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Pakistan says Afghanistan building ‘unlawful structures’ along tense border

September 12, 2023
By Abid Hussain
Al Jazeera
Published On 11 Sep 2023

Pakistan accuses Taliban government of ‘indiscriminate firing’ at the key Torkham border crossing, closed for nearly a week.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan has accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of constructing “unlawful structures” at a key border crossing, calling it a violation of territorial sovereignty.

The Torkham border crossing in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been closed since Wednesday after a deadly exchange of fire between their forces. Hundreds of trucks carrying essential goods have since been stranded on both sides.In a statement on Monday, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said “unprovoked and indiscriminate firing” by Afghan forces led to the closure of the most important trade route between the two countries.

“On the 6th of September, instead of a peaceful resolution, Afghan troops resorted to indiscriminate firing, targeting Pakistan military posts, damaging the infrastructure at the Torkham Border Terminal, and putting the lives of both Pakistani and Afghan civilians at risk, when they were stopped from erecting such unlawful structures,” it said.

The statement came a day after talks between the two countries on reopening the Torkham crossing failed.

On Saturday, the Taliban government accused the Pakistani security forces of firing on its troops when they were repairing an “old security post”. It said Islamabad was “causing hindrances and delays” in opening the transit point.

“[The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan] reminds the Pakistani side that such actions are detrimental to the trade of Afghanistan, region and national economy of Pakistan, which is heavily dependent the most on exports in the current situation,” said the Afghan statement.

Pakistan has alleged the Afghan forces were “illegally” building a new border post, which led to last week’s exchange of fire between the guards. The Taliban said two of its guards were killed in the firing.

The Torkham border closure came as relations between the two countries remain frosty, with Pakistan repeatedly urging Afghanistan to control the movement of armed attackers and stop them from entering its territory.

Afghanistan denies the allegation that it allows its soil to be used by armed groups to launch attacks on other nations.

Pakistan’s allegation follows a surge in armed attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces since the Taliban came to power in 2021.

Most such attacks are claimed by the outlawed Pakistan Taliban, also known by the acronym TTP, which is ideologically aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

On the day of the Torkham firing, TTP claimed to have attacked two military checkposts in remote Chitral district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing four Pakistani soldiers. At least 12 TTP fighters also died in the attacks.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Pakistan says Afghanistan building ‘unlawful structures’ along tense border
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Afghanistan delusions blind US on Russia-Ukraine

September 10, 2023
Responsible Statecraft
Quincy Institute

On the second anniversary of the final debacle of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, we should consider the lessons of that disaster for U.S. strategy elsewhere.

While the case of Afghanistan itself is by nature unique, Washington’s mistakes and failures reflected wider and deeper patterns — and pathologies — in U.S. policymaking and political culture. If left unaddressed, these will lead to more disasters in future.

Yet most of the mainstream media and the think tank world are treating the memory of the U.S. war in Afghanistan not as a source of reflection but as an embarrassment to be forgotten as quickly and completely as possible.

This parallels the approach to the memory of Vietnam in the U.S. mainstream — and the result was the disaster of Iraq. One of the most astonishing things about the U.S. debate — to give it that name — prior to the invasion of Iraq, was the general failure to consider, or even mention, what the experience of Vietnam might have taught. Today, this refusal to learn lessons applies above all to U.S. engagement in Ukraine.

The failure to pursue diplomacy with the Taliban prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan can be explained and excused by the fury naturally felt by Americans at the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the Taliban’s refusal immediately to hand over the al-Qaida leadership that was clearly responsible. Nonetheless, given the appalling costs that resulted from the U.S. invasion, it is worth asking whether an approach that allowed the Taliban to save face and remain true to their own beliefs might have produced better results for both Americans and Afghans: for example, exploring the possibility that the Taliban could be persuaded to deliver the AQ leadership to another Muslim country.

In the case of Iraq, there was no sincere diplomatic effort at all, since the Bush administration had already made the decision to invade.

The second lesson of Afghanistan is as old as war itself and was emphasized by military theorist Carl von Clausewitz: that there can never be certainty of long-term victory in any war, if only because war, more than any other human activity, is liable to generate unintended ramifications and consequences.

