Could State Department, Bagram or Ghani Have Made Afghan Airlift Less Chaotic?


FILE — Hundreds gather, some holding documents, near an evacuation control checkpoint on the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26, 2021.
FILE — Hundreds gather, some holding documents, near an evacuation control checkpoint on the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26, 2021.

This month, the Taliban are marking two years since they retook control of Kabul, a swift blow that shocked the international community and set in motion a frantic evacuation led by the United States.

The violent and chaotic final phase of the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021 saw more than 122,000 people airlifted to safety, but at least 180 people, including 13 U.S. military service members, were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate entrance on August 26.

Critics of the evacuation — known officially as a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation or NEO — say there is plenty of blame to go around.

“It was a Kafka-esque exercise in bureaucracy and red tape with no clear lines of authority while lives were on the line,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, at a Senate hearing about a month after the evacuation ended.

“We were unprepared,” he said.

Was the State Department to blame?

U.S. officials who spoke to VOA at the time of the fall, and again in recent weeks, have placed the blame largely on the State Department. They say the U.S. Embassy in Kabul repeatedly ignored Taliban gains that were meant to be seen as “trip wires” to signal the need for a NEO.

On May 1, 2021, the Taliban controlled roughly 75 Afghan districts, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal. By July 12, the Taliban controlled more than 210 of Afghanistan’s roughly 400 districts.

But as Afghan territories fell like dominoes, efforts by the military to conduct an interagency tabletop exercise to prepare for the evacuation were delayed. The State Department continued to “move the date because Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on vacation,” according to one official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Two officials told VOA that the State Department initially did not want the evacuation to include Afghan nationals who had worked with U.S. forces and had applied for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) to the United States. Instead, State wanted the military to focus solely on airlifting U.S. citizens and embassy personnel.

VOA asked the State Department how many Afghans seeking SIVs the U.S. wanted to include in its initial evacuation plans, but the department declined to comment.

According to an after-action report by U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, during the interagency tabletop evacuation exercise on August 10, Afghanistan’s crumbling situation was presented to Biden administration officials with a prediction that Kabul could be fully isolated within 30 days. However, diplomats did not order an evacuation that day.

“There was a reluctance [from State] to plan for the worst, and a reluctance to start the needed evacuation,” a U.S. official close to the evacuation planning told VOA.

The State Department finally ordered the military to conduct an NEO on August 14, one day before Kabul fell.

“There was not a sufficient sense of urgency,” wrote authors of an After Action Review on Afghanistan released by the State Department this year.

Who was in charge?

By definition, NEOs are “conducted by the Department of Defense … when directed by the Department of State,” and officials have said friction between the two led to the haphazard evacuation.

‘Hunger Games’ Evacuations as US Left Afghanistan

NEOs are overseen by the chief of mission, who was U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson.

One official told VOA that in addition to “waiting too long” to order the NEO, Wilson appeared to have “no policy [for] prioritizing how to get folks out.” Sometimes SIV applicants would get processed by State, other times not. Multiple C-17s left Kabul airport without any evacuees on the first day of the evacuation, said another official.

The State Department flew in a second ambassador and others to help with the NEO after Kabul fell, but processing remained the slowest part of the evacuation, frustrating military leaders, including Rear Admiral Peter Vasely and Brigadier General Farrell Sullivan, the officers responsible for coordinating the evacuation.

According to one official, Vasely was instructing military personnel to “load and go” in an effort to get as many people as possible onto planes so they could be fully processed in a safer location outside Afghanistan. State Department personnel, on the other hand, wanted to fully process potential evacuees before they boarded a plane.

International television audiences were shocked by scenes of desperate Afghans clinging to the undercarriages of planes as they took off, only to fall to their deaths.

The chaotic situation further devolved on August 26 when a suicide bomber unleashed a massive blast outside the airport’s Abbey Gate, where thousands of Afghans were clustered in a frantic effort to enter the facility in hopes of boarding an evacuation flight.

The attack, attributed to the Islamic State extremist group, killed an estimated 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members who had been manning the gate and trying to maintain order.

Was the military at fault for not using Bagram?

In the days, weeks and months after the attack, many criticized the U.S. military plan to use Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) for the evacuation rather than Bagram Airfield, the Soviet-built base about 50 kilometers north of Kabul that had been the hub of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan for nearly two decades.

Command Sergeant Major Jake Smith oversaw the U.S. military departure from Bagram at the beginning of July 2021, as part of the scheduled departure of the last U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

U.S. President Joe Biden on April 14 of that year had ordered the military to remove all of its troops from Afghanistan by September 11, with the exception of a few hundred to protect the embassy. The Biden administration later changed the military’s withdrawal deadline to August 31.

In the spring of that year, Smith had recommended Bagram for any NEO, saying the vast military base had far better resources and capabilities than HKIA to handle the operation.

“Bagram could house 35,000 people without overloading the infrastructure, whereas HKIA could hold under 4,000. … Bagram held the logistical capability to meet the requirements of 130,000 people, HKIA did not,” he told lawmakers.

Bagram also had one more runway than HKIA.

From a security assessment, too, Smith told lawmakers in July that Bagram was a better option than HKIA.

“The events that happened on Abbey Gate, I believe, that would have not occurred in Bagram,” he said.

