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Opinion: Trump & Co. engineered the pullout from Afghanistan. Now they criticize it.

 Opinion by Max Boot

The Biden administration, as I’ve argued, deserves plenty of blame for its precipitous and ill-planned exit from Afghanistan. Naturally, a sense of decency and consistency has not prevented former President Donald Trump and his minions from adding their voices to the chorus of criticism, even though they themselves designed this exit strategy and lauded it until the last moment. We are now being treated to the contemptible spectacle of people who sent the airplane into a nosedive complaining about the resulting crash.

As recently as April 18, Trump said: “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.” On June 26, he bragged: “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think?”

Now he is calling the situation “not acceptable” and saying that the troop withdrawal should have been “conditions based” — which wasn’t part of the deal he struck with the Taliban. He is demanding that Biden “resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan,” i.e., for carrying out Trump’s policy. Bizarrely, Trump is even castigating Biden for failing to “blow up all the forts,” as if U.S. forces were fighting in the Middle Ages.

Trump’s partner in hypocrisy, as in misgovernment, is former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Not only did he oversee the negotiations with the Taliban, Pompeo convinced Pakistan to release from prison Abdul Ghani Baradar, Afghanistan’s new president, to serve as an interlocutor. Pompeo met with Baradar last year and bragged about it on his Twitter feed, thereby legitimating the Taliban and disheartening the Afghan military.

As recently as July, Pompeo was eager to “applaud” the withdrawal, saying he wanted “the Afghans to take up the fight for themselves.” On Sunday, by contrast, he was fulminating that “weak American leadership always harms American security.” He went on to ludicrously accuse the Biden administration of being “focused on critical race theory while the embassy is at risk.”

Hold my nonalcoholic beer, says former vice president Mike Pence. On Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, he offered a master class in blame-shifting and buck-passing. “The Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is a foreign-policy humiliation,” he thundered, “unlike anything our country has endured since the Iran hostage crisis.”

In Pence’s alternative universe, the reason the Taliban won was because Biden extended the Trump deadline for withdrawal by a few months: “Once Mr. Biden broke the deal, the Taliban launched a major offensive against the Afghan government and seized Kabul. They knew there was no credible threat of force under this president.” You would never know from reading this mendacious twaddle that the Taliban never agreed to a lasting cease-fire and never stopped attacking even when Trump and Pence were in office. (More than 3,000 Afghan civilians were killed in 2020.)

Let’s get real. When it comes to Afghanistan, Trump and Biden are, as Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said on Wednesday, “like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” “While Biden bears responsibly for bungling the implementation,” Bolton said, “I have no confidence Trump would have executed it any more competently.” Indeed, given how many other policies Trump bungled, from the pandemic to migrant children, there is every reason to expect that he would have found some way to outdo Biden in mismanaging Afghanistan. At least Biden is now trying to airlift U.S. allies out of Afghanistan. Better late than never. It’s hard to imagine Trump doing even that much given the anti-immigrant animus of his base.

Charlie Kirk, head of the pro-Trump group Turning Point USA, set the tenor by accusing Biden of wanting Afghanistan to fall because he “wants a couple hundred thousand more Ilhan Omars to come into America to change the body politic permanently.” In a similarly odious vein, Fox “News” host Tucker Carlson warned of millions of Afghan refugees coming to the United States: “So first we invade, and then we are invaded.”Of course, given the opportunistic inconsistency of the Trumpkins, it would not surprise me to see these very same people who now warn of resettling Afghan refugees turn around tomorrow to criticize Biden for abandoning U.S. allies. In fact, Trump already did just that before reverting to his trademark nativism. (“This plane should have been full of Americans,” he complained on Wednesday of an Air Force aircraft carrying Afghan refugees. “America First!”) Logic be damned. The only thing that matters is “owning the libs.”

What’s maddening is that the disingenuous Trump media strategy could work. The bungled exit from Afghanistan does serve to discredit Biden and seemingly confirms Trump’s criticisms — hitherto limited to the right-wing bubble — that the president is weak and ineffectual. Biden’s approval rating is dropping — along with support for the withdrawal. The irony that Biden could be punished for implementing Trump’s strategy will be utterly lost on Trump supporters.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/19/trump-afghanistan-withdrawal-criticism/

Opinion: Who’s to blame for the deaths of 13 service members in Kabul? We all are.

By Max Boot

The last thing President Biden ever wanted to do was to preside over another ramp ceremony for more flag-draped caskets returning home from Afghanistan. Indeed, the entire rationale of his troop withdrawal was to avoid further casualties. Yet there he was on Sunday at Dover Air Force Base honoring the 13 service members killed in the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. Fate can be cruel that way.

