and we are in support of that and we are going to do whatever the leadership decides to execute.”

Milley would not say whether the United States was considering using Guam as a temporary harbor for the interpreters while visa issues were worked out.
“We are working through lots of options,” Milley said. “I’m not going to say the specifics of what’s on the table or off the table. Here’s what I would tell you though—we have a moral commitment to those who helped us.”

Posted for fair use

US Planning to Evacuate Afghan Interpreters, Top US General Says

“There are plans being developed very, very rapidly here,” said Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

www.defenseone.com

 

[jward]

America's withdrawal from Afghanistan: Will Pakistan pay a high price?
Syed Fazl-e-Haider

5-7 minutes


America's withdrawal from Afghanistan: Will Pakistan pay a high price?

Analysis: Pakistan is bracing for the impact of America's withdrawal from Afghanistan, with fears of increased insecurity.

While the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, aimed to be completed by 11 September, is expected to intensify instability in the country, there are also fears of volatility shifting to neighbouring Pakistan.
In late April, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive-laden vehicle in the parking lot of the Serena Hotel in the southwestern city of Quetta, killing five and injuring 13 others.

The alleged target of the attack was the Chinese ambassador, who was not present in the hotel when the bomb exploded.
It was claimed by the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also referred to as the Pakistani Taliban, who had largely fled to Afghanistan since Islamabad launched a counterterrorism offensive, Zarb-e-Azb, or Sharp and Cutting Strike, in 2014.
Amid the group’s re-unification efforts and an uptick in activity, many security analysts believe Pakistan will experience more terrorist attacks after the US pullout. Both the TTP and Baloch separatists have identified Chinese interests as one of their immediate targets.

"Many security analysts believe Pakistan will experience more terrorist attacks after the US pullout"

Since US and NATO troops have begun to withdraw, Afghanistan has already experienced an increase in violence. In one of the worst incidents, more than 85 people were killed when a bomb attack targeted a girl's school in Kabul in early May.
Pakistan is now worried that surging violence could spill over.
In the most recent incident on 5 May, militants opened fire at Pakistani soldiers in the southwestern Balochistan province who were installing a fence along the Afghan border, killing four.

In a separate incident, a shootout in North Waziristan saw three Pakistani soldiers killed during a raid on a militant hideout. The area used to be the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban.
Both incidents indicate the presence of terrorist groups who are now able to operate from ungoverned regions with more freedom due to the withdrawal of US forces. Many now fear a return to the violence of the 1990s, when bomb attacks across the country were a frequent occurrence as militant groups mushroomed.
Pakistan is also worried about an influx of refugees if fighting in Afghanistan escalates because of power struggles between Afghan factions.

Fierce exchanges between Afghan government forces and the Taliban in the Helmand province in early May forced more than 1,000 Afghan families to flee their homes after US forces handed over several military bases.
Pakistan already hosts over two million Afghan refugees and the country's weak economy is unable to absorb more numbers.
Certainly, Pakistan will grapple with new security challenges as instability intensifies. After achieving its objectives against the Soviet Union, the US largely abandoned Afghanistan as the Taliban rose to power in the 1990s.
It also ignored the subsequent difficulties borne by Pakistan, including bomb attacks and the influx of refugees. This time, as the US leaves after a 20-year war against the Taliban, Pakistan is not alone, with Russia and China ready to step in.

Both Moscow and Beijing will stand by Islamabad to counter terrorist threats emanating from post-US Afghanistan, 60% of which remains in the hands of a politically and militarily stronger Taliban.

"This time, as the US leaves after a 20-year war against the Taliban, Pakistan is not alone, with Russia and China ready to step in"

But Pakistan, politically and logistically, holds a trump card in the Afghan endgame through its leverage over the Taliban, having already played a key role of facilitator during the two-year peace negotiations between America and the group.
Russia is well aware of Pakistan's importance in this respect. In April, Afghanistan topped the agenda of Moscow-Islamabad talks, in the first visit by a Russian foreign minister since 2012. The trip by Sergey Lavrov came at a crucial time as the US was announcing its withdrawal plan.

Furthermore, Moscow wants this trump card in its hands in a post-US Afghanistan and has shown its willingness to supply Pakistan with military equipment to strengthen the country’s counterterrorism abilities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has also conveyed a message to the Pakistani leadership that he is open to cooperation on the construction of gas pipelines and in the area of defence. Some have interpreted this as Russia essentially offering Pakistan a blank cheque.

In Afghanistan, with multi-billion-dollar investments in the Aynak copper and gold project, oil exploration projects, and extensive railway infrastructure development, China is still the largest foreign investor in the war-wracked country.
Beijing has also offered infrastructure and energy projects worth billions of dollars to the Taliban in return for peace in Afghanistan, including the construction of road networks to boost commerce and trade.

Syed Fazl-e-Haider is a contributing analyst at the South Asia desk of Wikistrat. He is a freelance columnist and the author of several books including the 'Economic Development of Balochistan.'

Posted for fair use

America's withdrawal from Afghanistan: Will Pakistan pay a high price?

Analysis: Pakistan is bracing for the impact of America's withdrawal from Afghanistan, with fears of increased insecurity.

english.alaraby.co.uk

 

[jward]

The Future of Afghanistan Hinges on American Dollars, Not Troops

Dominic Tierney

June 1, 2021

In April, President Joe Biden announced he would withdraw America’s 2,500 combat troops from Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2021. Supporters praised the move for finally closing the book on America’s longest war and allowing Washington, in the words of Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, to “refocus American national security on the most pressing challenges we face.” Meanwhile, critics denounced the decision as “reckless and dangerous.” Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned it could have “huge consequences,” including a surge in global terrorism and a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Writing in War on the Rocks, Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware argued that withdrawal “will be universally seen as defeat,” thereby making America less safe.
Both sides of this debate, however, tend to exaggerate the importance of the U.S. troop departure. The key to the war in Afghanistan is not American soldiers but American dollars. The Biden administration should couple the withdrawal of soldiers with a long-term commitment to monetary aid which prioritizes sustainability, avoids unrealistic conditions, and shares the burden with foreign donors.

Small Footprint
U.S. forces in Afghanistan are doing valuable work — mainly, training and advising Afghan troops. The American departure also means the withdrawal of the roughly 7,000-strong NATO-led contingent in the country. But the fixation on the number of U.S. soldiers reflects a certain strategic narcissism — the American belief that the presence (or absence) of Americans is the decisive factor in any conflict combined with the media’s disinterest in wars where Americans are not directly involved in the fighting.

Become a Member

In truth, there are stark limits on what a small U.S. and allied force can achieve in a country of nearly 40 million people that faces a nationwide rebellion. The current number of U.S. soldiers is the same as the enrollment in a large American high school — and pales in comparison to the 300,000-strong Afghan security forces or the Taliban’s estimated 60,000 core fighters.
Furthermore, the departure of U.S. soldiers does not mean the end of America’s physical presence in Afghanistan. The CIA has reportedly deployed hundreds of covert operatives in Afghanistan to target al-Qaeda and ISIL. A smaller detachment of U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan beyond September 2021 to protect diplomatic facilities like the U.S. embassy. There are even creative ways to boost troop numbers beyond the official headcount. The true U.S. deployment was recently reported to be 3,500 rather than 2,500. In other words, the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan is already small and will get smaller but is not about to disappear entirely.

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems
The vital factor in shaping the fate of Afghanistan is not foreign troops but foreign aid. In recent years, Washington has given Afghanistan around $4 billion in security assistance and $500 million in civilian aid. Of this, $3 billion is used to bankroll the Afghan military, covering everything from salaries to helicopters. Since the war began, the United States has spent around $140 billion on aid to Afghanistan. Other countries also contribute, for example, through the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, but the United States is by far the biggest donor.
U.S. aid to Afghanistan may be the most inefficient assistance program in the world. Stories of shocking mismanagement are rife, such as the industrial-scale theft of U.S.-provided fuel, the construction of a dining facility that didn’t include a kitchen, or the $6.7 million compound for Afghan women police that was never used. One review found that 30 percent of American aid was lost to “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Foreign assistance can backfire by creating patronage opportunities for corrupt officials, dividing Afghan communities, and boosting the Taliban. American officials struggle to even know whether aid works or not, and they sometimes evaluate the effectiveness of assistance programs using dubious metrics like the amount of money spent.

