Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari lashes out at Pak PM over Afghan issue
Pakistan could not afford any more U-turns at Afghanistan's situation, hence the government should come up with a clear-cut policy on Afghanistan with political backing and consensus in the country, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said. During a press conference on Tuesday, the PPP leader took a jibe at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan over the current situation in Afghanistan, The News International reported.
"Prime Minister Imran Khan had come up with a stance on every vital national issue, but later on he took a U-turn on that, creating confusion in the country. Pakistan could not afford any more U-turns at this critical juncture," the local media outlet quoting Zardari reported. Zardari further said that the government should not compromise on the issue of terrorism in the country and the National Action Plan (NAP) should be implemented in letter and spirit. He said the fall of Kabul and Afghanistan had coincided with terrorism incidents in Dasu, Quetta, and Karachi. If the government did not continue to implement NAP, then there was a danger that such incidents would increase.
Pakistan has been globally accused of sheltering the Taliban in the country.
Taliban took over the country on Sunday. Earlier on Tuesday, the Taliban had announced a "general amnesty" for all Afghan government officials and urged them to return to work, including women corresponding with Sharia law. The Taliban leaders are discussing future government plans in Doha and are in touch with the international community and intra-Afghan parties to make government in Afghanistan. The world is closely watching the unfolding situation in Afghanistan as the countries have scrambled to evacuate its citizen from Afghanistan in an attempt to secure their people.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/bilawal-bhutto-zardari-lashes-out-at-pak-pm-over-afghan-issue/articleshow/85419276.cms
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
پی پی پی افغانستان میں ایک کثیرالجہتی، مساوی حقوق اور جمہوری حکومت کی حمایت کرے گی، چیئرمین پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی بلاول بھٹو زرداری
پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے افغانستان میں موجودہ صورتحال کی پیشِ نظر وہاں کے عام شہریوں کو درپیش مسائل پر اپنی جماعت کی جانب سے تشویش کا اظہار کرتے ہوئے تمام اسٹیک ہولڈرز پر زور دیا ہے کہ وہ امن کی جانب بڑھیں۔ پی پی پی افغانستان میں ایک کثیرالجہتی، مساوی حقوق اور جمہوری حکومت کی حمایت کرے گی، جو کئی دہائیوں سے جنگ سے متاثر ملک میں تمام عوام کے لیئے امن، تحفظ، زندگی اور آزادی کے ساتھ ساتھ ان کی املاک کی حفاظت کو بھی یقینی بنائے۔ افغانستان کے موجودہ حالات اور پاکستان کی سیاسی صورتحال پر پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کی سینٹرل ایگزیکیوٹیو کمیٹی کے اجلاس کے بعد وزیراعلیٰ ہاوَس میں پریس کانفرنس سے خطاب کرتے ہوئے پی پی پی چیئرمین نے کہا کہ انہیں اپنے افغان بھائیوں اور بہنوں کے لیئے تشویش ہے، جو کئی دہائیوں سے بڑی جرئت اور حوصلے کے ساتھ مشکل حالات کا مقابلہ کر رہے ہیں۔
انہوں نے کہا کہ انہیں افغانستان کے تمام شہریوں ، خصوصاً خواتین، نوجوانوں اور تمام اقلیتوں، کے لیئے تشویش ہے۔ انہوں نے مزید کہا کہ یہ محرم کا مہینہ ہے، اور افغانستان کے شہریوں کو محرم کا مہینہ بلا روک ٹوک منانے کی اجازت دی جائے۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ وہ پاکستان میں امن و امان کے معاملے پر تشویش کا اظہار کرتے رہے ہیں۔ اب حکومتِ پاکستان ملک دہشتگردی کے معاملے پر کسی مصلحت کا شکار نہ ہو، بلکہ نیشنل ایکشن پلان پر من و عن عمل کیا جائے۔
یہاں مختلف دہشتگرد گروپس ہیں، جنہوں نے ہمارے شہریوں اور سکیورٹی فورسز کو نشانہ بنایا ہے، انہیں یہ واضح پیغام جانا
چاہیئے کہ ہم یہاں ان کی اس طرح کی سرگرمیاں برداشت نہیں کریں گے۔
‘داسو، کوئٹہ اور کراچی میں دہشت گردی کے واقعات ہوئے ہیں، حکومت نیشنل ایکشن پلان پر عمل درآمد جاری نہیں رکھے گی تو خطرہ ہے کہ واقعات میں اضافہ ہوگا’۔ پی پی پی چیئرمین نے کہا کہ امید اچھی رکھنی چاہیے مگر ہمیں ہر طرح کی صورتحال کے لیے تیار ہونا چاہیے۔ اس کے علاوہ پاکستان میں سی پیک کے منصوبوں کے سیکیورٹی پر نظر ثانی کی جانی چاہیے اور ان پر کام کرنے والوں کو پوری سیکیورٹی دی جانی چاہیے۔ چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ پاکستان کی حکومت کے لیے بہت ضروری ہے کہ قوم پرست ذہنیت کے لوگوں کو مشغول کرنا چاہیے اور پر امن حل نکالنا چاہیے۔
ملک بھر کے قوم پرست نوجوانوں سے مل کر پرامن حل نکالنا چاہیے۔ ہم سمجھتے ہیں حکومت کو اپنے وعدے پورے کرنے ہوں گے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ موجودہ صورتحال پر پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کا یہ فوری اور ابتدائی رد عمل ہے اور وقت کے ساتھ ساتھ ہماری پالیسیز بھی بنیں گے۔ پی پی پی چیئرمین نے حکومت سے مطالبہ کیا کہ افغان صورتحال پر پارلیمان کو اعتماد میں لیا جائے اور پاکستانی کی پالیسی کے بننے کے طریقہ کار میں سینیٹ کی قرار داد کےطریقہ کار پر عمل کیا جائے تاکہ بہتر پالیسی بن سکے۔ سب افغانستان کی صورتحال کو غور سے دیکھ رہے ہیں اور اس کی حوصلہ افزائی کر رہے ہیں کہ افغانستان میں ایسا نظام آئے جس میں تمام برادریوں کی نمائندگی شامل ہو۔
انہوں نے کہا کہ پاکستان میں سرحد پر باڑ لگانے کے عمل پر ہم انحصار کر سکتے ہیں، اگر افغانستان میں امن و عامہ کی صوررتحال بہتر ہوجاتی ہے تو ہم پناہ گزینوں کی آمد نہ دیکھیں تاہم اگر ایسا نہ ہوا تو ہمیں ان چیزوں کا خطرہ ہے۔ بلاول بھٹو کا کہنا تھا کہ اس بات میں کوئی شک نہیں کہ پاکستان کی پالیسی واضح ہونی چاہیے کہ پاکستان کی عوام دہشت گردی کو کسی صورت برداشت نہیں کریں گے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ وزیر اعظم نے ہر معاملے پر ایک موقف اپنایا ہے اور پھر یوٹرن لیتے رہے ہیں جس سے الجھن پیدا ہوتی ہے اور ہم اس وقت ایسی چیزیں برداشت نہیں کرسکتے۔ اس وقت ہمیں ایک واضح پالیسی، سیاسی حمایت اور اتفاق چاہیے، اگر حکومت میں وضاحت نہیں ہوگی تو الجھن کا ریاست پر اثرات مرتب ہوں گے۔ ایک سوال کے جواب میں بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ دہشتگردوں کے معاملے پر ایک سیکنڈ کے لیئے بھی کنفیوژ نہیں ہونا چاہیئے، پاکستان کی عوام نے ہمیشہ دہشتگردوں کو مسترد کیا ہے۔ ایک اور سوال کے جواب میں انہوں نے کہا کہ وزیراعظم عمران خان بار بار یوٹرن لیتے رہے ہیں، لیکن موجودہ صورتحال میں ملک کسی کنفیوژن کا متحمل نہیں ہوسکتا۔ مسلم لیگ (ن) سے روابط کے متعلق سوال کے جواب میں بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ پی پی پی کے سب کے لیئے دروازے کھلے ہیں۔ وزیراعلیٰ سندھ کے متعلق سوال کے جواب میں انہوں نے کہا کہ وزیراعلیٰ سندھ کے عہدے کے لیئے ان کے تین نام ہیں، اور وہ ہیں “مراد علی شاہ، مراد علی شاہ، اور مراد علہ شاہ”۔