In 2017, Kabul was deemed so insecure that then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to meet him at Bagram Airfield. Similarly, in November 2019, President Donald Trump landed at Bagram, but did not take the less than 15-minute helicopter flight to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul because of security considerations.

Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, blames U.S. civilian decision-makers for ignoring Smith’s proposal to execute the NEO from Bagram.

“This was a prime example of the arrogance of civilian decision-makers who had never served in the military and had no real experience in Afghanistan haughtily ignoring those who did,” Rubin wrote to VOA.

To keep Bagram Airfield operational, U.S. military leaders say they would have needed at least 2,500 troops on the ground, significantly more than the Biden administration had ordered them to keep in the country.

U.S. forces vacated Bagram on July 2, at which point U.S. Central Command said the military withdrawal was “more than 90% complete.” By July 12, a month before Kabul fell and the day the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Austin “Scott” Miller, relinquished command, the only American troops that remained in Afghanistan were those assigned to protect the embassy and those assisting Turkish forces with security at HKIA.

“What we wanted was an elegant solution that was not attainable,” retired General Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command who oversaw the NEO, told VOA last year. “We wanted to go to zero militarily yet retain a small diplomatic platform in Afghanistan that would be protected.”

In September 2021, McKenzie told a House Armed Services Committee hearing, “I did not see any tactical utility to Bagram.”

Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the same hearing that “Bagram would’ve required exceptional levels of resources.”

Neither of the military officials spoke about Smith’s proposal to use Bagram for the NEO.

“The size of Bagram and its associated terrain would have demanded a much, much larger amount of troops to defend it,” Gian Gentile, a retired U.S. Army colonel and associate director of the Army Research Division at the RAND Corporation, a global policy research group, said in an interview.

“That view is the usual post-facto military lament that if policymakers would have only let us run the show, everything would have been fine,” he told VOA. “But again, that is a contorted inverse on how things work in a democracy.”

Could Ghani have changed the outcome?

Days before he fled from Afghanistan in three helicopters with his wife and closest aides, Ghani vowed he would not run away, even at the cost of his life.

Such assurances, and intelligence estimates about the strength and resilience of Afghan defense forces, prompted U.S. officials to believe that Kabul would not fall to the Taliban, even if the group claimed the rest of the country.

Ghani’s unexpected flight on August 15, however, left Afghanistan without a state for the U.S. to deal with while opening the door for the Taliban to walk into the deserted Presidential Palace in Kabul, less than three miles from the U.S. Embassy.

“If [Ghani] had not fled, things would have been different,” Sediq Seddiqi, a former deputy minister and spokesperson to Ghani, told VOA.

By staying, Seddiqi said, the Afghan president could have prevented the mayhem that followed his escape.

Others who knew Ghani and worked for him disagree.

“I believe President Ghani had totally lost credibility,” said Omar Zakhilwal, a former Afghan minister.

“If he had stayed in Kabul, the only thing he could have saved would have been his honor as a leader but not the government — it was just too late for the latter,” Zakhilwal told VOA.

Whether any U.S. or Ghani government action could have prevented or mitigated the events of August 2021 in Kabul remains in dispute, but neither the dramatic scenes at Kabul airport, nor the loss of life on August 26, can be reversed.

Milley told The Washington Post on Friday that he supported investigations, including those by House Republicans, into the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“I think any time that you can shed light and truth, determine lessons learned, I think that’s a valuable exercise,” he said.

Could State Department, Bagram or Ghani Have Made Afghan Airlift Less Chaotic?
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Concerns About Daesh Raised in UNSC

The members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) once again voiced concerns about the presence and increased activity of the Khorasan branch of Daesh in Afghanistan.

Speaking at the Security Council meeting on the 17th report of the Secretary-General on the threat posed by Daesh, UN counter-terrorism chief Vladimir Voronkov said that the situation in Afghanistan is growing increasingly complex, and that some 20 different terrorist groups are present in Afghanistan.

“The situation in Afghanistan is growing increasingly complex, with fears of weapons and ammunition falling into the hands of terrorists now materializing. The in-country operational capabilities of Da’esh’s so-called Khorasan province, sanctioned as ISIL-K, has reportedly increased, with the group becoming more sophisticated in its attacks against the Taliban and international targets. Moreover, the presence and activity of some 20 different terrorist groups in the country, combined with the repressive measures put in place by the Taliban de facto authorities, the absence of sustainable development and a dire humanitarian situation, pose significant challenges for the region and beyond,” Voronkov noted.

The US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield in the meeting said that Afghanistan must deny safe haven to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and ISIS-Khorosan.

“And I want to reiterate that capable law enforcement and broader security service responses are essential to preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism. In South Asia, Afghanistan must deny safe haven to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and ISIS-Khorosan, which continue to harbor ambitions to carry out attacks, and has claimed deadly attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a UN Security Council meeting.

Ecuador’s delegate voiced concerns over the situation in Afghanistan due to the ability of ISIL-KP [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant—Khorasan Province] to carry out attacks in the region, such as those that recently occurred on 30 July in Pakistan and 13 August in Iran.

Russian deputy ambassador Maria Zabolotskaya at the UN meeting on international terrorists threats blamed “the collective West’s intervention in the affairs of sovereign developing countries” and their “destructive role” for fueling the growth of terrorism. She claimed the West plundered the natural resources of these countries and only provided weak economic development and public administration.