Unsurprisingly, given these problems, foreign aid to Afghanistan has gradually declined, both in terms of the dollar amount and the length of commitments. In 2020, donors at the Afghanistan Conference in Geneva pledged $12–13 billion for the period 2021 to 2024, a decrease of around 20 percent from the $15.2 billion that was promised for 2017 to 2020. Whereas the norm had previously been to make four-year pledges, Washington has now made any payments beyond 2021 conditional on “consistent progress on transparency and accountability, as well as on the peace process, on the part of the Afghan government.”

Political pressures in Washington cast even greater doubt over the future of U.S. assistance to Afghanistan. American aid faces a potential pincer attack from both the right and left. Conservatives are often skeptical of foreign aid as big government handouts: a kind of diplomatic Obamacare. Meanwhile, some on the left see foreign aid — especially military aid — as a form of imperialism that fuels the violence, lines the pockets of the military-industrial complex, and extends America’s forever wars. Given competing budget pressures, from tackling a rising China to domestic priorities, the idea of sending billions of taxpayer dollars indefinitely to Afghanistan may be tough to swallow. It’s hard enough to agree on infrastructure spending in America, never mind in Afghanistan.

It’s the Economic Aid, Stupid!
Yet despite its problems and unpopularity, foreign aid is indispensable to the future of Afghanistan. In the ninth most fragile state in the world, unfortunately, inefficiency goes with the terrain. In the end, what matters is not whether the aid machine runs smoothly. What matters is its net effect. The assistance program in Afghanistan may be the most wasteful around the globe, but it could also be the most valuable. After all, foreign aid is the main barrier preventing a Taliban victory. Kabul raises just $2.5 billion in revenue every year and spends $11 billion — the other three-quarters of the budget comes from foreign donations. In 2018, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani said the Afghan army could not survive six months without assistance: “[W]e don’t have the money.”
Turning off the spigot of assistance would likely trigger the collapse of the regime and allow the Taliban to capture much of the country, including Kabul. In turn, a Taliban triumph would have devastating humanitarian consequences in Afghanistan and could spur a blame game in the United States that would further inflame American politics and divide the United States from its allies.

By contrast, if the foreign aid keeps flowing, the Afghan government has a reasonable shot at survival. When Soviet troops left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade of brutal warfare, many observers believed that Moscow’s client regime in Kabul would quickly fall to the insurgents. But the rebels were a disparate coalition that was bonded together by the shared Soviet enemy. When the Red Army departed, the insurgency splintered, and Kabul cut deals with local rebel commanders. Crucially, Moscow continued to supply aid to Kabul, including a weekly convoy of hundreds of trucks of weapons, fuel, and food. In the end, the Afghan regime survived longer than the Soviet Union itself and only disintegrated in 1992 when Moscow finally cut off support. Today, the withdrawal of foreign forces may also cause the glue bonding the Taliban together to come unstuck and create opportunities to drive a wedge into rebel ranks.
For all its flaws, foreign aid has helped spur impressive gains in Afghanistan, including a dramatic fall in infant and maternal mortality, huge advances in childhood education (especially for girls), and the construction of infrastructure like roads. In the last 20 years, Afghan life expectancy has jumped almost a decade, from 56 to 65 years.

The Price of Peace
What should Washington do? The United States has real, if moderate, interests in Afghanistan — stabilizing the region, countering extremist groups, fulfilling a moral obligation to the Afghan people, and averting a Taliban triumph. These interests do not justify anything close to the peak U.S. commitment during the 2009–2012 Afghan “surge,” when Washington deployed 100,000 U.S. soldiers and spent over $100 billion per year. But they do justify a sustained program of American financial assistance. As a result, the Biden administration should build domestic support, among both Democrats and Republicans, for a withdrawal of U.S. troops combined with a long-term program of aid.
First, Washington should commit to a four-year plan of military and civilian assistance to signal that America intends to back Afghanistan for the long haul. The most effective way to encourage the Taliban to embrace peace talks is to alter their expectations about the future and diminish their confidence in an easy victory. Guaranteeing the flow of aid means that the Taliban may face a painful stalemate, boosting the attraction of a negotiated deal.

Second, Washington should focus on building sustainable military and civilian capabilities. There is little point in constructing a high-tech Afghan air force that cannot operate without American know-how. Rather, the key is to shore up the Afghan army’s basic functionality — for example, paying soldiers’ salaries in a timely manner to reduce attrition rates. Civilian aid should also be targeted toward areas of greatest need or projects with a track record of success — for example, strengthening the Afghan Ministry of Finance so the country can eventually pay its own way or boosting the World Bank’s Citizens’ Charter Afghanistan Project, which delivers social services to local communities through elected community development councils.

Third, it’s important to establish conditions on aid without treating these requirements as a silver bullet. Monitoring projects effectively is necessary to convince taxpayers their dollars are being put to good use. After all, nearly one-third of U.S.-funded capital assets in Afghanistan were misused, unused, or abandoned — sometimes because the asset was destroyed by natural forces or war but often because the beneficiary was unable to maintain the asset or because U.S. officials failed to ensure the asset was constructed according to guidelines. But conditionality on aid should not be prioritized so much that it undermines the aid’s effectiveness. For instance, one study found that “ome benchmarks are largely irrelevant to achieving real progress.” Furthermore, conditionality is essentially a threat to withhold aid — which may serve to embolden the Taliban and increase Afghanistan’s need for support. In addition, conditionality can create perverse incentives. In 2020, Washington announced that future civilian assistance to Afghanistan would depend on “progress in the peace process.” But tying aid to advances in peace talks may encourage the Taliban to play spoiler and keep fighting. Similarly, the Afghanistan Partnership Framework, agreed to by Kabul and outside donors in 2020, made future foreign aid conditional on a peace settlement that lives up to highly idealistic principles, including democracy, human rights, and gender equality. Some compromise on these values is probably necessary to forge a deal with the ultra-conservative Taliban — and donor righteousness is the ticket to forever war.

Fourth, at a time of budget pressure, it’s important to keep international donors on board. Fortunately, key partners like the European Union, Japan, and Norway remain committed to Afghan aid and, in 2020, largely stuck to previous funding levels and the traditional four-year program, albeit with a greater emphasis on conditionality. What about China? Wider strategic competition between Washington and Beijing undeniably complicates cooperation in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, this could be a case where the great powers can act in cautious partnership. The United States and China share an interest in tackling extremism, while Beijing has the capacity to invest in Afghanistan through the Belt and Road Initiative. Afghanistan is far from an existential threat to either great power, and Washington can tolerate a modest growth of Chinese influence in the country.

A U.S. aid program to Afghanistan of around $4–5 billion per year is affordable — even indefinitely so. The figure equates to less than one percent of the U.S. defense budget. Indeed, to put the number in perspective, Washington spends over $300 million every year just on military bands. The aid program is also much cheaper than deploying U.S. troops. Washington can pay for around 50 to 100 Afghan soldiers for the same cost as stationing a single American soldier there (about $1 million per year). The aid program is only a tiny fraction of the expenditure in Afghanistan a decade ago.
Continuing aid to Afghanistan does not guarantee success, but curtailing aid guarantees failure. $4 billion is a lot of money. But it buys Washington a reasonable chance at creating military deadlock in Afghanistan, forcing the Taliban to make peace, and avoiding a repeat of Saigon 1975, with all the associated trauma and recrimination.