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/25355/
Afghanistan's winners: Qatar, Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Most of these countries have hosted the Taliban or tacitly backed them.
The victors in Kabul will be those who benefit from the Taliban taking power. They will also be those who benefit or cheer as the US appears humiliated.
Among those “winners” are Qatar, Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran. This can be seen in various ways. Most of these countries hosted the Taliban or tacitly backed them. Others, such as Turkey, have sought to have a role in post-American Afghanistan.
Iran’s media is full of stories arguing that the Taliban won’t export extremism or threaten anyone and that Iran has always helped the Afghan people. Iranian official Ali Shamkhani, for instance, has put out positive statements about Iran’s role in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s Al Jazeera was on hand to showcase the Taliban taking the presidential palace in Kabul. It appears Qatar had advance knowledge of the Taliban’s plans because Doha has been hosting the Taliban for years.
Qatar has a large US military base but has always backed religious extremists, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and has given red-carpet treatment to the Taliban. This is a big win for Qatar, and it will use it for leverage across the Middle East.
While Qatar and Turkey benefit because of their links to Islamist groups and general backing for far-right Islamic movements, Iran benefits from seeing the US leave its doorstep. Iran also wants the US out of Iraq and will use the Afghan chaos to push it to leave Iraq as well.
Turkey will be working with Russia and Iran in Syria to try to get the US to leave. All these countries agree that they want America gone from the region.
Russia and China have both hosted Taliban delegations in recent years and months. They want to have open channels to the Taliban and consider recognizing them as the new government. This is important at the United Nations Security Council. With backing from Russia and China, the Taliban can get the international clout they need and eventually obtain wider recognition.
The meetings between Taliban officials and Russian envoys this week, which have been reported, are important.
“Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov will meet on Tuesday with the coordinator of the leadership of the Taliban movement [outlawed in Russia] to discuss ensuring the security of the Russian Embassy, Russian Presidential envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said in an interview,” Russia’s TASS news agency reported.
“Our ambassador is in contact with representatives of the Taliban leadership,” he said. “Tomorrow, as he told me just 10 minutes ago, he will meet with the coordinator from the Taliban leadership for ensuring security, including our embassy.”
The Russian ambassador will discuss with the Taliban representative the details of the external protection of the diplomatic mission of the Russian Federation, Kabulov said.
This means that Russia may consider recognizing the Taliban at a future date. Russia could help put the wind in the sails of the Taliban.
But Russia has its own background in Afghanistan. It has noted that the US-backed Afghan government has fallen quickly. Russia wants to secure Central Asia as well, including its southern flank.That means the chaos of Afghanistan must not spread. It will want to work with China, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran to make sure that the Taliban are contained and come to power in a stable way.
All these countries have common interests. They want the US gone from the region. They want America humiliated. They also want to share energy and mineral resources that may flow through Afghanistan. This is their invitation to help make the decline of the US and the West more rapid.These countries have different ideological agendas. Turkey, Pakistan and Qatar have a far-right Islamic worldview of the world. They have wanted to work with Malaysia and even Iran on new concepts regarding an Islamic system of trade or television programs to confront “Islamophobia.”Turkey and Qatar form an axis that backs the Muslim Brotherhood, and as such, there has been cheering in Syria and the Gaza Strip regarding the Taliban takeover. China and Russia have other ideas about how this may benefit them on the world stage.
For now, the Afghanistan debacle is a major setback for the US globally in terms of image and the perception that US-backed systems tend to be as weak and temporary as the grass that greens with the spring and withers in the fall.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/afghanistans-winners-qatar-russia-china-pakistan-turkey-iran-676844
For America, and Afghanistan, the Post-9/11 Era Ends Painfully
By Roger Cohen
The desperate scenes at the Kabul airport will now give Afghanistan a place in America’s national memory as another failed attempt to reshape a far-off land.
“I have no doubt this will be a huge liability for Biden, even if Trump boxed him in,” said Cameron Munter, a former United States ambassador to Pakistan, referring to the agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in 2020 that stipulated the American withdrawal this year.That was the difficult legacy bequeathed to Mr. Biden. Still, his administration had options short of its accelerated withdrawal. “The thing that is appalling is that the administration had no plan,” said Stephen Heintz, the head of a foundation that has been working on Afghanistan since 2011. “There was scarcely any consultation with NATO and little with the Afghan government. It’s a failure of intelligence, of planning, of logistics, and in the end a political failure, because whatever it is, it’s Biden’s.”
