Author Topic: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan  (Read 664548 times)

Crafty_Dog

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Reports of anti-Taliban movement
« Reply #1900 on: September 29, 2021, 01:26:06 PM »
second

GUIDANCE
What to Watch For Amid Reports of an Anti-Taliban Movement in Afghanistan
7 MIN READAug 18, 2021 | 19:16 GMT





Armed men supporting Afghan security forces against the Taliban stand along a road in Panjshir on Aug. 18, 2021.
Armed men supporting Afghan security forces in the fight against the Taliban stand along a road in Panjshir on Aug. 18, 2021.

(AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Several unconfirmed reports indicate former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the son of the renowned Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, are rallying anti-Taliban forces in the former Northern Alliance stronghold of the Panjshir Valley — bringing into question the Taliban’s ability to govern the entire country mere days after seizing Kabul. Saleh declared himself as the “caretaker president” of the legitimate government of Afghanistan on Aug. 15 after former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in the wake of the Taliban’s capture of Kabul. The following day, photos emerged of Saleh meeting with Massoud in the Panjshir Valley, which has repeatedly proven difficult terrain to conquer and remains outside Taliban control. Some reports suggest Afghanistan’s former defense minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, is also joining Saleh and Massoud, in addition to several other former Northern Alliance fighters and elements of the Afghan security forces. Saleh had close relations with Massoud’s father Ahmad Shah Massoud, who fought from the Panjshir Valley against the Soviet occupation from 1979-89, earning him the name “The Lion of the Panjshir. ” The elder Massoud also served in the Afghan government as defense minister beginning in 1992, before going on to co-lead Northern Alliance forces against Taliban rule. He was assassinated by al Qaeda days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001, in part to shore up support from the Taliban for the expected U.S. reprisal.

Tajiks from the Afghan security forces have allegedly arrived in the Panjshir Valley as well with heavy equipment and vehicles, bolstering potential resistance forces.
The Massoud family name widely resonates in Afghanistan, with the Sept. 9 anniversary of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s death commemorated annually.
While they remain unconfirmed, the reports of a budding anti-Taliban movement would fit a logical pattern in Afghanistan. Some members of the Afghan government and security forces have fled the country, and others have entered into negotiations with the Taliban. However, we would still expect to see others continue to resist Taliban rule through political and military means. The Taliban anticipated resistance, particularly from ethnic Tajiks (Tajik areas of Afghanistan remained largely outside of Taliban control in the 1990s). Taliban forces moved across northern areas of the country before swinging south to surround Kabul in order to disrupt the potential for organized opposition or the reconstitution of a Northern Alliance force. The Taliban reportedly left Jamaat Ansarullah, the so-called Tajik Taliban, in charge of the border with Tajikistan in an effort to split ethnic support for anti-Taliban operations (a tactic seen in many countries, most notably Myanmar, where the military has long pitted ethnic militia against their anti-government compatriots). This also potentially limits any Northern Alliance forces from resupply and recuperation in neighboring Tajikistan.


Taliban forces will continue to focus on the Panjshir Valley, even as they negotiate the final transition in Kabul. There are some reports that the younger Massoud may already be in discussions with the Taliban, which would counter reports of the formation of a new anti-Taliban militia. Massoud, in a recent interview with the Atlantic Council, had raised the potential for some accommodation with the Taliban, and perhaps a federalist structure for rule in Afghanistan. It is possible such ideas are part of the ongoing negotiations in Kabul and Oman regarding the next government of Afghanistan. While this would require some concessions from the Taliban, it would also reduce the likelihood of a continuing civil war, at least in the near term.

What to Watch For
As we monitor the situation, we have several outstanding questions we are addressing to determine the significance of opposition to the Taliban and the likelihood of expanded national conflict:

Is the reported resistance in the Panjshir Valley defensive or offensive?

If the reports of a new resistance movement are true, it poses a significant challenge to the Taliban’s control and its search for international legitimacy. The Panjshir Valley provides a strong redoubt for a resistance movement, and while the Taliban claims to control all border crossings and most of the territory between the valley and the border, it is difficult to quell all movement of personnel and goods along the frontier.
The resistance activity could also be more of a defensive operation, with the Panjshir Valley serving as a gathering place for those fleeing the Taliban or resisting Taliban control. There are reports, for example, of ethnic Hazara Shias moving into the valley to shelter from the Taliban. This would present a persistent problem for the Taliban, but not necessarily an unmanageable one, at least in the near term. While the Panjshir Valley is difficult terrain to conquer, the same strength of limited accessibility can be a liability, enabling the Taliban to largely bottle up the resistance within a single geographic area.
If this is about building a base for future operations against the Taliban, then we are likely to first see anti-Taliban forces move to the north to open up the border with Tajikistan and establish lines of communication outside Afghanistan to ensure resupply and perhaps even personnel and training. It is possible that the Panjshir Valley first provides a defensive position before later becoming a base of operations for the counter-push against the Taliban, at least in the north. From the Taliban’s perspective, it is vital to deny the opposition, either defensively or offensively, the freedom to use the strategic and symbolic Panjshir Valley.
How coherent is this nascent resistance movement?

One of the main challenges of the Afghan government and security forces has been the inability to overcome ethnic, tribal and political differences. The old Northern Alliance was able to coalesce around opposition to a single enemy and the new resistance may be able to do the same against the Taliban. However, it is not certain that all opposition leaders are equally committed to active resistance. Disagreements about an end goal would provide a space for the Taliban to exploit.
At the same time, the Taliban, in losing their single enemy (the United States and other foreign forces) may face their own challenges of internal cohesion, providing opportunities for anti-Taliban forces to exploit. This could be further exacerbated if central Taliban leadership seeks to enforce their promise of not allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base to attack neighboring countries. This could, in turn, pit the Afghan Taliban against their allies in the south — namely, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — shifting their focus away from the northern areas.
What level of external support is there for a militant resistance movement or an Afghan government in exile?

While there is general international criticism of Taliban rule, there is also apparent exhaustion in fighting in the Afghan conflict. Overt foreign support for a resistance movement inside Afghanistan could keep foreign powers on a terrorist attack list, something that would be weighed against the perceived benefits of supporting another Afghan insurgency. Russia and China are both seeking stability in Afghanistan, and the United States is trying to refocus its attention to the Indo-Pacific. Other regional powers like India would also need to weigh the costs and benefits of active support, as would bordering states that would most likely see spillover.
Is active foreign support necessary in the early phases of resistance?

If the new counter-Taliban movement has elements of the Afghan security forces, it also likely has access to sufficient arms and ammunition, at least in the near term. In addition, Afghanistan is notorious for being a haven for arms smuggling, providing another avenue for necessary supplies to move.
The international community may block the Taliban from accessing Afghan monies abroad, but it is not assured that a government in exile or a resistance movement would be allowed access to those funds. Saleh’s recent move to declare himself as the leader of Afghanistan’s legitimate government may be an attempt to ensure access to those accounts.

Crafty_Dog

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ya

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1903 on: October 03, 2021, 12:04:06 PM »
probably come to take back, the military goodies we left behind.

G M

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1904 on: October 03, 2021, 06:01:39 PM »
probably come to take back, the military goodies we left behind.

No doubt about that.

DougMacG

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Joe Biden released the suicide bomber that killed Americans and Afghans
« Reply #1905 on: October 06, 2021, 01:46:49 PM »
To be fair, the people Biden virtually handed the keys to [Taliban] released Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri, who quickly and massively killed Americans and Afghans, which we avenged by killing more innocent people.

This is something that could not have been anticipated and prevented?  Sorry but I don't think releasing terrorists while Americans are still at the airport was in Biden's predecessor's plan, which he was under no obligation to follow anyway.

Did we NOT have room at Guantanamo for more terrorists?  No plane to fly them?  We left hundreds of aircrafts behind including multiple C-130 Transport planes.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules  Terrorists and terror, as predictable as a hammer and a nai8l.  What is the matter with these people [Biden administration]?  They thought the released would take up farming?

THIS IS CNN!  And wow do they rip him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/06/politics/kabul-airport-attacker-prison/index.html

ISIS-K suicide bomber who carried out deadly Kabul airport attack had been released from prison days earlier

By Oren Liebermann and Natasha Bertrand, CNN

Updated 11:38 AM ET, Wed October 6, 2021

(CNN)The ISIS-K suicide bomber who carried out a terrorist attack at Kabul international airport in late August, killing 13 US service members and dozens of Afghans, had been released from a prison near Kabul just days earlier when the Taliban took control of the area, according to three US officials.

Two US officials, as well as Rep. Ken Calvert, a California Republican who said he had been briefed by national security officials, said the suicide bomber was released from the Parwan prison at Bagram air base. The US controlled the base until it abandoned Bagram in early July. It had turned over the prison to Afghan authorities in 2013.

The revelation underscores the chaos around the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the struggle of the US to control a rapidly deteriorating situation around the airport as it relied on the Taliban to secure the perimeter of the airport.

The Parwan prison at Bagram, along with the Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul, housed several hundred members of ISIS-K, as well as thousands of other prisoners when the Taliban took control of both facilities hours before taking over the capital with barely a shot fired in mid-August, a regional counter-terrorism source told CNN at the time. The Taliban emptied out both prisons, releasing their own members who had been imprisoned but also members of ISIS-K, which is the terror group's affiliate in Afghanistan.

Eleven days later, on August 26, it was one of those prisoners who carried out the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, killing the 13 US service members, including 11 Marines, one soldier and one sailor. They would be the last US troops killed in Afghanistan as part of America's longest war.

As of Tuesday, one Marine injured in the attack remains in a serious but stable condition at Walter Reed Military Medical Center near Washington, the Marine Corps said in a statement. Another Marine is receiving care at a specialty facility, while 16 others are receiving outpatient treatment.

Two US officials confirmed attacker's identity
ISIS-K took credit for the attack and named the suicide bomber as Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri. Two US officials confirmed the identity of the attacker. FirstPost, an English-language news site based in India, was first to report that he had been released from the Bagram prison.

The rapid transition from released prisoner to suicide bomber highlights the dangers Afghanistan could pose without a US military presence on the ground to monitor the latest developments in the country. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said the threat from Afghanistan is currently lower than it was after the 9/11 attack, but he warned that conditions "could be set" for a reconstitution of al Qaeda or ISIS-K.

"It's a real possibility in the not too distant future -- six,12, 18, 24, 36 months that kind of timeframe -- for reconstitution of al Qaeda or ISIS," Milley said at Capitol Hill hearing last week, "and it's our job now, under different conditions, to protect the American citizens against attacks from Afghanistan."

Five takeaways from senior military leaders' testimony on Afghanistan
Calvert, who serves as the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense, represented one of those killed in the suicide attack, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui. In a statement released last month, Calvert said he was briefed by national security officials on the identity of the suicide bomber and his release from Bagram prison.

In the statement, Calvert said the "disastrous" handling of the withdrawal "led to a series of events that culminated with the tragic loss of life on August 26th outside of the Kabul airport. Thirteen Americans, including one of my constituents, were killed because of the poor judgement and execution of our troop withdrawal."

The Biden administration faced widespread criticism for its withdrawal from Bagram, not only because of the decision to abandon a sprawling military complex that was the heart of the US military operations in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years, but also for the way in which it was done.

Some Afghan officials said the US left the base in the middle of the night with little warning. The Pentagon insisted there had been communication and coordination about the handover of the base about 48 hours before the US left, but that the exact time of the final departure from Bagram was never given to the Afghan government.

Majority of Bagram prisoners were terrorists
The US handed Bagram Air Base over to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) on July 1, as the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan neared 90% completion.

At the time, there were approximately 5,000 prisoners at Bagram, an Afghan Ministry of Defense spokesman told CNN. A few hundred were criminals, but the vast majority were terrorists, the spokesman said, including members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. There were also foreign prisoners from Pakistan, Chechnya, and the Middle East detained there. It was up to the Afghans to secure the compound.

As the US was turning over Bagram to the ANDSF, the Taliban accelerated their sweep across the country, claiming to control 150 of Afghanistan's 407 districts by July 5. It was a sign of things to come, as provincial capitals began falling to the Taliban offensive in rapid succession. By mid-August, the Taliban were on the doorstep of Kabul and the complete collapse of the Afghan military was virtually complete.

On August 15, the day former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani secretly fled the country, the Taliban reached the capital city, taking control of Bagram air base and the Pul-e-Charkhi prison facility.

In releasing the prisoners, the Taliban introduced another threat into an already chaotic environment, just as thousands of Afghans rushed to Kabul international airport in an attempt to flee the country. Military officials warned of the possibility for an attack at the airport and a threat from ISIS-K, and the State Department repeatedly cautioned American citizens to stay from the airport or certain gates


ya

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1907 on: October 10, 2021, 08:56:12 AM »
It was inevitable...The only thing I agreed with Hillary Alahamdullilah Clinton, was with her statement that if you breed snakes in your backyard, you are bound to get bitten!

