Heather Barr: UN Human Rights Meeting Planned for September

Meanwhile, a number of women’s rights activists are asking the UN to take action on human rights issues, especially to support women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Heather Barr, director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, said that the Human Rights Council meeting will be held in Geneva in September of this year.

Heather Barr told TOLOnews that various issues will be discussed at the meeting, including the extension of the mission of the UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan.

“The council will convene again in September and there are a couple of things on their agenda that are extremely important for Afghanistan. One is that they will be deciding about whether to renew the mandate of the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan. Another issue is that, in their joint report, the special rapporteur and the working group recommended that states should mandate or report on the issue of gender apartheid and how that might apply in Afghanistan. So, it will be interesting to see whether the human rights council takes up that recommendation or not. And then, a third issue is that Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations have been pushing hard to say that the human rights councils should also set up a new separate UN mandated mechanism to collect evidence and preserve evidence of human rights violations being committed in Afghanistan,” she said.

Meanwhile, a number of women’s rights activists are asking the UN to take action on human rights issues, especially to support women’s rights in Afghanistan.

“Religion has given us human rights, so why are we far from it, why do we not have them, why are the programs that are implemented ineffective and not having a positive impact? The reason is that these programs are symbolic,” Mina, a women’s rights activist, said.

“The fact that the UN and the countries of the world hold the meeting regarding human rights is important for us. It should not be theoretical, but it should have practical measures too,” Alamtab Rasouli, a women’s rights activist said.

However, the Islamic Emirate argued that in international discussions regarding Afghanistan, more focus should be placed on the Islamic Emirate’s accomplishments.

“They should have good supervision regarding the progress of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the fact that a 44-year war has come to an end and progress has been made in the economy and other fields,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate.

Several human rights organizations have voiced their concerns over the human rights situation in Afghanistan.

Heather Barr: UN Human Rights Meeting Planned for September
read more

White House: We Are ‘Very Clear’ on Support for Afghan Girls

Meanwhile, some students asked the current government to reopen schools and universities for girls in the country.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that that the US has been very clear about the education of girls in Afghanistan.

Addressing the press conference, Jean-Pierre said that Washington remains laser-focused on trying to support and assist the Afghan people without bolstering the Islamic Emirate.

“We have been very clear in laying out our concerns, such as girls’ education, with the Taliban. We have been consistent with that. We’ve been very clear of that. And so, we also remain laser-focused on trying to support and assist the Afghan people without bolstering the Taliban. And so, that’s something that we’re going to continue to do. That’s something that the President is going to continue to be clear about,” she said.

Meanwhile, some students asked the current government to reopen schools and universities for girls in the country.

“We ask the Islamic Emirate to open the schools. Women have the right to study and perform duties and build the future of their country,” said Husna Ahmadzai, a student.

“Even though I was in the 12th grade, I could not participate in the entrance exam and get into the university. Please open the schools for us,” said Naderia, a student.

The deputy spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate, Bilal Karimi, said that all Afghans’ rights are upheld within the confines of the Islamic law.

“Afghanistan’s internal issues are related to the Afghan people. Interference from outside cannot be justified,” Karimi noted.

The international community also views the right of women to work in Afghanistan and the ability of girls and women to receive an education as requirements for recognizing the Islamic Emirate.

White House: We Are ‘Very Clear’ on Support for Afghan Girls
read more

Rights groups condemn Taliban’s new curbs on women’s education, movement

Al Jazeera
Published On 28 Aug 2023

Watchdogs slam Taliban’s ‘flagrant violation of the right to education and freedom of movement’ after Afghan women stopped from boarding a flight to Dubai to study on a scholarship.

Human rights groups have condemned the Taliban’s latest restrictions on Afghan women’s education and movement after it barred them from visiting one of Afghanistan’s most popular national parks and stopped them from leaving for the United Arab Emirates to study on academic scholarships.

Amnesty International said it denounced the Taliban’s latest action prohibiting female students from travelling to Dubai to start their university studies.

“This preposterous decision is a flagrant violation of the right to education and freedom of movement and demonstrates the continued gender persecution against women and girls in Afghanistan,” the rights group said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“The Taliban de-facto authorities must immediately reverse their decision and allow these female students to travel and study.”

 

The head of a Dubai-based conglomerate said Taliban authorities had stopped about 100 women from travelling to the UAE, where he said he had sponsored their university educations.

Khalaf Ahmad al-Habtoor, founding chairman of Al Habtoor Group, said in a video posted on X 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.

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

Students bemoan lost opportunity

Laila said their scholarships were their “only hope to go abroad to continue our education”.

“This was an amazing opportunity for us, but like everything else, this opportunity was taken from us,” she told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The 22-year-old was due to start a law degree in Dubai, having been forced to abandon her journalism studies under a Taliban government ban.