Become a Member

Dominic Tierney is a professor of political science at Swarthmore College and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He has published four books — most recently, The Right Way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts (Little, Brown, & Co., 2015). His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and various academic journals.
Image: U.S. Central Command (Photo by 1st Lt. Verniccia Ford)

The Future of Afghanistan Hinges on American Dollars, Not Troops - War on the Rocks

In April, President Joe Biden announced he would withdraw America’s 2,500 combat troops from Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2021. Supporters praised the

warontherocks.com

 

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Austin Asks Top General For ‘Options’ to Evacuate Afghans

Operation would need authorization from White House, which is not yet “actively pursuing” the idea.

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Austin Asks Top General For ‘Options’ to Evacuate Afghans
Operation would need authorization from White House, which is not yet “actively pursuing” the idea.

TARA COPP and JACQUELINE FELDSCHER | JUNE 2, 2021

Updated: 4:34 p.m. ET
With time running out, the Pentagon is still developing plans to evacuate Afghans whose lives would be in danger from the Taliban after U.S. forces depart—but there’s still no order from the White House to move anyone, yet.

To prepare, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has tasked the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, to develop options for those Afghans that includes the possibility of evacuating them, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Wednesday.

“The secretary did task Gen. McKenzie to come up with options potentially for the transportation out of Afghanistan of civilians that might need it, at various levels and under various circumstances,” Kirby said in a phone interview with Defense One.

However, the White House has not directed the Pentagon to execute those plans yet.
“We aren’t at a stage right now where evacuation is being actively pursued,” Kirby said.
White House officials have not yet responded to a request for comment.

Afghan translators who helped U.S. troops during the past two decades of war face potential retaliation from the Taliban once United States and coalition forces withdraw this year. Last week, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told Defense One that plans were being developed “very, very rapidly here, for not just the interpreters but a lot of other people that have worked with the United States....We are going to do whatever the leadership decides to execute.”

Advocates for those Afghans say it is too late to fix the Special Immigrant Visa program, which was established in 2009 to protect interpreters, their families and other Afghans who have assisted the U.S. government since forces began operating there after the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead, they argue it’s long past time to evacuate them to a safe location where their visas can be processed.

Kirby said expanding the program would require action from lawmakers.

“There will need to be Congressional support to expand that program to allow for more Afghans to apply through it,” he told reporters Wednesday at a Pentagon briefing.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a Marine Corps veteran, told Defense One last month that lawmakers in both parties are eager to support an evacuation plan for Afghans and a fix for the visa program, regardless of costs.

“There is bipartisan will in Congress to support getting it done, we just need a plan from the administration,” he said. “I’m sure there will be people who say that [it costs too much,] because there are a bunch of people in Congress with no moral bearing whatsoever, but we clearly have a majority in the House who are willing to support this.”
Advocates for the interpreters argue the best option now is Guam. The island is a U.S. territory, so the government will not need to negotiate with other nations to send evacuees there. Plus there’s precedent: Guam was used to stage Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975 while their visas were processed. In 1996, Guam also served as a temporary haven for Kurds who had worked with U.S. aid groups in Northern Iraq.

Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said this week that she would support bringing Afghan interpreters to the island while their visas are being processed, but added that she has not heard from the administration about the plan.

"We are a people that protect our freedom, protect our island, protect our nation. And certainly, we will be there to support whatever the military’s decision is. I know that we will be working very closely once we get the official word to move forward," she said during a Memorial Day event on Monday.

In a statement to Defense One, the State Department said that 18,000 Afghan principal applicants—interpreters or other Afghans who worked for the U.S. government—are currently seeking a Special Immigrant Visa. Twenty percent of those applications have received final approval "and are moving through the immigration process, either in the petition or visa processing stages," the State Department said.

Fifty percent of the SIV applications are only at the “initial stage of the process,” the State Department said, and are still submitting documents for consideration by the Chief of Mission, which is the top U.S. authority in a host country. The remaining 30 percent are awaiting Chief of Mission approval, the State Department said.

A principal applicant is an Afghan who worked for the U.S. government and who would be eligible to apply for a visa for themselves and their family members.

The State Department said it has added staff in both Kabul and Washington to speed applications.

“Much of the processing of applicants at the “Chief of Mission” (COM) stage occurs in Washington, and that team has significantly increased its staffing in recent months,” the State Department said. “The Department also approved a temporary increase in consular staffing at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to conduct interviews and process visa applications, which allowed the Embassy to address cases that were delayed due to COVID-19 related closures.”

Advocates estimate there are about 70,000 translators and family members who are waiting on a decision, said Matthew Zeller, a retired Army captain and advocate for Afghan interpreters. To move that many people out of the country between June 2 and Sept. 11, the military would need to move 703 people per day, which would require four airlifter flights. But if the withdrawal is, as reported, to be complete by July 4, that number jumps to 10 flights and more than 2,200 people per day, according to data compiled by the Association of Wartime Allies.

As of Tuesday, the U.S. military had flown out the equivalent of 300 C-17 planeloads of equipment from Afghanistan, totaling roughly 13,000 pieces of equipment. The Defense Department has not detailed what equipment was flown out, what was destroyed, and whether any of the gear was handed over to Afghan forces.

“We believe we have the capacity to handle evacuation should it come to that,” Kirby said. “I don't want to hypothesize about the scale and the scope because we just don't know right now.”

Other nations are facing similar pressure to protect the Afghans who worked alongside their troops during the war. German Defense Minister Annegret Kamp-Karrenbauer said in April that the country has a “deep obligation” not to leave people facing violence from the Taliban behind, and is considering bringing up to 520 Afghan translators and family members to Germany.

Dozens of Afghan translators and their families are also set to fly to the United Kingdom within the next two weeks, the Daily Mail reported.

If a similar request is made of the Pentagon by the White House, the military will be ready, Kirby said.

“We are a planning organization, we plan for all manner of contingencies, some of those contingencies are non-combatant evacuations around the world, that would include Afghanistan. So we certainly have, we have put some planning resources to this, no question.”

Related articles
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The Taliban Are Getting Stronger In Afghanistan As U.S. And NATO Forces Exit

As foreign troops withdraw, the Taliban have seized parts of Afghan highways and closed in on cities. One arms dealer in the country says they're even buying heavier weaponry.

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The Taliban Are Getting Stronger In Afghanistan As U.S. And NATO Forces Exit

June 5, 20218:00 AM ET
FAZELMINALLAH QAZIZAI

DIAA HADID
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KABUL, Afghanistan — At a dusty bus station on this city's outskirts, ticket hawkers call out for passengers to the southern city of Kandahar. It's a 300-mile route — and the Taliban control key parts of the highway.

There are gun battles along the route, and the Taliban undertake violent ambushes of Afghan forces.

But for bus driver Jan Mohammad, the highway seems to be the safest it has been in years because of the Taliban. "We are at ease now because the police don't harass us for bribes," says Jan Mohammad, 32, who like many Afghans, does not have a family name. Talibs even issue receipts for customs duties they collect so that drivers don't have to pay again, he says. And there's less highway robbery, he adds: "Robbers can't even spend five minutes on the road, because the Talibs zip over on their motorbikes whenever they hear of a problem."

Yet he acknowledges it's not safe for everyone. "They check the IDs of passengers," he says. "If you are with the Afghan military, they take you off the bus." Rights groups say the Taliban have detained and sometimes killed those suspected of working with government security forces.

Another driver, Sharif Omeri, says the insurgents search passengers' cellphones for music or material forbidden under the Taliban's strict version of Islam forbid. "One time they found a guy who had some pornography on his phone," he says. "They told him to delete it and not watch porn again."

Across Afghanistan, there are echoes of what the Taliban did in the 1990s when they seized power after a brutal civil war. The Taliban wrested order out of chaos, imposing harsh rules on Afghan society until they were toppled in the U.S. invasion in 2001.