In the case of Afghanistan, the mission to eliminate al Qaida and remove the Taliban from power morphed into a far greater — and probably innately doomed — effort to create a modern democratic Afghan state through foreign intervention, aid and supervision.

This in turn became related to the attempt to destroy the old and exceptionally powerful nexus between Islamic faith and Pashtun nationalism that had generated the Taliban, much of the resistance to the Communist regime and Soviet intervention in the 1980s, and numerous revolts against the British Empire before that.

Given that most Pashtuns live in Pakistan, the inevitable result was an extension of the conflict to that country, leading to a Pakistani civil war in which tens of thousands died. Pakistan’s refusal or inability to expel the Afghan Taliban led to the threat of direct U.S. intervention in Pakistan — which, if it had occurred, would have produced a catastrophe far worse than Afghanistan and Iraq put together.

The failure to anticipate consequences is worsened by conformism and careerism; not that these tendencies are any worse in the U.S. establishment than elsewhere. But America’s power and capacity to intervene across the world magnify their negative consequences. On the one hand, they mean that even experts and journalists who are in a position to know better, join officials in unthinking obedience to the establishment line of the given moment, which may have only the most tangential relationship to realities in the country concerned.

Returning to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, I encountered journalists whom I had known when covering the Mujahedin war against the Soviets and Communists in the 1980s. I was amused — kind of — to find them parroting a new version of the line that Moscow and Kabul had put out in the 1980s: that the Afghan resistance had no real local support and was not really Afghan, and that it was entirely the creation of outside powers (including Pakistan) and money.

This was despite the fact that the Taliban were recruiting exactly the same people from exactly the same areas as the Mujahedin, who were fighting for exactly the same reasons.

Matters are made worse by the flood of instant shake-and-bake “experts” who are generated every time the United States embarks on a new overseas venture. Selected for their connections in Washington rather than any real knowledge of the areas concerned, they could not correct the mistakes of U.S. policy even if they had the moral courage to do so. Moreover, their ignorance of local history and culture makes them dreadfully receptive to the self-interested fantasies of their local informants.

Thus I was also amused in the early 2000s to hear “advisers” on Afghanistan to the U.S. (and European) governments declare that “Afghanistan in the 1960s was a successful middle class democracy.” This U.S. syndrome could well be called Oedipal, since it is both incestuous and self-blinded.

Once both political parties have committed themselves to a given strategy, the bipartisan Washington establishment finds it extremely difficult to admit mistakes and change course — a tendency to which the U.S. military has also sometimes contributed in a disastrous fashion. This military refusal to admit defeat has its admirable sides — nobody should want U.S. generals to be quitters.

That, however, is why America needs political leaders (including ones with personal military experience, like Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Carter) with the knowledge and courage to tell the generals when it is time to call a halt.

Instead, in Afghanistan (as documented by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction and others), generals and administration officials colluded to produce optimistic lies, which were then circulated by a credulous and subservient media. Today, this risks being the case with the Biden administration’s refusal to admit that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed, and that it is therefore time to start developing a political strategy to end the fighting in Ukraine and the economic and political damage this is beginning to cause to vital U.S. allies in Europe.

The last point about the U.S. record in Afghanistan should hardly need to be made, because it has been made over and over again since the 1950s by a whole succession of great American thinkers, including Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward. This is the tendency in the U.S. political establishment to colossally exaggerate both the malignance of the enemy of the moment, and the danger it poses to the United States.

Instead of a Communist-led nationalist movement to reunify Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists were portrayed as a force that could start toppling a row of “dominoes” that would end with Communist victory in France and Mexico. Instead of a tinpot regional dictator, Saddam Hussein became a nuclear menace to the U.S. homeland. The Taliban, an entirely Afghan force, supposedly had to be fought in Afghanistan so that we would not need to fight them in the United States.

And today, U.S. officials in their rhetoric somehow manage to combine the supposed beliefs both that Russia is so weak that Ukraine can completely defeat the Russian army and catastrophically undermine the Russian state, and that Russia is so strong that if not defeated in Ukraine it will pose a mortal threat to NATO and freedom around the world.