She said foreign troops led by the United States were in Afghanistan for over 20 years “under the pretext of fighting terrorists” but they departed without defeating al-Qaida, leaving behind a huge quantity of weapons and military equipment. “And consequently, the Western weapons that were brought into the country to fight terrorism ended up, among other places, in the hands of the terrorists themselves,” she said.

However, Bilal Karimi, spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, in response to the statements of the members of this council, said that Daesh is not present in Afghanistan.

“We don’t have a Daesh that has a physical presence, a fixed location, or concrete activities, and Daesh has been defeated in Afghanistan,” Karimi noted.

Previously, the United Nations Security Council said in a statement on Friday that Daesh increased its operational capabilities inside Afghanistan.

According to the statement, the Daesh groups in Iraq and Afghanistan have been assessed by member states as the most serious terrorist threat in Afghanistan and the region.

“The report says that (Daesh Khorasan) has increased its operational capabilities inside Afghanistan, with the total number of fighters and family members associated with the group estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 people, a steady increase over the numbers reported in previous reports, while also becoming more sophisticated in its attacks against both the Taliban and international targets,” the statement said.

Concerns About Daesh Raised in UNSC
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Panjshir’s Governor Rejects Claims of Human Rights Violations

“These reports are definitely untrue because they get these reports from the people and they are in line with the opposition,” he said.

Panjshir province governor Mohammad Agha Hakim rejected the claims of international institutions and organizations regarding the violation of human rights in this province.

In an interview with TOLOnews, Hakim said that there have been no human rights violations in Panjshir province, and currently Panjshir is the safest province and there is no group to make it unsafe.

“These reports are definitely untrue because they get these reports from the people and they are in line with the opposition,” he said.

This official of the Islamic Emirate noted that for ensuring security of the province, 300 outposts and around 10,000 forces have been assigned to Panjshir.

“There are about 300 security outposts in the four surrounding areas of Panjshir, because Panjshir is a province that has borders with seven neighboring countries,” Hakim noted.

In a part of his speech, the governor of Panjshir said that they are trying to prevent schools from turning into security outposts in this province.

“We decided that every school should be evacuated and we thank God that 95% of the schools have been evacuated,” the governor further stated.

Mohammad Agha Hakim urged the people who left Panjshir after the reestablishment of the Islamic Emirate to return.

Panjshir’s Governor Rejects Claims of Human Rights Violations
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U.N. Says Taliban Committed Rights Abuses Despite Blanket Amnesty

The New York Times

A U.N. mission in Afghanistan reported summary killings, arbitrary detentions and torture of hundreds of onetime soldiers, police officers and others in the old government.

Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 2021, hundreds of members of the U.S.-backed former government have been detained, tortured or killed under the new government, despite Taliban leaders’ declaration of amnesty for actions during the long civil war, the United Nations reported on Tuesday.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in a new report that it had documented “at least 218 extrajudicial killings of former government officials,” primarily police officers and soldiers, committed by members of the new government, though the pace had slowed greatly since the first months after the takeover.

“In most instances, individuals were detained by de facto security forces, often briefly, before being killed,” it said. “Some were taken to detention facilities and killed while in custody, others were taken to unknown locations and killed, their bodies either dumped or handed over to family members.”

The killings were among some 800 documented human rights violations against members of the former government from the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15, 2021, until June 30, 2023, the U.N. mission said. The majority took place before the end of 2021, the report said.

More than 400 people were arrested and detained without any clear reason given. Many were held without any contact with their families, often by the national intelligence service. Some were never seen again.

The U.N. report “presents a sobering picture of the treatment of individuals affiliated with the former government and security forces of Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country,” said the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk. “Even more so, given they were assured that they would be not targeted, it is a betrayal of the people’s trust.”

In a statement appended to the U.N. report, the Taliban government denied any knowledge of such offenses.

“After the victory of the Islamic Emirate until today, cases of human rights violations (murder without trial, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and other acts against human rights) by the employees of the security institutions of the Islamic Emirate against the employees and security forces of the previous government have not been reported,” it said.

Officials also reiterated that the government’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, had issued blanket amnesty to all former government members immediately after the group seized power.

Some of those reportedly detained without charge, tortured or threatened said they had been accused of supporting small-scale insurgencies still ongoing against the Taliban, according to the report. In its reply, the Taliban cited that threat, suggesting that only people acting against them since the takeover had anything to fear.

“Those employees of the previous administration who joined the opposition groups of the Islamic Emirate or had military activities to the detriment of the system have been arrested and introduced to judicial authorities,” it said.

The report points to the difficulty the Taliban leadership may have had, after taking power, in redirecting fighters steeped in violence, retaliation, accumulated grievances and a culture that often considers revenge an obligation. It also underscores the complications of Taliban leadership trying to enforce a nationwide policy of amnesty among fighters of an insurgency that was once highly decentralized.

That context is important to keep in mind, according to Graeme Smith, an Afghanistan expert with the International Crisis Group. At the same time, he said, the advent of relative peace “actually puts a heavier legal burden on the Taliban” to uphold human rights than they would bear in the chaos of war.

The U.N. mission said it had included only reported violations for which it was able to document both that the episode had taken place and who was responsible. Its reporting standards, more cautious and rigorous than those of some human rights groups, are “the gold standard,” said Mr. Smith.

“I think we can be very confident that those are minimum numbers, because they are very careful in their work,” he said.

