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Afghanistan: Taliban uses Hamas meeting to send a message to the Muslim world

October 29, 2022 Current News Articles

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid meets Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Istanbul (Twitter)

After having to distance itself from Israel normalisation rumours, the Afghan group draws parallels between two occupations

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Earlier this week, Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted a picture of him meeting with Hamas leaders in Istanbul. In the tweet, Mujahid said that he discussed issues of Afghanistan and Palestine, including the status of Al-Aqsa Mosque, with a delegation that included Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief.

Mujahid has been in Turkey for more than one week now, where he has been attending a conference of Islamic scholars and meeting with Afghan business owners, whom he hopes to convince to invest back in their cash-strapped home country.

Though Ankara does not yet officially recognise the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate as the government of Afghanistan, Turkey has maintained ties with the Taliban that date back to when they were an armed opposition movement fighting the former western-backed Islamic Republic administration.

However, the news of Mujahid’s meeting with Haniyeh has caught experts in Afghanistan and the Middle East by surprise.

Still, Haniyeh has expressed his apparent support of the Taliban in the past. Shortly after the group returned to power in August 2021, the Hamas leader shared details of a phone call he had with senior Taliban official Abdul Ghani Baradar.

‘Being associated with the Palestinian cause, and gaining the endorsement and support of Palestinian leaders, could help improve the Taliban’s standing in the Muslim world’

– Haroun Rahimi, Afghan academic

In his congratulatory phone call, Haniyeh said that the end of the western occupation of Afghanistan was “a prelude to the demise of all occupation forces, foremost of which is the Israeli occupation of Palestine”.

The following October, Haniyeh had a similar phone call with the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, Amir Muttaqi. In that conversation, Haniyeh urged the Islamic Emirate to keep “Palestine present in the speeches of the Afghan foreign ministry, especially Jerusalem and the ongoing [Israeli] violations there”.

Haroun Rahimi, an Afghan academic and author currently based in the US, said the most recent in-person meeting could be a part of the Taliban’s efforts to secure some sort of international recognition, and that standing with Palestine would send a very specific message.

“The Taliban is trying to tap into the anti-imperialist and anti-western sentiment amongst [some] Muslims as a way to put pressure on other Muslim leaders,” Rahimi told Middle East Eye.

Rahimi said Mujahid’s face-to-face meeting with Haniyeh is also important for its symbolism: “Being associated with the Palestinian cause, and gaining the endorsement and support of Palestinian leaders, could help improve the Taliban’s standing in the Muslim world.”

The Taliban may also be seeking to link Afghanistan and Palestine as two occupied countries, as Haniyeh had done.

Ultimately, though, Rahimi said the Taliban is still very much driven by its desire to be seen as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, which was also likely a factor in Mujahid’s decision to meet with the Hamas leaders.

“The Taliban wants to have as much diplomatic activities as possible and having interactions with Palestine also makes ideological sense for [the group],” Rahimi said.

‘What problem do we have with Israel?’

Authorities in Afghanistan have repeatedly expressed support for the Palestinian cause over the past 20 years.

In 2019, Afghanistan’s then ambassador to Turkey donated $1m in aid to Palestinian refugees, following on from $500,000 given to the people of Gaza five years earlier.

The Afghan senate denounced Israel’s war on Gaza in 2014, and the western-backed government also criticised the 2021 Israeli attacks on worshippers and civilians at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Taliban, meanwhile, has even had to distance itself from Israel.

“What problem do we have with Israel? Next thing someone will ask whether we are willing to have a dialogue with Mars,” he said during the appearance. However, Naeem soon retracted his statement, saying his words had been misinterpreted.

Earlier this month, Mujahid criticised an Afghan media report claiming the Islamic Emirate was looking to establish ties with Israel as “fake news”.

Why Don’t Rich Muslim States Give More Aid to Afghanistan?

October 29, 2022 Current News Articles

Akmal Dawi

Voice of America/VOA

October 27, 2022

FILE - Hundreds of Afghan men gather to apply for humanitarian aid, in Qala-e-Naw, Afghanistan, Dec. 14, 2021. — FILE – Hundreds of Afghan men gather to apply for humanitarian aid, in Qala-e-Naw, Afghanistan, Dec. 14, 2021. Print

WASHINGTON — More than 10 months after the United Nations launched its largest ever single-country appeal to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, less than half of the appeal has been funded, with Muslim governments conspicuously missing on the list of major donors.

