Bill to Grant Afghan Evacuees a Path to Residency Hits Snags

September 22, 2022 Current News Articles

The New York Times

Sept. 22, 2022

The White House and members of both parties had hoped to attach the legislation to a must-pass spending bill this month. But some Republicans have raised security concerns.

WASHINGTON — On the lawn outside the Capitol this week, the flags of two countries flew in protest: America’s and Afghanistan’s from before it fell to the Taliban.

Beside them stood supporters of Afghans who had risked their lives to help Americans during the decades-long war in Afghanistan — as translators, drivers and fixers — and had to flee the country last year when U.S. forces withdrew. About 82,000 were evacuated to the United States, but since then most have been living in legal limbo, with no long-term authorization to remain.

Military veterans and other supporters have been lobbying Congress for more than a year to provide Afghan evacuees with a pathway to permanent legal status in the United States. Many have only temporary authorization to stay, even though they will most likely never be able to safely return to their former homes. Now, they are pushing for legislation addressing the issue to be tacked onto a must-pass spending bill to keep government funded past the end of the month, when it is slated to lapse.

But despite support from the White House, a bipartisan group of senators and military veterans, a direct path to legal status for Afghans has proved difficult to establish amid opposition from some Republicans, who argue that the evacuees pose security risks. The measure is unlikely to be included in the spending package this month because of those objections.

“It’s an atrocity that it is taking so long to get this simple thing done,” said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and the founder of the group AfghanEvac, which supports resettlement efforts. “This shouldn’t be controversial. I wish we could show up for them like they showed up for us.”

The advocates have thrown their support behind a bipartisan bill called the Afghan Adjustment Act that would allow Afghans who have short-term humanitarian parole status — which typically lasts for two years — to apply for permanent legal status if they submit to additional vetting, including an interview.

The protest at the Capitol in support of the bill has continued for a week. “We’re not going until this gets done,” said Matt Zeller, an Army captain who served in Afghanistan and whose interpreter saved his life.

The measure, sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, is modeled off laws enacted after other humanitarian crises, like the Vietnam War. Similar statutes also were enacted after crises in Cuba, Nicaragua and Iraq.

The bill would allow evacuees who pass an added layer of security checks to seek permanent authorization to stay in the United States without wading through the yearslong bureaucratic burdens of applying and being approved for asylum. It is meant to address security concerns about the Afghan evacuees, who were chaotically rushed from the country as U.S. forces abruptly departed, prompting some to argue that they were not properly

About 3,500 of the evacuees brought to the United States are now lawful permanent residents, and more than 3,000 received special immigrant visas. Most of the others are in the country under the tenuous status of humanitarian parole.

The White House included the Afghan Adjustment Act in its request for the spending bill that must pass by Sept. 30.

“Afghans have found themselves in this real legal limbo because the U.S. government has essentially applied short-term Band-Aids for a population that needs long-term protection,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “The Biden administration inherited a refugee program in ruin from its predecessors.”

Congress did not include a similar proposal in an emergency spending bill passed in May to help fund the war in Ukraine, despite President Biden’s call to do so.

Proponents argue that the lack of action reflects bias on the part of some policymakers against helping people from a majority-Muslim country when the United States has been far more welcoming to refugees from Ukraine, a mostly white and majority-Christian nation.

“The degree of support for Ukrainian refugees is appropriately and deservedly high,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a co-sponsor of the legislation to help Afghan evacuees. “But Afghans, even those who served alongside us, have struggled somewhat to garner the same level of support. And that’s really regrettable.”

The difference is particularly acute for Afghans who are still abroad. Since the evacuation of their country ended, the United States has mostly stopped quickly accepting parole requests from Afghans who remain overseas. Many of those who are applying have fled Afghanistan, and there is currently no entity that processes applications from within the country, which is controlled by the Taliban.

A vast majority of humanitarian parole applications for Afghans abroad have yet to be considered or have been denied. After the initial evacuation, 48,900 parole requests were made on their behalf; only 369 had been approved through July.