Others were more supportive of the president. “Twenty years was a long time to give Afghan leaders to plant the seed of civil society, and instead they planted only the seeds of corruption and incompetence,” Representative Jake Auchincloss, Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Marine who served in Afghanistan, told The New York Times.Both Mr. Biden and his predecessor were responding, in different ways, to an inward-looking American mood. Policing the world is expensive, often thankless work, and domestic problems abound. The military withdrawal from Afghanistan accurately reflected a shift of priorities, including toward the sharpening great power rivalry with China. But America-in-Afghanistan amounts to a chronicle of errors and misjudgments that pose fundamental questions for U.S. policymakers. From the moment the United States decided to go to war in Iraq in 2003 on the basis of flawed intelligence — opening a second front and diverting attention and resources from Afghanistan — a sense that the Afghan conflict was a directionless secondary undertaking grew. Defeating terrorism morphed perilously into nation building. But democracy was a far-fetched objective in a country that had never had a census, and where tribal loyalties were powerful. It was always unlikely that massive electoral fraud could be averted, or that millions of dollars in aid would ever reach its intended target. The attempt to build a credible Afghan army turned into a fiasco with an $83-billion-dollar tab. “We tried to build an Afghan military in the image of the Pentagon that actually cannot operate without us,” said Vali R. Nasr, a senior adviser on Afghan policy between 2009 and 2011. “It should not have depended on our air support or an ability the Afghans don’t have to service helicopters.” The reckoning on this American failure seems certain to be painful. The inclination to build in the American image — rather than adapt to simpler, less ambitions Afghan needs and capacities — seems to carry a wider lesson for the United States in the world in the 21st century. Mr. Munter, the former ambassador to Pakistan, led the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq, in 2006. He recalled arriving there and finding “there was no plan whatsoever.” Officials distributing aid seemed more concerned with how quickly they could do it, rather than where it went, “so that they could convince the people on the Hill that we were spending the money allocated to us,” Mr. Munter said. The Mosul experience, he added, “seemed like a miniature version of what happened on a much grander scale in Afghanistan.” The element that so often seemed missing in American policy, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, was an ability to pose a fundamental question: What is it we know about where we are going? “Americans have been very reluctant to acknowledge that they don’t know a whole lot about what was happening on the ground, may not know what they don’t know, and have made mistakes because they did not know enough,” Mr. Brahimi said. American naïveté, if it was that, did however bring many benefits. Mr. Mohseni compared the last 20 years to a “golden age” that ushered Afghanistan from the 12th to the 21st century. Women could be educated again. A digitally connected middle class emerged. Infrastructure and technology linked people to the world. “Afghans have changed forever,” he said. “For us, the stalemate was sweet.” The question now is how much of all that the Taliban, themselves changed by the internet on which they depend, will attempt to reverse. The most immediate threat they pose is certainly to Afghans, and particularly Afghan women, rather than to the United States. Anything seems possible, including violent reprisals and a massive refugee exodus. “This is a devastating blow to American credibility that calls into question how sincere we are when we say we believe in human rights and women,” Mr. Heintz said. When Richard C. Holbrooke was the special representative for Afghanistan from 2009 until his death in 2010, he insisted that all his team read Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American.”In the novel, a well-intentioned and idealistic American intelligence officer, Alden Pyle, confronts the bitter realities of the French colonial war in Vietnam as he tries to bring social and political change to a complex society. Greene, through his cynical journalist narrator, writes: “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/world/asia/afghanistan-united-states.html
Monday, August 16, 2021
We All Lost #Afghanistan - The United States misread a fragmented Afghan political reality. The blame for this terrible tragedy cannot be laid at any one door.
By P. Michael McKinley
Two Decades of Mistakes, Misjudgments, and Collective Failure.As Afghanistan tumbles into Taliban hands, the avalanche of recrimination and outright condemnation of the Biden administration’s withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has become unrelenting. Former National Security Adviser General H. R. McMaster echoed the sentiments of many when he declared that Afghanistan is a “humanity problem on a modern-day frontier between barbarism and civilization” and that the United States lacks the will “to continue the effort in the interest of all humanity.” What is happening is a terrible tragedy, but the blame cannot be laid at any one door. The Biden administration’s short timetable for withdrawal, tied to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and in the middle of the fighting season, was a mistake. But the situation on the ground is the result of two decades of miscalculations and failed policies pursued by three prior U.S. administrations and of the failure of Afghanistan’s leaders to govern for the good of their people. Many of the critics speaking out now were architects of those policies. The broader questions about why Afghanistan finds itself at this juncture undermine attempts to justify the “war on terror” as it was waged in the country over two decades. During my more than three years in Kabul, between 2013 and 2016 (including as U.S. ambassador from 2014 to 2016), it became evident to me just how steep the challenges to U.S. strategy were. Although we were largely successful in eliminating al Qaeda in the country and reducing the threat of terrorist attacks in the United States, we failed in our approach to counterinsurgency, to Afghan politics, and to “nation building.” We underestimated the resiliency of the Taliban. And we misread the geopolitical realities of the region. It is time to face the facts: a decision to delay the withdrawal of U.S. forces for another year or two would ultimately have made no difference to the unbearably sad consequences on the ground in Afghanistan. The United States would have had to commit to Afghanistan indefinitely, at a cost of tens of billions a year, with little hope of building on fragile gains inside a country with weak governance, with battlefield conditions eroding, and with the certainty that many more American lives would be lost as the Taliban again targeted U.S. forces and diplomats. As the blame games and lessons-learned exercises begin, therefore, it is also time for critics of the withdrawal to address squarely the misjudgments and shortcomings of the Afghanistan intervention that led us to this point—and for them to recognize that responsibility for what went wrong should be widely shared. THE MILITARY COLLAPSE In light of the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghan city after Afghan city in recent days, perhaps the most striking American misjudgment is our ongoing overestimation of the capabilities of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. Even without tactical American military support, the ANDSF should have been in a position to defend major cities and critical military installations. As numerous observers have pointed out, the ANDSF on paper was significantly larger and far better equipped and organized than the Taliban. The Afghan Special Forces were compared with the best in the region. As late as March 2021, U.S. intelligence briefings for Biden administration officials were reportedly warning that the Taliban could take over most of the country in two to three years—not in a few weeks. This overestimation of ANDSF capabilities was a