Of the documented victims, 72 percent had been in the military, the police or the National Directorate of Security under the old government, according to the U.N. report. Many of the killings appear to have been reprisals by individual Taliban fighters against their former enemies rather than a systematic revenge campaign.

Still, despite repeated Taliban assurances that such actions would be punished, the report said, “there is limited information regarding efforts by the de facto authorities to conduct investigations and hold perpetrators of these human rights violations to account.”

One witness report was from a person whose brother, a former police officer, was stopped on the road by the Taliban and taken away; three days later, his body was found with “the signs of many bullets.” In another instance, a former soldier was arrested last January, and more than two months later, “his dead body was returned to his family, bearing signs of torture.”

The Taliban government, badly in need of aid, wants to project a law-abiding image internationally even as it imposes increasingly repressive rule at home. The U.N. report addresses only offenses against former government officers, not the Taliban administration’s restrictions on women and girls or other policies that have drawn widespread international condemnation.

Richard Pérez-Peña, an international news editor in New York, has been with The Times as a reporter and editor since 1992. He has worked on the Metro, National, Business, Media and International desks. More about Richard Pérez-Peña

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 23, 2023, Section A, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Taliban Killed Hundreds Affiliated With Ex-Government, U.N. Report Says.
U.N. Says Taliban Committed Rights Abuses Despite Blanket Amnesty
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Taliban bringing water to Afghanistan’s parched plains via massive canal

AQCHA, Afghanistan — The morning sun was still rising over the shriveled wheat fields, and the villagers were already worrying about another day without water.

Rainwater stored in the village well would run out in 30 days, one farmer said nervously. The groundwater pumps gave nothing, complained another. The canals, brimming decades ago with melted snow from the Hindu Kush, now dry up by spring, said a third.

Village chief Mohammed Ishfaq threw his hands up. If everyone could hold out for two more years, he said, then the excavators and engineers — hundreds of them already working over the horizon — would arrive. “If we only had that water,” Ishfaq said, “everything will be solved.”

Two years after its takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban is overseeing its first major infrastructure project, the 115-mile Qosh Tepa canal, designed to divert 20 percent of the water from the Amu Darya river across the parched plains of northern Afghanistan.

The canal promises to be a game changer for villages like Ishfaq’s in Jowzjan province. Like elsewhere in the country, residents here are suffering from a confluence of worsening food shortages, four decades of war, three consecutive seasons of severe drought and a changing climate that has wreaked havoc on rainfall patterns. Average temperatures across Afghanistan have risen by 1.8 degrees Celsius in the past 70 years (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit), or twice the global average.

Once the canal is completed — provisionally, two years from now — it could irrigate 550,000 hectares (more than 2,100 square miles) of desert, effectively increasing Afghanistan’s arable land by a third and even making the country self-sufficient in food production for the first time since the 1980s, according to Afghan officials and researchers. “It could impact every household in the country,” said Zabibullah Miri, the project’s head engineer at the state-owned National Development Corporation (NDC).

But for the internationally isolated Taliban, the canal represents a crucial test of its ability to govern.

The canal project was initially conceived in the 1970s under the first Afghan president, Mohammed Daoud Khan, and construction finally began in 2021 under the last, Ashraf Ghani. When the Taliban seized power in August 2021, it inherited the project and swiftly approved about $100 million for its construction, amounting to about a quarter of Afghanistan’s yearly tax income.

About 6,000 workers are now operating excavators and heavy-duty trucks around-the-clock, working to carve a ditch 100 meters (328 feet) wide — wider than the California Aqueduct.

Taliban leaders have seized on the canal as a tool to burnish their image.

“Praise be to God, the work is progressing as planned,” Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy prime minister and a senior Taliban leader, said in March during one of several site visits. The project would be completed “at any cost,” he said on his page on X (formerly known as Twitter), which sometimes shares aerial footage of the construction, photos of Taliban officials surveying work and triumphant music.

“Qosh Tepa provides the Taliban with a good narrative: ‘See, this is a project fully designed and fully funded by Afghans with no foreign support; we can do whatever the previous government couldn’t with Western support,’” said Mohammed Faizee, a former deputy foreign minister under the previous Afghan government who was responsible for overseeing water and border issues.

The canal will be built and financed not by international aid but by Afghanistan’s revenue from domestic coal mines, NDC officials say. But overseas Afghan experts say the country could face challenges not only in building the mega-canal — but also in operating it.

To save costs, the canal bed has not been sealed with cement, and along some stretches, briny groundwater has already seeped into the canal, tainting freshwater meant for irrigation.

Najibullah Sadid, a water resources engineer and researcher at the Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute in Germany, said feasibility studies have shown that 22 percent of water would be lost to seepage along some sections. Sediment might also clog the intake mechanism where the canal joins the Amu Darya, potentially requiring prohibitively expensive repairs, he said.

Then there is the question of how much water Afghanistan will draw from the Amu Darya. Already, neighboring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have signaled their concerns that the reduced flow from the Amu Darya would affect their lucrative cotton fields. Uzbek Water Resources Minister Shavkat Khamraev said in June that a delegation had been sent to Kabul to convey Uzbek concerns.

Faizee, the former diplomat, said he feared the Taliban lacked the diplomatic and technical expertise to negotiate over water, one of the most combustible points of friction in Central Asia, an increasingly parched region.