G M

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Crafty_Dog

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1909 on: October 12, 2021, 10:49:06 PM »
I knew about this.  Additional details/insight here.

G M

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We totally get our money's worth!
« Reply #1910 on: October 20, 2021, 05:42:49 AM »
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/088/228/960/original/dbcbc2cc46f82256.jpg



Well, they did work with the FBI/DOJ and MI6 to steal the election, so they have that going for them.


G M

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1912 on: October 21, 2021, 04:56:37 PM »
We are beyond the stupidity event horizon.



Crafty_Dog

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ya

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1915 on: October 23, 2021, 08:23:39 AM »

ccp

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1916 on: October 23, 2021, 10:29:54 AM »

G M

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Reminder: the Biden admin abandoned Americans to die
« Reply #1917 on: October 23, 2021, 11:38:36 AM »

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/the-biden-admin-said-it-left-100-americans-in-afghanistan-they-now-admit-its-far-more/

Americans WILL be left behind.



Obviously this is RumInt:

=================
I just got this from Sam Faddis. (Former CIA)

“Folks, for those of you trying to help get people out of Afghanistan. Here is assessment based on information coming out of policy circles and from sources on the ground. Biden is hard over that we will have the last military personnel out of Kabul airport NLT 31 August. We may be gone before then. Drawdown could begin within next 72 hours.

"This is not conditions based. Biden has already disregarded all sound military advice. We can expect him to continue to do so. Anybody not out by the time the last plane leaves gets cut away.

"On the ground in Kabul all processing of Afghans has effectively stopped. Only AmCits being moved. People are finally realizing on the ground that this administration really will do things that are unthinkable.

"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.

"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.

"So to translate this into terms we use in teaching how to respond to a terrorist attack. Get off the X.

"Also assessment is that Panjshir Valley will likely be overrun. May hold for a while but not indefinitely. Any Afghan who wants out needs to get across a border.

"After we are gone the plan is apparently to take down the internet, expel foreign journalists and begin the Afghan version of the killing fields.”

"Sam is former CIA"

ya

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1918 on: October 23, 2021, 12:42:00 PM »
I would be surprised if the Panjshir valley folds, this Taliban does not seem to be a fighting force, but with all the US weaponry, who knows.

Crafty_Dog

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GPF: China and the Taliban
« Reply #1919 on: October 26, 2021, 06:28:55 PM »
gpf
China woos the Taliban. Following a meeting with Taliban leaders in Doha on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing had vowed to help the Taliban restore stability and rebuild Afghanistan. China’s main concern here is the spillover of militancy from Afghanistan, particularly by ISIS-K, which has been making hay out of the Taliban’s apparent willingness to deport Uyghurs to China. Accordingly, Wang expressed faith in the Taliban’s ability to crack down on such groups, as well as the ethnic Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

G M

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Re: GPF: China and the Taliban
« Reply #1920 on: October 26, 2021, 06:37:53 PM »
gpf
China woos the Taliban. Following a meeting with Taliban leaders in Doha on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing had vowed to help the Taliban restore stability and rebuild Afghanistan. China’s main concern here is the spillover of militancy from Afghanistan, particularly by ISIS-K, which has been making hay out of the Taliban’s apparent willingness to deport Uyghurs to China. Accordingly, Wang expressed faith in the Taliban’s ability to crack down on such groups, as well as the ethnic Uyghur East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

All muslims are brothers! Wait, you will pay me how much per Uighur?

ya

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1921 on: November 07, 2021, 05:08:23 PM »
Imran Khan and Bajwa having a power struggle....something must give.


DougMacG

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1923 on: November 08, 2021, 08:27:15 AM »

G M

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« Last Edit: November 10, 2021, 06:19:59 PM by Crafty_Dog »

ccp

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blinks has it all under control
« Reply #1925 on: November 12, 2021, 08:24:22 AM »
https://www.yahoo.com/news/qatar-u-protecting-power-afghanistan-160633257.html

 :roll:

outstanding work the MSM will proclaim
brilliant
strategic
etc.

ya

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« Last Edit: November 14, 2021, 02:12:38 PM by Crafty_Dog »


Crafty_Dog

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Stratfor: Taliban takeover ripples across cyberspace
« Reply #1928 on: November 30, 2021, 07:08:19 AM »
ON SECURITY
The Taliban Takeover Ripples Across Cyberspace as Regional Powers Vie for Influence
undefined and Stratfor Senior Global Analyst at RANE
Matthew Bey
Stratfor Senior Global Analyst at RANE, Stratfor
10 MIN READNov 30, 2021 | 10:00 GMT





A computer in Kabul on Oct. 2, 2011, shows a Taliban website.
A computer in Kabul on Oct. 2, 2011, shows a Taliban website.

(ADEK BERRY/AFP via Getty Images)

As regional countries jockey for influence in Afghanistan, a surge in cyberespionage, a flurry of influence and information operations, and the exploitation of databases and hardware left after the U.S. withdrawal can be expected.

China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia all are very likely to carry out various forms of cyberespionage against Taliban government and private targets, and to exploit the Taliban takeover in cyber influence and information campaigns to portray the United States and the West more broadly as incapable and untrustworthy.

The Taliban will seek to take advantage of valuable information and databases left by the prior government to target opposition and enforce cyber-repression, possibly with the help of foreign countries.

Some U.S. military equipment left behind could have intelligence value and/or digital vulnerabilities that foreign countries, principally China or Russia, could exploit.

In August, Facebook disabled the accounts and blocked the internet domains of a group of Pakistani state-backed hackers that targeted the former Afghan government, military and law enforcement, Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) announced in a Nov. 16 statement. The Pakistani advanced persistent threat group SideCopy created fictitious personas on Facebook, operated fake app stores and compromised legitimate websites to host malicious phishing pages aiming to harvest Facebook log-in credentials in its attacks. SideCopy sought to convince targets to install Trojanized chat apps containing malware to compromise devices on which the apps were installed.

Although Facebook pulled the plug on SideCopy's campaign prior to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Pakistan's cyberespionage campaign highlights how many regional countries will seek to surge intelligence collection now that the United States has withdrawn and the Taliban government is in power. Four significant cyber trends are likely to continue deep into 2022, if not longer, which could affect Western organizations and individuals in Afghanistan:

A general increase in foreign cyberespionage targeting Afghanistan.

Cyber influence and information campaigns in and out of the country trying to shape narratives about the Western withdrawal.

The Taliban's domestic crackdown on cyber freedoms using information and databases inherited from the previous government and Western states.

Cybersecurity challenges due to equipment left by the United States and NATO.


Regional Governments' Need to Gather Intelligence


SideCopy's attempt to gather information in Afghanistan during the U.S. exit from the country highlights the need by all regional countries to increase intelligence collection to better understand what is happening on the ground and attempt to sway events in their favor. While human assets, signals intelligence and other sources and methods will all play a role, cyberespionage will be a key vector to collect intelligence. Among other advantages, cyberespionage has become an important method because it allows perpetrators to acquire valuable information in bulk (such as emails and communications information), help find appropriate targets for source development, linger unnoticed in computer networks for prolonged periods — and do all of this remotely without fear of exposing personnel to arrest, or worse.

China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia all have particularly able intelligence services with well-developed cybercapabilities. They also aim to play a stronger role in influencing the Taliban’s and Afghanistan's future and managing any fallout to their countries from the recent regime change. China provides an example of what may become more routine in Afghanistan. In September, Recorded Futures' Insikt Group published a report accusing four different Chinese state-sponsored APT groups of targeting the mail server of Roshan, one of Afghanistan's largest telecommunications companies, between June 2020 and September 2021. Notably, one of the APT groups increased its activity in August and September as the Taliban took over and the United States left, suggesting Chinese intelligence services were trying to collect as much information as possible amid the transition and set up a longer intelligence-gathering operation as the Taliban sought to consolidate control over Afghanistan.

As regional countries jockey for influence, there likely will be similar and increasingly successful attempts to digitally compromise the Afghan government, security services and other organizations through a myriad of cybertactics. These include software and hardware exploits, phishing attacks and other social engineering methods, brute force attacks, and insider threats, all of which enable cyberthreat actors to compromise targets to gather intelligence. Certain APT groups are also becoming increasingly savvy at launching attacks through social media as SideCopy tried to do. Given the further decline likely in Afghanistan's already weak cybersecurity standards under the Taliban — whose leaders are unlikely to emphasize rigid cyberdefenses amid much greater competing priorities like pacifying internal dissent and combating the Islamic State Khorasan Province's campaign of violence — cyberthreat actors will probably be more successful in their attacks. Aside from obvious government targets, the Afghan telecommunications sector is likely to be a highly coveted target for foreign intelligence services due to the valuable information (phone calls, text messages, backdoors, etc.) it can provide. Among other uses, such information would help a foreign government better assess the Taliban's intentions on various issues and determine who might be receptive to overtures to spy on their behalf.

Influence and Information Campaigns to Exploit the Western Withdrawal

The chaotic final days before the United States left Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover will be a propaganda boon for U.S. adversaries — like China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia — that they will use in cyber-enabled influence and information campaigns globally. Already, China's Global Times, a tabloid run by the Chinese Communist Party, ran commentaries in August titled "US leaves chaos, destruction in Afghanistan" and "Afghan abandonment a lesson for Taiwan's DPP [a Taiwanese nationalist party]." These and other cyber influence and information campaigns seek to raise questions about U.S. power and undercut its claims to protect its supposed allies. While Taiwan is an obvious target for such messaging, Chinese APTs will very likely use similar narratives in the rest of Asia, where the United States is trying to boost its influence and counter China in countries like Thailand and Malaysia.

Similarly, Russia will very likely attempt to use the narrative of Western defeat in Afghanistan to sow divisions in Europe by exploiting preexisting fissures within NATO and seeking to generate uncertainty about NATO commitments to protect member states, especially those closest to Russia. Such messaging is also likely to target crucial non-NATO members that Russia seeks to keep outside of the bloc, such as Finland, Sweden and Ukraine. Russian APTs will also likely try to use the narrative of Western defeat to undermine France in sub-Saharan Africa, where the two countries are squaring off for influence in the Central African Republic, Mali and elsewhere. Judging from both countries' past election-related influence and information operations, Russia (and Iran) are even likely to try to exploit the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to sow social discord in the United States ahead of next year's U.S. midterm elections.

Inside Afghanistan, China, Iran, Pakistan and Russia will all try to shape domestic debate in their own interest through cyber-enabled influence and information campaigns, including posts on social media, misleading or outright false news stories, and fake online accounts or groups emphasizing a specific narrative. Even though some of their interests overlap and they will collaborate pragmatically in certain cases, they are by no means perfectly aligned. Instead, they will constantly seek to vie for influence and outflank one another as they compete to shape Afghanistan's future, with each country having its own potential vulnerabilities that rivals could exploit in messaging campaigns. Hypothetical narratives include exploiting concerns over future Chinese economic exploitation through potential natural resource extraction projects, Iran's status as a Shiite power — something anathema to many Afghans — Pakistan's complex and manipulative historic involvement in Afghanistan, and Russia's invasion of the country during the Soviet era. And while these four countries will drive most of these online influence and information operations, even the Taliban eventually probably will start to partake in such efforts.

Exploiting Leftover Databases and Digital Information to Crack Down

The former Afghan government left behind significant quantities of valuable digital information and databases that the Taliban is likely to exploit to quash dissent. The United States spent much of its time in Afghanistan trying to boost the strength of the Afghan state and institutions. These efforts included support in building databases, including those for voter registration, managing payrolls and human resources at government agencies and other common administrative tasks. Not only do these databases include valuable information on Afghans generally — especially as some databases have iris, face and other biometric information — but some of them housed information about Afghans who worked with the United States and its allies. It is unclear to what extent those databases were destroyed, secured or encrypted prior to the U.S. exit. While U.S. officials said they secured some of the key databases, at least some information is likely vulnerable and the Taliban can probably still make use of even partial information by cross-checking it against other sources, such as that provided by its robust network of human informants.

The Taliban is likely to use the data against rivals to consolidate control over Afghanistan and probably to help jump-start its own cyberstrategy that is likely to involve a heavy-handed crackdown on digital freedoms. The former risk is more acute in 2022, as the Taliban will likely use any exploitable digital information to go after internal critics within their ranks, members of the former government and any sources of social dissent. But if the Taliban remain in power, the group will have access to cybertools that were simply unavailable during its previous reign in the 1990s, potentially allowing it to shape a more organized and purposeful cyberstrategy that would almost certainly focus on enforcing digital control. That said, it will take time for the Taliban to develop those capabilities and the group will likely need to work with foreign governments, potentially even using this as an area of collaboration when trying to win support from countries like China and Russia. Both already employ mass surveillance at home and would likely be sympathetic to Taliban arguments that such systems are needed to stabilize the security situation.