constant after the end of the “surge” of American forces between 2009 and 2011. The semiannual U.S. Defense Department presentations to Congress regularly underscored the growing professionalization and fighting capability of the Afghan military. The December 2012 “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” was typical, highlighting that Afghan forces were carrying out 80 percent of operations and had successfully recruited enough Afghans to meet the authorized ceiling of 352,000 troops and police. The November 2013 “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan” went further: “Afghan security forces are now successfully providing security for their own people, fighting their own battles,” and could hold the gains “made by a coalition of 50 nations with the best trained and equipped forces in the world.” By 2014, Afghan forces reportedly “led 99 percent of conventional operations and 99 percent of special operations” and remained “at just under the full authorized level of 352,000 personnel.” Even as the situation on the ground deteriorated, a 2017 report described the ANDSF as “generally capable of protecting major population centers . . . and responding to Taliban attacks.” Only in the last few years did reports begin to reflect a more concerning reality. In 2017 and again in 2019, there were reports that tens of thousands of “ghost” soldiers were being removed from the rolls—suggesting that there were never close to 330,000 troops available to fight the Taliban, let alone 352,000. The Defense Department’s December 2020 report to Congress noted that only “approximately 298,000 ANDSF personnel were eligible for pay,” hinting at the recurring problem with “ghost” soldiers and desertions. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also regularly highlighted problems tracking equipment and salaries. Waste, fraud, and mismanagement of resources meant to transform the Afghan military further undermined the fighting capability of the ANDSF. The measure of waste and fraud runs into the billions of dollars with corruption often involving senior Afghan government officials. SIGAR did manage to expose much of this, but more should have been done to stop it. THE ERODING STALEMATE On the battlefield from 2013 onward, the Taliban seemed to gain ground every year in what came to be called an “eroding stalemate” in Washington parlance—even with the 2013 death of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, his successor’s assassination in 2016, and the heaviest coalition bombardments of the war in 2018–19. The seeds for that eroding stalemate were sown early on. The failure to invest in Afghanistan’s police and military in the first years after 2001 meant a loss of valuable time to build a capable fighting force when the Taliban were on the defensive. The building of an air force was not prioritized for more than a decade; the training of a new generation of Afghan pilots began only in 2009 and was slower than necessary because of a decision to transition the Afghan fleet from Russian craft to Black Hawks. And while the Afghan air force had more recently come to be seen as relatively effective, any success was undermined by the decision this year to withdraw the thousands of contractors who provided maintenance and support for operations as U.S. advisers began to leave in 2019. Indeed, the failure to transfer the services of the 18,000 contractors who worked with the Afghan military—or to provide the financial guarantees to cover the costs—proved damaging to the government in Kabul, although it is now unclear whether the ANDSF would have fought even with that support. These services may have sustained the logistics flow to the ANDSF in the field and the maintenance of the Afghan air force despite the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Instead, July nighttime U.S. departure from Bagram Air Base, a key logistics fulcrum, will become an enduring symbol of our military failure in Afghanistan. (The failure to maintain a logistics capability had another consequence: hampering the evacuation of embassy personnel and tens of thousands of Afghans, beyond just interpreters, who worked with the U.S. military, diplomatic mission, and assistance programs.) Meanwhile, the counterinsurgency strategy embraced by the United States never demonstrated an ability to bring sustained gains. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen told an interviewer this week, he opposed the extension of the U.S. surge past 2011 because “if we did not have significant progress or show significant progress over the course of 18 months or so, then we had the wrong strategy and we really needed to recalibrate.” Yet until the decision to withdraw, such a recalibration never came. Year after year, Afghan soldiers went months without pay and without the necessary supplies to defend themselves. More recently, provincial capitals do not appear to have been adequately reinforced, even though it was clear 18 months ago that the United States intended to withdraw troops within a year of the Doha agreement that the Trump administration struck with the Taliban in February 2020. As the Taliban advance intensified in the past weeks, Afghan soldiers were also let down by their commanders and political leaders, who over 20 years have failed abysmally to earn national allegiance. It is striking how incapable Afghanistan’s government was of issuing any rallying cry for the nation as its defenses collapsed. This context helps explain why the ANDSF did not fight in recent days. Another misjudgment relates to the weakness of regional warlords. Since 2001, there has been a broad assumption that these warlords commanded thousands of armed followers who could be mobilized quickly against the Taliban. Both the United States and the national Afghan government believed this to be the case and accommodated often brutal local leaders as a result. The fall of Sheberghan, stronghold of former Vice President (and human rights violator) Abdul Rashid Dostum; of Herat, previously under the sway of former mujahideen leader Ismail Khan; and of Mazar-e Sharif, formerly run by Atta Nur, reveal how deeply flawed that assumption was. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani appealed for assistance from these warlords, only to find they had no forces to rally—a sorry commentary on the state of the national government, the army, and the U.S. reading of a fragmented Afghan political reality. The United States also overestimated its ability to address another factor that fundamentally undermined the war effort: Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. For years, U.S. leaders sought the support of Islamabad for a peaceful resolution of the war in Afghanistan. They failed; Islamabad was more interested in keeping its options open on Afghanistan. Yet even after 9/11 mastermind al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found hiding in Abbottabad, the United States retained close ties to Pakistan given the country’s broader regional importance. It is extraordinarily difficult to defeat an insurgency that has a cross-border sanctuary. The Taliban leadership in Quetta and Peshawar raised funds, planned attacks, and recruited without hindrance. The Afghan government asked repeatedly for Pakistan’s assistance in closing Taliban bases. Yet Pakistan’s minister of the interior admitted in July 2021 that Taliban families lived in Islamabad suburbs. MISREADING AFGHAN REALITIES Why did an effective Afghan government fail to emerge over 20 years? The United States certainly tried to help produce one. Our efforts to impose a Western democratic model on Afghanistan, first at the Bonn conference in 2001 and through the writing of the national constitution, continued over two decades. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai complained often about overbearing U.S. political influence. Such “interference” often seemed to keep Afghan politics on track—but with unexpected consequences. When Richard Holbrooke, then the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, sought to influence the 2009 election, he succeeded not in stopping a Karzai victory but only in turning the Afghan president into an enemy. In 2014, when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry brokered a government of national unity as the threat of civil conflict loomed, the result was an uneasy political compromise, between President Ghani and challenger Abdullah Abdullah, that never settled. In the next presidential election, in 2019, fewer than two million Afghans voted, down from eight million just five years before. The contested result hardly suggested Afghanistan’s democracy was consolidating at a time when the Taliban threat was increasing. By the time the unity government leaders visited Washington to meet President Joe Biden in June 2021, unity was nonexistent except in name, and Ghani’s presidential palace was increasingly isolated. Yet many in Washington continued to assume a semblance of common purpose regarding the looming Taliban threat. Afghanistan’s national political leadership never fully cohered on how best to fight the Taliban. There were tensions between regional power brokers and Kabul, and between Pashtuns and the minority Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Both Karzai and Ghani managed ethnic representation through a spoils system rather than the promotion of a common national vision. And U.S. efforts to identify, even select, leaders in ministries succeeded only in undermining the independence and legitimacy of the Afghan government. The Taliban, by contrast, proved resilient not just as a military and terrorist organization but as a political movement as well. After 2001, the Taliban continued to enjoy popular support in parts of Afghanistan and retained the ability to field tens of thousands of new generations of young Afghan adherents. Even during the “surge” of U.S. troops in 2009–11, the Taliban proved able to evolve. The Afghan government’s efforts to reconcile with the Taliban from 2010 onward represented an implicit acceptance of their political and military salience inside Afghanistan. The decision by the United States to negotiate formally with the Taliban in 2018, and of foreign governments to welcome Taliban emissaries after the Doha agreement of February 2020, reflected that reality. We misread the Taliban when we were fighting them; we also misread their more recent pledge to negotiate peace as they shadow-boxed in Doha with the Ghani government after reaching agreement with the United States on the withdrawal timetable. They never had any intention of reaching a settlement. (The notion that the Taliban have changed seems even more naïve now, given the disturbing images emerging from the current takeover.) Yet that intention was in some ways mirrored by the United States: the ultimate goal of American negotiators was to create the conditions for an orderly U.S. withdrawal. The Taliban always knew that. Now, threats to withhold international recognition as the Taliban capture Kabul by force mean little. Taliban leaders are not concerned about whether the United States recognizes them as a government; other international actors probably will no matter what Washington does. Another series of misjudgments and mistakes related to American ambitions when it came to “nation building.” To American officials, much of what was being done seemed to work. The United States worked to support a representative government, strengthen the legislature, and provide for both a degree of security and the delivery of social services. Its efforts transformed Afghan education, with an exponential growth in the number of girls in school and of women at university and in the workplace. Civil rights were codified, and a free press and judiciary came into being. Millions of refugees returned to Afghanistan in the years after 2001. Yet even with these successes, we oversold the gains. And we did less than we could have about corruption, knowingly working with senior government and military figures that ordinary Afghans saw as responsible for graft and political and human rights abuses. Our counternarcotics program was an abject failure: poppy production continued to increase for most of the past decade, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimating a 37 percent increase in acres under cultivation in 2020. The hope that Afghanistan’s economic growth would eventually allow the government to cover its own expenditures was advanced year after year at donors’ conferences, even though that clearly would not be the case for the foreseeable future. Grandiose projects languished: it took 15 years to install a new turbine on Kajaki Dam, a symbol of American largess toward Afghanistan in the 1950s. WHO LOST AFGHANISTAN? In February 2021, the congressionally mandated Afghanistan Study Group came out with its recommendations for the way forward. It highlighted the importance of continued support for the Afghan state and people; of continued diplomacy in support of a peace process; of working with regional allies; and of extending the U.S. troop presence to allow for the Doha peace negotiations to conclude. All but one of these policies were in effect before and after the report was issued, but they did nothing to stem the collapse we are witnessing now. The survival of the Afghan state should not have been solely dependent on the continuation of an American troop presence. There is one seductive argument made by critics of the withdrawal: that a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan will again become a haven for terrorist groups threatening the security of the United States. This argument is a backhanded acknowledgment that we succeeded in reducing the threat from Afghanistan to minimal levels—the original rationale for U.S. intervention. The sacrifice, however, was significant: more than $1 trillion, the deaths of 2,400 U.S. service members (and thousands of contractors), more than 20,000 wounded Americans. Perhaps the resurgence of a terrorist threat will develop more quickly under a future Taliban government than it would have otherwise. But to conclude that this outcome demands an indefinite U.S. troop presence would imply that U.S. troops should also be deployed indefinitely in the many other parts of the world where Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and al Qaeda offshoots are active in greater numbers than they are in Afghanistan and pose a greater threat to the United States. Moreover, U.S. capabilities to monitor and strike at terrorist groups have grown exponentially since 2001. Ultimately, Washington’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops is not the sole or even most important explanation for what is unfolding in Afghanistan today. The explanation lies in 20 years of failed policies and the shortcomings of Afghanistan’s political leadership. We can still hope that we in the United States do not end up in a poisonous debate about “who lost Afghanistan.” But if we do, let’s acknowledge that it was all of us.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-08-16/we-all-lost-afghanistan-taliban
US’ failure to push back Pakistan has brought Taliban to Kabul. India had seen it coming
PPP CEC expresses concern over how the situation in Afghanistan can pose a challenge for the peace and security of Pakistan
The PPP CEC met today in a meeting chaired by Chairman PPP, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, and President Zardari at Bilawal House, Karachi.
The party expressed concern at the developing situation in Afghanistan and its implications for the women, men, and youth of Afghanistan.
The party further expressed its concern for the religious and ethnic minorities and vulnerable communities of Afghanistan.
The Party also expressed concern for the potential challenges this could pose for the peace, stability, and security of Pakistan as well as other countries in the region.
The Party reiterated its support for a democratic, inclusive, pluralistic Afghanistan where all citizens of Afghanistan are free to realize their full potential in society.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/25353/
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Taliban Take Over Kabul as Afghan President Flees Country
By Yaroslav Trofimov
Insurgents’ advance on capital triggered Western evacuation efforts.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistans-taliban-seize-jalalabad-as-panic-grips-kabul-11629005282
افغان ولسمشر اشرف غني هېواد پرېښود؛ کرزي، عبدالله او حکمتیار د همغږۍ شورا اعلان کړه
د افغانستان د ملي روغې جوړې عالي شورا مشر عبدالله عبدالله ویلي دي چې افغان ولسمشر محمد اشرف غني هېواد پرېښی دی.