By contrast, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have entered the United States on humanitarian parole.

Republicans argue that their opposition to granting a path to legal residency for Afghan evacuees is rooted in security concerns.

Stephen Miller, who was a senior adviser to President Donald J. Trump and a central figure in gutting the refugee program during his administration, argued shortly after the fall of Kabul that Afghan evacuees should not be allowed into the United States because they had not faced stringent vetting.

“If you bring in several provinces’ worth of individuals from Afghanistan, you will replicate the conditions in Afghanistan here in the United States of America and all the horrors that entails,” Mr. Miller said on Fox News last year.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, has raised concerns on Capitol Hill about vetting, citing a report by the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security that found that evacuees from Afghanistan “who were not fully vetted” were allowed into the United States.

“The vetting of those admitted to the United States in the wake of President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan has been completely insufficient,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement.

Customs and Border Protection disagreed with the finding, saying that the agency had informed investigators in November that “all individuals were screened, vetted and inspected.”

Republicans have also complained that the State Department has not been forthcoming with information about its vetting process.

The lawmakers sponsoring the bill said it would ensure that Afghans who sought permanent residency would be held to higher security standards.

The bill would mandate screening “equivalent to the vetting they would have received if they were going to come here originally as refugees,” Ms. Klobuchar said.

Mr. Graham said his fellow Republicans had a “legitimate concern” about security, but those could be addressed by tightening the bill’s vetting requirements.

“These people have no place to go. Their country has fallen into hell,” he said of the Afghan evacuees. “There are security concerns, but here’s the overarching theme for me: We need to try to do right by these folks.”

For now, there is little sign that Congress is prepared to act, even as some of the Afghans say they would gladly submit to more vetting if it means a chance to stay permanently in the United States.

Arafat Safi, who was a senior official in Afghanistan’s foreign affairs ministry when Kabul fell to the Taliban and is now in the United States on humanitarian parole, said there was no way he could return to his country.

“I don’t see a way back to Afghanistan while these guys are there,” he said of the Taliban. “I have always wished a better future for my kids, a better place where they can be raised. So I believe the United States will be my home.”

Mr. VanDiver, who has been among the protesters outside the Capitol this week, said he became involved with the effort after an Afghan friend texted him from a mountain surrounded by the Taliban in August 2021.

“He asked me to grant his last request and help get his family out,” Mr. VanDiver said. “So I did. And I’m doing everything I can.”

Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

‘This is what it was like’: reliving the devastating US withdrawal from Afghanistan

September 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Adrian Horton

Over a year out, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan still seems, from afar, shocking, swift, baffling. In a matter of days, the Afghan government – and a fraught, nearly two-decade war by western countries to uphold it – collapsed. Escape from Kabul, a new, day-by-day account of the hellish last gasp of the war in Afghanistan, submerges in that confusion; by mid-August 2021, Kabul remained the only secure route out of the country, and tens of thousands of people crowded the airfield, desperate for a way out. “It was like doomsday at Kabul airport,” says Muslim Hotak, a student who tried to flee with 5,000 others in the initial run on the airport on 15 August 2021.

Escape from Kabul, directed by Jamie Roberts, embeds in the chaos, blending horrific images familiar to news consumers – crowds crushing toward a closed gate, children pushed against barbed wire, anguished people clinging to the wheels of a moving plane – with first-hand accounts of the evacuation. As with Roberts’s previous film Four Hours at the Capitol, which used first-hand accounts and archival footage for an on-the-ground accounting of the January 6 insurrection, Escape from Kabul trains specifically on a discrete event: the 15 days at Kabul airport before the US withdrawal deadline of 31 August 2021.