No doubt the president was even more gutted than the rest of us, because he was the one who sent them into harm’s way. In one of her last Instagram posts, Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee had been pictured holding an Afghan baby in her arms. “I love my job,” she said. Now she is gone. Along with Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, who was married in February and expecting his first child; Marine Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, who hailed from the tiny border town of Rio Bravo, Tex., and saw military service as his “calling”; Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, who wanted to serve his country just like his two great-grandfathers who fought in the Korean War … and so many others.

Their deaths were not in vain. They died so that more than 114,000 people could escape to freedom. Generations as yet unborn will remember these heroes for helping them to find a better life. And yet their sacrifice was also agonizing and unnecessary. Like so many service members throughout U.S. history, they died, in part, because of the blunders of their superiors.

If you ask me who is to blame, I would point not only to Biden but to former president Donald Trump — and to all of us, the people of America. By carrying out this pell-mell withdrawal from Afghanistan, our leaders, after all, were only giving us what we wanted.

In a sense, the fuse of the bomb that exploded on Thursday was lit 18 months ago. That was when Trump, with bipartisan support, concluded a terrible troop-withdrawal deal that freed 5,000 Taliban terrorists and sapped the morale of our Afghan allies. Trump made scant provision to save Afghans who had fought with our troops. Olivia Troye, an aide to former vice president Mike Pence, has recounted how White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller hindered every effort to bring the holders of Special Immigrant Visas to the United States.

Biden should have done better, but he didn’t. In April, also with bipartisan support, he announced that all U.S. forces would rapidly withdraw, along with the 17,000 contractors who kept the Afghan air force flying and the Afghan army supplied. Denied the ability to support their forces, the Afghan military rapidly collapsed in the face of a Taliban offensive.

Yet even as Biden was bowing out, he was ignoring calls from veterans’ groups to evacuate translators and other Afghan allies. Lawmakers, many with military backgrounds, pleaded with the administration to begin a mass evacuation, but their entreaties were ignored.

Why? At least three factors were at play. First, Biden was afraid of a xenophobic backlash from bringing so many Afghans to the United States. Second, he was concerned about sending a signal of no confidence in the Afghan government. And, third, he wagered that there was plenty of time to get people out later. But the Afghan government unraveled faster than anyone imagined, and desperate mobs of refugees swarmed the airport.

It was only then — with the Taliban already in control of Kabul — that Biden did what he should have done many months earlier: order a massive airlift of Afghans and U.S. citizens out of the country. What once could have been done in an orderly fashion with relatively low risk now became a highly perilous undertaking. The kind of “defense in depth” that was standard at U.S. military bases in Afghanistan — with multiple layers of trusted security personnel — was not possible in this chaotic environment.

U.S. troops were forced to rely on their enemies for outer-perimeter security. We do not know exactly how an Islamic State suicide bomber got close enough to carry out his devastating attack, but suffice it to say the Taliban guards were either incompetent or overwhelmed or simply unwilling to risk their own lives to save “infidels” and “traitors” from the wrath of fellow Islamists.

There are recriminations aplenty, but the sad fact is that the only way to avoid this particular disaster would have been either to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely or to leave our allies behind. Both options would have come with their own costs and were overwhelmingly rejected by the American people: Seventy percent of Americans wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, and 81 percent wanted to evacuate translators and other allies. Our leaders were simply giving the American people what they thought we wanted.

The truth is that most Americans paid little attention to Afghanistan until recently (the three major television networks devoted a total of five minutes of evening news coverage to the country last year), and they had conflicting desires. They wanted out, but they did not want to bear the consequences of withdrawal. Those clashing impulses produced incoherent policymaking — and resulted in Sunday’s heartbreaking homecoming.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/29/whos-blame-deaths-13-service-members-kabul-we-all-are/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

د آشنا تلویزیون د یکشنبې خپرونه د ۲۰۲۱ د اګست ۲۹ - وږي ۷

Editorial: Kabul airport attack serves as a harbinger of what lies ahead if the ISIS-K threat is ignored

WHILE Kabul may have fallen to the Afghan Taliban with little violence, Thursday’s devastating suicide blast outside the Afghan capital’s airport serves as a harbinger of what lies ahead should the local chapter of the self-styled Islamic State group have the freedom to operate in a security vacuum.

The IS’s Khorasan affiliate has claimed credit for the atrocity, which targeted families waiting outside the airport to be processed in order to leave Afghanistan. At the time of writing the death toll was at least 100, including over a dozen American troops, Taliban fighters and non-combatants. There had been intelligence reports of an impending attack, while the mass exodus to flee Taliban-ruled Afghanistan amidst the hasty Western withdrawal meant that a disaster was only a matter of time. IS was waiting to exploit the situation, and it has done so in a most brutal way.