Laila said she and the other women made it to their departure gate but were turned away at the last moment by men in airport uniforms who said they had an order that those with student visas were not allowed to leave the country.

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

In a video posted on X, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the international community to “press the Taliban to end their violations of women’s rights”.

 

Women banned from entering national park

On Sunday, the Taliban government’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice closed the Band-e-Amir national park to women, saying female visitors were failing to cover up.

The park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site 175km (110 miles) west of Kabul, is renowned for its striking blue lakes surrounded by sweeping cliffs.

The park in Bamyan province is a popular spot for domestic tourism and is regularly swarmed with Afghans relaxing at the shore or paddling the waters in rented boats.

HRW Associate Women’s Rights Director Heather Barr told AFP the decision to ban women was “cruel in a very intentional way”.

“Not content with depriving girls and women of education, employment and free movement, the Taliban also want to take from them parks and sport and now even nature,” she said in a statement.

“Step-by-step, the walls are closing in on women as every home becomes a prison,” she said.

 

The minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, justified the ban, saying women were failing to wear hijabs properly.

“We must take action from today. We must prevent the non-observance of hijab,” he said during a visit to Bamyan.

Ministry spokesman Akef Muhajir told the AFP news agency that local religious leaders requested the temporary closure because women from outside the province were not observing the hijab dress code.

Other national parks in Afghanistan remain open to all, he said.

On Sunday, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, asked in a social media post: “Why [is] this restriction … necessary to comply with Sharia and Afghan culture?”

Women have been barred from visiting parks, fairs and gyms and must cover up in public since the Taliban returned to power two years ago.

They have also mostly been blocked from working for UN agencies or NGOs. Thousands have been sacked from government jobs or paid to stay at home.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
Rights groups condemn Taliban’s new curbs on women’s education, movement
read more

US Should Align Sanctions Policy with Peacemaking Efforts: ICG

The ICG said that as the use of sanctions has increased, so, too, has awareness of their collateral effects.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), said in a new report that sanctions have become an increasingly prominent tool of US statecraft, but urged Washington to align sanctions policy with peacemaking efforts.

The ICG said that as the use of sanctions has increased, so, too, has awareness of their collateral effects.

“While the US looks to sanctions to further its goals in numerous conflicts, sanctions also sometimes obstruct peacemaking – that is, activities in the service of violence prevention and conflict resolution,” it said. “The more Washington uses sanctions, the more far-reaching the downsides are and the more pressing it is to address them.”

To align sanction policy with peacemaking efforts, the ICG said, the US administration “could do so by setting clear objectives for sanctions programs, subjecting them to rigorous periodic review, expanding and making permanent carveouts for peace activities, and addressing private-sector concerns about investment in previously sanctioned jurisdictions.”

It said sanctions can also impede US efforts to encourage private-sector investment in post-conflict settings. Investors often lack the confidence to enter markets where sanctions exist, even when the US Treasury has issued licenses specifically authorising certain transactions or when sanctions have recently been lifted, in part or in full. In these situations, sanctions have a “chilling effect” on business activity or, in the words of one former US official, hang over a country “like a black cloud”.

According to the report, private firms often express confusion about the scope of permitted activity and may err on the side of caution by refusing to do business in these places altogether.

“Such have been the calculations of many companies that had been active in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, which pulled out of the country despite the general licenses published by the US permitting extensive private-sector transactions as part of efforts to stave off state collapse,” the report said.

The ICG cited that the effects can seem trivial (some diplomats working on Venezuela in 2019 and 2020 were told to avoid buying anything, even a cup of coffee, for sanctioned members of the Maduro government), but in other cases they can prove a hurdle to dialogue.

“For example, some US officials have expressed regret at the designation of Afghanistan’s Haqqani network as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), which they said made it harder for the US government as a whole to come around to the idea of dialogue with the group on ending the conflict in Afghanistan,” it said.

US Should Align Sanctions Policy with Peacemaking Efforts: ICG
read more

‘Despair is settling in’: female suicides on rise in Taliban’s Afghanistan

Zahra Nader and Zan Times reporters

First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away.

“I had two options: to marry an addict and live a life of misery or take my own life,” said the 18-year-old in a phone interview from her home in central Ghor province. “I chose the latter.”

It was not an isolated act of desperation. Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, there has been a disturbing surge in the number of women taking their own lives or attempting to do so, data collected from public hospitals and mental health clinics across a third of Afghanistan’s provinces shows.

Taliban authorities have not published data on suicides and have barred health workers from sharing up-to-date statistics in multiple provinces, medics say. Health workers agreed to privately share figures for the year from August 2021 to August 2022 to highlight an urgent public health crisis. The data suggests Afghanistan has become one of very few countries worldwide where more women than men die by suicide.

