Friday, August 13, 2021
#SanctionPakistan - Afghanistan Is in Freefall. America Must Punish Pakistan For Its Role.
By Michael Rubin
The American defeat to the Taliban and, by extension, Pakistan is a humiliation rooted not in a US military failure but the corrosiveness and shortsightedness of America’s own political debate. It is a blow the United States might have avoided, but should not take without a response. Simply put, it is time to sanction Pakistan.
Afghanistan is in freefall. The Taliban conquer city after city with impunity. The State Department pleads with the Taliban to spare its embassy. A repeat of Saigon 1975 looms. It need not have been this way. President Joe Biden decided to withdraw forces to honor a peace agreement his and President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad hashed out with the Taliban, never mind that the Taliban never abided by the terms of the agreement. As Afghanistan collapses, Biden now blames the Afghan government for its corruption and the Afghan military for its failure to counter the Taliban advance. Corruption is a major problem, though Afghanistan has tackled some of the worst abuses and so improved in Transparency International’s ratings. If corruption alone was the problem, however, then its similarly-ranked peers—Burundi, Guinea Bissau, and Turkmenistan—would suffer a similar fate. As for the Afghan military’s failure to fight, Afghans are correct to point out that the fight would have been far easier if the United States had not forced the Afghan government to release imprisoned Taliban fighters.
The real problem, however, is not Afghanistan but rather its neighbor Pakistan. Simply put, if Pakistan had not taken the decision to support, co-opt, and control the Taliban, Afghanistan would never be in such a dire situation. The majority of Taliban car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) use precursor chemicals that come from two fertilizer plants in Pakistan. While conducting research for a history of US diplomacy with rogue regimes and terror groups, I interviewed a number of Pakistani officials about the Taliban. One former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency acknowledged to me over tea in the Islamabad Club that Pakistan was playing both sides of the issue—supporting the Taliban insurgency while then charging the United States extortionate fees so that the Pentagon could resupply its forces. From the ISI’s standpoint, it was like hitting the jackpot. Since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has given Pakistan almost $23 billion in security assistance and Coalition Support Funds.
Afghanistan is a diverse country; the Taliban do not represent traditional Afghan culture nor, for that matter, do they represent most Pashtuns, despite a quarter-century of Pakistan’s support. This is why the Taliban refuse to submit themselves to elections: The movement knows that they could never achieve their extremist society in a poll of their peers, so they seek instead to impose it through the force of arms. The American defeat to the Taliban and, by extension, Pakistan is a humiliation rooted not in a US military failure but the corrosiveness and shortsightedness of America’s own political debate. It is a blow the United States might have avoided, but should not take without a response. Simply put, it is time to sanction Pakistan. The case against Pakistan is strong. Pakistan remains jihad central. It sustained the Taliban and sheltered Usama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, a town that is Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point. Pakistan also sheltered 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, before his 2003 capture. The United Nations believes Bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahiri lives under Pakistani protection. US drone strikes have killed several Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders inside Pakistan, including Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who had succeeded Mullah Omar, the movement’s founder. Pakistan also hosts Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group that has killed Americans including during the 2008 Mumbai bombings. The current Taliban assault did not materialize out of thin air, but rather is a sign of deception: Pakistani officials deceived their American counterparts they were facilitating peace talks while in reality they were preparing the Taliban to take over Afghanistan. Pakistan’s current behavior is not the exception, but rather the rule. Pakistani authorities have long distrusted the United States. They believe (rightly) that, upon India’s partition, Pakistan was Washington’s second choice, and they accuse the United States of failing to support them when they subsequently started wars with India. History is full of diplomatic grievances, but Pakistani authorities use their exaggerated sense of grievance repeatedly to backstab America. This was the case in the 1980s when Pakistan authorities violated their commitments not to build a nuclear arsenal. Today, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is not only a fait accompli, but incitement has reached such depths that Pakistani politicians threaten to use nuclear weapons. A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program, subsequently proliferated the technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. While the United States often compartmentalizes Pakistan with Afghanistan, Pakistan also threatens American interests elsewhere. First Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and then-incumbent Imran Khan have transformed Pakistan into a Chinese vassal. This is a tragedy for Pakistani nationalists, but it also affects the entire Indo-Pacific region by giving China an outlet to the Indian Ocean. That Pakistan receives US military training and gains access to US equipment only to embrace Beijing is a paradox that the Biden administration should immediately end. Today, China trains the ISI and the Pakistani Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have increasingly strong links. The