“Afghanistan is facing a harsh winter,” Tomas Niklasson, European Union special envoy for Afghanistan, warned in a Twitter thread after his visit to Afghanistan in early October. “I urge China, Russia and the OIC [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] to follow the example of the U.K., the U.S., the EU and others by significantly stepping up humanitarian assistance.”

While it has been one of the poorest countries in the world for decades, Afghanistan has fallen deeper into poverty since the country’s U.S.-backed government collapsed last year and the de facto Taliban regime was met with crippling international economic sanctions.

Nearly all Afghans now live below the poverty line, according to the U.N.

“There has certainly been a lot of competition over humanitarian resources in the last year, with the war in Ukraine taking a lot of attention and finances from the West. There is some concern that Afghanistan will become a neglected crisis in the future,” Neil Turner, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan, told VOA.

Last week, Saudi Arabia announced it was giving $400 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The announcement, while welcomed by aid agencies, stands in contrast with the $11 million the oil-rich Muslim kingdom has pledged in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan this year.

Other relatively wealthy Muslim countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey are also either absent or lagging in the list of donors to the Afghanistan humanitarian appeal.

So far this year, the UAE has given more than $309 million in response to U.N. humanitarian appeals in 23 countries, of which $171 is to Ethiopia and only $1.9 million to Afghanistan.

Qatar, which has one of the highest GDP per capita rates in the world, has given less than $1 million to the U.N. global humanitarian appeals system in 2022, of which about $500,000 was for Cameroon.

FILE - A man disributes bread to women outside a bakery in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec, 2, 2021. — FILE – A man disributes bread to women outside a bakery in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec, 2, 2021.

In December 2021, foreign ministers attending an OIC conference in Islamabad agreed to set up a special humanitarian trust fund at the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) in response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

In August, the IsDB announced giving $525,000 to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to spend on immediate humanitarian activities in Afghanistan.

Spokespersons at both the OIC and the IsDB did not respond to queries about what additional funding the trust fund has delivered since August.

Several calls and emails from VOA to the embassies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE received no reply.

Donors’ geopolitical interests

“Most humanitarian response plans and appeals are underfunded,” Maryam Z. Deloffre, an associate professor of international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, told VOA.

The $4.29 billion humanitarian appeal for Ukraine, second only to that for Afghanistan by about $200 million, has received 68% of the required funding.

The Afghanistan appeal has a 55% funding gap in which a lack of major contributions from Muslim donors is noticeable.

“Geopolitically, Saudi Arabia, since 9/11, has cut off ties with the Taliban, has accused them of defaming Islam and harboring terrorists … so there’s some concerns of running afoul of U.N. sanctions, U.S. sanctions, U.S. laws,” Deloffre said.

While imposing sanctions on Taliban leaders and institutions, the United States has offered waivers for humanitarian funding for the Afghan people. The U.S. and some other countries have also frozen about $9 billion of Afghanistan central bank assets on the premise that de facto Taliban rulers might use the money to sponsor terrorism.

There is also some criticism of the U.N.-led humanitarian response system for not categorizing the most urgent needs where more funding should be channeled.

“We have a system which is a bit like having the beggars lining up outside the door of the mosque and the worshipper goes in and can choose which beggar he or she will give a coin to, thinking one beggar is more worthy than others,” Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, told VOA.

The U.N. system, de Waal said, has traditionally been funded mostly by Western donors while Muslim donors have acted selectively.

“It’s entirely a transaction that depends upon the whim of the donor,” he said.

FILE - A burqa-clad Afghan woman sits next to a boundary wall with her children as she seeks alms from people passing by along a road in Kabul, Jan. 8, 2022. — FILE – A burqa-clad Afghan woman sits next to a boundary wall with her children as she seeks alms from people passing by along a road in Kabul, Jan. 8, 2022.

Skepticism of the U.N.-led aid system is not limited to majority-Muslim countries that have no permanent seat at the Security Council. Powerful countries China and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council, have also criticized the U.N. system as ineffective and manipulated.

“Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States are generally wary of the U.N.-led system. There is a perception that the U.N. and international nongovernmental organizations are more interested in organizational survival than helping. There’s also a perception that most of the funds go to staff costs and consultants who are from Western countries rather than to local economies,” Deloffre said.

Bleak prospects

For almost two decades, development and humanitarian activities in Afghanistan have been bankrolled mostly by the U.S. and European countries.

“As the war in Ukraine continues and other humanitarian crises evolve across the globe, we may find donors less and less willing to commit funding to Afghanistan, particularly in the backdrop of domestic economic crises amongst many long-standing donors,” said the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Turner.

For the estimated 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, Afghanistan is not the only humanitarian emergency in need of assistance. From Yemen to Syria to Somalia, many majority Muslim countries face natural and/or human-caused disasters requiring urgent humanitarian responses.

The U.N. and other international aid organizations are more effective in asking for funds in the Western countries than in countries where the civil society is restricted or controlled by the state, according to Jens Rudbeck, a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

“It’s easier for Western countries to provide funds because they already have organizational infrastructure in place, so they can direct the money into that,” Rudbeck told VOA, adding that despite the existence of some international Islamic relief organizations, their funding and infrastructural resources are limited.

The shortage of funding in response to the needs in Afghanistan is likely to compound human suffering there. Out of desperation, some Afghans have reportedly sold their organs and even their children.

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October 29, 2022 Current News Articles

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Russia’s Recruiting Afghan Commandos

October 28, 2022 Current News Articles

Lynne O’Donnell
Foreign Policy
OCTOBER 25, 2022, 2:53 PMAbandoned special forces veterans are getting job offers for a very different kind of battlefield.

Members of Afghanistan’s elite National Army Commando Corps, who were abandoned by the United States and Western allies when the country fell to the Taliban last year, say they are being contacted with offers to join the Russian military to fight in Ukraine. Multiple Afghan military and security sources say the U.S.-trained light infantry force, which fought alongside U.S. and other allied special forces for almost 20 years, could make the difference Russia needs on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Afghanistan’s 20,000 to 30,000 volunteer commandos were left behind when the United States ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021 . Only a few hundred senior officers were evacuated when the republic collapsed. Thousands of soldiers escaped to regional neighbors as the Taliban hunted down and killed loyalists to the collapsed government. Many of the commandos who remain in Afghanistan are in hiding to avoid capture and execution.

The United States spent almost $90 billion building the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. Although the force as a whole was incompetent and handed the country over to the Taliban in a matter of weeks, the commandos were always held in high regard, having been schooled by U.S. Navy SEALs and the British Special Air Service.

Emblematic of the commandos’ pyrrhic success was the battle of Dawlat Abad, where an Afghan commando unit fought the Taliban while waiting for reinforcements and resupplies that never came in June 2021. The U.S.-trained major who led the unit, Sohrab Azimi, became a national hero when it was revealed he’d had only three days’ rest after fighting for 50 days straight before heading to his final battle.

Now, they are jobless and hopeless, many commandos still waiting for resettlement in the United States or Britain, making them easy targets for recruiters who understand the “band of brothers” mentality of highly skilled fighting men. This potentially makes them easy pickings for Russian recruiters, said Afghan security sources. A former senior Afghan security official, who requested anonymity, said their integration into the Russian military “would be a game-changer” on the Ukrainian battlefield, as Russian President Vladimir Putin struggles to recruit for his faltering war and is reportedly using the notorious mercenary Wagner Group to sign up prisoners.

Wagner is a shady organization that officially doesn’t exist but is believed to be run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an associate of Putin who possibly funds it through the GRU military intelligence agency. It reportedly first emerged in Crimea after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of the region from Ukraine, and it has since appeared in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere in Africa. Prigozhin was recently filmed signing up prisoners in return for canceled sentences to reinforce Russian lines in Ukraine.

A former official, who was also an Afghan commando officer, said he believed Wagner was behind Russia’s recruitment of Afghanistan’s special forces. “I am telling you [the recruiters] are Wagner Group. They are gathering people from all over. The only entity that recruits foreign troops [for Russia] are Wagner Group, not their army. It’s not an assumption; it’s a known fact,” he said. “They’d be better used by Western allies to fight alongside Ukrainians. They don’t want to fight for the Russians; the Russians are the enemy. But what else are they going to do?”