The figures are partial but give a snapshot across Afghanistan’s wide demographic and geographic range. They cover provinces variously dominated by all of Afghanistan’s major ethnic groups, provinces ranging from southern deserts to northern mountains, and largely rural areas and others around major cities.

UN officials and human rights activists have raised the alarm about the sharp increase in the number of women attempting to take their own lives. They have explicitly linked it to Taliban restrictions on every aspect of women’s existence, from a ban on education above elementary level and a prohibition on most work, to a bar on entering parks, bathhouses and other public spaces.

“Afghanistan is in the midst of a mental health crisis precipitated by a women’s rights crisis,” said Alison Davidian, the country representative for UN Women. “We are witnessing a moment where growing numbers of women and girls see death as preferable to living under the current circumstances.”

Bleak figures

Globally, more than twice as many men die by suicide as women, World Health Organization (WHO) data shows. In Afghanistan, until 2019, the last year for which official figures are available, more men than women took their own lives.

The Taliban declined repeated requests for comment on suicide rates or on the data collected for this investigation.

The figures from healthcare providers show that out of 11 provinces surveyed, in only one did men account for the majority of suicide deaths and attempts.

That province was Nimruz, the main jumping-off point for dangerous attempts to cross illegally into Iran, which are made largely by men. Those who fail in their attempt to get over the border sometimes take their own lives there.

Everywhere else, women and girls made up a majority of those who died from suicide or were treated after trying to kill themselves, with the youngest recorded victims in their early teens. Overall, females made up more than three-quarters of recorded suicide deaths and treated survivors.

A graveyard in Herat city
A graveyard in Herat city. 

Those bleak figures are likely to underestimate the depths of women’s desperation. Suicide is considered shameful and often covered up in Afghanistan. Some women who attempt suicide will not be taken for treatment and some who die may be buried without a record that they took their own lives.

Roya*, 31, was found dead in her house in the city of Herat in May 2022 after years in an abusive marriage. Her younger brother, Mohammad*, said his sister had often told their parents about her husband’s attacks but they urged her not to leave him.

“Every time, my parents would persuade her to keep her family together,” Mohammad said. “One morning, we were informed that Roya had [taken her own life]. We never thought it would get this far.”

The family told people she had died of an illness, because they consider suicide unIslamic and shameful.

Shaharzad Akbar, a former chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission – an organisation targeted by the Taliban insurgency and now operating in exile – said social stigma meant such secrecy was common.

“The rare instance when [relatives] willingly admit to suicide is when they don’t want any member of the family to be accused of murder,” said Akbar, who is now executive director of Rawadari, a new Afghan human rights organisation.

Lost hope

Afghanistan’s history of conflict and poverty had fuelled a mental health crisis long before August 2021. A survey published in the journal BMC Psychiatry two months before the Taliban takeover found nearly half the population suffered from psychological distress.

But the loss of freedom and hope, and an increase in forced and underage marriages and domestic abuse, has made women even more vulnerable over the last two years.

About 90% of mental health admissions at the provincial hospital in western Herat were women “breaking down under the weight of the new restrictions”, one medic there said.

Nine in 10 women in Afghanistan are subjected to some form of domestic violence, according to the UN. Efforts to tackle the issue under the last government, from legislation to shelters, were imperfect but offered women some hope. Those efforts have now been dismantled by the Taliban.

“The mechanism to respond to domestic violence is totally eradicated; women have no choice but to bear the violence or kill themselves,” said Akbar.

Inside the Herat hospital’s mental health ward
Inside the Herat hospital’s mental health ward. 

Warnings about female suicides are only intensifying as the Taliban tighten controls on every aspect of women’s lives, most recently banning beauty salons.

When Latifa woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by family and doctors, she was told that her cousin had disappeared after learning of her suicide attempt. She worries that he might return and says if he does she will try to kill herself again.

“If he comes back and my family tries to force me [into marriage] again, I will … make sure I don’t survive,” she said.

Medics in Herat province, which recorded the highest numbers of female suicides and attempted suicides, described a system overwhelmed, with only 25 mental health beds for a population of millions.

In May, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was “alarmed about widespread mental health issues and accounts of escalating suicides among women and girls”.

Some see suicide as the only remaining form of defiance possible in a country where authorities are seeking to remove women from public life entirely.

“They don’t have much room for expressing their protests and disagreements,” said Julie Billaud, an anthropology professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and the author of Kabul Carnival, a book about gender politics in postwar Afghanistan. “The despair is settling in. Perhaps that [suicide] is the last attempt by those who have left no power to say something and be heard.”

* Names have been changed for the safety of interviewees

‘Despair is settling in’: female suicides on rise in Taliban’s Afghanistan
read more

British Official Claims TTP Operating in Afghan Territory

Bilal Karimi, the deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, said that Afghanistan’s soil will not be used against any country.