In the two decades since, the Taliban have fought the Afghan government and its international allies to regain land and power. Analysts say the insurgents have been growing stronger for years. Now, as American and NATO troops withdraw, the Taliban appear even more emboldened and are wresting more territory from the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

"Even the smallest mujahid feels like we defeated a superpower, and all the world combined," says a Taliban commander, who is second in charge of military operations in a Kabul district. He requested anonymity to speak to NPR so he couldn't be identified by Afghan or foreign forces.

The Taliban have been accelerating a years-old trend of seizing districts since the U.S. scaled back its airstrikes in support of Afghan forces following the deal the Trump administration struck with the Taliban in February last year, according to Jonathan Schroden, an expert at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va.

The agreement included the departure of foreign forces from Afghanistan, largely in exchange for the insurgents refraining from attacks and from harboring terrorist groups like al-Qaida.

"Things have gotten notably worse over the last year," Schroden says. "What you're seeing the Taliban do now is not just taking rural areas, but taking rural areas that are increasingly closer to significant cities, provincial capitals, for example, and effectively surrounding them and also cutting the roads that connect to them."

A recent quarterly inspector general report to Congress said, as of February, the Taliban had surrounded five provincial capitals, including Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. The insurgents have doubled their territory since 2018, according to Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who closely follows Taliban military gains. "And keep in mind: That was when U.S. forces were there," he says.

Since President Biden announced U.S. and allied forces will leave by the symbolic date of Sept. 11, U.S. defense officials have reportedly said they intend to complete the withdrawal as early as July. A month into the process, U.S. Central Command said this week the military was "30-44%" of the way there.

As foreign forces leave, Roggio anticipates the Taliban will seize swaths of southern and eastern Afghanistan. "I think that we are going to see the real offensive come in the next several months," he says.

"Buying rockets, mortars, surface-to-air missiles"

A weapons dealer in the eastern city of Jalalabad says the Taliban are acquiring heavier weapons than usual. "Ever since the Americans agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban have been buying more," he says.

He asks NPR only use his nickname, Haji, to avoid being identified. He is in his 60s, and says he has sold weapons to the Taliban and other militants for much of the past four decades of Afghanistan's near-continuous conflict.

"They're buying rockets, mortars, surface-to-air missiles," he says, noting that these were not their usual light weapons purchases, like automatic rifles and ammunition. He says he has knowledge that as many as 35 surface-to-air missiles, made in Russia, were purchased for the Taliban for $70,000 each.

NPR could not independently verify the dealer's claims.

The analyst Schroden, who has provided assessments of Afghanistan's security situation to Congress, says the assertions are plausible.

"Dominance of the air is one of the [Afghan national defense and security forces'] few critical advantages," he says. If the Taliban "got air defense capabilities, it would be a game-changer in terms of military balance."

"We will arrive as conquerors"

At a gas station on the outskirts of Kabul, the Taliban commander says the group has its eyes fixed firmly on the capital. "When we arrive in Kabul, we will arrive as conquerors," he tells NPR.

Taliban leaders say publicly, however, they are serious about peace talks with the Afghan government, which were among the terms of the U.S.-Taliban deal. The negotiations are meant to reach a power-sharing agreement between the Taliban and other Afghan parties, but the talks have sputtered since starting in September.

Speaking to NPR, the commander indicates the Taliban intend to rule Afghanistan according to their harsh version of Islamic law, rolling back some of the gains women have made since the insurgents last ruled from Kabul. "Women will be able to study and work and move freely, but they'll cover their faces. They'll be segregated. We won't have democracy. We'll have an Islamic regime."

He claims it will be utopia, but he warns: "We will punish those who do not pledge allegiance to us."

Killings escalate

Some analysts believe the Taliban are already punishing prominent critics in advance of their planned future rule.

Amid A Wave Of Targeted Killings In Afghanistan, She's No. 11 On A Murder List
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Amid A Wave Of Targeted Killings In Afghanistan, She's No. 11 On A Murder List

"This deal has actually emboldened the Taliban," says Weeda Mehran, a lecturer on conflict, security and development at Britain's University of Exeter, "to assassinate people and try to get rid of people who would be a problem."

Mehran's referring to killings of dozens of Afghan journalists, activists, clerics and other influential members of society.

The killings escalated after talks began between Afghan government negotiators and Taliban representatives. The U.S. accuses the Taliban of many of the killings. The Taliban deny responsibility. "This is a false propaganda of the enemy," said a spokesman, who uses the name Zabihullah Mujahid. He blamed Afghan government intelligence officials for the murders.

Afghan government defense officials say their forces can protect the country from the Taliban and, even after the withdrawal, could call in international air support as needed. But in recent weeks, the insurgents have overrun four districts, in some incidents reportedly sending Afghan forces fleeing without a fight.

On a recent journey down the Kabul-Kandahar highway in a passenger bus, sounds of clashes were audible between Taliban fighters and government forces in Wardak province, which is adjacent to Kabul.

The bus was flagged down at one of the highway's four Taliban checkpoints. A fighter donned a black turban and a camouflage jacket, that appeared to have been taken from government forces, over his traditional long shirt and baggy pants and wore fingerless gloves. He held a rifle in one hand, and in the other, a green laser pointer to aim at vehicles for searches.

He climbed onto the bus, calling out the traditional Muslim greeting: "As-salaam alaikum!"

He flashed his light at the passengers before landing on one young man. "What is your job?" he asked. "I work in a hotel," the passenger responded.

The Talib walked back to the door of the bus. "Forgive us for the hassle," he apologized. "Please pray for us."

Fazelminallah Qazizai reported from Kabul and Jalalabad; Diaa Hadid from Canberra, Australia.

 

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Al Qaeda's Al-Zawahiri likely to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan border region, probably alive but too frail: UN report

The report, issued on Friday, said that large numbers of Al-Qaeda fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan.

economictimes.indiatimes.com

Al Qaeda's Al-Zawahiri likely to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan border region, probably alive but too frail: UN report


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Al Qaeda's Al-Zawahiri likely to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan border region, probably alive but too frail: UN report
PTILast Updated: Jun 05, 2021, 11:43 AM IST


Synopsis
The report, issued on Friday, said that large numbers of Al-Qaeda fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan.

A significant part of the Al-Qaeda leadership resides in the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region, including the group's elusive leader Aiman al-Zawahiri, who is "probably alive but too frail to be featured in propaganda," according to a United Nations report.

The report, issued on Friday, said that large numbers of Al-Qaeda fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan.

"Member states reported that a significant part of Al-Qaeda leadership remains based in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the core is joined by and works closely with Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent," the twelfth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team said.

Al Qaeda leader "Aiman Muhammed Rabi al-Zawahiri, is believed to be located somewhere in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Previous reports of his death due to ill health have not been confirmed.

"One member state reports that he is probably alive but too frail to be featured in propaganda," the report said, without identifying the country.

It said Al-Qaeda's strategy in the near term is assessed as maintaining its traditional safe haven in Afghanistan for the Al-Qaeda core leadership.

The Monitoring Team noted assessments that have suggested a longer-term Al-Qaeda core strategy of "strategic patience" for a period of time before it would seek to plan attacks against international targets again.

"This scenario is untested against stated Taliban commitments to prohibit such activities."

Al-Qaeda, including Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, is reported to number in the range of several dozen to 500 persons.

Al-Qaeda core's membership is of non-Afghan origin, consisting mainly of nationals from North Africa and the Middle East.

"Member states assess that formal communication between senior Al-Qaeda and Taliban officials is currently infrequent, one member state reported that there is regular communication between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda on issues related to the peace process."

The report said Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent operates under the Taliban umbrella from Kandahar, Helmand (notably Baramcha) and Nimruz Provinces.

"The group reportedly consists of primarily Afghan and Pakistani nationals, but also individuals from Bangladesh, India and Myanmar." It said the current leader of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent is Osama Mahmood, who is not listed, and succeeded the late Asim Umar.