State Department has long been reluctant to impose sanctions on Pakistan. Perhaps senior diplomats believed they might better compel Pakistan with carrots rather than sticks, but the net result of US inaction was a sense of impunity in Islamabad and an emboldened Taliban. American credibility is also at stake. The State Department’s failure to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism hemorrhages the credibility of the terror list, because it shows it to be subjective rather than objective. The U.S. and its allies must also support adding Pakistan to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) black list; this Pakistan remains on the grey list signals to Pakistani leaders that they can finance terror and launder money with impunity. Nor should the United States consider Pakistan a major-non NATO ally. Perhaps it was one for a short period after 9/11, but no longer. Simply put, all sales of military and dual-use technology to Pakistan by the United States and its allies should cease immediately. The United States and its allies—many of whom have also suffered because of Pakistani duplicity—should withdraw support for loans for Pakistan from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank. Lastly, it is time to impose targeted travel and banking sanctions on ISI and Pakistani army officers involved in supporting the Taliban and other terrorist groups.Mr. President, for the honor of not only Afghanistan but also the United States, make Pakistan pay. A future generation of Pakistanis who aspire to live in a normal country not hijacked by extremism will one day thank you.https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/afghanistan-freefall-america-must-punish-pakistan-its-role-191725
The Afghan Military Was Built Over 20 Years. How Did It Collapse So Quickly?
The Taliban’s rapid advance has made clear that U.S. efforts to turn Afghanistan’s military into a robust, independent fighting force have failed, with its soldiers feeling abandoned by inept leaders.The surrenders seem to be happening as fast as the Taliban can travel. In the past several days, the Afghan security forces have collapsed in more than 15 cities under the pressure of a Taliban advance that began in May. On Friday, officials confirmed that those included two of the country’s most important provincial capitals: Kandahar and Herat. The swift offensive has resulted in mass surrenders, captured helicopters and millions of dollars of American-supplied equipment paraded by the Taliban on grainy cellphone videos. In some cities, heavy fighting had been underway for weeks on their outskirts, but the Taliban ultimately overtook their defensive lines and then walked in with little or no resistance.This implosion comes despite the United States having poured more than $83 billion in weapons, equipment and training into the country’s security forces over two decades. Building the Afghan security apparatus was one of the key parts of the Obama administration’s strategy as it sought to find a way to hand over security and leave nearly a decade ago. These efforts produced an army modeled in the image of the United States’ military, an Afghan institution that was supposed to outlast the American war. But it will likely be gone before the United States is. While the future of Afghanistan seems more and more uncertain, one thing is becoming exceedingly clear: The United States’ 20-year endeavor to rebuild Afghanistan’s military into a robust and independent fighting force has failed, and that failure is now playing out in real time as the country slips into Taliban control. How the Afghan military came to disintegrate first became apparent not last week but months ago in an accumulation of losses that started even before President Biden’s announcement that the United States would withdraw by Sept. 11. It began with individual outposts in rural areas where starving and ammunition-depleted soldiers and police units were surrounded by Taliban fighters and promised safe passage if they surrendered and left behind their equipment, slowly giving the insurgents more and more control of roads, then entire districts. As positions collapsed, the complaint was almost always the same: There was no air support or they had run out of supplies and food. But even before that, the systemic weaknesses of the Afghan security forces — which on paper numbered somewhere around 300,000 people, but in recent days have totaled around just one-sixth of that, according to U.S. officials — were apparent. These shortfalls can be traced to numerous issues that sprung from the West’s insistence on building a fully modern military with all the logistical and supply complexities one requires, and which has proved unsustainable without the United States and its NATO allies. Soldiers and policemen have expressed ever-deeper resentment of the Afghan leadership. Officials often turned a blind eye to what was happening, knowing full well that the Afghan forces’ real manpower count was far lower than what was on the books, skewed by corruption and secrecy that they quietly accepted.And when the Taliban started building momentum after the United States’ announcement of withdrawal, it only increased the belief that fighting in the security forces — fighting for President Ashraf Ghani’s government — wasn’t worth dying for. In interview after interview, soldiers and police officers described moments of despair and feelings of abandonment.On one frontline in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar last week, the Afghan security forces’ seeming inability to fend off the Taliban’s devastating offensive came down to potatoes. After weeks of fighting, one cardboard box full of slimy potatoes was supposed to pass as a police unit’s daily rations. They hadn’t received anything other than spuds in various forms in several days, and their hunger and fatigue were wearing them down. “These French fries are not going to hold these front lines!” a police officer yelled, disgusted by the lack of support they were receiving in the country’s second-largest city. By Thursday, this