Leftover Equipment, a Trove of Potential Cyber (and Other) Vulnerabilities

Although most of their critical electronic systems have been destroyed or stripped out, the hasty U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in a large amount of U.S. military (and potentially sensitive nonmilitary) equipment being left behind that could enable U.S. adversaries to search for valuable intelligence and cyber vulnerabilities if they can acquire the hardware from the Taliban. According to U.S. military officials, the United States left behind 73 aircraft; about 70 mine-resistant, armored-protective vehicles; 27 Humvees; and the C-RAM air defense system used to protect Hamid Karzai International Airport. Prior to their departure, U.S. personnel demilitarized most of this to prevent the Taliban from using it in combat operations, but foreign countries are likely to try to glean whatever of intelligence value the systems can offer.

With persistence and advanced technical skills, they may still find some vulnerabilities they could exploit in the event of a military conflict with the United States, or even potentially compromise U.S. communications.

Electronic and cyberwarfare will be a critical part of any conflict between the United States and China and Russia, making any intelligence or vulnerabilities gathered from left-behind equipment all the more important to those countries. As two ongoing practitioners of economic espionage, both could also use any recovered hardware to improve their respective military-industrial bases. While Iran and Pakistan have fewer resources to uncover potentially useful intelligence or vulnerabilities, they still present a threat, even if only by potentially facilitating Chinese or Russian access to the hardware. And perhaps most concerningly, it would be difficult for the United States even to know if a foreign rival found useful intelligence or a key vulnerability — let alone to patch one — meaning a risk might not be known until exploited in some future conflict.

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GPF: China eyes Afghan resources
« Reply #1929 on: December 06, 2021, 05:53:28 PM »
China eyes Afghan resources. Several Chinese mining companies are reportedly in talks with the Taliban on gaining access to copper and lithium deposits in Afghanistan. One site of particular interest for the Chinese is Mes Aynak, one of the world’s largest copper deposits, located southeast of Kabul. A Chinese delegation reportedly visited the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Laghman to look into other opportunities for resource exploitation.


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WT: Less than 100 Americans left
« Reply #1931 on: December 14, 2021, 05:50:26 AM »
Less than a dozen U.S. citizens remain stuck in Afghanistan

State Department does not reveal exact number

BY STEPHEN DINAN THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Fewer than a dozen U.S. citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan and have all the paperwork are still stuck there, the State Department said Monday, suggesting it has whittled down a number that had been in the hundreds just a few weeks ago.

And more than 74,000 Afghan nationals airlifted out in the waning days of the U.S. war effort have now been relocated to America, with another 3,000 waiting in other countries overseas for their chance to enter.

The State Department, in an update on the situation, said the Biden administration has “surged resources” to try to help Americans and Afghans in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal in August, which ended America’s 20-year war effort.

In early September, the State Department indicated there were fewer than 100 Americans left behind. Two months later, officials said there were aware of 439 Americans still in Afghanistan, and 216 of those had said they wanted assistance in fleeing.

Biden administration officials said at the time that the rising number was a good thing, because it meant more people were feeling optimistic enough to come forward and ask for assistance.

But many questions remain. The department, in its statement Monday, did not reveal the total number of American citizens still in Afghanistan.

Neither did it say how many Afghans stuck in the country have indicated they qualify for the special visa offered to those who assisted the U.S war effort.

Refugee groups say tens of thousands of other Afghans also are at risk of mistreatment at the hands of the new government or its proxies, and that the U.S. should be working to assist them.

They are limited by American bureaucracy and the capacity of charter flights out of Afghanistan.

The chaotic August evacuation saw 13 U.S. troops killed defending the Kabul airport, the last holdout of American troops in August, as the government collapsed and the Taliban retook control of the country.

During the chaos, the U.S. said it orchestrated an airlift that brought out more than 120,000 people. It later was revealed that many of those were Americans or citizens of allied nations. The actual total of Afghans evacuated appears to be lower than 80,000.

They were generally brought to sites in a third country where the names they gave were run through databases to try to spot any previous red flags or entanglements with U.S. agencies. But most were brought to the U.S. without the usual interview that would have been done for the special visa or for refugee status.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted them using his special humanitarian parole powers.

They were supposed to go to tent cities set up at military bases where they were to remain while they got medical screenings and communities figured out who could handle them.

The State Department, in its update Monday, saidabout 34,000 people have already been resettled in new communities here.

The Republican National Committee complained about the lack of details, saying Mr. Biden missed a congressionally mandated deadline for informing Congress about who, exactly, was airlifted.

The RNC called the troop withdrawal “an unmitigated foreign policy disaster.”

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WT: Taliban: "We changed. We need money"
« Reply #1932 on: December 14, 2021, 05:55:33 AM »
second

Foreign minister: New Taliban deserves support

Says Afghanistan wants good relations with all countries

BY KATHY GANNON ASSOCIATED PRESS KABUL, AFGHANISTAN | Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers are committed in principle to education and jobs for girls and women, a marked departure from their previous time in power, and they seek the world’s “mercy and compassion” to help millions of Afghans in desperate need, a top Taliban leader said in a rare interview.

Facing a deeply skeptical world, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi also told The Associated Press that the Taliban government wants good relations with all countries and has no issue with the United States, which saw its 20-year combat mission in the country end in ignominious retreat this summer.

Mr. Muttaqi urged Washington and other nations to release upward of $10 billion in funds that were frozen when the Taliban took power Aug. 15, following a rapid military sweep across Afghanistan and the sudden, secret flight of U.S.-backed President Ashraf Ghani.

“Sanctions against Afghanistan would ... not have any benefi t,” Mr. Muttaqi said Sunday, speaking in his native Pashto during the interview in the sprawling pale brick Foreign Ministry building in the heart of Kabul.

“Making Afghanistan unstable or having a weak Afghan government is not in the interest of anyone,” said Mr. Muttaqi, whose aides include employees of the previous government as well as those recruited from the ranks of the Taliban.

Mr. Muttaqi acknowledged the world’s outrage at the Taliban- imposed limitations on girls’ education and on women in the workforce. In many parts of Afghanistan, female students between grades 7 and 12 have not been allowed to go to school since the Taliban took over, and many female civil servants have been told to stay home. Taliban officials have said they need time to create gender-segregated arrangements in schools and the workplace to meet their severe interpretation of Sunni Islam.

When they first ruled from 1996-2001, the Taliban shocked the world by barring girls and women from schools and jobs, banning most entertainment and sports, destroying priceless cultural artifacts as blasphemous, and occasionally carrying out executions in front of large crowds in sports stadiums.

But Mr. Muttaqi said the Taliban have changed since they last ruled.

“We have made progress in administration and in politics ... in interaction with the nation and the world. With each passing day, we will gain more experience and make more progress,” he said.

Mr. Muttaqi claimed that under the new Taliban government, girls are going to school through grade 12 in 10 of the country’s 34 provinces, private schools and universities are operating unhindered, and 100% of women who had previously worked in the health sector are back on the job.

“This shows that we are committed in principle to women participation,” he said.

He also claimed the Taliban have not targeted their opponents, instead announcing a general amnesty and providing some protection. Leaders of the previous government live without threat in Kabul, he said, although most of them have fled.

Last month, the international group Human Rights Watch published a report that said the Taliban summarily killed or forcibly disappeared more than 100 former police and intelligence officials in four provinces. However, there have been no reports of large-scale retribution.

Mr. Muttaqi alleged the government that took power after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban regime in 2001 carried out widespread revenge attacks against the Taliban. Hundreds disappeared or were killed, with thousands fleeing to the mountains, he said. The Taliban were ousted for harboring al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for masterminding the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.

The minister acknowledged that the Taliban have made mistakes in their first months in power and that “we will work for more reforms which can benefit the nation.” He did not elaborate on the mistakes or possible reforms.

Mr. Muttaqi pushed back against comments by U.S. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who told the AP last week that al Qaeda has grown slightly in Afghanistan since U.S. forces left. Gen. McKenzie is Washington’s top military commander in the Middle East.

Mr. Muttaqi said Sunday that the Taliban honored a promise to battle outside jihadi groups, along with a pledge not to attack U.S. and NATO forces in the final phase of the withdrawal, which ended in late August.

“If McKenzie has any proof, he should provide it,” the minister said. “With confidence, I can say that this is a baseless allegation.”

Mr. Muttaqi said he does not envision cooperating with the Biden administration in the battle against the Islamic State group inside Afghanistan.

However, he did express hope that with time, “America will slowly, slowly change its policy toward Afghanistan” as it sees that a Taliban-ruled country standing on its own is a benefit to the U.S.

“My last point is to America, to the American nation: You are a great and big nation, and you must have enough patience and have a big heart to dare to make policies on Afghanistan based on international rules and relegation, and to end the differences and make the distance between us shorter and choose good relations with Afghanistan,” he said.

“Making Afghanistan unstable or having a weak Afghan government is not in the interest of anyone,” Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said


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Major WSJ story on the fall of the American effort
« Reply #1934 on: December 27, 2021, 03:06:11 PM »



During years of peace talks with the U.S. and Kabul, Taliban representatives made promises of power-sharing and moderation.

But when the Afghan Republic collapsed, hard-line factions seized power.

America's longest war ended in ignominy and set back 20 years of efforts to build a democratic nation infused with Western values.

How the Taliban Outwitted and Outwaited the U.S.
Islamist movement spoke of moderation as it solidified gains on the battlefield, taking Washington and its Afghan allies by surprise
By Yaroslav Trofimov
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 in Kabul and Jessica Donati
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 in Washington | Photographs by Kate Brooks/Redux Pictures for The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 24, 2021 10:02 am ET
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TEXT
588 RESPONSES
Taliban delegates and representatives of the U.S.-backed Afghan republic gathered for a secret retreat in a château north of Paris in December 2012, raising hopes that a peace deal could end their intractable war.

The Taliban, whose fighters had been beaten back by President Obama’s troop surge, dined on pork-free French cuisine with Afghan warlords, civil-society activists and female parliamentarians. At a formal session in the Chantilly hideaway, the emissaries distributed a message on behalf of the movement’s founding leader, the one-eyed cleric Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The Taliban won’t seek to rule Afghanistan on their own anymore, the document assured, and a new constitution “would pave the way for power-sharing in the next government.” When the republic’s delegates returned to Kabul, many enthused about how much the Taliban had evolved from the ruthless regime that ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s.

For the next nine years, the Taliban continued to lull the world with conciliatory messaging as they pursued a bloody war at home in parallel with diplomatic efforts to secure their ultimate goal: an American military withdrawal.

“Monopoly of power is a story of failure. That is why we want to have all on board,” Suhail Shaheen, now the Taliban’s ambassador-designate to the United Nations, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal six weeks before the group seized Kabul, deposed the Afghan republic and monopolized all power. “Past experiences have shown that you will ultimately fail and will not bring durable peace.”

Throughout its history, Afghanistan defied foreign attempts to reshape the country, from the British Empire in the 19th century to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s to the failed American experiment in nation-building.

An examination of why U.S. peace efforts collapsed so spectacularly, setting back the Biden presidency and America’s global standing, reveals the Taliban’s mastery of the diplomatic long game.

America’s increasing impatience with its longest overseas war drove the pace of these talks—removing one by one the Taliban’s incentives to compromise. For President Biden just as for President Trump, the “priority was to get out, not the Afghan settlement,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as chief U.S. negotiator under both administrations. “They made it clear—and that strengthened the Talibs.”


Seeking an exit, U.S. officials found it expedient to paint Taliban behavior in the best possible light while exaggerating the strength of the Afghan republic they had brought to life. Recognizing this opening, the Taliban leadership learned how to obfuscate their true intentions in the comforting language that appealed to foreign diplomats and negotiators.

The question now is whether Western powers can apply lessons from past failures as they try to nudge the Islamist movement into adopting more-moderate policies. Experience suggests that the Taliban won’t readily trade long-held traditions for Western cash and a place in the global community.

Some U.S. and former Afghan officials continue to believe the relatively pragmatic Taliban they dealt with were sincere and that a negotiated solution could have preserved at least some achievements gleaned from the 20-year international effort in Afghanistan. Intransigence by President Ashraf Ghani, they argue, ultimately torpedoed these efforts and bolstered the Taliban’s more hard-line elements.