دا خبره نوموړي د اګست پر ۱۵مه پر فېسبوک په یوه ویډیويي بیان کې کړې.
دا په داسې حال کې ده چې طالبان د افغانستان د پلازمېنې کابل شاوخوا ته رسېدلي دي خو طالبانو ژمنه کړې چې په زور به کابل نه نیسي.
کابل یوازینی لوی ښار دی چې د حکومت تر واک لاندې پاتې دی.
خو د طالبانو یوه ویاند د اګست پر ۱۵مه په بیان کې وویل چې تر هغې وروسته یې خپلو وسله والو ته کابل ته د داخېلدو امر وکړ چې افغان پولیسو خپلې پوستې پرېښودې.
ذبیح الله مجاهد دا بیان د اشرف غني د هېواد پرېښودو تر خبر لږ ساعت وروسته پر ټوېټر خپور کړ.
یو شمېر حکومتي چارواکو د نوم نه ښوولو په شرط رسنیو ته ویلي چې له رپورټونو سره سم، ولسمشر غني تاجکستان ته تللی دی.
عبدالله عبدالله په پیغام کې ویلي چې غني "افغانستان په مشکل وخت کې پرېښود، خدای دې ورسره حساب وکړي."
نوموړي اشرف غني د "پخواني ولسمشر" په توګه یاد کړ، حال دا چې هغه استعفا نه ده اعلان کړې.
تر دې مخکې د اګست پر ۱۵مه د دفاع سرپرست وزیر بسم الله محمدي وویل، اشرف غني له افغان سیاستوالانو سره ولیدل او ورته یې د یوه پلاوي د جوړولو او د اګست پر ۱۶مه دوحې ته د سفر کولو مسوولیت سپارلی چې هلته له طالبانو سره د افغانستان پر مسلې هوکړې ته ورسېږي.
په عین وخت کې ولسي وګړي وېره لري چې کېدای شي طالبان د پخوا په څېر ظالمانه قوانین نافذ کړي او د ښځو حقونه تر پښو لاندې کړي.
همدا لامل دی چې ملکیانو د هېواد پرېښودو لپاره د اې ټي اېم مشینونو ته ورغلي چې خپلې پیسې وباسي.
د همغږۍ شورا اعلان
هلته د افغانستان پخواني ولسمشر حامد کرزي ویلي دي چې د اشرف غني د هېواد تر پرېښودو وروسته یې د واک د سوله ییز انتقال او د ګډوډۍ مخنیوي لپاره د همغزۍ شورا جوړه کړې ده.
کرزي د اګست پر ۱۵مه پر ټوېټر په بیان کې لیکلي چې دا شورا له نوموړي، د ملي مصالحې د عالي شورا مشر ډاکتر عبدالله عبدالله او د حزب اسلامي مشر ګلبدین حکمتیار څخه جوړه ده.
اخوا په افغانستان کې د واک د سوله ییز انتقال په اړه خبرې شوې دي.
د افغانستان د کورنیو چارو لنډمهالي وزیر عبدالستار میرزکوال د اګست پر ۱۵مه په یوه ویډیويي پیغام کې ویلي چې "واک" یوه انتقالي حکومت ته په سوله ییزه توګه انتقالېږي.
یوه افغان چارواکي اسوشيېټېډ پرېس اژانس ته ویلي چې طالب مرکچیان د ولسمشرۍ دفتر ته ورغلي چې د واک پر "انتقال" بحث وکړي.
دې چارواکي د اګست پر ۱۵مه د نوم نه ښودو په شرط ویلي چې د خبرو موخه په سوله ییز ډول طالبانو ته د حکومت انتقالول دي.
د طالبانو یوه ویاند هم مشال راډیو ته تایید کړه چې په دې اړه خبرې روانې دي خو نور تفصیل یې ورنکړ.
تر دې مخکې د افغان ولسمشر دفتر د اګست پر ۱۵مه پر ټولنیزو شبکو په بیان کې وویل چې د کابل په یو شمېر برخو کې ډزې اورېدل شوي دي.
دفتر په بیان کې ویلي چې کابل ښار د نړیوالو ملګرو په همغږۍ د امنیتي ځواکونو په کنټرول کې دی.
د ولسمشر د دفتر رییس متین بېک پر ټوېټر په بیان کې پر خلکو غږ کړی چې نه دې وار خطا کېږي.
https://www.mashaalradio.com/
Saturday, August 14, 2021
I recently worked in Kabul and weep for all my Afghan friends, who we’re abandoning to their deaths. Here’s why our mission failed
Kevin Hurley is a former senior police officer and reservist army officer. He has completed two tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan working on security sector reform. He now specialises in advising on policing and security development in fractured nations.
Afghanistan’s falling apart again and the Taliban’s on the brink of victory, as I predicted. So, why did the 20-year US-led occupation fail? Because it refused to tackle the rampant corruption that pervades all echelons of power.
Knowing that in less than three hours, you will be in Kabul, the most dangerous capital city in the world, makes boarding the pristine Emirates flight from Dubai a surreal experience. This spring I did just that, as I went to join the United Nations Development Programme mission in Afghanistan as its expert advisor on policing and security.