Afghanistan, preoccupied by internal conflict, has long struggled to assert its claims over transboundary water resources while its neighbors, including Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have used more than their fair share, Faizee said. Although four Central Asian Soviet republics signed an agreement to allocate the Amu Darya’s water in 1987, the deal cut out Afghanistan.

If the new northern canal were not properly managed, Faizee said, it could lead to conflict similar to Afghanistan’s perennial dispute over the Helmand River with Iran, which has sometimes led to Iranian residents attacking Afghan refugees and Iranian officials threatening to invade Afghanistan. After three border guards — two Iranian and one Afghan — were killed in a shootout in May, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi traveled to the area to champion “the water rights of Iranians.”

In a statement, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman at the Afghan Foreign Ministry, acknowledged there were “questions” about the Taliban’s ability to manage the canal and contain water disputes, but said they would be solved.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan retains experienced water management experts and remains committed to water rights of neighbors in line with existing treaties,” Balkhi said. “As climate change has disproportionately harmed Afghanistan and the region due to consecutive drought years and depletion of water reserves, it is therefore vital that major carbon emitting countries take lead in tackling this crisis.”

Today, construction has progressed about 100 miles, reaching deep into a part of Afghanistan that researchers say has become increasingly desertified over the past century.

Next to a turn in the Amu Darya, workers are still driving piles into the earth for the canal’s intake. The first 30-mile stretch is already filled with groundwater, and workers have been experimenting with growing tree saplings along graded banks, next to towering sand dunes. After that, the canal dries out. The sun-blasted terrain seems devoid of life except for shrubs and construction workers toiling amid layers of sand and rock that blend into the sky.

Beyond the 100-mile mark, the canal remains but a plan. Ishfaq, the village chief, said he was told it would cross near the Aqcha bazaar, about a kilometer away, and surveyors had already come. But other villagers didn’t know much about the project. They only knew how their land and their rivers have changed over two generations, and how badly they needed it.

The river water from central Afghanistan, which used to flow until August, now runs dry by March. Droughts used to occur once a decade, not every two years.

Even wheat crops failed, said Azizullah Walizada, 62, as he crumbled tassels in his fingers that were too dry to yield any grain. The northern drought began three years ago, and his income began to dwindle. Like other villagers, Walizada sold off his cattle to make money to buy food, keeping one last emaciated cow.

“Even the trees are dying,” Walizada said.

Gerry Shih is the India Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, covering India and neighboring countries.
Taliban bringing water to Afghanistan’s parched plains via massive canal
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Former Afghan Leaders Powerless Inside, Outside Their Homeland


Abdullah Abdullah, left, and Hamid Karzai have remained in Kabul, Afghanistan, since the Taliban seized power.
Abdullah Abdullah, left, and Hamid Karzai have remained in Kabul, Afghanistan, since the Taliban seized power.

President Ashraf Ghani, accompanied by his wife and closest aides, sought asylum in the United Arab Emirates, while the rest of his Cabinet, including his two vice presidents, scattered to different parts of the world.

In a video statement three days later, Ghani said his departure might have been the only way to escape the fate of his predecessor, former President Mohammad Najibullah, who was tortured and killed by the Taliban in 1996.

“If I had stayed, the president of Afghanistan would have been executed in front of the eyes of Afghans once again,” Ghani said.

What the Taliban would have done to Ghani is open to speculation, but Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman, told VOA that the group had no intention of harming anyone, including Ghani.

That is not entirely true. The United Nations reported Tuesday that since seizing power, the Taliban have killed, tortured, jailed and mistreated hundreds of former Afghan military personnel — a charge the Taliban deny.

But some former leaders did choose to stay in Afghanistan and have been able to remain politically active, if only in a restrained way, thanks to a surprising amnesty announced by the Taliban for its former enemies.

Hamid Karzai, the nation’s first democratically elected president who signed the U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2012, declared his commitment to the country in a video posted on Facebook within days of the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

“To the esteemed residents of Kabul, I say that my family, my daughters and I are here with you,” Karzai said in the Dari language as his three small daughters huddled with him.

Similarly, Abdullah Abdullah, a former chief executive and foreign minister of Afghanistan, chose to remain in Kabul despite his history of opposition to the Taliban.

“I personally had a conversation with former President Karzai 10 days prior to the collapse of the government and asked him specifically what his plans were if some morning he woke up to the scenario of Kabul overrun by the Taliban,” Omar Zakhilwal, a former Afghan minister, told VOA.

“He responded that he’d thought about it, realized the possibilities of very high risks to him and his family, particularly in the initial moments of the overrun, but under no circumstances would either he or his family leave Kabul.”

‘No influence or freedom’

Inside Afghanistan, former leaders like Karzai and Abdullah appear active, meeting with locals, diplomats and aid workers. On their verified social media accounts, they issue carefully crafted statements calling on de facto authorities to reopen secondary schools for girls and allow women to work, while avoiding direct criticism of the Taliban’s globally condemned misogynistic policies.

What has become evident in the two years since the fall of Kabul, however, is that regardless of whether they chose to flee or remain, none of the former leaders has had any significant influence over Taliban policies.

“Those who stayed in Afghanistan under the Taliban have no influence or freedom to stand against the Taliban,” Sediq Seddiqi, a former spokesperson to Ghani, told VOA.

Outside of Afghanistan, Ghani and other former Afghan officials are more critical of the Taliban on social media platforms.