However, gruesome as the airport bombing was, it offers an opportunity for all Afghan forces to disregard their differences and join forces — aided by the international community — against the IS threat. The world has seen in Iraq and Syria the brutal violence the self-styled caliphate is capable of. The threat of IS in Afghanistan has also been highlighted in these columns previously. Therefore, ignoring the threat will help create a regional security nightmare.

While the Taliban control most of Afghanistan, those opposed to their rule, primarily in the Panjshir area, have vowed to stick to their guns. In the interest of security, the Taliban and Panjshiri forces must work together to eliminate the IS threat from Afghan soil.

In reaction to the bombing, US President Biden has said he will strike back at IS. But instead of indulging in any gung-ho operations, there should be a unified anti-IS effort in Afghanistan led by the Taliban and other Afghan groups, and aided by foreign forces including Nato as well as Russia and China. Afghans know their country best and it should be left to them to purge it of IS.

However, such an operation does come with risks. After all, the more hard-line members of the Taliban may break ranks with the group’s leadership and join forces with IS, as was the case during the Taliban-US negotiations. Be that as it may, leaving IS to its devices in Afghanistan will help create a new monster. Not only will a rejuvenated IS rampage across Afghanistan, it will pose a grave threat to all major regional states, including Pakistan. Again, mention must be made of Syria and Iraq, where foreign interference and collapse of governance gave the soldiers of the ‘caliphate’ an open playing field. The effects of this folly were felt in the West also, as acts of terrorism increased globally. Therefore, mistakes of the past must not be repeated in Afghanistan, and Afghan forces must lead an internationally supported effort to disable IS in the country.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1643073/kabul-massacre

Biden’s Rushed Afghan Exit Adds Strains to U.S.-Pakistan Ties

Joe Biden’s hopes of keeping the Afghan Taliban in check will rely heavily on Pakistan, a neighboring nation that has close ties to the militant group but which has often proven an unreliable partner to the U.S.

Islamabad has long tried to balance its relationship with the U.S. and its support for the Taliban, stoking frustration in Washington and a sense now that the militant group’s triumph has a lot to do with its base of support in Pakistan.

“Americans believe Pakistan’s support for the Taliban over 20 years was the main reason” for the U.S.’s failure, said Husain Haqqani, who served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2008 to 2011. “U.S.- Pakistan relations are in for a rough ride.”

Pakistan remains an indispensable power in the region and even if the Taliban weren’t ruling next door, the U.S. would want to maintain a foothold in the country to keep China’s influence in check and ensure Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal is secure. That will be even more critical after American troops wrap up their Afghan withdrawal on Aug. 31.

Bin Laden Refuge

The U.S. and Pakistan were never closer than after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when the U.S. turned to Afghanistan’s neighbor for bases and intelligence. But the relationship hit a nadir in 2011, when U.S. special forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad, not far from a key Pakistani military base. Many U.S. officials assume bin Laden’s presence was at least known by some in the Pakistani government, military and intelligence services, a charge officials there rejected. But the bitterness and distrust caused by that event still linger on both sides.Now, more than half a year into his presidency, Biden still hasn’t called Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. “I keep hearing that President Biden hasn’t called me. It’s his business,” Khan told journalists this month. “It’s not like I am waiting for any phone call.”

Deadly Kabul Attack Shakes Biden’s Afghan Exit Strategy

Pakistani officials have complained over the years that the Americans have simultaneously wanted them to use their influence on the Afghan Taliban to help reach a political settlement while also cracking down on the group. Pakistan also has a large Pashtun population, the dominant ethnic group of Taliban leaders, complicating the politics of meeting U.S. demands. Leaving out Pakistan’s historic support for the Taliban, particularly from the country’s security services, Khan said the militant group’s success in retaking Afghanistan was probably inevitable and urged the world to work with them as a new government gets formed. The 300,000-strong Afghan security forces, equipped with sophisticated American weapons, couldn’t withstand 70,000 Taliban fighters because “no one fights for a corrupt government,” he said. “Let’s help them if the Taliban want to establish peace.”

China Ties

Despite the tensions, both sides still need each other.

For starters, “our intelligence-gathering ability in Afghanistan isn’t what it used to be,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Aug. 20 when asked about the U.S.’s ability to track terrorists in the country as troops withdraw. Pakistan can help fill that gap, better than other neighboring nations.