I knew what to expect. I’d spent a year there, before Covid broke out, as a senior adviser for policing, working directly with the Afghan government and senior NATO commanders. I even advised the US’s four-star commanding general, the Afghan minister of the interior and the chief of police. During that time, I saw at first hand why America and the West’s mission in the country was doomed to fail, despite the spending of two trillion dollars and the best efforts of hundreds of thousands of brave, clever, passionate soldiers and civilians, many now dead or maimed. The attempts of the international community to resist the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K), IS’s even nastier offshoot in the country, fell foul of the landscape of insurgencies, terrorism and ever-shifting political and tribal allegiances. But its main killer was the Big C: corruption. My flight this May, like so many before, still had some Afghan ‘businessmen’ returning with empty attaché cases that once held US dollars sent to be laundered in the Emirates, as well as many tough-looking bearded Western men in khaki chinos and adventure jackets, their eyes veiled under baseball caps. These were the contractors who come from all over the world to try to make a difference or chase the big money or both, just like me. The US’s and NATO’s wars, occupations and counter-terrorism operations are a lucrative business. These men work in every field, doing virtually everything needed to keep the Western involvement going. Among them are IT consultants, aerospace engineers maintaining the Afghan air force, firefighters crewing the airport crash tenders and, of course, the countless armed bodyguards working for embassies, commercial organisations and NGOs. By March, it was already clear that the Taliban was breaking the peace agreement it had made with the Trump administration – a deal done without the US having consulted with the Afghan government or listened to NATO allies. I knew from past experience that, as we came into land at Kabul, I would get a sense of foreboding, like a finger pressing hard into the back of my neck, reminding me that we were about to enter an extremely hazardous place, and that this apprehension would pervade everything and would not lift until I was on the flight out of there. After all, from the moment you land at Hamid Karzai International Airport, you are ‘in play’. As your aircraft taxis past the Afghan air force and NATO fighters on the north side of the runway, rockets or mortars could come screaming down, spraying razor-sharp splinters of jagged steel. Or that uniformed policeman could turn his gun on you in one of the notorious and frequent ‘green-on-blue’ attacks. The size of the military investment in the country is easy to see, with rows of Afghan military helicopters and light ground-attack planes filling my window, only to be replaced by the chattering Chinooks, Blackhawk and Puma helicopters of the NATO forces as they go about their daily bus services ferrying diplomats, soldiers, NATO civilians and letters to protected bases in other parts of the city. It’s far too dangerous to travel by road. Just a few short months later and they are nearly all gone, along with all the US and NATO troops. To avoid being shot at, the choppers were taken away by stealth overnight, packed into huge C-17 military transports or hired Russian-built Antonov freighter aircraft, rotor blades folded, ready to be used in some other conflict. As for the Afghan helicopters and light-attack fighters parked by the runway, quite a few have simply stopped flying. That’s partly because some of the Afghan pilots have given up and partly because the number of US contractors who maintained them has been greatly reduced. The men with beards and baseball caps know when the party’s over and it’s time to move on. Passing through passport control, one’s apprehension grows. A suicide bomber could detonate him- or herself as you collect your baggage, rockets could hit the terminal building, you could be kidnapped as you walk into the car park looking for your transport, or a car bomb could blow up as you pass by. Finding my transport that day – two white UN-marked armoured Toyota Land Cruisers driven by two local employees – was unnerving. Would I be able to locate them? When I did, could I trust them not to kidnap me and sell me to terrorists, cashing in an insurance policy as the country was starting to fall apart? I was reassured to find both my new colleagues were like so many of the quietly humble, brave, clever Afghan people who have worked with the international community since we have been there. My driver, Abdul, a family man with four children, could not have been more welcoming. As we drove the five miles to our huge, protected compound, he told me about his family and offered to buy me fresh fruit and – since my suitcase had been mislaid in transit – clothes at the local market. Although I’d been in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan before, his chatter eased some but not all my concerns. I scanned anyone I saw on a motorbike to see if they were going to attach a magnetic improvised explosive device to our roof to defeat the armour-plated sides of the car. My research had told me this was the latest weapon of choice in this city, which is one that bristles with every conceivable means of inflicting death. Derelict and abandoned, once-fortified NATO or Western commercial-company bases were scattered all along our route, and I wondered which might be home to a rocket-launcher looking for a target. Arriving at the UN compound at last, I cast an experienced eye over the fortifications and security guards. I was reassured that they were sound. I even smiled a wry smile when I saw there was a large protection team made up of former Gurkha soldiers – fearsome warriors with a smile for their friends, and a kukri (their standard-issue bladed weapon) for their enemies. I hoped that, working with the UN, I might be able to help to improve things and, of course, make some money into the bargain. The place and staff certainly seemed well set up, with plenty of dedicated professional people from all over the world supported by many locals such as my drivers – all well-educated and capable Afghans. Little did I know that, within weeks, the new US president would pull the rug from under the whole international edifice by unilaterally withdrawing his troops, as allied nations rushed to scuttle out with them. In truth, I don’t blame them. As most of us predicted, the Taliban have since seized on this retreat and are now maximising their opportunity to grab cities and towns – Kabul too, most likely – before the freezing winter makes fighting too difficult. Assassinations of public officials and attacks on power supplies reinforce the impending threat to the capital. Meanwhile, IS-K carries on killing or bombing pretty much anyone it pleases, organised crime in all its forms is flourishing, and kidnappings are rife. The Afghan government, while putting up a front of resistance rhetoric, is in disarray. The president is reacting like many despots before him: firing and replacing ministers, generals and police chiefs in a desperate bid to blame others for the debacle and retain some semblance of power. His army and police, who are really used as light infantry soldiers, are deserting in droves. You cannot blame them; thousands have not been paid for months.