As Loren Baritz wrote in 1985 concerning the obliteration of the memory of Vietnam in the United States:

“Our power, complacency, rigidity and ignorance have kept us from incorporating our Vietnam experience into the way we think about ourselves and the world… But there is no need to think unless there is doubt. Freed of doubt, we are freed of thought.”

It would be nice to think that on this anniversary, and faced with even greater dangers in Ukraine, the U.S. establishment and media will devote some serious thought to what happened in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan delusions blind US on Russia-Ukraine
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Predictions of an Afghan ‘security vacuum’ were all wrong

September 10, 2023
Responsible Statecraft
Quincy Institute
It was still shocking for many Americans to witness the swift collapse of a government that so many lives and tax dollars contributed to building.

Today, Afghanistan is a nightmarish place for many Afghans, marked by a lack of rights and opportunities. It’s crucial to recognize this reality. However, it’s also important to acknowledge that numerous predictions from Washington did not materialize as expected. For all the admonishments of the Biden administration, Afghanistan has not become a gift for China or Russia, or a hotbed of transnational terrorism.

President Biden faced relentless criticism for the withdrawal, decried as squandering “20 years of blood and sacrifice” by Republican Senator Jim Risch and branded “fatally flawed” by Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who oversaw the end of the U.S. surge in Afghanistan during President Obama’s tenure, likened the evacuation to the infamous Bay of Pigs fiasco, even before the tragic loss of 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans in an ISIS attack.

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who less than one year earlier had proudly stood for a photo op with the Taliban’s chief negotiator, after agreeing to withdraw U.S. troops, told Fox News that the “Biden administration has just failed in its execution of its own plan.” In April, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board partly attributed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to “U.S. surrender in Afghanistan” and during a Congressional hearing in July, Congressman Michael McCaul labeled the withdrawal “a mistake of epic proportions.” Failure is, indeed, an orphan.

One of the most frequently cited reasons for why the U.S. military had to remain in Afghanistan was rooted in counterterrorism efforts. Indeed, fighting terrorism was the reason for the authorization for the use of military force that allowed U.S. troops to be deployed to Afghanistan in the first place. President Biden drew criticism from certain pundits when he asserted on August 16, 2021, that “Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on [sic] American homeland.” He emphasized that the original mission was, in fact, a response to a terrorist attack and had a primary focus on counterterrorism.

Some pundits might find this fact inconvenient, especially those who have come to believe that our presence in Afghanistan was primarily about nation-building, rather than acknowledging that nation-building itself was an ill-conceived strategy within the context of the War on Terror.

In the lead-up to the withdrawal, the notion of over-the-horizon counterterrorism capabilities was often ridiculed as ineffective. During the fall of 2021, the Pentagon assessed that the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), an ISIS offshoot in Afghanistan, could potentially launch an attack on the U.S. within as little as 6 months. Yet, nearly two years later, no ISKP attack originating from Afghanistan has targeted U.S. soil.

Furthermore, senior analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) recently evaluated that the group relies on “inexperienced operatives in Europe” to carry out attacks abroad. In other words, the next generation of 9/11 hijackers is not being trained in Afghanistan. The Biden administration showcased its ability to secure significant over-the-horizon victories against terrorists, such as when a U.S. drone killed al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul apartment on July 31, 2022.

As of last March, Nicholas Rasmussen, the Department of Homeland Security’s counterterrorism coordinator, viewed the likelihood of a 9/11-style attack as “almost inconceivable.”

The world of today is different than on the morning of September 11, 2001. Back then, Afghans had extremely limited communication with the outside world. In contrast, today, over 60 percent of adults own a cell phone, with more than 80 percent having access to one. This trend holds true for other once-isolated parts of the world as well. This connectivity will pose challenges to the Taliban’s ability to enforce their draconian restrictions over the long-run. It has also changed the way terrorists operate. In the realm of terrorism, the world is indeed flat. Extremist ideologies can be disseminated, and terrorists can recruit overseas operatives to inflict harm.