“If the Afghan politicians in exile can bring about an enduring political settlement and work together for a better Afghanistan, it is justified,” Seddiqi said.

It remains uncertain what kind of a political settlement the exiled Afghan leaders could reach with the Taliban, particularly now that they have little, if any, leverage.

“History will judge harshly of those who left,” Nader Nadery, a former Afghan official and a member of the former government’s negotiating team with the Taliban, told VOA.

Now a research fellow at the Wilson Center in the United States, Nadery said many Afghans appreciate Karzai, Abdullah and those former leaders who have remained in Afghanistan.

“When the time is hard, leaders stay with their people,” he said.

Exodus of skilled Afghans hurts country

Concerned that the Taliban would target Afghans who worked for the U.S. and the Afghan governments, the United States airlifted more than 120,000 individuals from Kabul in August 2021. Among them were Afghan lawmakers, ministers, journalists and human rights activists.

Over the past two years, the United States, Canada and some European countries have continued evacuating tens of thousands of at-risk Afghans.

Prevalent poverty and Taliban repressions have also forced many Afghans to migrate to Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere.

The exodus of mostly educated and skilled Afghans continues to hurt Afghanistan, Zakhilwal said.

“Afghanistan would have been better off if not only the political leaders but also the tens of thousands of other [mostly educated] Afghans who were evacuated by the West had remained in Afghanistan,” the former official said.

For others, however, life under the Taliban is unbearable.

“Afghanistan now has become the most oppressive country for women,” Pashtana Dorani, an Afghan women’s rights activist, wrote last week on X, formerly known as Twitter.

As the Taliban consolidate their grip on power, rejecting domestic and international calls to respect women’s rights and forming an inclusive government, former leaders — inside the country and in exile — appear to have little sway on how the Taliban govern Afghanistan.

Last week, the Taliban’s Justice Ministry announced that political parties were outlawed, effectively forcing their opponents to either leave the country or submit to non-democratic rule.

Former Afghan Leaders Powerless Inside, Outside Their Homeland
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‘My goals in life vanished’: Afghan students rocked by US visa denials

Yalda Azamee blinked back tears as she stared down at the American consular officer.

“He did not even give me a chance to explain myself; he rejected me right away. He didn’t even look at my documents,” she said, rushing out of the US embassy building on to the streets of Islamabad to cry.

It was the second time her application for a US student visa had been rejected.

To get a student visa, applicants like Yalda need to prove that they do not intend to immigrate to the United States. The consular officer needs to believe that the applicant will leave the United States after graduation.

“For countries like Afghanistan or others where there is war, or other problems, it can be particularly hard to show that you intend to return home after you finish your studies in the United States,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell University.

The fate of Afghan students is particularly troubling this month, which marks two years since the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan ended the country’s 20-year war. Earlier this year, the national security council reported that the Biden administration should have started evacuations earlier.

“We really have failed the people of Afghanistan in so many ways, going more broadly than just Afghan students,” Yale-Loehr said.

Yalda’s life had been consumed by grief and terror since she saw armed Taliban marching past her Kabul apartment. After the Taliban toppled the Afghan government and recaptured control of the country, Yalda and her mother fled to Pakistan.

She struggled to adjust to refugee life, but Yalda clung to her childhood dream of pursuing higher education in the United States.

Just weeks after she made the perilous journey out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Yalda applied to top graduate programs at US universities. In spring 2022, Yalda was accepted to Columbia and to New York University – and the latter offered her a full scholarship.

“It restored the hope in my heart. I start dreaming about my future again,” she said.

That flicker of optimism was snuffed out months later, when the US embassy – for the second time – rejected her request for a student visa.

Yale-Loehr said the visa rule, commonly referred to as the “immigrant intent” test, is part of why students from Africa and the Middle East face higher visa denial rates than students from western European countries.

“It’s basically the discretion of the consular officer that decides whether the person overcomes that requirement,” he said. “It really depends on the consular officer and whether they’re feeling generous that day or not.”

The total number of student visa denials rose between 2015 and 2022, according to a recent report by Shorelight and the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. The group’s analysis of state department data found that the denial rate for Afghans is among the worst in the world (though students in some African and central Asian countries face similarly bad odds).

According to a spokesperson for the US state department, visa applications are considered on a “case-by-case basis”.

“The student’s intent to depart the United States upon the conclusion of their studies does not imply the need to return to the country from which they hold a passport,” the spokesperson added.

In theory, Yalda could have proved she planned to return to some third country after finishing her graduate studies in the United States. But she does not have financial or familial ties to any country other than Afghanistan and the United States.

Returning to Pakistan is not an option. The country has not adopted the UN Refugee Convention of 1951, which confers a legal duty on countries to protect people fleeing serious harm.

Pakistani officials began a nationwide crackdown on Afghan refugees in summer 2022. Hundreds of Afghans were allegedly deported from Pakistan earlier this year, and thousands more have been detained.

Fearing the wrath of Pakistani immigration officers, the Azamees have not left their house in months. They rely on the eldest Azamee daughter, Rukhsar, for support.

Rukhsar Azamee came to the United States in 2015 to study at New York University.

“I hoped Yalda would come be with me here in New York,” she said, with a heavy sigh.

Rukhsar devised a system to discreetly send resources to her family. For the past year, she has been wiring money to a trusted acquaintance in Pakistan: he takes a cut off the top, then delivers groceries and medicine to the home of her mother and younger sister.