I knew what to expect. I’d spent a year there, before Covid broke out, as a senior adviser for policing, working directly with the Afghan government and senior NATO commanders. I even advised the US’s four-star commanding general, the Afghan minister of the interior and the chief of police. During that time, I saw at first hand why America and the West’s mission in the country was doomed to fail, despite the spending of two trillion dollars and the best efforts of hundreds of thousands of brave, clever, passionate soldiers and civilians, many now dead or maimed. The attempts of the international community to resist the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K), IS’s even nastier offshoot in the country, fell foul of the landscape of insurgencies, terrorism and ever-shifting political and tribal allegiances. But its main killer was the Big C: corruption. My flight this May, like so many before, still had some Afghan ‘businessmen’ returning with empty attaché cases that once held US dollars sent to be laundered in the Emirates, as well as many tough-looking bearded Western men in khaki chinos and adventure jackets, their eyes veiled under baseball caps. These were the contractors who come from all over the world to try to make a difference or chase the big money or both, just like me. The US’s and NATO’s wars, occupations and counter-terrorism operations are a lucrative business. These men work in every field, doing virtually everything needed to keep the Western involvement going. Among them are IT consultants, aerospace engineers maintaining the Afghan air force, firefighters crewing the airport crash tenders and, of course, the countless armed bodyguards working for embassies, commercial organisations and NGOs. By March, it was already clear that the Taliban was breaking the peace agreement it had made with the Trump administration – a deal done without the US having consulted with the Afghan government or listened to NATO allies. I knew from past experience that, as we came into land at Kabul, I would get a sense of foreboding, like a finger pressing hard into the back of my neck, reminding me that we were about to enter an extremely hazardous place, and that this apprehension would pervade everything and would not lift until I was on the flight out of there. After all, from the moment you land at Hamid Karzai International Airport, you are ‘in play’. As your aircraft taxis past the Afghan air force and NATO fighters on the north side of the runway, rockets or mortars could come screaming down, spraying razor-sharp splinters of jagged steel. Or that uniformed policeman could turn his gun on you in one of the notorious and frequent ‘green-on-blue’ attacks. The size of the military investment in the country is easy to see, with rows of Afghan military helicopters and light ground-attack planes filling my window, only to be replaced by the chattering Chinooks, Blackhawk and Puma helicopters of the NATO forces as they go about their daily bus services ferrying diplomats, soldiers, NATO civilians and letters to protected bases in other parts of the city. It’s far too dangerous to travel by road. Just a few short months later and they are nearly all gone, along with all the US and NATO troops. To avoid being shot at, the choppers were taken away by stealth overnight, packed into huge C-17 military transports or hired Russian-built Antonov freighter aircraft, rotor blades folded, ready to be used in some other conflict. As for the Afghan helicopters and light-attack fighters parked by the runway, quite a few have simply stopped flying. That’s partly because some of the Afghan pilots have given up and partly because the number of US contractors who maintained them has been greatly reduced. The men with beards and baseball caps know when the party’s over and it’s time to move on. Passing through passport control, one’s apprehension grows. A suicide bomber could detonate him- or herself as you collect your baggage, rockets could hit the terminal building, you could be kidnapped as you walk into the car park looking for your transport, or a car bomb could blow up as you pass by. Finding my transport that day – two white UN-marked armoured Toyota Land Cruisers driven by two local employees – was unnerving. Would I be able to locate them? When I did, could I trust them not to kidnap me and sell me to terrorists, cashing in an insurance policy as the country was starting to fall apart? I was reassured to find both my new colleagues were like so many of the quietly humble, brave, clever Afghan people who have worked with the international community since we have been there. My driver, Abdul, a family man with four children, could not have been more welcoming. As we drove the five miles to our huge, protected compound, he told me about his family and offered to buy me fresh fruit and – since my suitcase had been mislaid in transit – clothes at the local market. Although I’d been in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan before, his chatter eased some but not all my concerns. I scanned anyone I saw on a motorbike to see if they were going to attach a magnetic improvised explosive device to our roof to defeat the armour-plated sides of the car. My research had told me this was the latest weapon of choice in this city, which is one that bristles with every conceivable means of inflicting death. Derelict and abandoned, once-fortified NATO or Western commercial-company bases were scattered all along our route, and I wondered which might be home to a rocket-launcher looking for a target. Arriving at the UN compound at last, I cast an experienced eye over the fortifications and security guards. I was reassured that they were sound. I even smiled a wry smile when I saw there was a large protection team made up of former Gurkha soldiers – fearsome warriors with a smile for their friends, and a kukri (their standard-issue bladed weapon) for their enemies. I hoped that, working with the UN, I might be able to help to improve things and, of course, make some money into the bargain. The place and staff certainly seemed well set up, with plenty of dedicated professional people from all over the world supported by many locals such as my drivers – all well-educated and capable Afghans. Little did I know that, within weeks, the new US president would pull the rug from under the whole international edifice by unilaterally withdrawing his troops, as allied nations rushed to scuttle out with them. In truth, I don’t blame them. As most of us predicted, the Taliban have since seized on this retreat and are now maximising their opportunity to grab cities and towns – Kabul too, most likely – before the freezing winter makes fighting too difficult. Assassinations of public officials and attacks on power supplies reinforce the impending threat to the capital. Meanwhile, IS-K carries on killing or bombing pretty much anyone it pleases, organised crime in all its forms is flourishing, and kidnappings are rife. The Afghan government, while putting up a front of resistance rhetoric, is in disarray. The president is reacting like many despots before him: firing and replacing ministers, generals and police chiefs in a desperate bid to blame others for the debacle and retain some semblance of power. His army and police, who are really used as light infantry soldiers, are deserting in droves. You cannot blame them; thousands have not been paid for months.
The money donated by the international community for their salaries continues to be stolen by their corrupt political, army and police bosses. It’s been going on for years. We all knew about it, but did nothing effective to stop it. The political will was not there. Better to say nothing to avoid embarrassing donor governments. Perhaps that tells you why Afghanistan is going the way it is so fast.
Virtually everything the donors have tried to fund – from hospitals to schools to fire engines to police uniforms – gets stolen or misused by the people in power. The very people who now are fleeing the mess to live in apartments or houses bought in Ankara, Istanbul, Dubai, Virginia or Southern California with stolen international donations. I recall an FBI financial crime specialist colleague telling me how dishonest Afghan public officials were laundering the monies meant for the people of Afghanistan through banks in the United Arab Emirates and the British Channel Isles.
Meanwhile, the praetorian guards of this failing government, the Afghan special forces and commandos, continue to fight increasingly bitter battles against the Taliban with failing air support, and try desperately to hold or recover terrain lost by their regular army colleagues or the police as they desert. They do so in the certainty that, if captured, they will be murdered. These very capable troops, trained and now deserted by NATO, have nowhere to go. Just like the South Vietnamese marines and rangers in 1975, their fate is to fight to the death. They have no other choice.
Around the country, various warlords are resurrecting themselves, alongside organised narco-criminals, to protect their own enclaves and wealth. Tribal leaders are making security deals with others. In Afghanistan, it is ever thus.
The future for ordinary Afghan people – the women and children who have gained so much in terms of basic human rights, especially in the cities – looks grim.
What we are seeing now is almost straight out of the playbook we saw unfold back in Vietnam. Who can forget the pictures of the US Embassy in Saigon as people scrambled to get onto helicopters to escape to the aircraft carriers waiting offshore. This time, in Afghanistan, there are no ships waiting. The sea is too far away in this landlocked ‘graveyard of the empires’.
As for the next Western international military intervention, if there is one, I have one piece of advice. It is the same that doubtless many hundreds, if not thousands, of specialists like me have given as they tried to tell truth to power: read the manuals and theses on countering insurgency before you start on your adventure. There are thousands of them to be found in every military academy and university in the US, UK, Europe and beyond.
They all say one thing: the human terrain is the vital ground to capture and military methods are rarely decisive. They all ought to say, as well: Don’t back a corrupt government or you’ll lose.
May the Lord help the people, especially the women, of Afghanistan now.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/532036-kabul-afghanistan-taliban-fail/
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