Unable to fight once American support disappeared, Afghanistan’s armed forces disintegrated in August, allowing the Taliban to seize almost all of the country’s provincial capitals and reach the outskirts of Kabul in just over a week. The collapse of remaining government structures after Mr. Ghani fled the country on Aug. 15 rendered U.S.-backed talks on a peaceful transition moot.


“Monopoly of power is a story of failure. That is why we want to have all on board.” — Suhail Shaheen

The new Afghan government established in September is made up almost exclusively of Taliban clerics prominent in the insurgency. While the new regime has refrained so far from openly hosting terrorist groups or committing the kind of atrocities that earned it world-wide condemnation in the past, it has already sharply curtailed the rights of women, banned girls’ education beyond the sixth grade in most provinces and marginalized ethnic communities that aren’t part of its Pashtun power base.

In continuing talks with U.S. and allies in Doha, Qatar, the new Taliban administration is seeking diplomatic recognition, a removal of American sanctions and the unfreezing of over $9 billion in Afghan central-bank assets abroad. One of Washington’s key conditions is the creation of a more inclusive government in Kabul that respects human rights, one that would fulfill promises that the Taliban have been making since Chantilly.

“The Taliban regime should seek legitimacy within Afghanistan before seeking international recognition,” said Thomas West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, who is leading these talks.

The Road to Doha
The Taliban sought to negotiate with Washington and other Afghans immediately after a U.S. invasion ousted their government in 2001. Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s American-anointed new leader, wanted the Islamist movement to participate in the Bonn conference that year that established the country’s new political order. Washington, still shaken in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, which Osama bin Laden plotted on Afghan soil, vetoed the plan. Potential Taliban negotiators were hunted down by U.S. special-operations forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, and shipped to detention in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

American and allied attitudes to engaging the Taliban changed as the group bounced back in the ensuing decade. By 2009, the Taliban once again controlled large parts of the countryside. Mr. Obama surged the U.S. military presence to over 100,000 troops to defend the Afghan republic—while also promising to start withdrawing all American forces 18 months later.


Fatima Gailani, one of the members of the Afghan republic’s negotiating team in Doha.
By the time Washington was ready to negotiate, Taliban leaders refused to sit down with Mr. Karzai’s administration, dismissing it as an American puppet with no legitimacy or agency of its own. Mr. Karzai, for his part, objected to the U.S. engaging in talks with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan republic’s democratically elected government. The Obama administration agreed not to discuss Afghanistan’s future without Kabul but also endorsed the idea of creating a Taliban political mission abroad to facilitate diplomatic contacts.

The U.S. and the insurgents began building trust by negotiating tactical deals, such as freeing five senior Taliban leaders who had spent more than a decade in Guantánamo in exchange for the Taliban handing over Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. Army sergeant who walked off his base and was captured by the insurgents. Taliban representatives, some of whom had been living in Doha for years, formally opened a political office there in 2013.

While the Taliban still rejected direct talks with the Kabul government, its envoys based in Doha began to engage in several rounds of so-called track-two meetings with members of the Afghan republic’s political elites. The Chantilly confab was followed by similar events in Europe, Russia and China.

Over the years, the Taliban office in Doha, and the exemption of its members from United Nations travel sanctions, allowed the insurgent movement to reach out to governments world-wide, gaining growing acceptance as a legitimate political force.


“One of the reasons why the Taliban outsmarted Americans is the fact they set up relations with the whole world while negotiating with the Americans—something that the Americans didn’t want to happen,” said Rahimullah Mahmood, a veteran insurgent commander who served as governor of Wardak province after the Taliban takeover and now is deputy head of the Kandahar-based military corps. “They succeeded in convincing the world that the Taliban weren’t the terrorists as depicted by American propaganda.”

In 2018, President Trump, a longtime critic of the Afghan war, scrapped the long-held precondition that the U.S. would only enter into talks with the Taliban that included the Afghan republic’s government. Mr. Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Kabul and to the United Nations, was appointed as special envoy with wide latitude to negotiate a deal.

Born in Afghanistan in 1951, Mr. Khalilzad knew Mr. Ghani since both went to the U.S. as high-school exchange students. The two men later studied at the American University in Beirut and then earned their Ph.D.s in the U.S.—Mr. Khalilzad at the University of Chicago, and Mr. Ghani at Columbia. Mr. Khalilzad’s dealings with the Taliban dated back to the 1990s, when he served as a consultant for the Unocal oil company that explored building a pipeline through Afghanistan.

“His mandate was to figure out a way to enable us to leave quickly and potentially zero out the force, but to be able to call it a victory,” said a senior State Department official who was involved in the effort. “And it wasn’t always understood that those were mostly mutually exclusive.”

Mr. Ghani, a former American citizen who succeeded Mr. Karzai as president in 2014, was alarmed by these negotiations. A co-author of a book called “Fixing Failed States” and a onetime fixture of Washington’s think-tank circuit, he boasted to other Afghan officials about his understanding of American politics. But, until too late, he and senior officials in his administration misread American intentions and clung on to illusions that Washington would never actually pull the plug on Kabul.

The U.S. had been talking about leaving Afghanistan for more than a decade, after all. “There was this notion of Afghanistan being a unique geographical location that would always be an area of interest for global powers,” said Nader Nadery, a senior Afghan peace negotiator who headed the fallen republic’s civil service. “Some of our colleagues believed until the last months that the U.S. forces would never leave.”


Afghan President Ashraf Ghani misread U.S. intentions until it was too late.
PHOTO: KIANA HAYERI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“In Kabul, they were living in an unrealistic world,” agreed Mr. Khalilzad, who left the U.S. government in October. “That was the grand miscalculation.”

That belief that America’s national-security establishment wouldn’t allow Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden to abandon Afghanistan was coupled with another strategic blunder: excessive optimism about the Afghan republic’s own military strength, Mr. Khalilzad added. “They didn’t assess their forces correctly. I don’t know that any of them thought, at the leadership level, that the force would collapse that quickly.”

The combination of these two miscalculations meant that Mr. Ghani slow-rolled peace talks between the Afghan republic and the Taliban on a possible power-sharing agreement that would have inevitably involved him leaving office. It is unclear to what extent the Taliban would have compromised. But, as the insurgents made dramatic military gains, their calculations changed, too. In Doha over the months, discussions moved from possible power-sharing to considering an “inclusive government” dominated by the Taliban to essentially a surrender on Taliban terms.

“Ghani was not flexible, and that is why we are in this dark situation,” said Habiba Sarabi, a member of the Afghan republic’s negotiating team with the Taliban and a former governor of Bamian province. “His mentality was that the Taliban should join his government and he would be on the top. This was not possible in a peace process. He loved power. He was crazy for power.”


Ms. Sarabi, who like most of the Afghan republic’s senior officials and negotiators is now in exile, added that Mr. Khalilzad shared the blame because he consistently stressed the Taliban’s alleged moderation and interest in a peaceful transition. “He wanted to sugarcoat the almond. But at the end the bitter taste appeared,” she said.


“In Kabul, they were living in an unrealistic world. That was the grand miscalculation.” — Zalmay Khalilzad

Mr. Khalilzad, who wrote an op-ed all the way back in 1996 to argue that “the Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism,” said that he believed in the sincerity of Taliban negotiators and that it was the fault of both sides that no political settlement could be found. “They didn’t rise to the occasion,” he said. “I couldn’t blame that one side was more at fault than the other.”

Withdrawal or Peace?
To begin serious talks, Mr. Khalilzad needed a Taliban counterpart with appropriate seniority. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar fit the bill. He was a co-founder of the Islamist organization, served as deputy minister of defense in the previous Taliban regime and coordinated the insurgency’s commanders after the U.S. invasion. A relative pragmatist, Mr. Baradar had tried to open negotiations with the U.S. in 2001, and engaged in secret contacts with Mr. Karzai’s government in 2010. One of the few senior Taliban members from the same aristocratic Popolzai clan as Mr. Karzai, Mr. Baradar was captured by Pakistani and U.S. agents in Karachi later that year, and kept in Pakistani custody since.

In September 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led a delegation to Islamabad to press the need for Pakistan’s cooperation and to demand Mr. Baradar’s release. Pakistan acquiesced and Mr. Baradar moved to Doha weeks later to take the helm of the Taliban political office. The Taliban’s secretive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has never been filmed in public, gave his blessing to the negotiations.

The talks faced a constraint from the start: Mr. Trump’s impatience to bring home the troops. American negotiators say they woke up every morning with the fear of seeing what they described as “the tweet of Damocles” in which Mr. Trump would announce an unconditional withdrawal.

As American and Taliban envoys started hashing out a deal in Doha, U.S. ambassador to Kabul John Bass tried for months to push Mr. Ghani to name a broad negotiating team that would be ready to begin Kabul’s own talks with the Taliban. The Afghan president refused, unwilling to dilute his administration’s control over the process.


“President Ghani’s model of negotiation—and that was the essence of his unhappiness—was that he should be the one negotiating with Hibatullah. That he would have his laptop under his arm, sit with Hibatullah, and make a deal,” Mr. Khalilzad said. “And of course that was not realistic from the get-go.”

By the summer of 2019, Mr. Khalilzad’s team hammered out the broad contours of the deal with Mr. Baradar in Qatar. Then, the Taliban suddenly reversed course and demanded prisoner releases, a new, major concession. To break the deadlock, the U.S. yielded and signed off on a clause that required Kabul to free up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners in Afghan custody. Mr. Ghani was allowed to read the draft text but not to keep a copy. He wasn’t given access to the agreement’s secret annexes, either.


Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, second from right, was a pragmatic point man for the Taliban in talks with the U.S.
With preparations under way for Mr. Trump to host a grand signing ceremony around the Sept. 11 anniversary, a car bomb went off near the U.S. Embassy and Afghan security compounds in Kabul, killing 12 people, including a U.S. soldier. The Taliban claimed responsibility. A furious Mr. Trump tweeted that he “called off” the talks with the Islamist movement and canceled plans for a meeting with Taliban leaders and Mr. Ghani in Camp David.

Encouraged by the apparent about-turn, Mr. Ghani hoped that Mr. Trump’s rush for the exits would now be restrained. His national-security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, complained that America was “whitewashing the Taliban” because it was tired of the war, and called for reassessing the deal. Mr. Nadery, the peace negotiator, wasn’t as optimistic. That September, he binge-watched a Netflix series on the fall of South Vietnam, noting that the government in Saigon, just as the government in Kabul, had been kept in the dark by the U.S.

In Washington, John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s then-national security adviser, held a similar view. “We were basically selling the government out. The analogy of Vietnam is really true,” said Mr. Bolton, who quit that month over disagreements with Mr. Trump that included Afghanistan policy. “In both cases, everybody, every other interested party could see that the principal U.S. objective was to get out.”

The suspension didn’t last long. Mr. Trump still wanted to leave Afghanistan before the U.S. presidential elections. Within weeks, U.S. diplomats opened talks to swap two professors of the American University in Kabul held hostage by the Taliban in return for Anas Haqqani, the younger brother of the Taliban’s deputy leader Sirajuddin, who was held by the Afghan government. The U.S. has designated the Haqqani network a terrorist organization since 2012 because of its links to al Qaeda.

By February 2020, the Taliban agreed to a brief cease-fire as a show of goodwill and Mr. Trump approved signing the deal. It was officially called the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” even though the Taliban made no commitment to stop military operations against the Afghan government and security forces.

In the text, the U.S. promised a full military withdrawal by May 2021 in exchange for the Taliban pledging to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan soil to threaten other nations. The Taliban, in a significant departure, also agreed to open peace talks with Mr. Ghani’s government. The U.S. withdrawal wasn’t conditional on the success of these negotiations—in part because Washington didn’t want to give Mr. Ghani a lever to slow down the departure.

Mr. Pompeo flew to Doha to attend the signing ceremony on Feb. 29, 2020. Minutes before his arrival in Qatar, the Taliban staged a victory march with the white flags of their Islamic Emirate, prompting fears among the Qatari hosts that the embarrassment might scuttle the deal at the last moment. The Qataris were prepared to prevent the Taliban from entering the luxury Sheraton resort with the flags. The insurgency’s representatives left them in their vehicles.

Mr. Pompeo grimly shook hands with Mr. Baradar after aides failed to orchestrate his separation from the Taliban in the room. Mr. Khalilzad signed for the U.S. while Mr. Pompeo followed with a somber speech delivered mostly to journalists in another room afterward. Members of Mr. Khalilzad’s team were relieved the day had passed without incident and stayed out until late in Doha, drinking overpriced cocktails.