“For me, the most important thing is that they are out of immediate danger, and in Pakistan, at least they cannot be immediately targeted by Talibs,” Rukhsar said.

She tried to remain optimistic. After Yalda’s first student visa application was rejected, the sisters went to work compiling documents that might help convince the consular officer that she deserves to study in the United States. They had written proof that she had spent two years advocating for gender equality in Afghanistan, working as a data analyst for UN Women.

None of it mattered. The consular officer did not look through Yalda’s application.

“The moment you come in, and the officer realizes, ‘Oh, it’s your second time applying,’ then it’s over – they barely look at you,” said Rukhsar. “Yalda is a young woman with a lot of talent, [and] two years of her life have been taken from her. Who knows how many more years it will take?”

For Afghan students forced to return to Afghanistan, failure to obtain a student visa feels doubly devastating.

Bahram Emrani, a law student who worked closely with US civilian and military officials before 2021, was part of a select group of Afghan law students who participated in legal training and clinics hosted by the US Agency for International Development.

In April 2022, months after Emrani and his family fled to Pakistan, he received what appeared to be a life-changing email. The University of Pittsburgh’s law school offered him admission and a full scholarship. He just needed to secure a student visa.

In the August, Emrani walked into the US embassy in Islamabad.

“I watched everyone else who was interviewing – the whole process seemed really smooth,” Emrani said. “There was a queue of people before me, they walked out smiling, so everything seemed OK.”

His application was rejected a few minutes after Emrani handed the consular officer his Afghan passport. It was the same response Yalda Azamee had received on her second attempt to obtain a student visa: Emrani had failed the “immigrant intent” test because he was from Afghanistan.

“My goals in life vanished so suddenly,” he said.

Pakistani immigration officials forced Emrani to return to Afghanistan later that year.

The University of Pittsburgh deferred Emrani’s admission by a year, offering him extra time to secure a student visa.

A spokesperson for the university said some Afghan students “gain approval for their visas after multiple attempts, and there could be federal legislation enacted that would make it easier for people like Bahram Emrani to come to the United States”.

But no such legislation has been enacted. Emrani and his family are stuck in Afghanistan for the indefinite future and because of Emrani’s known affiliation with the US, he lives in constant fear of Taliban retaliation.

“Life in Afghanistan now is just surviving, and me and my family are surviving,” Emrani said. “I don’t want to be optimistic again.”

‘My goals in life vanished’: Afghan students rocked by US visa denials
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Taliban stopped 100 women flying to Dubai for university scholarships, UAE billionaire says

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Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, founding chairman of Al Habtoor Group, said in a video posted on X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, that he had planned to sponsor the female students to attend university and a plane he had paid for had been due to fly them to the UAE on Wednesday morning.

“Taliban government refused to allow the girls who were coming to study here – a hundred girls sponsored by me – they refused them to board the plane and already we have paid for the aircraft, we have organised everything for them here, accommodation, education, transportation security,” he said in the video.

Spokespeople for the Taliban administration and Afghan foreign affairs ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Al Habtoor included audio of one of the Afghan students who said that she had been accompanied by a male chaperone but airport authorities in Kabul had stopped her and others from boarding the flight.

The Taliban administration have closed universities and high schools to female students in Afghanistan.

They allow Afghans to leave the country but usually require Afghan women travelling long distances and abroad to be accompanied by a male chaperone, such as their husband, father or brother.

Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Maha El Dahan Editing by Bill Berkrot

Taliban stopped 100 women flying to Dubai for university scholarships, UAE billionaire says
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Red Cross set to end funding at 25 hospitals in Afghanistan

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Reuters

Aug 17 (Reuters) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is likely to end the financial running of 25 Afghan hospitals by the end of August due to funding constraints, a spokesperson told Reuters, amid growing concerns over a plunge in aid to Afghanistan.

“Although we continue to engage with government ministries, donors, and organisations to find alternative sustainable support mechanisms for the hospital sector, the phase-out of the Hospital Program is expected to happen tentatively at the end of August,” Diogo Alcantara, ICRC’s spokesperson for Afghanistan, told Reuters on Thursday.

“The ICRC does not have the mandate nor the resources to maintain a fully functioning public health-care sector in the longer term,” Alcantara said.

In April, ICRC said its governing board approved 430 million Swiss francs ($475.30 million) in cost reductions over 2023 and early 2024 and a rolling back of operations in some locations as budgets for humanitarian aid were expected to decrease.

“The financial difficulties the ICRC is facing have sped up, in transparency with IEA (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) authorities, the expected return of the full responsibilities of the health services to the Ministry of Public Health,” Alcantara said, referring to the Taliban administration.Report this ad

The program’s end comes amid growing concerns over cuts to Afghanistan’s humanitarian aid, two years after the Taliban took over and most other forms of international assistance, which formed the backbone of the economy, were halted.

The Geneva-based organisation would continue its other Afghanistan health programs, including rehabilitation support for people with disabilities.

A spokesman for the Taliban-run Afghan health ministry did not respond to request for comment.Report this ad

It was not clear how much was needed to pay for the operations, which fund salaries and other costs at many of Afghanistan’s major hospitals serving millions of people, and if Taliban authorities could cover that amount from the fiscal budget.

An Afghan finance ministry spokesman said this year’s budget had been finalised, but not publicly released.