Some former commandos report being contacted on WhatsApp and Signal with offers to join what some experts referred to as a Russian “foreign legion” to fight in Ukraine. News of the recruitment efforts has caused alarm in Afghanistan’s former military and security circles, with members saying up to 10,000 former commandos could be amenable to the Russian offers. As another military source put it: “They have no country, no jobs, no future. They have nothing to lose.”

“It’s not difficult,” he added. “They are waiting for work for $3 to $4 a day in Pakistan or Iran or $10 a day in Turkey, and if Wagner or any other intelligence services come to a guy and offer $1,000 to be a fighting man again, they won’t reject it. And if you find one guy to recruit, he can get half his old unit to join up because they are like brothers—and pretty soon, you’ve got a whole platoon.”

Since global attention switched to Ukraine following Russia’s February invasion, the Afghan commandos have been left high and dry. Instead of helping them escape Taliban death squads, the United States and its allies have largely gone AWOL. Their vulnerability to recruitment by countries hostile to the United States was flagged in a report by Rep. Michael McCaul on last year’s evacuation debacle. Referring to United States’ intelligence assets—which include the Afghan commandos—he said they “could potentially present a risk to U.S. security should they be coerced or coopted into working with an adversary, including international terrorist groups such as [the Islamic State-Khorasan] or state actors like China, Russia, and Iran.”

A 35-year-old former commando captain in hiding in Afghanistan said he had helped a number of former colleagues connect with a recruitment office in Tehran. Recruits were flown from Afghanistan to Iran and then to Russia, he said. What happened next was unclear: “When they accept Russia’s offer, the commando personnels’ phones are turned off. They proceed very secretly,” the former captain said.

He and other former commandos who spoke from Afghanistan and Iran described living in desperate conditions. “We are very disappointed. For 18 years, shoulder to shoulder, we performed dangerous tasks with American, British, and Norwegian consultants. Now, I am in hiding. I am suffering every second,” said the 35-year-old. He didn’t take up the offer, as he regards Russia as Afghanistan’s enemy. The former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and fought a 10-year war against U.S.-supported mujahideen. More recently, Russia supported the Taliban’s insurgency, and it has close ties with them now that they’re in power, stopping short of diplomatic recognition.

Another commando who fought alongside British special forces said he fled to Iran to escape Taliban death squads and now worries he will be arrested by Iranian police. Both commandos said they wanted to resettle in Britain but have no idea how to contact the authorities to ask for protection.

Recruitment messages seen by Foreign Policy use the same wording, suggesting a centralized operation. “Anyone who would like to go to Russia with better treatment and good resources: please send me your name, father’s name, and your military rank,” the messages say. Recipients are asked to help recruit other members of their units. Afghan television reported that the recruitment offers include Russian citizenship.

The 35-year-old captain, father to four young children, said he was still hopeful that he would be resettled in Britain. “We fought the sworn enemies of Afghanistan for 20 years, all over the country, with high morale, on the side of Britain and the United States,” the captain said. “We are hiding like prisoners now.”

Lynne O’Donnell is a columnist at Foreign Policy and an Australian journalist and author. She was the Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press between 2009 and 2017.

Afghanistan Becomes World’s ‘Least Secure’ Country: Report

October 28, 2022 Current News Articles

NDTV (India)

According to Gallup’s index, Afghanistan is the country in which the people are “least likely” to feel safe while walking at night alone since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.

Kabul: Amid unabated human rights violations in Afghanistan due to Taliban rule, the war-torn country has been ranked as the “least secure” country in the world, local media reported citing a report by Gallup’s Law and Order Index.

The survey evaluated around 120 countries based on the safety and security of the country’s citizens. This report comes after Afghanistan retained its position in the Global Peace Index for five years as the world’s “least peaceful” country, Khaama Press reported.

Afghanistan emerged with a score of 51 as the survey was conducted on the basis of how safe people feel in their communities or have been prone to theft or assault in the previous year.

Despite the low score in 2021, Afghanistan’s score was an improvement over its previous result in 2019, which was 43 according to Gallup’s survey. The surveys conducted by Gallup in Afghanistan in 2021 were conducted when the US withdrew its troops.