Mr. Ghani initially resisted the Doha agreement’s commitment, made by the U.S. without his assent, that Kabul release thousands of Taliban prisoners. He also kept rebuffing American pressure to create a negotiating team including his political foes in Kabul, such as Mr. Karzai and his challenger in the 2019 presidential elections, Abdullah Abdullah. Any power-sharing deal with the insurgents would be contingent on Mr. Ghani stepping down, after all. Loath to leave office, the Afghan president instead kept hoping that Washington would reverse the withdrawal decision, especially if Mr. Trump were to fail in his re-election bid.

“We, the Afghan government, should have seen the writing on the wall,” Mr. Mohib, who served as Mr. Ghani’s national-security adviser until both men fled Kabul on Aug. 15, said when asked what was the Afghan administration’s biggest error. “It was a withdrawal, not a peace agreement. Democratic values were not as much of a priority as we thought. The gains of the past 20 years were not as much of a priority as we thought they would be.”

Taliban military commanders were also initially upset with the Doha deal. Mullah Mohammad Fazel, a Taliban negotiator and one of the five former Guantánamo inmates freed in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl, traveled across front lines from Qatar to a meeting with insurgent commanders from all over Afghanistan to explain its terms.


Mullah Mohammad Fazel, who was released after 12 years in Guantánamo, became a Taliban negotiator.
Some of the men, sporting the Taliban’s black turbans and beards, believed the agreement was naive, according to those present. How were they supposed to trust that the U.S. would in fact leave Afghanistan the following year? Why should they stop hitting American forces even as Washington retained the right to conduct airstrikes against them?

“During the negotiations, many were claiming that the Americans were deceiving us, that it was all a trap for us,” said Mr. Mahmood, then the military commander of the Taliban’s eastern zone, who attended the gathering in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province. “Many military commanders wanted to resume attacks on Americans. The suicide bombers, in particular, were extremely sad: they cried and mourned the fact that they wouldn’t get martyred.”

Yet, the Taliban political negotiators’ argument that Washington would deliver on pledges made in Doha and withdraw from Afghanistan prevailed at the end, said Mr. Mahmood. “It’s a treaty of victory,” was the message that he carried back to his troops.

Shortly after that, the Taliban’s propaganda department published a calendar for the Islamic year 1442 that began in August 2020. It showed an American and a Taliban hand signing the Doha deal—described as “the agreement to end the invasion”—and Afghanistan breaking free from chains of foreign occupation. Below was a quote from the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mr. Hibatullah, pledging: “We don’t want the monopoly on power.”

Drawdown
The lack of progress in Afghanistan ahead of the U.S. presidential election was causing Mr. Trump to get impatient, and in June he ordered a fresh drawdown of troops to 4,500, without any concessions by the Taliban.

At that point, the Taliban hadn’t delivered on any of their major promises except for stopping attacks on American troops. They still refused to meet the Afghan government’s delegation. Trying to gain the prisoner release and break the stalemate, Mr. Baradar made verbal assurances to U.S. negotiators that violence would drop as soon as the 5,000 Taliban inmates were set free.

A buoyed Mr. Khalilzad sent a cable to Washington announcing that Mr. Baradar had promised a near-complete cease-fire. Ross Wilson, who had taken over the role of top U.S. diplomat in Kabul, delivered the message to Mr. Ghani. The promised cease-fire “was part of our selling of what was a very difficult decision for good reasons,” Mr. Wilson said. Grudgingly, Mr. Ghani agreed to a prisoner release in phases in exchange for the Taliban setting free 1,000 government personnel in their custody.

With the release complete in September 2020, Taliban and Afghan republic negotiators finally gathered in Doha’s Sharq Village resort for their own peace talks. The venue spread around a large beachside pool frequented by bikini-clad tourists who lounged under loud pop music that wafted into Taliban negotiators’ rooms. Afghan republic delegates were told by Kabul to stay away from the pool to avoid embarrassing headlines. The Taliban didn’t swim.

The two sides had breakfast in separate halls and rarely socialized. Key Taliban negotiators, who by then spent several years in Qatar and had families and businesses there, only occasionally showed up in the Sharq Village.


Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai headed the Afghan government’s negotiating team with the Taliban in Doha.
As the two Afghan delegations began their discussions, a U.S. military team monitored the levels of violence in Afghanistan to evaluate whether the Taliban were abiding by Mr. Baradar’s assurances. The team documented a rise in insurgent attacks instead. U.S. Army Col. Brad Moses, who served as deputy to the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Scott Miller, briefed about the alarming data on intensifying violence during regular calls with the White House, the State Department, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies.

“It never reduced,” he said. The Taliban would claim to the U.S. that these attacks were either carried out by spoilers or criminals when confronted with the evidence, he added.

The Afghan government, meanwhile, instructed its forces, cooped up in isolated bases and outposts, to stop offensive operations during the talks and engage in what it called “active defense.” The loss of initiative handed over a critical advantage to the insurgents, said Lt. Gen. Imam Nazar Behboud, who commanded the Afghan army’s Kandahar corps.

“This meant that you just had to stand there and wait until the Taliban attacked you. No matter how much you got killed, you just had to wait,” he said. “There were huge casualties. The troops were tired, they were not receiving any backup from Kabul, and they lost their trust in the central government.”

By October, the Taliban had gathered a huge force in the south and launched a wide-scale assault on Helmand’s provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. The U.S. intervened with airstrikes to prevent the city’s collapse. Weeks later, the Taliban moved toward Kandahar, capturing the Arghandab district on the edge of the country’s second-largest city. Another torrent of U.S. airstrikes stopped further advances. Both sides accused each other of violating the Doha agreement.


Nader Nadery, a senior Afghan peace negotiator, once binge-watched a Netflix series on the fall of South Vietnam.
Still, the Taliban stuck to their promise not to strike American targets, showing that they could exercise discipline over their fighters when they wanted to. Despite sustaining heavy casualties in the airstrikes, the Taliban leaders calculated it wasn’t in their interest to disrupt an American withdrawal they viewed as inevitable.

“We convinced our fighters that, as our negotiations with the Americans are under way, we will not fire a single bullet at the Americans. We proved that we can uphold our treaties,” said Mohammad Farouk Ansari, a member of the Taliban’s military commission that united some 50 top commanders from across the country. “We told each other at the time that it was a victory. When the Americans started closing their outposts and evacuating their bases, we knew that the country was ours, today or tomorrow.”

U.S. officials still wonder whether they had been played by Mr. Baradar’s promises or whether the chief Taliban negotiator himself was being used by the insurgency’s real leadership to lull the U.S. and Kabul into complacency.

‘It was always hard to tell if the Taliban were serious about a political settlement or not,” said Carter Malkasian, who was part of Mr. Khalilzad’s team as a representative from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “One possibility is that they never meant it. That they were saying what we needed to hear. We may learn, like we have about the Vietnamese negotiations, that they never had any intention of conceding.”

The U.S. presidential election was held on Nov. 3 and Mr. Trump lost. While fighting to overturn the results, he ordered the Pentagon to pull remaining troops out of Afghanistan and appointed a new defense secretary, Chris Miller, a former Green Beret and vocal war skeptic, to carry out the plan. Mr. Miller, along with other close advisers, convinced the president to keep a downsized force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to avoid the country’s collapse, which they said would hurt Mr. Trump if he wanted to run for office again.

Around that time, Mr. Khalilzad circulated proposals for a new interim government that would be equally split between the Taliban and representatives of the republic. The proposal, he said, didn’t specify who would be in charge.

Mr. Miller said the unspoken goal of retaining a small force to keep the Kabul government afloat was to eventually force Mr. Ghani to cut a power-sharing deal. “And let’s be honest, the Taliban probably would have had about 14 seats in the cabinet. And Ghani probably would have had four. He probably would have had sports and recreation. Probably would have had, like, roads and sewers,” Mr. Miller added.


“He loved power. He was crazy for power. ” — Habiba Sarabi of President Ashraf Ghani

The Afghan president hoped the American determination to withdraw from Afghanistan would end with Mr. Trump’s term on Jan. 20. He was so convinced that the new Biden administration wouldn’t follow through on the Doha agreement that he declined to see Mr. Khalilzad when the American envoy came to Afghanistan that January. Mr. Ghani subsequently rejected Mr. Khalilzad’s power-sharing plan, which was promptly leaked to the media, and kept refusing to engage in meaningful talks in Doha.

“It was us, the republic, that were lingering. The Taliban were much more flexible,” said Fatima Gailani, a negotiator for the republic who belongs to one of the country’s most influential families. “Negotiations need a give and take, and an honorable compromise is absolutely fine, but that was not the case at all. It was purposefully lingering and waiting for Biden to come. Why were they thinking that Biden would bring a miracle, I don’t know.”

Mr. Khalilzad gave his proposal to Mr. Baradar, who agreed to consider it but offered no formal response.

By then, Taliban commanders on the ground, emboldened by their military successes and the looming American withdrawal, had little desire to share power with their enemies. “The strategy of a colonizer, when it is forced out of a country, is to leave its offspring behind, so as not to break the chain of colonization. The Americans wanted to keep a parallel government here, for the Taliban and the rest to have equal power,” said Mr. Ansari, the Taliban military commission member who operated southeast of Kabul. “We did not agree with this from the very beginning. We said that we’re the rulers in the country. The country is our home. We don’t accept a second ruler in our home.”

Areas of control by district

No data

Contested

Government control

Taliban control

Oct. 21, 2020

About a month into Afghan-Taliban talks the Taliban launch attacks in the south, violating verbal assurances made to U.S. negotiators to reduce violence

Apr. 13, 2021

The Taliban announce they will not join an international conference the U.S. hoped would create an interim government

June 30, 2021

By the end of June, the Taliban make significant gains in the districts they control

TURKMENISTAN

UZBEK.

UZBEK.

IRAN

TAJIK.

Area of

detail

Kabul

PAKISTAN

Note: Districts classified as unconfirmable claim of Taliban control are included in contested

Source: FDD’s Long War Journal
Mr. Ghani’s hopes about Mr. Biden were quickly dashed. The new president had advocated withdrawing from Afghanistan back when he served as Mr. Obama’s vice president, and showed little inclination to reverse Mr. Trump’s deal.

For months after Mr. Biden took office, interagency officials held an endless series of meetings on how to mitigate risks from the pullout. Abandoning the Doha agreement, the White House calculated, would force the Taliban to resume attacks on American forces, requiring a major troop increase with no end in sight. As for the peace talks shepherded by Mr. Khalilzad in Doha, the White House concluded that chances of progress were too slim to justify delaying the withdrawal.

“There is not a lot of evidence that either side treated those negotiations in Doha in good faith,” said a current senior Biden administration official who was involved in the decision-making.

On April 12, the Taliban refused to participate in a peace conference that the U.S. was trying to convene under the sponsorship of the United Nations in Turkey, fearing that they would be forced to make concessions.

Two days later, Mr. Biden announced that all U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, regardless of whether the Taliban and the Afghan reach a political deal or any other developments on the ground, a move that removed the conditionality attached to the 2020 Doha agreement.

“We will not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We’ll do it…responsibly, deliberately and safely,” Mr. Biden said in the White House’s Treaty Room that day. “More and endless American military force could not create or sustain a durable Afghan government.”

Kabul was stunned. The following afternoon, Mr. Ghani convened top Afghan security officials to discuss Mr. Biden’s bombshell. The army chief of staff wondered how the Afghan military could continue servicing its aircraft once American advisers and contractors left. Mr. Ghani, according to a person present at the meeting, was calm and said he was working on securing continuing U.S. support.

Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who used to work closely with the CIA, refused to believe that Mr. Biden would actually withdraw all U.S. forces. Could Mr. Biden’s announcement simply be a pressure tactic to force Kabul make concessions to the Taliban in Doha, he wondered, according to people present.

Mr. Saleh, Afghanistan’s former intelligence chief, told the Journal his U.S. interlocutors had been assuring until the last moment that Washington wouldn’t abandon his administration. “There were so many occasions in which I asked the visiting dignitaries, diplomats, intelligence officials, generals and members of the U.S. intelligentsia if the U.S. would hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban,” Mr. Saleh said after Kabul’s fall to the Taliban. “The answer would be outright no, with nuances explained later but still implying no.”

As members of Mr. Ghani’s inner circle continued to cling to illusions, Afghan army and police field commanders drew a different conclusion: The end was nigh. Survival meant striking private deals with the Taliban and preparing for a rainy day meant selling off their units’ ammunition, food and fuel on the black market.

By May, the Taliban started taking one district after another, often without a fight, allowing government troops to go home unharmed and giving them pocket money for the road. Still, in accordance with verbal commitments given to Mr. Khalilzad, the insurgents refrained from seizing any of the country’s 34 provincial capitals. In Doha, Taliban negotiator Mohammad Nabi Omari, another former Guantánamo inmate who is affiliated with the Haqqani network, hashed out a transition proposal with a narrow circle of Afghan republic representatives.