front line collapsed, and Kandahar was in Taliban control by Friday morning. Afghan troops were then consolidated to defend Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals in recent weeks as the Taliban pivoted from attacking rural areas to targeting cities. But that strategy proved futile as the insurgent fighters overran city after city, capturing around half of Afghanistan’s provincial capitals in a week, and encircling Kabul. “They’re just trying to finish us off,” said Abdulhai, 45, a police chief who was holding Kandahar’s northern front line last week. The Afghan security forces have suffered well over 60,000 deaths since 2001. But Abdulhai was not talking about the Taliban, but rather his own government, which he believed was so inept that it had to be part of a broader plan to cede territory to the Taliban. The months of defeats all seemed to culminate on Wednesday when the entire headquarters of an Afghan Army corps — the 217th — fell to the Taliban at the northern city of Kunduz’s airport. The insurgents captured a defunct helicopter gunship. Images of an American-supplied drone seized by the Taliban circulated on the internet along with images of rows of armored vehicles. Brig. Gen. Abbas Tawakoli, commander of the 217th Afghan Army corps who was in a nearby province when his base fell, echoed Abdulhai’s sentiments as reasons for his troops’ defeat on the battlefield. “Unfortunately, knowingly and unknowingly, a number of Parliament members and politicians fanned the flame started by the enemy,” General Tawakoli said, just hours after the Taliban had posted videos of their fighters looting the general’s sprawling base. “No region fell as a result of the war, but as a result of the psychological war,” he said. That psychological war has played out at varying levels. Afghan pilots say that their leadership cares more about the state of the aircraft rather than the people flying them: men and at least one woman who are burned out from countless missions of evacuating outposts — often under fire — all while the Taliban carry out a brutal assassination campaign against them. What remains of the elite commando forces, who are used to hold what ground is still under government control, are shuttled from one province to the next, with no clear objective and very little sleep.The ethnically aligned militia groups that have risen to prominence as forces capable of reinforcing government lines also have nearly all been overrun.The second city to fall this week was Sheberghan in Afghanistan’s north, a capital that was supposed to be defended by a formidable force under the command of Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum, an infamous warlord and a former Afghan vice president who has survived the past 40 years of war by cutting deals and switching sides.On Friday, another prominent Afghan warlord and former governor, Mohammad Ismail Khan, who had resisted Taliban attacks in western Afghanistan for weeks and rallied many to his cause to push back the insurgent offensive, surrendered to the insurgents. “We are drowning in corruption,” said Abdul Haleem, 38, a police officer on the Kandahar frontline earlier this month. His special operations unit was at half strength — 15 out of 30 people — and several of his comrades who remained on the front were there because their villages had been captured. “How are we supposed to defeat the Taliban with this amount of ammunition?” he said. The heavy machine gun, for which his unit had very few bullets, broke later that night. As of Thursday, it was unclear if Mr. Haleem was still alive and what remained of his comrades. As the Taliban carry out an almost uninterrupted sweep of the country, their strength has been in question. Official estimates have long sat at somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 fighters. Now that number is even murkier as international forces and their intelligence capabilities withdraw. Some U.S. officials say the Taliban numbers have swelled because of an influx of foreign fighters and an aggressive conscription campaign in captured territory. Other experts say the Taliban have taken a bulk of their strength from Pakistan. Yet even amid what could be a complete surrender by the Afghan government and its forces, there are troops still fighting. More often than not, as is the case in any conflict since the beginning of time, the soldiers and police are fighting for each other, and for the lower-ranking leaders who inspire them to fight despite what hell lies ahead. In May, when the Taliban were breaching the outskirts of the southern city of Lashkar Gah, a hodgepodge group of border force soldiers were holding the line. The police officers who were supposed to be defending the area had long surrendered, retreated or had been paid off by the Taliban, as has occurred in many parts of the country over the past year. Equipped with rifles and machine guns, some dressed in uniforms, others not, the border soldiers beamed when their stubble-bearded captain, Ezzatullah Tofan, arrived at their shell-racked position, a house abandoned during the fighting. He always comes to the rescue, one soldier said. Late last month, as the Taliban pushed into Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand Province, an outpost called their headquarters elsewhere in the city asking for reinforcements. In an audio recording obtained by The New York Times, the senior commander on the other end asked them to stay and fight. Captain Tofan was bringing reinforcements, he said, and to hold on a little longer. That was around two weeks ago. By Friday, despite the Afghan military’s tired resistance, repeated flights of reinforcements and even American B-52 bombers overhead, the city was in the hands of the Taliban. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/world/asia/afghanistan-rapid-military-collapse.html
As the Taliban Advance in Afghanistan, Pressure on Pakistan Grows
By Emily Schmall
The United States and others want Pakistan to push harder for peace. But many Pakistanis see a Taliban victory as inevitable, and some are cheering for one.