It’s neither a history of the doomed war on terror nor an explainer of the decisions leading up the humanitarian disaster at Kabul airport – Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban signed at Doha in 2020, which excluded the Afghan government, or the Biden administration’s faulty assumptions on how long Kabul would hold. Instead, the 77-minute film assembles a visceral collage of archival footage (often shot on cellphones) and recollections from three main parties: the US marines tasked with keeping the airfield clear, Taliban commanders encroaching upon the airfield and complete takeover of the capital, and Afghan women and students who endured harrowing conditions for a shot at leaving.

“We live in a world where it’s very hard to make sense of an increasingly complex information landscape, increasingly complex and fragmented political landscape,” said Dan Reed (Leaving Neverland, In the Shadow of 9/11), a producer on the film. “Hearing from people who were at the center of a big, important story that changed their lives and changed world history, just speaking to you about what it was like – at the heart of it, it’s ‘that could be me.’” You could be tasked with trying to maintain a semblance of control as the walls are closing in, as expressed by several marines whose mission is to hold the airport as Afghan citizens beg for an escape. The compartmentalization is clear – as one marine puts it in the film on forcing back crowds with every good reason to leave, “It wasn’t pleasant for them, it wasn’t pleasant for us.”

You could be a student, a female newscaster, a government minister on behalf of women, a family member of someone who assisted the US military, faced with an impossible choice – “we could die trying to leave, or we could be killed”, says Malalai Hussainy, a female student in her first year of university who stood for four days in sewage water, oppressive heat and crushing crowds for one of the 124,000 spots on an aircraft out of Kabul. A handful of Taliban commanders who were also surrounding the airport in the final days of the evacuation have their own justifications; one recalls how US forces slaughtered two of his family members. Others have fought the Americans since they were children.

“In the end, an intellectual grasp, a Wikipedia grasp of what’s going on doesn’t really connect you to that event,” said Reed of the film’s assemblage of first-hand accounts, sans narration or analysis. “You will come away from our documentary kinda feeling that you kinda get what that was like. But you won’t come away feeling like you have a perfect grasp of the negotiations [to withdraw from Afghanistan] and the history.”

Many of those first-person accounts were filmed in Kabul during the early months of this year, when Roberts and his team negotiated meetings with Taliban leaders when it was “a stage where it was open country a little bit”, he said. (The film ends with a chilling postscript: as of July 2022, the UN confirmed numerous systemic human rights abuses, particularly against women, under the Taliban.) “We wanted the suicide commanders who encircled the airport, we wanted the guy who came in on the motorcycle with his men to explain what the story was like, right from the front,” said Roberts. “That took a long time – a lot of meetings and a lot of working through networks, going to literally when they’re on checkpoints talking to them to going to the very top Talibs and working down.”

Roberts and his team obtained footage filmed by Taliban soldiers who eventually took over the airport and government buildings. The crew also worked with Afghan citizens whose attempts to leave the country were unsuccessful. “We really wanted to represent them and we wanted to do it openly, so you could see their faces, so you could see them as humans, that was the whole point of the film,” said Roberts.

Escape from Kabul depicts a mosaic of the unfathomable – how you could be so fearful as to hand an infant over to American forces beyond the airport gates, a desperate sacrifice for a better future; what that might feel like to receive, when your mission as a marine is to keep the crowd at bay for a devastatingly slow evacuation process. Why someone would cling to the wing of a plane as it took off; how that might feel to witness them fall back to earth. The anxiety felt by soldiers expecting a suicide bomb attack; the gruesome aftermath of the survivor who awakens in a bombed-out sewage canal next to his dead brothers, three of the 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US military personnel killed in the attack claimed by the Islamic State. How this all could have happened in the first place. “What we didn’t anticipate was the sheer desperation and fear and willingness of the people to put themselves at tremendous risk to get themselves and their families out of Afghanistan,” says Maj Jordan Eddington, one of the marines maintaining control of the airfield, though it seems unthinkable how, given the promises made by western forces, that that couldn’t be foreseen.

The film does not delve into the larger chain of events for such a gut-wrenching failure, instead remaining firmly rooted in the experiential. But Reed allows that “The United States and Great Britain and the allies invested in a system that was hollowed, and that was never going to be able to take the strain, and never really committed enough to do a completely alternative system.” The main failure was one of imagination, “not understanding how quickly the collapse would happen when it began”.