Under the proposed deal, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mr. Hibatullah, would become Afghanistan’s head of state but the country would turn into a constitutional monarchy of sorts, governed under the 1964 constitution promulgated by King Zahir Shah, with an elected parliament. Ms. Gailani, who was involved in this negotiation, joked that Mr. Hibatullah, who hadn’t been seen in public for years and widely presumed to be dead, was a perfect head of state. Her Taliban interlocutor assured her that Mr. Hibatullah was very much alive. Both sides agreed to keep the planned agreement secret.

“They were not easy. There were things on which they would absolutely not compromise upon. They would never accept the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. They would never accept our constitution,” said Ms. Gailani. “But at least 60% of our values could be rescued. Our flag could be rescued.”

Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, the lead Afghan government negotiator in Doha and a former defense minister and intelligence chief who regularly briefed Mr. Ghani on the talks, said he believed the plan presented by Mr. Omari was just an individual idea and not a solid proposal backed by the entire Taliban leadership.

In late June, Mr. Ghani flew to Washington in a last-ditch effort to persuade the U.S. of the need to keep providing support. Mr. Biden agreed to receive Mr. Ghani in the White House only if he came with Dr. Abdullah, then holding the title of head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation. “We’re going to stick with you. And we’re going to do our best to see to it you have the tools you need,” Mr. Biden promised in joint remarks.

The American president’s April withdrawal decision “has made everybody recalculate and reconsider,” Mr. Ghani chimed in. “The Afghan nation is in an 1861 moment, like President Lincoln, rallying to the defense of the republic. It’s a choice of values—the values of an exclusionary system or an inclusionary system.”


President Ghani gives an interview in his office in Gul Khana Palace.
PHOTO: KIANA HAYERI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ms. Gailani met Mr. Ghani in Washington during that trip and briefed him on proposals discussed with Mr. Omari and other Taliban negotiators. Mr. Ghani encouraged her to continue the talks, she said. “I thought, good, he decided to be the de Klerk of Afghanistan, not the Saddam or Gadhafi,” she recalled. “It was clear that this was the end, but at least it could have been a decent end. At least the institutions, the army, the police would not have collapsed.”

Yet, in following weeks, Mr. Ghani continued playing for time. “He lingered and lingered, which just made things more difficult,” Ms. Gailani said.

In July, a senior foreign envoy visited Mr. Ghani in Kabul. The Afghan president was defiant, boasting about the strength of government forces massed in the city and saying that the Taliban would suffer 50,000 casualties should they attempt to attack the capital. Still, he added that he instructed his bodyguards to give him a lethal injection should he face the risk of being captured by the Taliban, according to the envoy.

Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, flew to Kabul later that month to meet Mr. Ghani, publicly promising intensified airstrikes in support of Afghan forces. “Taliban victory is not inevitable,” he said at the time. In private, Gen. McKenzie told Mr. Ghani that Mr. Biden was still evaluating options for continuing to provide air support to Afghan forces from bases in the Persian Gulf after the withdrawal.

The Republic Collapses
In early August, the Taliban’s military commission chief, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, gathered military commanders in the insurgent stronghold of Aryub Zazi in the eastern Paktia province. The time to capture provincial capitals had come, Mr. Zakir announced, but the Taliban should take their time and not rush.

“It was decided that we should enter the cities cautiously, targeting the provinces that fall an easy prey,” said Hajji Qari Osman Ibrahimi, a member of the Taliban military commission who attended the meeting. “And we were told not to enter Kabul, because we had promised so to the Americans.”

As it turned out, almost all the cities were easy prey, and just a week later the Taliban were at the doorstep of the Afghan capital. Dr. Abdullah held another round of meetings in Doha and returned to Kabul to brief Mr. Ghani and other political leaders: A transitional arrangement that would save at least some of the Afghan republic’s institutions was still possible. The Taliban had a strong incentive to cooperate. The U.S. had assured the insurgents that such a transitional government would get diplomatic recognition and would have access to billions of dollars in Afghan central-bank reserves and continued foreign aid.

Dr. Abdullah, Mr. Karzai, Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other Afghan leaders planned to fly to Doha to strike such an agreement but needed Mr. Ghani’s commitment to resign first. Once again, the Afghan president stalled for time, haggling over the composition of the delegation and insisting that close aides such as Mr. Mohib participate. The delegation was tentatively scheduled to leave Aug. 16.


Afghan government representative Abdullah Abdullah, seated third from left, confers with other negotiators at the start of talks with the Taliban in Doha.
Amin Karim, a senior member of Mr. Hekmatyar’s party and a former adviser to Mr. Ghani, went to see the Afghan president in the palace that week.

“It’s game over,” he started the meeting, in English. Mr. Ghani, flustered, accused Mr. Karim of defeatism, saying that Kabul was safe and that tens of thousands of elite troops from all over the country were ready to protect the Afghan capital.

On Aug. 14, Mr. Wilson, the American envoy, also met with Mr. Ghani. By then, the major cities of Kandahar, Herat and Ghazni had fallen to the Taliban. He says he was struck by how calm the Afghan leader appeared. Reporters were invited to cover the meeting, which was unusual. Taliban commanders in the mountains around the city had no inkling that just hours later they would be in control of the Afghan capital.

“We were sure that provinces would fall without any resistance, but we weren’t sure about Kabul. Bluffing by the government had given us a sense that there would be a fight,” said Mohammad Salim Saad, a senior commander of the Haqqani network’s Badri force who oversaw insurgent operations within the capital. “We worried that a battle for Kabul would destroy the city.”

The morning of Aug. 15, some armed Taliban sympathizers started appearing in the city. On Washington’s request, the Taliban issued a statement in Doha that requested all Taliban units to stay away. Mr. Wilson ordered all remaining personnel to move from the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul’s Green Zone to the airport, then held by the American military.

Remaining staff were told to leave their personal effects behind and were allowed just one suitcase. Mr. Wilson left his suits and shoes at the embassy, and packed the essentials, including a book that had just arrived via Amazon delivery. As he boarded the chopper to leave for the airport, the pilots told him that Mr. Ghani had been spotted fleeing Afghanistan by helicopter about 30 minutes earlier.

“He gave us no hint that he was leaving. Not a scintilla of a hint that he was going to leave the country,” Mr. Wilson recalled. Mr. Ghani, in a statement released weeks later from the United Arab Emirates, where he now resides, said his unexpected departure “was the only way to keep the guns silent and save Kabul.”

In Doha, senior Taliban representatives gathered on the 21st floor of Qatar’s foreign ministry for a meeting with the country’s special envoy who oversaw Afghan affairs, Mutlaq al Qahtani. In disbelief, they watched the news of Mr. Ghani’s escape. Would the U.S. military want to secure Kabul for two weeks, to enable an orderly transition, they asked.

Mr. Baradar, Mr. Khalilzad, Gen. McKenzie and other officials met in Doha that afternoon. “There was a sense of anarchy coming. Law and order was falling apart in Kabul,” Mr. Khalilzad recalled. Following Mr. Ghani’s escape, the rest of the Afghan republic’s ministers, including the minister of defense, also rushed to the airport to flee the country.

The Biden administration wasn’t interested in taking potentially open-ended responsibility for the besieged Afghan capital and its five million residents. “It’s not my job. My job is to safely withdraw my forces,” Gen. McKenzie replied to the Taliban proposal, according to Mr. Khalilzad. “If you attack, we’ll defend ourselves.”

By 8 p.m., Taliban units, mostly those belonging to the Haqqani network, started entering the city, reinforcing the first echelon of clandestine operatives who had seized strategic locations.


Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace after President Ghani fled the country on Aug. 15.
PHOTO: ZABI KARIMI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Instead of a negotiated transfer of power with international recognition that had been discussed with the U.S., the Taliban found themselves running a government with empty coffers, subjected to American sanctions and denied a United Nations seat.

Mr. Baradar, widely expected to become the Taliban’s new head of government, was marginalized as one of three deputy prime ministers, and later disappeared from view for weeks. His verbal promises to American and other international negotiators, such as a commitment to ensure girls’ education, were no longer binding for Afghanistan’s new regime.

Instead, the Haqqanis and the southern military commanders under Mullah Omar’s son Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob emerged as the factions with real authority in Kabul.

A newly published Taliban calendar, for the Islamic year that began in August 2021, no longer carried Mr. Hibatullah’s promise of not seeking a monopoly on power. Instead, it pledged to enforce a “pure Islamic system.” A pile of wrecked Humvees left behind and a fleet of Chinooks flying away with tattered American flags illustrated the message.

Crafty_Dog

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Afghan resistance begs for US support
« Reply #1935 on: December 29, 2021, 02:50:35 AM »
What say we here?
==========
Taliban resistance forces beg for U.S. support in effort

Effects will be felt beyond borders

BY JOSEPH CLARK THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Pro-democracy fighters in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley may be bloodied but are not bowed in opposing the Taliban, who have claimed victory over the entire country, a resistance leader told The Washington Times.

Ali Nazary, head of foreign relations for the National Resistance Front (NRF), said the pro-democracy fighters in Afghanistan’s fabled valley need foreign nations to back their efforts to turn back the Taliban and the flood of terrorist groups that he says have poured into the country.

“Whatever happens in Afghanistan will impact the international community,” Mr. Nazary said in an interview. “We believe the U.S. and any other country that believes international terrorism is a threat to its security and to its national interests has to assist us because we are the only forces fighting against international terrorism.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal in mid-August, the Biden administration has ignored the scores of fighters backed by ISIS, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups pouring into the country, he said. And the estimated 50,000 strong Taliban, which has a long history of partnering with terrorist organizations, has no hope of providing security and stability in a country on the cusp of an economic and humanitarian disaster.

“These are facts that haven’t been accepted by the international community, especially the United States,” Mr. Nazary said. “The threat of international terrorism is growing every day that passes — and not only from ISIS but al Qaeda and the Taliban themselves.”

Mr. Nazary says the NRF, armed with an estimated 10,000 former Afghan soldiers, special forces commandos and police, is quickly becoming the U.S.’ last remaining option to counter the Taliban and the scores of terrorist groups flooding Afghanistan. But he says time is running out.

“We are the only forces inside Afghanistan that are militarily challenging all of them,” Mr. Nazary said.

“We cannot do this all alone,” he said. “My main appeal to the administration, to the U.S. Congress, and to others outside of government has been that this is the only option that the U.S. has. But it is not an option that will always persist.”

Led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of the late U.S.-allied Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the NRF formed in mid-August amid the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan.

The 32-year-old Mr. Massoud and his followers decamped to the mountainous region his father had defended amid a constant onslaught of Soviet offensives in the 1980s and later against the Taliban after they gained power in the 1990s. They pledged to stand up against the Taliban’s Islamic fundamentalism and fight for the same pro-democratic platform the Northern Alliance touted decades before.

Mr. Massoud says his forces need more arms for a protracted conflict because Taliban forces have surrounded Panjshir and cut off supply lines to replenish troops and weapons.

Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, met with representatives from the NRF in late August and pledged support for the anti-Taliban resistance.

But neither the White House nor the State Department publicly backed the NRF, and in early September, Taliban fighters posted photos of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s flag raised in over Panjshir — dashing hopes of stalling the fundamentalist government.

Mr. Waltz, a former Army Green Beret on the House Armed Services Committee, said that, from a national security standpoint, it is “grossly irresponsible” for the administration not to engage with the Afghan resistance.

“They’re begging us now to be a partner,” Mr. Waltz said. “If you look at what they stand for, versus what the Taliban are actually doing, what more does the administration need to see?”

Mr. Waltz pledged in September to “take a page out of ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’” referring to the book and movie about the flamboyant Texas Democratic congressman known for securing millions of dollars for the CIA to arm the Afghans fighting against Soviet occupiers in the 1980s.

Mr. Nazary said such support has yet to materialize, as the NRF’s pleas are met with silence from the Biden administration. “Seeing inaction from this administration is just mind-boggling,” he said.

In Panjshir, both sides claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties throughout weeks of clashes in September, though reports have not been independently verified.

Afghanistan’s former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, who joined the resistance in Panjshir, said the Taliban had blocked humanitarian access and cut phone service and electricity in the region. He also claimed that the Taliban had begun forcing “military-age men” to clear minefields in the area.

Still, Mr. Nazary said the Taliban will struggle to maintain control in the valley.

“Panjshir has never been somewhere where the people have welcomed invaders,” he said. “Anyone who enters that valley throughout history has faced defeat.”

He said the NRF currently controls more than 60% of Panjshir, which is made up of an endless network of sub valleys that branch off of the main artery. The NRF allowed the Taliban to take control of the highly visible thoroughfare, he said, as the group adjusted its strategy to avoid protracted skirmishes with the well-armed Taliban.