The Taliban are claiming towns and territories across Afghanistan. With each victory, scrutiny is falling on the leaders of neighboring Pakistan.
For decades, Pakistan has served as a sanctuary for the Afghan Taliban, who have often crossed the countries’ rugged, 1,660-mile border with ease. Officials have acknowledged that Taliban fighters maintain homes and families in Pakistan, at a safe distance from the battlefields.
Now that the American military has declared its part in the Afghan war over, and the Taliban increasingly look as if they can capture the country, Washington is applying pressure on Pakistan to push for a negotiated settlement.
While voicing support for a peaceful solution globally, however, the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan has been quieter at home. It has not spoken out against pro-Taliban rallies within Pakistan. It also hasn’t condemned reported Taliban atrocities as the group marches toward Kabul.
The reason: A large number of Pakistanis, including military officers, describe a Taliban victory as inevitable. Some, including former military officials, are publicly cheering for one.
But a collapse in Afghanistan would carry risks for Pakistan, too, including a possible wave of refugees, and a boost to jihadist movements that target Pakistan’s government for attack.
“Pakistan is really in a bind,” said Elizabeth Threlkeld, a South Asia expert at the Stimson Center in Washington. “Even though Pakistan is really concerned about spillover violence and an influx of refugees, they want to keep the Taliban on side.”
In an interview with The New York Times in June, Mr. Khan said Pakistan had used the “maximum leverage it could on the Taliban.”
Pakistani officials deny helping the group militarily, insisting that during negotiations in Doha, Qatar, they pushed hard for peace talks with the Taliban. In public, they have echoed the line taken by the United States and other parties to the accord reached in Doha, warning that Afghanistan would become a pariah state if the Taliban took it by force.
But Pakistan has leverage that it is not bringing to bear, government officials in other countries say. It still allows Taliban leaders free movement into and out of the country and continues to serve as a safe haven where fighters and their families can receive medical care, they say.
Some critics, particularly in Afghanistan, accuse Pakistan of actively supporting the Taliban’s offensive, saying that the insurgents could not have mounted such a large effort without assistance. On social media, the hashtag campaign #SanctionPakistan has gained popularity in Afghanistan and among the diaspora.
Officials in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, have played down the idea that they can influence the Taliban. But the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, said during a trip to India last month that Pakistan must “do whatever it can to make sure that the Taliban does not take the country by force.”
The U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalizad, said this month that Pakistan bore special responsibility because of how many Taliban leaders resided within its borders, and that it would be “judged internationally” on whether it was seen to have done all it could to promote a political settlement.
Pakistan’s tolerance of the Taliban has taken a diplomatic toll. Its archrival, India, which is currently presiding over the United Nations Security Council and also seeks influence in Afghanistan, says that logistical, technical and financial support for the Taliban continue to emanate from Pakistan. Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, claimed at a conference last month in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, that 10,000 jihadis had traveled from Pakistan to join the offensive, which Mr. Khan staunchly denied.