But this may not be such a big win for terrorist groups like ISKP. While their capacity for recruitment is more substantial than in the past, their ability to train and direct quality recruits without interference is actually diminished. Meanwhile, the capacity of potential target nations to intercept such plots is stronger than ever before. Instead of participating in a global campaign of terrorist whack-a-mole, it is our domestic defenses that are best positioned to protect the homeland.

This isn’t meant to downplay the potential of ungoverned spaces to serve as breeding grounds for adept and motivated terrorists. However, concerning the case of Afghanistan, NCTC analysts concluded that the Taliban’s activities have “prevented the branch [ISKP] from seizing territory that it could use to draw in and train foreign recruits for more sophisticated attacks.”

While it’s true that terrorism can be managed and nation-building wasn’t the purpose of going to war, it was still shocking for many Americans to witness the swift collapse of a government that so many U.S. lives, tax dollars, and lives of our Afghan partners had contributed to building.

One reason for the astonishment shared by lawmakers, media, and the American public over the evacuation debacle, the vanishing of Afghan security forces, and the hasty departure of the Ghani administration, stems from a steady flow of falsehoods regarding the war. Rather than a deliberate effort of intentional deceit, it was more of a collective exercise in self-deception, omission, and hopeful exaggeration.

As the U.S. war in Afghanistan trudged onward, a carefully curated liturgy of talking points was repeated in Washington. Our leaders were well aware that Afghanistan was an archipelago of cut-off cities and forward operating bases, while the Taliban dominated the countryside, roads, and the night. It was no secret that Ashraf Ghani was surrounded by a circle of sycophantic advisors. The economy was sustained by a continuous flow of aid and war-related industries. Yet, speaking candidly about this was rare until after the Afghan government collapsed.

A cognitive dissonance made it acceptable for U.S. lawmakers, foreign elites, military-aged men who had fled their conflict-ridden countries, and even human rights organizations to not only call for the perpetual deployment of American soldiers but to claim we owed such a commitment. Of course, the U.S. military was more than enthusiastic to oblige. And for soldiers, there is an unrelenting desire and pressure to deploy. I too volunteered to deploy. However, the enthusiasm of young warfighters shouldn’t grant a blank check for putting them in harm’s way.

Since the U.S. withdrawal, unsettling truths emerged. Although tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice, when push came to shove — even before the Americans’ departure — Afghan forces fell to the Taliban. Their supplies ran out and corrupt leaders in Kabul left them to die or surrender. The strongman warlords, elevated by Washington and summoned by Ashraf Ghani to save the republic, fled to neighboring countries.

Over the years, the Taliban were dismissed as a proxy of Pakistan, disconnected from Afghan society, yet, it was the Afghan government, created through an international conference in Bonn, Germany, and supported with billions of U.S. aid, that failed to inspire Afghans to fight for its survival at a crucial moment. Many observers, myself included, were confident that Afghans would fiercely resist the Taliban and the country would rapidly descend into civil war. The country has instead fallen into a haunting silence.

One prediction that has come true is the dire situation for women under the Taliban’s rule that can only be described as gender apartheid. They have progressively restricted girls and women’s right to education, closed gathering places and livelihoods like beauty parlors, and even banned women from a national park. Their actions seem more driven by an obsession with control of every aspect of women’s lives than religious doctrine.

Additionally, the Taliban have stifled dissent and used torture against rivals. We must confront these harsh realities and take meaningful actions, but we must also avoid making promises we cannot fulfill, both for the sake of Afghans and our own credibility.

Today, Afghanistan is not at war for the first time in twenty years, with violent deaths decreasing from well over 20,000 per year in the years leading up to the U.S. withdrawal to under 2,000 last year. The country hasn’t turned into a narco-state. The Taliban also haven’t abandoned their extremist beliefs, disavowed al-Qaeda, or restrained the Pakistani Taliban.

However, their current focus seems to be inward on Afghanistan. The Afghan economy is struggling, partly due to Taliban mismanagement, though it doesn’t appear to be much worse than the previous government at management, and their corruption seems to be less. Their cruelty, however, seems unfailing.