"The group is reported to be such an 'organic' or essential part of the insurgency that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to separate it from its Taliban allies. Several member states characterised this relationship by noting that the wife of the former leader of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, Asim Umar, was among 5,000 Taliban prisoners freed by the Afghan Government in 2020 as part of the Doha agreement," it said.

The report added that Al-Qaeda continued to suffer attrition during the period under review - between May 2020 and April 2021 - with a number of senior figures killed, often alongside Taliban associates while co-located with them.

"The primary component of the Taliban in dealing with Al-Qaeda is the Haqqani Network. Ties between the two groups remain close, based on ideological alignment, relationships forged through common struggle and intermarriage," the report said.

It added that the Taliban has begun to tighten its control over Al-Qaeda by gathering information on foreign terrorist fighters and registering and restricting them.

"However, it has not made any concessions in this regard that it could not easily and quickly reverse, and it is impossible to assess with confidence that the Taliban will live up to its commitment to suppress any future international threat emanating from Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida and like-minded militants continue to celebrate developments in Afghanistan as a victory for the Taliban's cause and thus for global radicalism."

In May 2020, Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent released an Eid al-Fitr audio message in which it portrayed the Doha agreement as an example of divine victory and reward for pursuing jihad.

"While both organisations are expected to maintain a posture of distance and discretion for as long as such is required for the achievement of Taliban objectives, Al-Qaeda nonetheless stands to benefit from renewed credibility on the back of Taliban gains.

"It will be important for the international community to monitor any sign of Afghanistan again becoming a destination for extremists with both regional and international agendas," it said.

Regionally, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan (ISIL-K) strategy is coordinated by the Al-Sadiq office, which covers the "Khorasan" region of Central and South Asia (including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Central Asian republics).

While infrequent, ISIL-K still maintains communications with ISIL core, but funding support to the Khorasan branch from the core is believed to have effectively dried up, it said.

Since June 2020, ISIL-K has had an "ambitious new leader, Shahab al-Muhajir", who is not listed, and it remains active and dangerous, particularly if it is able, by positioning itself as the sole pure rejectionist group in Afghanistan, to recruit disaffected Taliban and other militants to swell its ranks.

 

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China worried about US withdrawal from Afghanistan - The Sunday Guardian Live

From a strategic point of view, a good foothold in Afghanistan would provide leverage to China in terms of containing the expansion of the other major

www.sundayguardianlive.com

China worried about US withdrawal from Afghanistan

Shalini Chawla

• Published
• :
• June 5, 2021,
• 7:48 pm
• |
• Updated
• :
• June 5, 2021,
• 7:48 PM

From a strategic point of view, a good foothold in Afghanistan would provide leverage to China in terms of containing the expansion of the other major players, the US and Russia, in the region.

President Joe Biden’s announcement of complete withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021 has sparked serious apprehensions and disappointments at the global level. While Biden surely wants to exit the unfinished war and says he doesn’t want to pass America’s longest war to another president, the current situation in Afghanistan invites nothing but pessimism. China has recently been active and quite vocal in raising its concerns regarding instability in the region post US and foreign troops withdrawal from Afghanistan.

China’s policy and engagement in Afghanistan has evolved over the past few years. From being an independent and indifferent actor—seeking assurances from the Taliban to guard Xinjiang from extremism, looking for opportunities for economic investment and exploring the mineral wealth of Afghanistan—Beijing’s engagement has widened significantly. China has extended cooperation to Afghanistan in areas of security, military assistance, counterterrorism, COVID-19 related relief assistance and facilitating/offering Afghanistan connectivity with its neighborhood (Iran and Central Asia) through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). (Shalini Chawla, The Sunday Guardian, October 3, 2020)

From a strategic point of view, a good foothold in Afghanistan would provide leverage to China in terms of containing the expansion of the other major players, the US and Russia, in the region. Although China has been keen to expand its influence and engagement in the region, the potential security fallouts post US and foreign troop departure (September 11, 2021), are extremely worrying for China. Beijing has expressed deep displeasure on President Joe Biden’s withdrawal announcement and termed it “hasty”. China has been suggesting the resolution of the Afghan conflict on multiple forums: it has called on the United Nations to play its ‘due role’, insisted the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) actively “pay attention” to the Afghan political crisis and has also offered to moderate the talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The Chinese foreign minister assured Kabul that Beijing will back the Afghan government in playing the lead role in the conflict resolution process.

China has significant security, strategic and economic stakes in the stability of Afghanistan.

Unrest in Xinjiang on account of Muslim repression and the support Uyghur militants draw from the terrorist organisations based in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been a cause of serious concern for China for a long time. Violence in Xinjiang escalated in late 1990s and that’s when Beijing became keen to initiate contacts with the Taliban. Various sources in Russia and China suggested that thousands of Uyghurs received military training in the camps set up in Afghanistan. Chinese diplomats did hold meetings with the Taliban including the famous meeting in December 2000 between the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan, Lu Shulin, and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar in Kandahar. Media reports suggested (The Express Tribune) that Mullah Omar ensured the Chinese Ambassador that the Afghan soil will not be used to destabalise China. During the same period, reports regarding the Chinese companies/sources aiding the Taliban also surfaced.

In the last couple of years, Uyghur repression has found significant concern and expression in the global jihadi discourse. In April 2019, al-Qaeda released a statement expressing solidarity with the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and the Uyghurs. Taliban has maintained links with al-Qaeda despite assuring the US otherwise in the agreement it signed on February 29, 2020. Beijing fears that the Uyghurs will continue to get increasing support from the transnational Muslim extremist forces. China’s efforts are to ensure that the East Turkestan separatists do not benefit from the Taliban and the global terrorist organisations when the Western forces leave. Additionally, the level of violence has escalated in Pakistan with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) resurgence raising security risks for the CPEC projects in Pakistan.

China’s occupation and repression of Xinjiang Muslims has attracted significant international attention and there have been strong coordinated reactions and punitive actions against China: the US has alleged the Chinese government of genocide against the Muslim Uyghurs; in March 2021, the US, European Union, Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on four Chinese individuals and one entity from China on account of ‘serious human rights violations’ and repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang; and on May 19, the European Parliament adopted a resolution freezing “any consideration of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), as well as any discussion on ratification”. China’s position on human rights, values and governance has been increasingly questioned and condemned at the international level. At this point, Beijing would not want the situation in Xinjiang to intensify with the spill over impact from the neighbouring Afghanistan. Another important security concern for China is the drugs from Afghanistan as the Golden Crescent (meaning Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan) is the main gateway for smuggling drugs into China. (Shalini Chawla, The Sunday Guardian, October 3, 2020)

China’s quest for energy has also led it to make investments in the Afghan energy sector. It is interesting to note that in 2007, when the US and the allied forces were facing growing challenges in the Afghan war given the resurgence of the Taliban (with Pakistan’s extensive support while the US was distracted in Iraq), China invested lavishly in the Aynak copper mine and oil and natural gas sector.

Given its strong security concerns and economic stakes, China is exploring a more pragmatic and a multilateral approach to resolve the Afghan crisis.


Dr Shalini Chawla is Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi.

 

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The Rahnuma-E-Deccan Daily – A Century Worth Celebrating. Established in 1921

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China, Pak, Afghan FMs call for ‘moderate Muslim policy’ in Afghanistan after US troops withdrawal
1 day ago
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Beijing, Jun 4 (PTI) China, Afghanistan and Pakistan have underlined that after the withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan, the country should pursue a moderate Muslim policy amid Beijing’s growing concern over the return of the Taliban and the Islamic State and its likely impact on its volatile Xinjiang province.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar and their Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi held their fourth China-sponsored trilateral meeting via video conference on Thursday.

Last month, Wang had held talks over telephone with the foreign ministers from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A joint statement issued after the trilateral talks said, The three sides underlined the importance of a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan and called on all parties in Afghanistan for an early declaration of a comprehensive ceasefire and an end to the senseless violence, in order to create the conditions needed for negotiation between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban .

They called for an orderly withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan to prevent the deterioration of the security situation there and the return of terrorist forces.

State-run Xinhua news agency in a report said the three countries stressed that the solution to the Afghan issue should fully reflect the principle of “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned”, support Afghanistan in becoming an “independent, sovereign and neutral country, pursue a moderate Muslim policy, firmly fight against terrorism, and maintain friendly ties with other countries, especially neighbouring countries .

They also stressed the need to reject the “double standards” of anti-terrorism, to forbid any terrorist organisations or individuals from using their territories to engage in criminal activities against other countries.

They also urged strengthened efforts to combat the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other terrorist forces, so as to safeguard regional security and stability, the Xinhua report said.

The trilateral meeting took place as China has stepped up its diplomacy with both Pakistan and Afghanistan to deal with the fallout of the US and NATO troops withdrawal which is already resulting in increasing incidents of violence in Afghanistan.

The US is preparing to wrap up its longest war by withdrawing the last of its 2,500-3,500 troops along with 7,000 allied NATO forces by September 11 at the latest.

Beijing seeks to carve out its Afghanistan policy, to safeguard its interests, especially the security of its Xinjiang region that shares a narrow border with Afghanistan.

Observers say China’s worries stem from Uygur Muslim militants from Xinjiang belonging to the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) who joined the Islamic State (IS) and fought in Syrian civil war returning to the volatile province which shares borders with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Afghanistan besides Central Asian States, Kyrgyztan and Kazakhstan.

China is currently battling the allegation of genocide against Uygur Muslims in Xinjiang levelled by the US, EU, Australia and other countries.

Significantly, ahead of the trilateral meet, Afghanistan said it favoured India, the US and China playing a role to restore peace in the country.

“Afghanistan being a stable country is in favour of countries such as the US, China and India,” Javid Ahmad Qaem, Afghanistan’s ambassador to China, was quoted as saying by state-run Global Times at a press conference with Chinese journalists here on Tuesday.

In an apparent reference to Afghanistan’s charge that Pakistan hosted the Taliban in its territory, Qaem said “it is more important how we and Pakistan can build trust and how China and India can build trust regarding Afghanistan regardless of other issues. It is about peace in the whole region,” he said.

A prominent advantage that China enjoys is that it has good relations with both Afghanistan and Pakistan and can play a critical role in building trust between these two neighbouring countries, and the trust is the real thing that will bring long-lasting peace in the region, Qaem said.

He also expressed confidence that the Afghan Army can deal with the Taliban after the US troop withdrawal.

“Since 2014, we have been fighting by ourselves, except for some air support from the US for our national security forces,” he said.

He said around 1,500 Taliban fighters were killed by Afghan forces in May.

“We have 350,000 national security forces, among whom there are special forces. We don’t have any fear of losing ground. I don’t see a lot of changes along with the withdrawal,” he said.

The US and the Taliban signed a landmark deal in Doha on February 29, 2020 to bring lasting peace in war-torn Afghanistan and allow US troops to return home from America’s longest war.

Under the US-Taliban pact, the US has agreed to withdraw all its soldiers from Afghanistan in 14 months.

There are currently 2,500 American troops left in Afghanistan, the lowest level of American forces in the war-torn country since 2001.

Since the US-led invasion that ousted the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks, America has spent more than USD 1 trillion in fighting and rebuilding in Afghanistan.

About 2,400 US soldiers have been killed, along with tens of thousands of Afghan troops, Taliban insurgents and Afghan civilians.

 

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C.I.A. Scrambles for New Approach in Afghanistan (Published 2021)

The rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops has left the agency seeking ways to maintain its intelligence-gathering, war-fighting and counterterrorism operations in the country.

www.nytimes.com

C.I.A. Scrambles for New Approach in Afghanistan
The rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops has left the agency seeking ways to maintain its intelligence-gathering, war-fighting and counterterrorism operations in the country.

By Mark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes
June 6, 2021
Updated 6:49 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The rapid U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is creating intense pressure on the C.I.A. to find new ways to gather intelligence and carry out counterterrorism strikes in the country, but the agency has few good options.

The C.I.A., which has been at the heart of the 20-year American presence in Afghanistan, will soon lose bases in the country from where it has run combat missions and drone strikes while closely monitoring the Taliban and other groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The agency’s analysts are warning of the ever-growing risks of a Taliban takeover.

United States officials are in last-minute efforts to secure bases close to Afghanistan for future operations. But the complexity of the continuing conflict has led to thorny diplomatic negotiations as the military pushes to have all forces out by early to mid-July, well before President Biden’s deadline of Sept. 11, according to American officials and regional experts.

One focus has been Pakistan. The C.I.A. used a base there for years to launch drone strikes against militants in the country’s western mountains, but was kicked out of the facility in 2011, when U.S. relations with Pakistan unraveled.

Any deal now would have to work around the uncomfortable reality that Pakistan’s government has long supported the Taliban. In discussions between American and Pakistani officials, the Pakistanis have demanded a variety of restrictions in exchange for the use of a base in the country, and they have effectively required that they sign off on any targets that either the C.I.A. or the military would want to hit inside Afghanistan, according to three Americans familiar with the discussions.

Diplomats are also exploring the option of regaining access to bases in former Soviet republics that were used for the Afghanistan war, although they expect that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would fiercely oppose this.

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Recent C.I.A. and military intelligence reports on Afghanistan have been increasingly pessimistic. They have highlighted gains by the Taliban and other militant groups in the south and east, and warned that Kabul could fall to the Taliban within years and return to becoming a safe haven for militants bent on striking the West, according to several people familiar with the assessments.

As a result, U.S. officials see the need for a long-term intelligence-gathering presence — in addition to military and C.I.A. counterterrorism operations — in Afghanistan long after the deadline that Mr. Biden has set for troops to leave the country. But the scramble for bases illustrates how U.S. officials still lack a long-term plan to address security in a country where they have spent trillions of dollars and lost more than 2,400 troops over nearly two decades.

William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, has acknowledged the challenge the agency faces. “When the time comes for the U.S. military to withdraw, the U.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish,” he told senators in April. “That is simply a fact.”

Mr. Burns made an unannounced visit in recent weeks to Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with the chief of the Pakistani military and the head of the directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s military intelligence agency. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has had frequent calls with the Pakistani military chief about getting the country’s help for future U.S. operations in Afghanistan, according to American officials familiar with the conversations.

Mr. Burns did not bring up the base issue during his trip to Pakistan, according to people briefed on the meeting; the visit focused on broader counterterrorism cooperation between the two countries. At least some of Mr. Austin’s discussions have been more direct, according to people briefed on them.

A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment when asked about Mr. Burns’s travel to Pakistan.

Two decades of war in Afghanistan have helped transform the spy agency into a paramilitary organization: It carries out hundreds of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, trains Afghan commando units and maintains a large presence of C.I.A. officers in a string of bases along the border with Pakistan. At one point during President Barack Obama’s first term, the agency had several hundred officers in Afghanistan, its largest surge of personnel to a country since the Vietnam War.

These operations have come at a cost. Night raids by C.I.A.-trained Afghan units left a trail of abuse that increased support for the Taliban in parts of the country. Occasional errant drone strikes in Pakistan killed civilians and increased pressure on the government in Islamabad to dial back its quiet support for C.I.A. operations.

Douglas London, a former head of C.I.A. counterterrorism operations for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said that the agency was likely to rely on a “stay behind” network of informants in Afghanistan who would collect intelligence on the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the stability of the central government and other topics. But without a large C.I.A. presence in the country, he said, vetting the intelligence would be a challenge.

“When you’re dealing offshore, you’re dealing with middlemen,” said Mr. London, who will soon publish a book, “The Recruiter,” about his C.I.A. experience. “It’s kind of like playing telephone.”