Privately, though, Pakistan officials say they have little power to stop Afghans who live in Pakistan from crossing the border to fight alongside the Taliban.
Pakistan’s leaders may also be sensitive to the impact that a Taliban victory could have on its own insurgency. The Pakistani Taliban, or T.T.P., a banned terrorist group, has carried out hundreds of attacks on Pakistani security forces and civilians, including an assault on a school in 2014 that killed at least 145 people, mainly children.
Until last year, the T.T.P. appeared to be crumbling. A series of leaders were killed in U.S. drone attacks. It suffered an internal rift. A sustained crackdown by Pakistan pushed the group into Afghanistan.
But last month alone, it claimed responsibility for 26 terrorist attacks in Pakistan. On Thursday the government said it was behind a July blast at a hydroelectric plant that killed nine Chinese workers and four others, a claim the group denied. The T.T.P. chief, Mufti Noor Wali, has described the Afghan Taliban’s victory as one shared by all Muslims.
“Taliban’s recent advancements in Afghanistan, doubtlessly, have boosted the T.T.P.’s morale and increased the group’s strength,” said Aftab Khan Sherpao, a former Pakistani interior minister who has survived three T.T.P. suicide attacks.
“It is the beginning,” he said. “There will be a rise in terror attacks and it will be linked with Taliban advancement in Afghanistan.”
Some former members of Pakistan’s military establishment make their support for the Afghan Taliban clear.
Ghulam Mustafa, a retired lieutenant general and defense commentator, recently described the Taliban insurgency as “a struggle of epic proportions” that would result in the “destruction of the ‘free world’s’ way of life.”
Another retired lieutenant general, Shafaat Shah, compared the Taliban’s “swift justice” favorably to Pakistan’s slow-moving judicial system.
Their words may not reflect the views of Pakistan’s top leaders, but they suggest the Taliban’s position in the country has strengthened.
“I don’t think the euphoria displayed by some ex-military officers is reflective of the mood in the armed forces as an institution to support the Taliban,” said Asif Durrani, a former Pakistani diplomat.
“However, it is also a fact that the Taliban have proved their prowess and have emerged as formidable stakeholders, duly recognized by the immediate neighbors and other important capitals, including Washington.”
The Afghan situation has once again complicated the relationship between Pakistan and the United States. Moeed Yusuf, Pakistan’s national security adviser, and Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, the director of intelligence, recently visited Washington to discuss Afghanistan. Pakistan has said that it will not allow the United States to use its bases for any military action against the Taliban.
“The Pakistan-U.S. relationship is passing through a rough patch,” Mr. Durrani said.
Still, said Ms. Threlkeld of the Stimson Center, Pakistan may be willing to accept the international community’s opprobrium, as well as spillover violence and refugees, in exchange for greater influence in Kabul.
A friendly stance toward the Taliban could also score Mr. Khan political points at home. Many in Pakistan see the group as Islamic champions who are routing foreign interlopers.When the Taliban captured the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak last month, Islamists and students held a huge celebratory rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta.In mosques along the border, many frequented by Afghan families who had fled to Pakistan, preachers called on worshipers to pray for Taliban fighters and donate money to their cause. Afghan officials say that the Taliban find rich recruiting grounds in those mosques and in religious schools in Pakistan. Pakistani officials deny that.
Some Pakistan lawmakers cast the Taliban as a useful ally against the threat of foreign powers as well as homegrown terrorism. Pakistani officials say that “anti-Pakistan elements” are funding at least two dozen militias operating along the border.
The Taliban “are playing the role of a protective wall for Pakistan,” Mufti Abdul Shakoor, a member of an Islamist party, said in Parliament last month.
The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001, tens of thousands of refugees poured into Pakistan. In anticipation of a Taliban takeover, the Pakistani authorities have erected fencing along nearly 1,500 miles of border.
Still, the border remains somewhat porous — for those aiming to join the Taliban, if not those fleeing from it.
Khan Nazar, an Afghan refugee in Karachi, said that his brother’s family of seven had fled Kunduz after the Taliban seized the city’s main entrance in late July.
“It seems it will be difficult for them to cross the border this time,” Mr. Nazar said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/world/asia/pakistan-afghanistan-taliban.html
Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s message to the nation on the occasion of the 74th Independence Day
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/25349/