It’s worth reflecting on why so many of our predictions were inaccurate. The U.S. facilitated Afghanistan’s development, but it also prolonged the war. Now, Taliban rule and the isolation it creates has plunged Afghans into deeper poverty and created a nightmare for women, a bargain from hell, created by Washington and its partners in Kabul, but that ultimately can only be resolved by Afghans themselves.

Predictions of an Afghan ‘security vacuum’ were all wrong
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Afghan Taliban criticises closure of main border crossing with Pakistan

September 10, 2023

Reuters

KABUL, Sept 10 (Reuters) – The Afghan Taliban criticised the closure of its main border crossing with Pakistan this week after clashes between security forces, saying the halt in trade would see heavy losses for businesses.

The busy Torkham border crossing closed on Wednesday after Pakistani and Afghan Taliban forces started firing at each other, according to local officials.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan deems the closure of Torkham gate and opening of fire on Afghan security forces by the Pakistani side contrary to good neighbourliness,” Taliban administration’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Saturday.

The statement said the incident had started after Pakistani security forces fired at Afghan Taliban forces fixing an old security outpost near the border. Pakistan’s foreign office did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Hundreds of trucks laden with goods have been halted and traders have complained that trade is affected.

“The closure of Torkham gate can adversely affect bilateral and regional trade, and cause trade and financial losses to common mercantile class on both sides,” the statement said, adding many travellers were also stuck on each side of the border.

Disputes linked to the 2,600 km (1,615 mile) border have been a bone of contention between the neighbours for decades.

Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar and Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Michael Perry

Afghan Taliban criticises closure of main border crossing with Pakistan
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Retirees Continue to Call for Payment of Pensions

September 10, 2023
TOLOnews
10 Sept 2023

The retirees said that despite their protests and calls for their rights, they have not received their pensions.

Retirees at a gathering in capital Kabul voiced concerns over continued unpaid pensions, saying that they have not been paid their pensions since the fall of the former government.

The retirees said that despite their protests and calls for their rights, they have not received their pensions.

“I have worked for 45 years. I don’t have food now to eat like my other peers. Either they are retired civilians or military retired personnel, they don’t have food to eat and medicine to heal,” said Abdul Khaliq, a retiree.

“There is nothing left behind, I sold everything including home appliances and furniture. The government says it will pay our pensions, but when? Why don’t you give it to us?” said Omar, a retiree.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) said the payment of pensions for the retirees is waiting on approval from the Islamic Emirate’s leader.

“The plan for the payment of the pensions has been sent to the leadership of the Islamic Emirate. According to Mr. Mujahid, the Darul Iftah has also approved it. We hope to soon receive instruction from the leadership, so we will start our work,” said Ahmad Wali Haqmal, a spokesman for the MoF.

Earlier, the MoF said that the number of retirees is 49,000 with 10,000 of them women.

Retirees Continue to Call for Payment of Pensions
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Islamic Emirate Officials Discuss With Pakistan Reopening Torkham Gate

September 10, 2023
Nazir Shinwari
Tolo News
10 Sept 2023

Such steps harm the trade and transit relations between the two countries, the statement said.

Local officials in the eastern province of Nangarhar discussed the reopening of Torkham crossing with Pakistani officials.

Arafat Mahajar, manager of the department of information in the Directorate of Information and Culture of Nangarhar, said that the two sides held talks about opening the crossing.

“On Sunday, the Afghan and Pakistan officials held negotiations about the reopening of the Torkham crossing so that the gate will be reopened soon,” he said.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) said the closure of Torkham crossing and the firing on Afghan security forces by Pakistan is against good neighborly relations.

The ministry said in a statement that Islamabad is continuingly creating problems in Karachi port and has closed Torkham crossing at the time of harvest for Afghanistan’s vegetable and fruits, which is an unjustifiable act and against all commitments made previously.

Such steps harm the trade and transit relations between the two countries, the statement said.

“It is essential that the two sides, for improvement of trade and transit of the region, find a solution for such problems,” said Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal, deputy spokesman for the MoFA.