 Another key incentive is China. The U.S.’s biggest strategic rival maintains close ties with Islamabad and stands to gain from America’s withdrawal from the region.Pakistan is a crucial part and original participant in China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. Beijing and Islamabad signed $11 billion in projects last year alone. Close relations with Pakistan also provide China with leverage in its strained relationship with India.Khurram Schezad, chief executive officer at Karachi-based advisory Alpha Beta Core Solutions Pvt, said Islamabad needs to keep its options open, even as its long-standing political and economic ties with Beijing continue to deepen.

“China is a large trading partner for Pakistan but so is the U.S.” Schezad said. “We should keep diversification rather than concentrating risk with one specific nation.”

China-Pakistan trade totaled about $15 billion last year, more than double the $6.5 billion between Pakistan and the U.S., according to International Monetary Fund import data compiled by Bloomberg.

Investors are still cautious about the developing situation. While the stock market has seen little impact from the Taliban takeover, Pakistan bonds were the worst performers among emerging-market peers when the militant group took Kabul, according to a Bloomberg index, a reflection of the possibility that the country will face a backlash for its role supporting the Taliban.

If that happens, it would add to the economic troubles facing Pakistan, which is dependent on a $6 billion International Monetary Fund program.

Homegrown Terrorists

Pakistan also faces its own terrorist threats for which security and intelligence cooperation with the U.S. could prove useful. The Pakistani Taliban have been blamed for 70,000 deaths of civilians in the country since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The group has carried out multiple terrorist attacks in the country in recent years, including a car bomb explosion at a luxury hotel hosting the Chinese ambassador in the Pakistani city of Quetta this year. In 2014, the organization assaulted a school, leaving 145 dead -- mainly children.

Now, Pakistan is worried about terrorist attacks from across its border after militants were released from Afghan jails.

“The Taliban’s Pakistan faction was using Afghan soil against Pakistan,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in a news conference this week. “Our concerns are genuine, and our expectations are also natural. We don’t want to see Afghanistan become a safe haven for any terrorist outfit.”

Qureshi has urged a political accommodation with the Taliban during visits to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran to discuss the evolving situation. He argues that peace in Afghanistan would bring stability to the region and promote trade.

Hard to Forget

Besides Pakistan’s history hosting bin Laden, Americans will find it hard to forget that Pakistan gave the Taliban in Afghanistan the opportunity to rebuild and regroup after the U.S. invasion.

“No U.S. administration in the last 20 years was able to end the Pakistani sanctuary the Taliban enjoyed,” said Lisa Curtis, former senior director for South and Central Asia on the National Security Council under President Donald Trump. “So long as the Taliban could fall back safely to Pakistan and the Pakistani military allowed them to freely cross back and forth across the border, the Taliban were never going to lose the stamina, will, and resources to fight.”

Trump cut back on military assistance to Pakistan in 2018, wary that U.S. taxpayer dollars were being used to fund America’s enemies.

Yet for all the problems, neither America nor Pakistan seems capable of extricating itself from their awkward relationship.

The U.S. “looks at the region and says we have a potentially festering terrorism sanctuary in Afghanistan we need to deal with,” said Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security who was an adviser to the late Republican Senator John McCain. “They’re going to need regional partners, and Pakistan is going to be one of those.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-29/biden-s-rushed-afghan-exit-adds-strains-to-u-s-pakistan-ties

Fire from Afghan border kills two soldiers - Pakistan Army

Militant fire from across the Afghan border kills two Pakistanian soldiers, the Pakistan Army reported on Thursday. The army said it retaliated and killed two or three attackers.

The incident in Pakistan's Bajaur district is the first of its kind reported since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

On Saturday, the United States said it had killed two ISIS-K militants in eastern Nangarhar province which borders Pakistan. The Taliban condemned the strike.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/militant-fire-across-afghan-border-kills-two-pakistan-soldiers-says-army-2021-08-29/

#Pakistan #PPP - Imran Khan celebrating destruction of three years: Bilawal Bhutto

Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has termed the PTI government as incompetent and selected and said that Imran Khan is celebrating the destruction of three years.

Addressing the ‘Workers Convention’ at Wassan House in Kot Diji, Khairpur District, he said that IRSA was doing injustice to Sindh on the issue of water.

Chairman PPP while criticizing the incumbent PTI said that incompetent and illegitimate government was imposed on the people terming the current government as ‘selected’.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that unemployment and inflation have reached historic levels. He said that people have been made jobless during PTI’s three years of destruction adding that Pakistan Steel Mills was closed and people were made unemployed.

He said that the future of the youth of Sindh was being played with. Instead of building houses, people are being made homeless.

https://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/617250-Imran-Khan-celebrating-destruction-of-three-years:-Bilawal-Bhutto-