Furthermore, Mr. Nazary said support for the NRF is beginning to expand beyond Panjshir as the Taliban fails to deliver stability.

“The resistance is growing now because the population is now facing a humanitarian crisis,” he said.

“They see the Taliban as a disruptive force, a force that is unable to bring stability and security, a force that is unable to deliver services to feed them,” he said. “So they have no other choice and the only reasonable option that they have is the NRF.”

But, Mr. Nazary said, the NRF can only hold out so long without U.S. assistance.

In the absence of constant, on-the-ground reporting, the state of play in Panjshir is difficult to verify. Western media outlets have noted few signs of Taliban opposition in the region in the weeks following the Taliban offensive, and some analysts in Washington maintain a more pessimistic view of the emergence of a formidable challenge to Taliban control.

Nonetheless, Mr. Nazary said supporting the NRF’s resistance may be the U.S.’ only option to thwart the growing threat of international terrorism and keep the Taliban in check.

In September, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley told the House Armed Services Committee that terrorist organizations could regain footing in Afghanistan in as soon as six months.

Gen. Milley also conceded that the pullout damaged the ability to confront potential terrorist threats in the region.

“I think the ends are going to remain the same to protect the American people, but I think the ways and means are going to change,” he said. “I think it is going to become much more difficult now to conduct counterterrorism operations against a reconstituted al Qaeda or ISIS in Afghanistan. Not impossible … but it will be more difficult.”

The Biden administration has lauded its overthe- horizon counter-terrorism strategy, but with no military footprint and degraded intelligence capabilities in Afghanistan and the closest air base from which to fly unmanned intelligence aircraft hours away, many in Washington remain skeptical of the strategy.

The Taliban continues to vie for international recognition and claims that it has distanced itself from al Qaeda and has promised to comply with international standards for human rights.

“It is a false premise from those who believe that they have bargaining chips with the Taliban, that will enable change in the Taliban behavior over the long term,” said Richard Goldberg a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “If anybody has watched the Taliban for the last couple of years, we should be very clear-eyed that any promise or statement from the Taliban is completely worthless.”

Mr. Nazary said he fears international leaders have already begun to cave to the Taliban and says that as long as they remain in power, the threat of terrorism continues to grow.

Last week, the Biden administration announced it was easing some restrictions on humanitarian aid to Afghanistan to help alleviate the worsening economic crisis. More aid organizations will now be able to assist in the Taliban-ruled country without violating sanctions against the Taliban and Haqqani network, a group of Afghan Islamic guerrilla insurgents.

Critics said the move sends the wrong message. “Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s shortsighted decision to offer broad sanctions carveouts could result in using American taxpayer funds to reward, legitimize and enable the same Taliban that took power by force and has shown no interest in abiding by international norms,” said Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. Nazary fears the Biden administration and leaders across the globe are on a slippery slope toward recognizing the fundamentalist government.

“We believe there’s too much being given away to the Taliban, even if they’re not recognized,” Mr. Nazary said.

“The only thing the Taliban know is destruction. That’s what they were made for. They weren’t made for good governance. They weren’t made to become statesmen.”

The White House has reiterated that no country, including the U.S., has recognized the Taliban. Both the Taliban and the Haqqani network remain sanctioned by the U.S. and United Nations.

“We have worked with the United Nations and other international institutions to accelerate the provision of liquidity, as well as resources to ensure that the basic human needs of the people of Afghanistan are being met,” a senior administration official said. “We are getting the relief to people across the country as winter approaches” “Our diplomats will continue to press the Taliban through multiple channels to address basic human rights issues, provide access to education for women and girls, and to fulfill their counterterrorism commitments,” the official added. While Mr. Goldberg did not specifically endorse the NRF, he said it could make sense for the U.S. to look for partners in Afghanistan as a potential check on the Taliban.

“Members of Congress should ask for a series of briefings from the intelligence community to be looking very closely at any opposition that exists,” said Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Mr. Nazary said the NRF’s calls for U.S. support went unheeded by the administration, despite the increasingly dire picture in Afghanistan.

As the NRF waits for its chance to retake Panjshir, it has ramped up efforts to influence powerbrokers outside of Afghanistan. Last month, NRF supporters staged demonstrations in 22 cities around the globe.

“We were able to show that the diaspora communities throughout the globe support the National Resistance Front,” Mr. Nazary said. “We have the popular support whether inside Afghanistan or outside.”

Mr. Nazary said the NRF has mobilized Afghan communities around the globe.

“If the Taliban control the geography, we have the popular support with us,” he said. “We have legitimacy.”

In October, the NRF registered in Washington as a lobbying group.

“If the United States completely ignores the situation inside of Afghanistan and believes that the Taliban will stabilize the situation, we’re going to see many threats in the West, especially in the United States, in the years to come,” Mr. Nazary said.


“The only thing the Taliban know is destruction. That’s what they were made for. They weren’t made for good governance. They weren’t made to become statesmen,” said Ali Nazary of th


Crafty_Dog

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GPF: China-Afghanistan
« Reply #1937 on: January 03, 2022, 03:53:10 PM »
Cooperation. Chinese and Afghan government officials met over the weekend to discuss economic reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. In an official statement, Beijing expressed its desire to invest in Afghanistan, support the export of agricultural products and deliver humanitarian assistance. Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum also said the new Taliban government would honor a mining contract between China Metallurgical Group and the previous Afghan government for the Mes Aynak copper mine, where work has been stalled for years


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Re: Taliban fields brigade of suicide bombers
« Reply #1939 on: January 08, 2022, 11:45:06 AM »
https://andmagazine.com/talk/2022/01/06/the-taliban-field-a-brigade-of-suicide-bombers-officially-part-of-their-army/

I wonder if these are drafted or enlisted men...

With complete control of the country, they could offer the seventy two virgins in advance of the missions.

No comment from the Klain administration?

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Re: Taliban fields brigade of suicide bombers
« Reply #1940 on: January 08, 2022, 11:49:53 AM »
https://andmagazine.com/talk/2022/01/06/the-taliban-field-a-brigade-of-suicide-bombers-officially-part-of-their-army/

I wonder if these are drafted or enlisted men...

With complete control of the country, they could offer the seventy two virgins in advance of the missions.

No comment from the Klain administration?

The United States on Thursday praised the Taliban as businesslike and cooperative in facilitating the first evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan since the US military withdrawal.

The departure from Kabul to Doha on a chartered Qatar Airways flight Thursday marked "a positive first step" with the new regime, National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said.

"The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from HKIA," she said in a statement, referring to Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport.


"They have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort."

ccp

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Re: Afpakia: Afghanistan-Pakistan
« Reply #1941 on: January 08, 2022, 11:53:32 AM »
"They have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort."

well I don't know if the Taliban should be described this way
but I know this is not a description of the Biden administration or Dems in the Houses.

 :-P

ccp

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308 mill to AFghanistan
« Reply #1942 on: January 11, 2022, 05:09:32 PM »
to keep them from starving to death
good job BB - Blinks/Biden

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-announces-308-million-in-aid-to-afghan-people-/6391862.html

G M

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ccp

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jizya tax
« Reply #1944 on: January 11, 2022, 05:32:16 PM »
yes
we are infidels

led by idiots



Crafty_Dog

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NY Post: Biden-Blinken/Obama started the fustercluck in 2014
« Reply #1947 on: February 08, 2022, 04:17:55 PM »
Revealed: How Obama and Biden laid groundwork for Afghanistan disaster
By Paul Sperry
February 7, 2022 6:13pm  Updated


The Obama administration's 2014 swap of five Taliban prisoners for deserter Bowe Bergdahl helped lead to the current crisis in Afghanistan.
AFP/Getty Images
Paul Sperry

As his hasty Afghanistan exit looms larger as a strategic blunder, President Biden is still blaming his predecessor for the debacle, arguing the former President Trump tied his hands.

It’s Trump’s fault, the administration insists, that Afghanistan has collapsed into a pre-9/11 narco-terrorist state run by medieval mullahs brutalizing women all over again.

“The last president signed an agreement to get out,” Biden reminded reporters during last month’s marathon White House press conference.

But the truth is, it was the other way around.

Trump essentially inherited what Biden started nine years earlier as vice president, according to White House e-mails and U.S. officials who investigated his old office’s secret dealings with the Taliban.

Biden had advocated withdrawing from Afghanistan when he served as President Obama’s vice president. The White House shared a common goal with the Taliban in ending the war, concerned as it was that the long troop deployment looked like the “occupation” of a Muslim nation. And Biden’s then-national security adviser — Antony “Tony” Blinken — spearheaded an effort to achieve that goal, which included as its centerpiece a once-covert plan to spring from the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison basically the entire old leadership of the Taliban captured by U.S. forces after the 9/11 attacks.

“Tony Blinken got the ball rolling long before Trump, undercutting the notion that Biden was boxed in by Trump,” said Christopher Bright, who led a House Armed Services Committee investigation of the Obama administration’s jailbreak of the Taliban honchos.

The shocking 2014 paroling of the so-called Taliban Five, which was sold as a patriotic move to free an alleged Afghan “P.O.W.” — US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — paved the way for the creation of a shadow Taliban government in Qatar.

That Taliban government in exile was used to formally negotiate the ill-advised U.S. withdrawal agreement.

“The White House just wanted the Taliban Five out to start that process,” Bright said. “That’s now more apparent in hindsight.”

All five former Gitmo inmates ended up sitting across the negotiating table with Biden’s envoys to hammer out details of the troop withdrawal, and all five are now in key posts running the government in Afghanistan, which they’ve renamed the “Islamic Emirate.”

Without their release — orchestrated by Blinken, who is now Secretary of State under Biden — there likely would be no troop pullout or Taliban takeover, and 13 U.S. service members slaughtered while guarding a mass evacuation at the Afghan airport would still be alive today.

As head of the Congressional investigation, Bright obtained administration e-mails that outlined Obama and Biden’s moves.

In 2011, Obama promised to start withdrawing all American forces from Afghanistan. Such a drawdown required engaging with the Taliban in peace talks, Bright noted, and releasing several of their senior leaders would advance the administration’s negotiating position.

Khairulla Said Wali Khairkhwa was one of the "Taliban Five" released by the Obama administration. He is now Afghan minister of information and culture.
Khairulla Said Wali Khairkhwa, one of the “Taliban Five” released by the Obama administration, is now Afghan minister of information and culture.
US Dept of Defense
Absul Haq Wasiq is now the intelligence chief of Afghanistan.
Absul Haq Wasiq is now the intelligence chief of Afghanistan.
US Dept of Defense
Mohammad Fazl Mazloom is the Afghan deputy defense minister and a member of the Afghan negotiating team.
Mohammad Fazl Mazloom is the Afghan deputy defense minister and a member of the Afghan negotiating team.
US Dept of Defense
The next year, Biden’s office floated to the Defense Department and other agencies the idea of trading five Taliban commanders jailed at Gitmo for Bergdahl, the US soldier held by the Taliban. But then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta balked.

“I opposed the swap,” Panetta wrote in his memoir. “I did not believe it was fair to trade five for one.”

But Panetta was soon replaced by Chuck Hagel, who was open to the idea.

Within months of Hagel taking over the Pentagon in February 2013, the swap scheme was resurrected. In June 2013, the exiled Taliban government opened a “political office” in Doha, Qatar, and the Obama administration formed “the interagency Taliban reconciliation group” which made it clear it was interested in releasing the Taliban commanders.

Mullah Norulla Noori is minister of borders and tribal affairs.
Mullah Norulla Noori is minister of borders and tribal affairs.
US Dept of Defense
Mohammad Nabi Omari is the governor of Khost Province.
Mohammad Nabi Omari is the governor of Khost Province.
US Dept of Defense
In December 2013, Hagel personally traveled to Doha to begin the process of drafting a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Taliban representatives for the Taliban Five.

“Blinken was actively involved in overturning secretary of defense and other objections to the [Gitmo] transfer,” Bright said, “instituting an irregular review and security process, and proceeding nonetheless.”

As negotiations progressed, Blinken and other administration officials used coded language in emails to discuss the secret deal, using “third party” as a euphemism for the Taliban, for example.

“We achieved our immediate objectives: signaling to the third party our interest in pursuing this matter,” Hagel’s top military attorney Stephen Preston briefed Blinken and other officials in a December 2013 e-mail about their trip to Qatar.

By then, Blinken had been promoted to deputy national security advisor under Susan Rice, where he rode herd on finalizing the MOU to secure the still-secret deal. (Jake Sullivan replaced Blinken as then-veep Biden’s security adviser.)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly spearheaded the effort to release the "Taliban Five" while he was Obama's deputy national security advisor.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly spearheaded the effort to release the “Taliban Five” while he was Obama’s deputy national security advisor.
Susan Walsh/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Career military officers, miffed at freeing Taliban commanders the Pentagon classified as too dangerous to release, leaked the scheme to the media.