“We once again call on the Pakistani officials to reopen the gates of Torkham for the common people, patients and traders,” said Sardar Ahmad Shikib, the chargés d’affaires of Afghanistan’s embassy in Islamabad.

Meanwhile, political analysts said that Pakistan needs to stop its dual policy towards Afghanistan.

“Pakistan wants to put pressure on the Islamic Emirate because Torkham gate is important for us. Thousands of Afghans are commuting through this gate,” said Mohammad Sangar Amirzada, political analyst.

Last Wednesday, a clash erupted between Islamic Emirate and the Pakistani military, which led to a closure of the Torkham crossing.

Islamic Emirate Officials Discuss With Pakistan Reopening Torkham Gate
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Afghanistan is the fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, U.N. drug agency says

September 10, 2023
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

The report called Afghanistan’s meth manufacturing a growing threat to national and regional health and security.

ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan is the world’s fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, a report from the United Nations drug agency said Sunday. The country is also a major opium producer and heroin source, even though the Taliban declared a war on narcotics after they returned to power in August 2021.

The United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crimes, which published the report, said meth in Afghanistan is mostly made from legally available substances or extracted from the ephedra plant, which grows in the wild.

The report called Afghanistan’s meth manufacturing a growing threat to national and regional health and security because it could disrupt the synthetic drug market and fuel addiction. It said seizures of meth suspected to have come from Afghanistan have been reported from the European Union and East Africa.

Annual meth seizure totals from inside the country rose from less than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) in 2019 to nearly 2,700 kilograms (6,000 pounds) in 2021, suggesting increased production, the report said. But it couldn’t give a value for the country’s meth supply, the quantities being produced, nor its domestic usage, because it doesn’t have the data.

Angela Me, the chief of the UNODC’s Research and Trend Analysis Branch, told The Associated Press that making meth, especially in Afghanistan, had several advantages over heroin or cocaine production.

“You don’t need to wait for something to grow,” said Me. “You don’t need land. You just need the cooks and the know-how. Meth labs are mobile, they’re hidden. Afghanistan also has the ephedra plant, which is not found in the biggest meth-producing countries: Myanmar and Mexico. It’s legal in Afghanistan and it grows everywhere. But you need a lot of it.”

Me said it was too early to assess what impact the Taliban’s drug crackdown has had on meth supplies.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, Abdul Mateen Qani, told the AP that the Taliban-run government has prohibited the cultivation, production, sale and use of all intoxicants and narcotics in Afghanistan.

“We cannot claim 100% that it is finished because people can still do these activities in secret. It is not possible to bring it to zero in such a short time,” said Qani. “But we have a four-year strategic plan that narcotics in general and meth in particular will be finished.”

A U.N. report published in November said that opium cultivation since the Taliban takeover increased by 32% over the previous year, and that opium prices rose following authorities’ announcement of a cultivation ban in April 2022. Farmers’ income from opium sales tripled from $425 million in 2021 to $1.4 billion in 2022.

The 2022 report also said that the illicit drug market thrived as Afghanistan’s economy sharply contracted, making people open to illegal cultivation and trafficking for their survival.

Afghans are dealing with drought, severe economic hardship and the continued consequences of decades of war and natural disasters.

The downturn, along with the halt of international financing that propped up the economy of the former Western-backed government, is driving people into poverty, hunger, and addiction.

An Afghan health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said around 20,000 people are in hospitals for drug addiction, mostly to crystal meth. Of these patients, 350 are women. He said children are also being treated, but did not give the number nor their ages.

Afghanistan is the fastest-growing maker of methamphetamine, U.N. drug agency says
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New US intelligence suggests al Qaeda unlikely to revive in Afghanistan, but officials warn ISIS threat remains

September 9, 2023

Natasha Bertrand and Katie Bo Lillis

CNN
Fri September 8, 2023

New US intelligence assessments suggest that is “unlikely” al Qaeda will revive in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that counterterrorism operations by the Taliban in Afghanistan have degraded the Islamic State’s presence there, two senior US officials said on Friday.