British High Commissioner to Pakistan Jane Marriott claimed that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other terrorist organizations continue to operate in Afghan territory.

In an interview with Pakistani Geo News, Marriott said that if the activities of these groups in Afghanistan are not stopped, they may become a threat to Pakistan and the world.

“Pakistani military and security forces are bearing the brunt of these attacks across the border from Afghanistan. So, in many ways they are paying a price to keep the world safe, as well as Pakistan safe. Pakistan has deployed many security forces in the border area to try and stop terrorists from coming over the border,” Marriott said.

Several military experts offered different views on the allegations made by the British High Commissioner to Pakistan that there are terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan.

“There is definitely no terrorism in Afghanistan. We ask them if Pakistan asserts that the TTP is present, how can it enter Afghanistan from your territory since you do have a very powerful army,” Yusuf Amin Zazi, a military expert, told TOLOnews.

However, the Islamic Emirate denied the presence and activity of terrorist groups in Afghanistan.

Bilal Karimi, the deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, said that Afghanistan’s soil will not be used against any country.

“Afghanistan is peaceful, stable, and secure; there is no instability or group that harms other nations from Afghan soil, and there is no basis for the claims and statements that are made,” Karimi said.

This comes as Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the presence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan and demanded that the Islamic Emirate fight against them.

British Official Claims TTP Operating in Afghan Territory
read more

Kabul Denies UNSC Members’ Concerns About Daesh in Afghanistan

A part of the statement said that such propaganda gives motivations to the Daesh group and increases destabilization in the region.

The Islamic Emirate has once again denied the concerns of the UN Security Council members about Daesh activities 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 Islamic Emirate said in a statement that the UNSC report about the presence of terrorist groups including in Afghanistan is not documented from evidence, which affects the reputation of the UNSC.

A part of the statement said that such propaganda gives motivations to the Daesh group and increases destabilization in the region.

“The path to negotiation and contact is effective and the Islamic Emirate believes in relations and engagement,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.

The statement also said the existing sanctions on Afghanistan by the UN and other sides, and the freezing of Afghanistan’s assets abroad are the main reasons for the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.

“Every problem which the international community has regarding Afghanistan, it should approach it through diplomatic paths because it cannot eliminate the problems through allegations,” said Ziaul Haq Madani, political analyst.

“After the Islamic Emirate came to power, even one acre of land is not in the hands of terrorists and Daesh has been defeated seriously. This is negative propaganda against the government,” said Kamran Aman, a military veteran.

The situation in Afghanistan is growing increasingly complex, with fears of weapons and ammunition falling into the hands of terrorists now materializing.

Kabul Denies UNSC Members’ Concerns About Daesh in Afghanistan
read more

Afghanistan: Taliban ban women from visiting popular national park

By Antoinette Radford

The Taliban government have banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir national park in Bamiyan province.

Afghanistan’s acting minister of virtue and vice, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, said women had not been observing hijab inside the park.

He called on religious clerics and security agencies to forbid women from entering until a solution was found.

Band-e-Amir is a significant tourist attraction, becoming Afghanistan’s first national park in 2009.

It is a popular destination for families and the ban on women attending will prevent many from being able to enjoy the park.

Unesco describes the park as a “naturally created group of lakes with special geological formations and structure, as well as natural and unique beauty”.

However, Mr Hanafi said going to the park to sightsee “was not obligatory”, Afghan agency Tolo News reported.

Religious clerics in Bamiyan said the women who were visiting the park and not following the rules were visitors to the area.

“There are complaints about lack of hijab or bad hijab, these are not Bamiyan residents. They come here from other places,” Sayed Nasrullah Waezi, head of the Bamiyan Shia Ulema Council told Tolo news.

Afghan former MP Mariam Solaimankhil shared a poem she had written on X, formerly known as Twitter, about the ban and wrote “we’ll return, I’m sure of it”.

Fereshta Abbasi, of Human Rights Watch, noted women had been banned from visiting the park on Women’s Equality Day and wrote it was a “total disrespect to the women of Afghanistan”.

Meanwhile Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, asked why stopping women from visiting Band-e-Amir “is necessary to comply with Sharia and Afghan culture?”.

The Taliban have a history of implementing bans on women doing certain activities on what it insists is a temporary basis, including preventing them from attending schools in December 2022.

The ban on visiting the Band-E-Amir national park is the latest in a long list of activities that women have been prevented from doing since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.

Most recently, the Taliban ordered hair and beauty salons in Afghanistan to shut and in mid-July stopped women from sitting the national university entrance exams.

Afghanistan: Taliban ban women from visiting popular national park
read more

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?
read more

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
read more