In the short term, the Pentagon is using an aircraft carrier to launch fighter planes in Afghanistan to support the troop withdrawal. But the carrier presence is unlikely to be a long-term solution, and military officials said it would probably redeploy not long after the last U.S. forces leave.

The United States is stationing MQ-9 Reaper drones in the Persian Gulf region, aircraft that can be used by both the Pentagon and the C.I.A. for intelligence collection and strikes.

But some officials are wary of these so-called over the horizon options that would require plane and drones to fly as many as nine hours each way for a mission in Afghanistan, which would make the operations more expensive because they require more drones and fuel, and also riskier because reinforcements needed for commando raids could not arrive swiftly during a crisis.

Pakistan is a longtime patron of the Taliban; it sees the group as a critical proxy force in Afghanistan against other groups that have ties to India. Pakistan’s spy agency provided weapons and training for Taliban fighters for years, as well as protection for the group’s leaders. The government in Islamabad is unlikely to sign off on any U.S. strikes against the Taliban that are launched from a base in Pakistan.

Although some American officials believe Pakistan wants to allow U.S. access to a base as long as it can control how it is used, public opinion in the country has been strongly against any renewed presence by the United States.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, told lawmakers last month that the government would not allow the U.S. military to return to the country’s air bases. “Forget the past, but I want to tell the Pakistanis that no U.S. base will be allowed by Prime Minister Imran Khan so long he is in power,” Mr. Qureshi said.

Some American officials said that negotiations with Pakistan had reached an impasse for now. Others have said the option remains on the table and a deal is possible.

The C.I.A. used the Shamsi air base in western Pakistan to carry out hundreds of drone strikes during a surge that began in 2008 and lasted during the early years of the Obama administration. The strikes focused primarily on suspected Qaeda operatives in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal areas, but they also crossed the border into Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s government refused to publicly acknowledge that it was allowing the C.I.A. operations, and in late 2011 it decided to halt the drone operations after a series of high-profile events that fractured relations with the United States. They included the arrest of a C.I.A. contractor in Lahore for a deadly shooting, the secret American commando mission in Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden and an American-led NATO airstrike on the Afghan border in November 2011 that killed dozens of Pakistani soldiers.

The Americans and the Pakistanis “will want to proceed cautiously” with a new relationship, said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States who is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. But, he said, Mr. Biden’s announcement of a withdrawal “has the C.I.A. and the Defense Department, as well as Pakistanis, scrambling.”

American diplomats have been exploring options to restore access to bases in Central Asia, including sites in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan that housed American troops and intelligence officers during the war.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke this month with his counterpart in Tajikistan, though it is not clear if base access was discussed during the call. Any negotiations with those countries are likely to take considerable time to work out. A State Department spokeswoman would say only that Mr. Blinken was engaging partner countries on how the United States was reorganizing its counterterrorism capabilities.

Russia has opposed the United States using bases in Central Asia, and that is likely to make any diplomatic effort to secure access to bases for the purposes of military strikes a slow process, according to a senior American official.

While the C.I.A. in particular has long had a pessimistic view of the prospects of stability in Afghanistan, those assessments have been refined in recent weeks as the Taliban has made tactical gains.

While military and intelligence analysts have previously had assessments at odds with one another, they now are in broad agreement that the Afghan government is likely to have trouble holding on to power. They believe the Afghan security forces have been depleted by high casualty rates in recent years. The announcement of the U.S. withdrawal is another psychological blow that could weaken the force.

Intelligence assessments have said that without continued American support, the Afghan National Security Forces will weaken and could possibly collapse. Officials are working to develop options for continuing that support remotely, but the Pentagon has not yet come up with a realistic plan that officials believe will work.

Some current and former officials are skeptical that remote advising or combat operations will succeed. Collecting intelligence becomes far more difficult without a large presence in Afghanistan, said Mick P. Mulroy, a retired C.I.A. officer who served there.

“It doesn’t matter if you can drop ordinance,” he said, “if you don’t know where the target is.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

The U.S. in Afghanistan

Pentagon Accelerates Withdrawal From Afghanistan
May 25, 2021

Spy Agencies Seek New Afghan Allies as U.S. Withdraws
May 14, 2021

Pentagon Struggles to Wean Afghan Military Off American Air Support
May 6, 2021

Mark Mazzetti is a Washington investigative correspondent, and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He is the author of "The Way of the Knife: the C.I.A, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth." @MarkMazzettiNYT

Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes • Facebook

 

[Housecarl]

This is going to look like a cross between the falls of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane, only with satellite and internet video feed.....What a FUBAR......

Posted for fair use.....

Afghan forces will be gutted without U.S. contractors to fix planes

The loss of U.S. contractors could trigger a game-changing shift in the military balance between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

www.nbcnews.com

NATIONAL SECURITY
Without U.S. contractors, the Afghan military will lose its main advantage over the Taliban — air power
The loss of U.S. contractors could trigger a game-changing shift in the military balance between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

June 6, 2021, 3:00 AM PDT
By Dan De Luce

WASHINGTON — Afghan government forces could lose the single most important military advantage they have over the Taliban — air power — when private contractors and U.S. troops leave the country in coming weeks.

The Afghan security forces rely heavily on U.S.-funded contractors to repair and maintain their fleet of aircraft and armored vehicles and a whole array of other equipment. But the roughly 18,000 contractors are due to depart within weeks, along with most of the U.S. military contingent, as part of Washington's agreement with the Taliban to withdraw all "foreign" troops.

Without the contractors' help, Afghan forces will no longer be able to keep dozens of fighter planes, cargo aircraft, U.S.-made helicopters and drones flying for more than a few more months, according to military experts and a recent Defense Department inspector general's report.

The Biden administration has vowed to keep up U.S. financial support of Afghanistan's army and police after U.S. troops leave by the deadline of Sept. 11, and Afghan officials say they are able to take on the Taliban without the need for U.S. boots on the ground. But the contractors' departure is a potentially devastating blow for the Afghan government in its fight against the Taliban.

"We're talking about the more or less grounding of the Afghan air force," said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank.

Air power is arguably the Afghan government's main edge in its fight with the Taliban, said Bowman, a former Army officer and Black Hawk helicopter pilot who served in Afghanistan. "If we don't help them maintain those aircraft, then the Afghan security forces will be deprived of that advantage, and that could have a decisive impact on the battlefield and ultimately on the state of the Afghan government."

Under the deal the U.S. and the Taliban signed last year during the Trump administration, the U.S. pledged to withdraw all American and allied troops, as well as all nondiplomatic staff, including "trainers, advisers, and supporting services personnel."

When the Obama administration withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, defense contractors remained in the country.

Pentagon officials and senior military officers have said at congressional hearings that the administration is looking at "options" to support the Afghan security forces from afar, possibly by repairing equipment outside the country or by providing assistance remotely. But the clock is ticking on the U.S. exit, with the withdrawal at nearly the halfway point as U.S. troops hand over bases across the country, and Afghan officials are scrambling to find an alternative solution.

Afghan officials have yet to announce any new arrangements with outside companies to maintain U.S.-supplied aircraft and military equipment.

The Afghan Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other senior officials have long acknowledged the "critical role" played the Afghan air force and other military aircraft, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said, adding that the Defense Department will continue to provide the resources they need.

He said the budget request the administration submitted to Congress late last month "fully funds contracted logistics support for the Afghan aviation fleet so the Afghan government can maintain its advantage in the air."

David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, an association for contractor companies, said in April that there were "a lot of unanswered questions" about what comes next after the troop withdrawal. "We'll be raising this with the Defense Department over the coming days, and a lot of our member companies are asking us to weigh in on this."

If the Afghan government secures contractors on its own, possibly with Western financial support, the U.S. military would not be on the ground to provide security. The contractors also would not enjoy U.S. legal protections, and they would be subject to Afghan law, which would mean the companies would be likely to charge much higher fees, experts said.