The assessments described by the officials in a briefing to reporters paints an optimistic picture of the overall terrorist presence in Afghanistan, suggesting it has been waning despite the US military’s withdrawal from the country in 2021.

Since the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan – and as the US has shifted intelligence resources away from counterterrorism priorities to focus on China and Russia – the Biden administration has been at pains to emphasize that it retains “over the horizon” capabilities to track terrorism threats emanating from South Asia.

Still, some US officials have privately raised concerns that as the US has transitioned intelligence assets away from the Middle East and South Asia, the Biden administration may struggle to track the threat posed by ISIS, which continues to operate in ungovernable areas in Syria and elsewhere.

ISIS-Khorasan, the Afghanistan affiliate of ISIS, has continued to attack high-profile targets inside Afghanistan. ISIS-K attacks have killed and wounded dozens of civilians since the Taliban took over in 2021, part of an attempt to undermine the Taliban’s rule and erode public confidence in its assurances of security.

ISIS-K carried out the Abbey Gate bombing that killed 13 US servicemembers in 2021 – the last to die in America’s longest war. Between late 2022 and early 2023, the group attacked the Pakistani and Russian embassies, hit a hotel where Chinese business representatives were staying and carried out an explosion at an air force compound, CNN has reported.

“ISIS-K is a threat that we are certainly concerned about, from an external operations perspective,” one of the officials said. “But it’s a fundamentally different kind of threat than what we saw from al Qaeda on 9/11.”

The officials added that intelligence shows ISIS-K has been under increasing pressure from the Taliban and many of its key leaders have fled the country in recent months, the officials said.

“ISIS Khorasan members involved in media, facilitation and recruitment in support of external operations are increasingly moving to neighboring countries to evade the Taliban [counterterrorism] campaign,” the official said.

The officials said that the threat from al Qaeda, meanwhile, is at its lowest point in decades.

“Al Qaeda is at its historical nadir in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its revival is unlikely,” one of the senior officials told reporters in a briefing, adding that the group’s “ability to threaten the United States from Afghanistan or Pakistan is probably at its lowest point” in decades.

That is at least partly because al Qaeda has lost one of its primary targets: US troops, the official said. The US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, leaving al Qaeda without a “proving ground” to train fighters and operatives.

After a US drone strike killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in August 2022, the group was left without “leadership talent” and “strategic guidance,” the official added. The Taliban claimed at the time that they did not know Zawahiri was residing in the Afghan capital of Kabul when the US targeted him.

Notably, the US assessments downplaying a terrorist resurgence appear to contrast with a report released in June by the United Nations’ Sanctions Monitoring Team, which assessed that al Qaeda “is in a reorganization phase,” and had been establishing new training facilities in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nuristan provinces.

The report also said that ISIS-K “continues to pose a significant threat within Afghanistan, and Member States are concerned about its potential to develop external operations capability and to project a threat into the region and beyond.”

Asked about the contrast between the US and UN assessments, one of the senior officials said the UN report was “wildly out of whack” with intelligence collected by the US and its partners.

“We have tried to engage with those who produced the report to understand where it comes from better and ideally, educate them back,” the official said. “The bottom line is, that report is an outlier within the UN system.”

CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed reporting.

 

New US intelligence suggests al Qaeda unlikely to revive in Afghanistan, but officials warn ISIS threat remains
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Hollywoodgate review – a fascinating insight into the Taliban’s insular world

September 9, 2023

Xan Brooks

The Guardian

Fri 1 Sep 2023

Venice film festival: It’s no surprise that Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary lacks in-depth interviews – his subjects barely tolerate his presence as he reveals the fighters’ lack of purpose after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan

The spoils of war are a chore in this fascinating fly-on-the-wall study of the Taliban’s first year in power. Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary is named for its principal location, a former CIA stronghold on the outskirts of Kabul, hastily abandoned and haphazardly vandalised by its previous tenants. The base contains treasures but it has been left in a state. Afghan fighters pick their way through the corridors, weighing up their surroundings, wondering just where to begin. They could be a band of hotel cleaners called in to mop up after a heavy-duty stag weekend.