However, Singapore was rated as the most secure, with a score of 96 in the survey report, according to Khaama Press.

According to Gallup’s index, Afghanistan is the country in which the people are “least likely” to feel safe while walking at night alone since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban seized power in Kabul last year, the human rights situation has been exacerbated by a nationwide economic, financial and humanitarian crisis of unprecedented scale.

Acts of terror, killings, blasts and attacks have become a regular affair with unabated human rights violations involving ceaseless murder of civilians, destroying mosques and temples, assaulting women, and fueling terror in the region.

The Taliban dismantled the system to respond to gender-based violence, created new barriers to women accessing health care, blocked women’s aid workers from doing their jobs, and attacked women’s rights protesters.

With the US troops’ withdrawal from the country, large-scale violence has been unleashed creating political uncertainty in different parts of the country. At least 59 per cent of the population is now in need of humanitarian assistance – an increase of 6 million people compared with the beginning of 2021, according to UNAMA.

Russia recruits Afghan commandos to bolster forces in Ukraine: ‘Surprising’ effect of US military drawdown

October 28, 2022 Current News Articles

By Peter Aitken

Fox News

October 27, 2022 4:25pm EDT

Former intelligence officer said Iran may be helping Russia recruit Afghan commandos

The Russian military has started recruiting U.S.-trained Afghanistan commandos to bolster its forces in Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin looks to replenish his forces and supplies in the drawn-out conflict.

Multiple Afghan military and security sources have said the elite National Army Commando Corps, which fought alongside U.S. forces for nearly two decades, have started joining up with Russian troops in Ukraine after the U.S. left them behind following its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, according to a report from news website Foreign Policy.

The force, comprised of 20,000 to 30,000 volunteer commandos, have faced persecution in their homeland after the U.S. departed as the Taliban took control of the country. A few hundred senior officials evacuated during the withdrawal, leaving thousands of soldiers to try and escape to neighboring countries or hide to avoid capture and execution.

A Department of Defense spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the Pentagon has “seen the reports” and that officials will “monitor” the situation but have nothing to say on the matter today. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. spent around $90 billion to build the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, according to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) from May 2022.

New Afghan commandos take part in their graduation ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 13, 2020. (Xinhua/Rahmatullah Alizadah via Getty Images)

Rebekah Koffler, president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting and a former DIA intelligence officer specializing in Russia and Putin, told Fox News Digital that the situation might prove more complicated than initial reports indicated as intelligence suggests that Iran may be helping Russia with its recruitment.

“Intelligence indicators suggest that Russian operatives, possibly with assistance from Iran, are recruiting Afghan soldiers and refugees, including those trained by U.S. forces, to fight on behalf of Russia in Ukraine,” Koffler said.

New Afghan commandos take part in their graduation ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 13, 2020. (Rahmatullah Alizadah/Xinhua via Getty)

“In the aftermath of the hasty and disorganized U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, thousands of Afghan security personnel, translators and support staff had to flee as the Taliban took control,” she explained. “They became refugees in neighboring countries with no means of survival.”

New Afghan commandos take part in their graduation ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 13, 2020. (Rahmatullah Alizadah/Xinhua via Getty)

The recruitment presents another troubling consequence of President Biden’s withdrawal with continued knock-on effects: many Afghanistan allies – possibly thousands – are still waiting to enter the U.S.

Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the report presents “one of the more unexpected consequences of President Biden’s rash and disastrous decision to precipitously withdraw from Afghanistan” and warned of the significant impact it could have on the war in Ukraine.

“Tens of thousands of commandos were left in Afghanistan to fend for themselves, and many are without work and being hunted by the Taliban,” said Roggio, who also edits the Long War Journal news site. “They are easy recruiting prey for the Russians, assuming they are willing to fight for the Russians.”

“If the Russians can recruit the commandos in large numbers, they can have an impact on the battlefield in Ukraine,” he added.

Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news.

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After having to distance itself from Israel normalisation rumours, the Afghan group draws parallels between two occupations

‘What problem do we have with Israel?’

According to Gallup’s index, Afghanistan is the country in which the people are “least likely” to feel safe while walking at night alone since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.

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