Furious over the breach, Blinken lashed out in a February 2014 email to Pentagon brass: “I know you share my dismay, and frankly, disgust, at the leak in today’s Washington Post about our Bergdahl efforts.”

But the leaks failed to derail the final deal he negotiated with the Taliban through Qatari intermediaries. A few months later, Blinken authorized Preston to execute the final agreement. “Tony has okayed the signing of the MOU,” according to a May 2014 e-mail circulated by a National Security Council staffer.

SEE ALSO
Main: An internally displaced school teacher wearing a burqa from Takhar province, who identified herself by her first name, Nilofar, left, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press inside her tent in a public park in Kabul, Afghanistan. Inset: Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa
Same as the old barbarous boss
That same month, Obama announced he planned to end US troop presence in Afghanistan by 2016.

To get everybody on board the swap, Blinken had chaired a number of interagency “deputies meetings” in the months leading up to the June 2014 release of the five Taliban fiends. A month prior to the release, he and other officials actually entertained a last-minute Taliban demand to free a sixth Taliban detainee before settling on the original five. Hagel signed their release order.

News of their release sparked a firestorm of outrage. Congress complained it was not consulted about efforts to arrange the swap as required by law.

Others pointed out the Taliban Five were the only “forever prisoners” released without being cleared by the Gitmo parole board, and some of them had been linked by US intelligence to Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda terrorists.

Obama justified their release as a worthy exchange for a war hero. After the Taliban returned Bergdahl, Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony with his parents celebrating their son as a “POW,” a designation the Pentagon never gave him.

“We’re committed to winding down the war in Afghanistan,” Obama said, hinting at the real reason for the deal.

Begdahl eventually pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in 2017.
Bergdahl eventually pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in 2017.
AP Photo/Ted Richardson, File
It took years to find out the truth about Bergdahl, who was captured after deserting his post in Afghanistan. He was no hero. He ultimately was court-martialed and pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. In 2017, he was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge.

But Obama, Biden and Blinken, along with Rice and Sullivan — who are now serving Biden as top advisers in the White House — got what they wanted out of the ruse: a major token of good will to start withdrawal negotiations with the Taliban.

At the time, Obama assured a wary public that the dangerous enemy combatants would be transferred to Qatar and kept from causing any trouble in Afghanistan. In fact, they were left free to eventually mastermind last August’s sacking of Kabul. And they did so in luxury. Within months of arriving in Qatar, the Taliban leaders were housed in small palaces inside an exclusive neighborhood in suburban Doha and provided fancy new SUVs to drive.

The Obama-Biden administration pressed ahead with their plan in spite of several red flags. Soon after gaining their freedom, some of the notorious Taliban Five pledged to return to fight Americans in Afghanistan and made contacts with active Taliban militants there. But the administration turned a blind eye to the disturbing intelligence reports, and it wasn’t long before the freed detainees used Qatar as a base to form a regime in exile.

Khairkhwa, member of the Taliban negotiating team, and the Taliban delegation arrive for final Afghan peace talks in Doha, Qatar, Aug. 12, 2021, where they met face-to-face with Biden envoy Khalilzad.
Khairkhwa, a member of the Taliban negotiating team, and the Taliban delegation arrive for final Afghan peace talks in Doha, Qatar, Aug. 12, 2021, where they met face-to-face with Biden envoy Khalilzad.
Photo by KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images
Fast-forward to 2021. Last year, the Taliban Five sat across the negotiating table from Biden’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, where they participated as key members of the official Taliban delegation who negotiated the final terms of the US withdrawal. The retreat cleared a path for the Taliban to retake power after 20 years.

Khairullah Khairkhwa and other former Taliban prisoners assured Khalilzad that the Taliban would not launch a military offensive if Biden committed to removing all remaining American troops. In turn, Khalilzad convinced Biden and Blinken that the Taliban would share power with the US-backed government in Kabul.

“I do not believe the government is going to collapse and the Taliban is going to take over,” Khalilzad affirmed, while whitewashing the Taliban as “changed.”

But all the while, Taliban militants were taking large chunks of Afghan territory around the capital Kabul, encircling the US-backed regime there, waiting to take over the moment the last US troops left. Taliban negotiators made it clear they weren’t interesting in any power-sharing and sought to reestablish strict Islamic rule without outside meddling.

US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad at the Doha, Qatar meeting with Taliban officials.
US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad at the Doha, Qatar meeting with Taliban officials.
Photo by KARIM JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images
As Khairkhwa warned in an al-Jazeera interview conducted during one of Biden’s “peace” summits: “I started jihad [holy war] to remove foreign forces from my country and establish an Islamic government, and jihad will continue until we reach that goal through a political agreement.”

He added that Taliban attacks on Afghan army posts were not off-limits, that they never agreed to a ceasefire with the US-backed Ashraf Ghani administration, and that “the intelligence of Kabul know that they cannot stay in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the foreign forces.”

Meanwhile, Blinken pushed Ghani to capitulate to the Taliban on several issues and even possibly step aside, according to Congressional Research Service analyst Clayton Thomas.

Little wonder the Taliban seized control of Kabul in mid-August and stormed the presidential palace without firing a single shot. Hoping to escape their clutches, thousands of panicked Afghans and foreigners fled to the airport, resulting in a humanitarian crisis lasting weeks.

Former Gitmo inmate Khairkhwa (third from left) with other Taliban leaders negotiating with Biden diplomats last March. All five Taliban commanders released from Gitmo sat on the Taliban negotiating team. “It never occurred to me that one day there would be negotiations with them (American officials), and I would be sitting there with them on one side and us on the other,” Mullah Khairkhwa said.
Former Gitmo inmate Khairkhwa (third from left) with other Taliban leaders negotiating with Biden diplomats last March. All five Taliban commanders released from Gitmo sat on the Taliban negotiating team. “It never occurred to me that one day there would be negotiations with them (American officials), and I would be sitting there with them on one side and us on the other,” Mullah Khairkhwa said.
Photo by ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
It’s plain that Biden and his diplomats got played by the Islamist thugs they assumed were rehabilitated. They thought they were dealing with a more pragmatic Taliban.

They should have known better: During the secret 2014 talks over their release from Gitmo, Taliban representatives used in their messages the abbreviation “IE” — Islamic Emirate — for the name of their shadow Afghan government. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is what the Taliban called the country when they ruled it from 1996 until US forces toppled their regime in 2001.

That old Islamic Emirate flag now flies again over Afghanistan.

President Trump wanted out of Afghanistan just as badly as Obama and Biden did, but he was handicapped by the fact that the Taliban leadership was already free and regrouping — they were bargaining from a position of strength, and deception.

The same five Taliban leaders captured by US troops and sent to Gitmo to rot in jail ended up getting to negotiate the removal of those very troops.

Obama, Biden and Blinken escorted the 9/11 terrorist-harboring creeps from prison cells to palace suites.

Paul Sperry is an investigative journalist and author of several books on the War on Terror including bestseller “Infiltration.”

Crafty_Dog

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NRO: Manchurian Joe's Afghan fustercluck
« Reply #1948 on: February 08, 2022, 04:35:39 PM »
second

The more we learn about the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic.

As the Biden administration’s chaotic and inept withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in August 2021, a suicide bomber murdered 13 American servicemembers, and at least 170 Afghans, at the Abbey Gate outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. It was one of the deadliest attacks on our troops in our 20 years in that nation.

“Know this,” Biden said after the bombing. “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” This turned out to be face-saving political theater. Three days later, an air strike killed ten Afghans, seven of them children. Not one of the dead, as far as we know, was an “ISIS facilitator,” as the administration had alleged.

In fact, the Pentagon now says that the bombing was the work of a lone terrorist rather than a “complex” network, as the Biden administration had initially maintained. At the time, General Mark Milley not only referred to the strike as “valid” and “righteous” — let’s concede for a moment that he was basing this on the best available information — but went further to describe a “secondary explosion” and a supposed plethora of evidence justifying the bombing. None of that, it seems, was true. It seems increasingly likely that Biden was going to blow someone up to project his toughness.

The more we learn about the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic. Here, for example, is a snippet from ProPublica’s recent investigation into the Kabul suicide bombing:

Days before the final withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, thousands of desperate Americans and Afghan allies seeking to flee the country were using unguarded routes across open fields and through narrow alleys to reach one of the few gates providing access to the Kabul airfield.

Despite intelligence warning of terrorist attacks, U.S. military commanders encouraged use of the routes. Some U.S. officials even provided maps to evacuees trying to bypass Taliban fighters stationed at a checkpoint outside the airport.

The fact that the murderer of 13 Americans “likely” gained access to troops via a path that U.S. officials were encouraging people to use seems quite noteworthy. As does the fact that we were helping evacuees circumvent the Taliban even as the Biden administration was assuring the public that the Islamic militants were facilitating the extraction of Americans.


A World without Rules

These are the same Taliban with whom the Biden administration had reportedly shared a list of “American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies.” When defending his reliance on the militants, the president claimed that, “to the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints — they are letting through people showing American passports.” In September, the administration declared that the Taliban had “shown flexibility” and were comporting themselves in a “businesslike and professional” manner.


You will recall, as well, White House press secretary Jen Psaki risibly contending that no Americans had been “stranded” in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would later say that there were “under 200” Americans remaining in Afghanistan who “want to leave.” A new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report from ranking member Jim Risch (R., Idaho), contends that State Department officials estimated that on August 17 there were 10,000–15,000 Americans trapped in Afghanistan. Over the subsequent two weeks, as the Afghan forces the United States had trained and funded for 20 years disintegrated, 6,000 Americans were able to escape. I’m not a math whiz, but that leaves a lot more than zero, or even 200, stranded. How many of those American citizens, green-card holders, or Afghan allies had their names handed to the Taliban? Were the interpreters on that list being hunted down or beheaded by Islamists?

The Pentagon investigation into the bombing — relying on hundreds of witness interviews, drone footage, and reports by medical examiners — also concluded that the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate was “not preventable,” words that recurred in headlines atop reports by the Associated Press and other outlets.

In truth, the attack became unpreventable only after the Biden administration evacuated secure positions without having extracted those who wanted to leave. When George Stephanopoulos asked Biden whether he was warned that adhering to the Taliban’s timeline would put lives in danger, Biden answered: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”

This was surely a lie. As the New York Times reported, American intelligence had warned Biden that Afghan security forces would not resist the Taliban for long, and that the American-allied government would not hold Kabul. Anonymous Defense Department officials told the Wall Street Journal that neither Secretary Lloyd Austin nor General Milley had much confidence in “over-the-horizon” counterterror strategy and that both had warned Biden to keep 2,500 troops to cover the withdrawal.

A recently declassified report by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, which was submitted to the Department of Defense in January 2021, also warned the administration that the Afghan air force would quickly collapse. Yet, when asked in July 2021 if a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was inevitable, the president scoffed at the notion, arguing that “Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.” What with the U.S. military equipment now in the Taliban’s possession, I guess that makes the Taliban as well-equipped as any army in the world.

A yet fuller picture emerges from another Army investigation, released to the Washington Post this week through a Freedom of Information Act:

Military personnel would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander on the ground during the operation, told Army investigators, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” He did not identify any administration officials by name, but said inattention to the Taliban’s determination to complete a swift and total military takeover undermined commanders’ ability to ready their forces.

So, apparently, the only branch of the armed services that didn’t warn the administration was the Coast Guard. Yet none of this advice stopped the president from abandoning the Bagram air base. Nor did it prompt him to set up military safe zones to retrieve stranded Americans or Afghan allies before retreating. His failure to do so caused a bottleneck at the Kabul airport that put troops and civilians in needless danger. Biden maintained that chaos was inevitable even as he promised a “safe and orderly” withdrawal when making his announcement.

Biden was wedded to the Taliban’s timeline. Given that he’s shown reliably disastrous foreign-policy instincts over 50 years in public life, this isn’t exactly surprising. It’s also increasingly clear that the administration ignored warnings because it believed leaving Afghanistan, which was quite popular in polls, would be a political slam dunk early in his term.

That was Biden’s prerogative. The president has no obligation to follow the advice of his generals. Undoubtedly, many of them would have advocated a U.S. presence in Afghanistan in perpetuity. As a policy matter, Biden’s botching of the evacuation is a separate issue from whether the United States should have withdrawn. However, once Biden decided to embrace what the Trump administration had begun, the responsibility to protect American lives was his. There are numerous questions yet to be answered on why he failed to do so.