Leading the band is Mawlawi Mansour, a bushy-bearded Taliban commander whose father was killed in a US airstrike. Nash’at shows him doggedly going about his duties. He stretches his legs on the newfangled treadmill in the gym. He checks the expiration date of cough drops and calamine lotion in the medical stockroom. “Our head doctor is lazy,” one of his lieutenants explains, at which point Mansour flashes a pained look at the camera.

The commander likes to boast that his own wife was a doctor before giving up work as a condition of marriage. If Mrs Mansour was still free to practise, she might have been able to lick this small hospital into shape.

Nash’at – who was born in Egypt and is based in Berlin – spent 12 months trailing Mansour and his crew, loitering in the background and shooting from the sidelines. If his finished film is light on probing interviews and rigorous analysis, there’s an obvious reason: his subjects all hate him.

The Taliban fighters view every journalist as a foreign spy and have accepted the presence of this one only under duress. “That little devil is filming again,” one mutters when Nash’at draws too close. If the director misbehaves, says another, he will promptly be taken outside and killed.

When US forces quit Afghanistan in the spring of 2021 they left behind an estimated $7bn (£5.5bn) worth of military equipment. Mansour’s main task – in addition to checking expiration dates – is to oversee the repair and repainting of the fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters, officially in advance of a victory parade but also conceivably in preparation for a war against neighbouring Tajikistan.

This prospect appears to provide the soldiers with a sense of purpose, something to fill their days and plug the gaps in their hearts. The Taliban are triumphant, but this win feels like a loss. “My burning wish is to see American troops still here,” one soldier admits. “That way I could ambush them, kill them, die and become a martyr.”

While it would have been good to have Nash’at properly cross-examine these men, his film’s careful approach pays handsome dividends. Hollywoodate teases back a corner of the curtain to reveal a Taliban regime stitched awkwardly over the bones of US occupation. It shows us the soldiers pining for the caves where they once hid, and mourning the glorious death that has somehow been snatched from their grasp.

The film hits its head-spinning crescendo during the surreal celebrations at Bagram airbase, which feature a motorbike parade by “the suicide bombing battalion”, a unit that wouldn’t have been out of place in Chris Morris’s Four Lions. The battalion’s members pass through in some haste, trailing their broken dreams and dashed ambitions. For these men in particular, there has been no happy ending. They ride off into an uncertain future; unfulfilled, still alive.

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 Hollywoodgate screened at the Venice film festival

Hollywoodgate review – a fascinating insight into the Taliban’s insular world
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Prime Minister’s Absence From Meetings Raises Questions

September 9, 2023
By Fatema Adeeb
Tolo News
9 Sept 2023

According to some political analysts, the presence of the PM in meetings and meetings with representatives of countries is important.

Two months after coming back to Kabul from Kandahar, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the Islamic Emirate, has not been reported to have visited with officials of foreign countries or participated in significant meetings.

The Islamic Emirate’s Prime Minister left Kandahar on July 17, 2023, and returned to Kabul after two months of rest and medical treatment.

The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told TOLOnews that he is still sick and is resting.

“His deputies continue their activities, and, in the gatherings that you mentioned, his deputies have been seen giving speeches. Once again, I say that he might have needed to rest because of his health condition and that is why he has not participated in the meetings,” Mujahid said.

The Islamic Emirate’s PM was not present at the events marking the two-year anniversary of the Islamic Emirate on August 15, 2023, and on August 19, 2023, the nation’s 140th anniversary of independence. However, the Islamic Emirate’s high-ranking officials were there.

According to some political analysts, the presence of the PM in meetings and meetings with representatives of countries is important.

“Throughout the world, when a meeting is held, its elders hold a press conference after the meeting and make the details of the meeting public, and this causes the gap between the government and the people to decrease and brings transparency,” said Wahid Faqiri, a political analyst.

Mawlawi Abdul Kabir, the political deputy of the PM, had previously been appointed the acting Prime Minister of the Islamic Emirate by an order of the Islamic Emirate’s leader due to the illness of Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund.

Prime Minister’s Absence From Meetings Raises Questions
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