The hospitals have been supported by ICRC since a few months after foreign forces left in August 2021.

Development funding was cut to Afghanistan as the Taliban – which has not formally been recognised by any country – took over the country. The sudden financial shock imperilled critical public services including health and education.

The ICRC and other agencies including the U.N. stepped in to try to fill gaps.

“The (ICRC) took this decision back then to save the healthcare system from collapsing due to the financial crises that Afghanistan was experiencing and because many development agencies and other organisations left the country while the ICRC stayed,” Alcantara said.

The ICRC hospital program had originally covered 33 hospitals, eight of which have already been phased out, paying for the salaries of over 10,000 health workers and some medical supplies. The hospitals provided thousands of beds and served areas encompassing more than 25 million people – over half the population.

Neighbouring Pakistan is closely watching the development, a senior government official told Reuters. Pakistan, a major destination for healthcare for Afghans, routinely has thousands of medical visa applications lodged with its embassy, officials said.

“We are concerned about a further influx of medical patients,” said the Pakistani official, who declined to be identified to speak openly about sensitive diplomatic issues.

Pakistan’s foreign office did not reply to request for comment.

There is growing alarm over cuts to aid to Afghanistan, where the U.N. humanitarian plan for 2023 is only 25% funded, even after requested budget was downgraded from $4.6 billion to $3.2 billion.

Diplomats and aid officials say concerns over Taliban restrictions on women alongside competing global humanitarian crises are causing donors to pull back on financial support. The Taliban has ordered most Afghan female aid staff not to work, though granted exemptions in health and education.

Almost three-quarters of Afghanistan’s population are now in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the aid agencies.

Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Kim Coghill

Red Cross set to end funding at 25 hospitals in Afghanistan
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Afghan Taliban celebrate return to power two years on amid erosion of women’s rights

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Reuters

KABUL, Aug 15 (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s Taliban marked the second anniversary of their return to power on Tuesday, celebrating their takeover of Kabul and the establishment of what they said was security throughout the country under an Islamic system.

After a lightning offensive as U.S.-led foreign forces were withdrawing after 20 years of inconclusive war, the Taliban entered the capital on Aug. 15, 2021, as the Afghan security forces, set up with years of Western support, disintegrated and U.S.-backed President Ashraf Ghani fled.

“On the second anniversary of the conquest of Kabul, we would like to congratulate the mujahid (holy warrior) nation of Afghanistan and ask them to thank Almighty Allah for this great victory,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

Afghanistan is enjoying peace not seen in decades but the U.N. says there have been dozens of attacks on civilians, some claimed by Islamic State rivals of the Taliban.

For many women, who enjoyed extensive rights and freedoms during the two decades of rule by Western-backed governments, their plight has become dire since the return of the Taliban.

“It’s been two years since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan. Two years that upturned the lives of Afghan women and girls, their rights and futures,” Amina Mohammed, deputy secretary-general of the U.N., said in a statement.

Security was tight in the capital on Tuesday, which was declared a holiday. Taliban fighters, supporters and some Kabul residents gathered on streets and vehicles drove slowly in informal parades carrying soldiers and children waving black and white flags.

“Today I’ve come here to see the commemoration of the second anniversary of the Taliban. It was the day that the enemy of Afghanistan was expelled from our country, that’s why I came here to celebrate,” said resident Sayed Hashmatullah Sadat.

Several departments, including the education ministry, also held gatherings to celebrate.

“Now that overall security is ensured in the country, the entire territory of the country is managed under a single leadership, an Islamic system is in place and everything is explained from the angle of sharia,” Mujahid, the spokesman, said.

In a Kabul tailoring workshop, 27-year old Maryam, who set up the business after losing a job first in an international project, then as a teacher, said she dreaded the anniversary.

“The day … reminds me of two years ago and I have the same feeling I had two years ago, which was a really terrible feeling,” she said.

OBSTACLE TO RECOGNITION

Girls over the age of 12 have been mostly excluded from classes since the Taliban returned to power. For many Western governments, the ban is a major obstacle to any hope of formal recognition of the Taliban administration.

The Taliban, who say they respect rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic law, have also stopped most Afghan female staff from working at aid agencies, closed beauty salons, barred women from parks and curtailed travel for women in the absence of a male guardian.

Journalism, which also blossomed in the two decades of rule by Western-backed governments, has been significantly suppressed.

The detention of media workers and civil society activists, including prominent education advocate Matiullah Wesa, has raised the alarm of human rights groups.

The Taliban have not commented in detail on those issues but say their law enforcement and intelligence agencies investigate activities they consider suspicious to seek explanations.

On the positive side, the corruption that exploded as Western money poured in for years after the Taliban were ousted in 2001, has been reduced, according to the U.N. special representative.

There are also signs that a Taliban ban on narcotics cultivation has dramatically reduced poppy production in what has for years been the world’s biggest source of opium.

The Taliban will be hoping the progress will help bring foreign recognition and the lifting of sanctions, and the release of about $7 billion in central bank assets frozen in the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2021, half of which was later transferred to a Swiss trust.

A fall-off in development aid has seen job opportunities shrink and the U.N. estimates more than two-thirds of the population need humanitarian aid to survive.

Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul and Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad; Additional reporting by Reuters TV editing, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie

Afghan Taliban celebrate return to power two years on amid erosion of women’s rights
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