Although the Afghan security forces depend on U.S.-funded contractors to repair most of their gear, the Afghans do not require U.S. help to maintain their Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters. U.S. government officials and Congress encouraged the Kabul government to replace the Russian choppers with U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and Little Bird MD-530 helicopters, but the Afghans still fly a significant number of Russian helicopters.

Apart from sustaining more than 170 aircraft, U.S.-funded contractors also maintain thousands of armored vehicles and personnel carriers for the Afghan army and police.

"In the absence of contract maintenance support, within some number of months you will have an Afghan air force that has pretty significantly reduced capability — i.e., you can't fly — and an Afghan army that can't move," said Jonathan Schroden, special operations program director for the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research center.

U.S.-funded contractors are crucial for almost every aspect of the Afghan military's operations, helping to maintain radio communications gear, surveillance balloons, radar for artillery, logistical networks, fuel supplies and even the government's system for paying troops. Their absence, coupled with the withdrawal of U.S. troops and air power, has a psychological as well as a practical effect, experts said.

Comparing the military strength of the Taliban and Afghan security forces, Schroden said that the insurgents have a slight edge now but that Afghan troops could prevent the government in Kabul from falling in the short term — but not if they are unable to keep helicopters and planes in the fight.

"If the air force goes away or at least becomes significantly degraded, that is a game changer with respect to the military balance between the two sides," he said.

The Taliban have proven to be a capable fighting force that has steadily rolled back government forces across the country over the past several years. But the insurgents have no air power at their disposal, apart from some basic drones, and no effective anti-aircraft defenses against Afghan fighter planes and attack helicopters.

"What often has tipped the scales in some of the battles between Afghan security forces and the Taliban is close air support," said Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "And if you can't maintain the aircraft, you're not going to be able to provide that close air support."

Officials with the U.S. military's training mission in Afghanistan said last year that without logistical and other assistance from contractors, "no airframe can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months," according to a Defense Department inspector general's report.

Over the years, efforts to reduce the Afghan government's dependence on outside contractors have fallen far short of the Pentagon's objectives, according to reports by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

The Pentagon had set a goal to have the Afghan air force carry out 80 percent of its required aircraft maintenance by 2023.

U.S. advisers and contractors have also overseen regular maintenance schedules for aircraft, which Afghan military commanders have tended to ignore as they focused on the immediate demands of combat, Schroden said.

"What we've seen in the past, without U.S. advisers leaning on the Afghans to adhere to those routine maintenance schedules, they just blow through them," Schroden said. "The operational exigency to provide air support to forces in the field just completely outweighs long-term views of the health of these air frames."

In announcing his decision in April to bring home the roughly 3,000 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden vowed to keep up aid to the country's army and police. "We'll continue to support the government of Afghanistan. We will keep providing assistance to the Afghan National Defenses and Security Forces," he said.

But the administration has come under bipartisan criticism over unanswered questions about the troop withdrawal, including uncertainty about how the U.S. will continue to support Afghan security forces, how Washington will protect Afghans who face Taliban threats because of their work for the U.S. government and how the U.S. will track terrorist threats in the country.

"I mean, all the questions that have not been addressed should have been addressed, because, frankly, right now, the appearance of it is that since we didn't have a plan, we basically have said, 'To hell with Afghanistan,'" former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was defense secretary in the Obama administration, said at an event last week. "I mean, that's the message."

Dan De Luce
Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

 

[jward]

thediplomat.com

Pakistan Targets a Resurgent TTP as Uncertainty Looms in Afghanistan
By Umair Jamal for The Diplomat

6-8 minutes


The Pulse | Security | South Asia
The withdrawal of U.S. troops raises questions about Pakistan’s ability to target TTP militants in Afghanistan.

Credit: VOA
Two police officials were killed in Islamabad on June 3. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a proscribed militant group, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The TTP’s latest attack targeting security officials in the country’s capital underscores that the group is not only poised to make a comeback, but may have once again established a footprint in Pakistan’s major urban centers. This is not good news as Pakistan attempts to ramp up efforts to contain the group amid the withdrawal of the international troops from Afghanistan.

The TTP has been on the run for years due to Pakistani security forces’ military operation against it. The disintegration of the group’s infrastructure in Pakistan’s tribal areas following the 2014 Zarb-e-Azb military operation and its division into different splinter groups over the last few years has been seen as a win and a durable solution.
However, the first major threat to this assessment came in August last year when the TTP brought two of its major splinter groups back to the fold. The announcement of the merger came only a few days after Pakistan’s Army announced that countrywide military operations against militant groups had brought “hard-earned success.”
Since August 2020, the TTP’s militant activities and presence inside Pakistan have grown significantly. This is happening despite that fact that the once lawless tribal areas where the group had bases before the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb are now mostly under the government’s watch.

Over the last few months, the TTP has staged numerous small but targeted attacks on the country’s security agencies. In April, the group carried out a deadly bombing outside a heavily guarded hotel in Balochistan province’s capital, Quetta. The attack was one of the first outside the group’s traditional stronghold, in Pakistan’s northwest region along the border with Afghanistan. In May, the TTP claimed responsibility for two separate attacks on security forces in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan province, killing at least nine soldiers.
Reportedly, Pakistan’s security agencies have tried to contact the new leadership of the TTP to “start peace talks and put an end to the violence,” but the effort has not produced any meaningful results. If the news is true, then the group may have become a far bigger threat than already known. It is important to note here that the last major attempt on the Pakistani side to negotiate with the Taliban was before the launch of the 2014 military operation.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s security forces have ramped up efforts to target the TTP’s network in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the group’s leadership is considered to be based. Last month, a senior commander of the group was killed in Quetta by Pakistan’s security forces. On June 4, Sindh province’s Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) issued a Red Book for the first time in four years, containing names of militant groups and leaders that are a serious security threat. Out of the 93 most wanted names in the Sindh Red Book, at least 23 militants come from the TTP alone. On May 29, another senior commander of the TTP was killed in Afghanistan’s Kunar province near Pakistan’s tribal areas.
As U.S. and other international troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, Pakistan would like to accelerate its targeting of the group’s senior leadership in Afghanistan. The possibility of widespread violence in Afghanistan is imminent once all international troops withdraw. Adding to Pakistan’s worries, U.S. troops are likely to withdraw well ahead of the announced September 11 deadline. There have been several reports of claiming that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan will be complete by July 4.

The rushed withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan creates plenty of compilations for Pakistan’s ability to target the TTP’s network across the Durand Line, the border dividing both countries. For years, Pakistan has relied on U.S. drone attacks on both sides of the border to target TTP commanders. So far, three former TTP chiefs, namely Baitullah Mehsud, Hakimullah Mehsud, and Maulana Fazlullah, have been killed in US drone strikes. U.S. drone strikes have played a vital role for Pakistan’s security agencies, but at this point, it is unclear what will happen to these operations in the months to come.
The withdrawal of U.S. troops thus raises questions about Pakistan’s ability to target TTP militants in Afghanistan. Does Islamabad have the capability to reach TTP commanders hiding in Afghanistan without relying on U.S. drone strikes?

In the past, Pakistan has quietly offered its air bases for U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan. Reportedly, Washington has again reached out to Pakistan for a similar understanding. Publicly Islamabad has refused to offer bases, but some analysts say that Pakistan may have again quietly allowed the United States to use its airspace for surveillance operations in Afghanistan. If true, the availability of U.S. drones to target the TTP in Afghanistan would surely be part of the deal. On the other hand, if it’s not true, the TTP would gain a major field advantage in the coming months.

Much will become clear in the coming weeks as far as the US troops presence in the region is concerned. As of now, both the TTP and Pakistan are trying their best to emerge as the beneficiary of the looming uncertainty in Afghanistan.

Pakistan Targets a Resurgent TTP as Uncertainty Looms in Afghanistan

The withdrawal of U.S. troops raises questions about Pakistan’s ability to target TTP militants in Afghanistan.

thediplomat.com