“There was no regard for all those people who lived on that thin crust of westernized existence in Kabul,” he added. “They were the people who bought into the dream that we sold them and then they were the people that we abandoned. There’s no other way of looking at it.”

The documentary, then, stands in a for a way of looking toward the people swept up in the current of events beyond their control, who made it out, or were left behind, or celebrated a long-fought victory over invading forces. “We have an opportunity now to make a lasting reminder of how messy and how bad and how appalling this can be if we don’t take more care when we turn our back on a very expensive failure,” said Reed. “Look at these people in the face. This is what it was like.”

Escape From Kabul is available on HBO in the US, the BBC in the UK and streaming on Paramount+ and Binge in Australia

Islamic Emirate Replaces Acting Education Minister in Reshuffle

September 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Mohammad Farshad Daryosh

Tolo News

21 SEPTEMBER 2022

Tuesday’s order also announced that acting Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Mohammad Mohsin would be appointed to run the northern province of Panjshir.

The Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader issued an order on Tuesday announcing a reshuffle of several national and provincial positions, including replacing the acting education minister.

Islamic Emirate spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid released the list of changes, saying they were by order of the Islamic Emirate’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is based in Kandahar, the southern province.

Makhdom Alam was appointed commander of the security department of Ghazni province, according to the decree.

Makhdom Alam is a famous commander of the Islamic Emirate in northern Afghanistan. Earlier, he had been arrested on charges of kidnapping but was released after being in detention for around one month.

“Based on the decree of the (supreme leader), the reshuffling took place and this is a usual procedure in government. This happened to improve activities,” said Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman for the Islamic Emirate.

“The people wish for fundamental reforms in the government. For example, the changes in the Education Ministry pave the ground for the immediate reopening of girls’ schools. Also, the changes in other departments of the government happened based on the people’s wishes,” said Najibullah Jami, a political analyst.

The newly appointed Education Minister, Mawlawi Habibullah Agha, is said to be one of the closest figures to the supreme leader of the Islamic Emirate, Mawlawi Hebatullah Akhundzada.

The education ministry initially said all schools would open in March, but secondary schools for girls have mostly stayed shut.

The Islamic Emirate now say they are working on a plan to open secondary schools for girls but have not given a specific timeframe.

Islamic Emirate and diplomatic sources told Reuters that last week several ministers had gathered in Kandahar for a cabinet meeting led by the supreme leader. The Taliban’s information ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request to confirm the cabinet meeting had taken place.

Tuesday’s order also announced that acting Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Mohammad Mohsin would be appointed to run the northern province of Panjshir, replacing a provincial governor who would be reassigned as governor of eastern Logar province.

Resistance groups have said they have been carrying out operations in the Panjshir and clashing with Islamic fighters.

The Islamic Emirate said last week they had killed 40 fighters of the Resistance Front, including four commanders, in Panjshir. However, the Islamic Emirate has denied widespread fighting, saying it has established control of the entire country.

US Launches Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience

September 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Amina Hakimi

Tolo News

22 Sept 2022

This comes as some women’s rights activists said that many women have become jobless.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken launched the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience (AWER) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

“AWER is a new public-private partnership between the Department of State and Boston University that aims to catalyze business, philanthropic, and civil society commitments to advance Afghan women’s entrepreneurship, employment, and educational opportunities in Afghanistan and third countries,” the US Department of State said in a press release.

This comes as some women’s rights activists said that many women have become jobless.

The event was attended by Afghan women entrepreneurs, business leaders and civil society members, as well as representatives of the US and other foreign governments, including US special envoy for Afghanistan Thomas West and US special envoy for Afghanistan Women and Human Rights Rina Amiri.

“This is a public-private partnership that will help improve access to education training, expand job opportunity, support women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan as well as in other countries. Now I don’t want to sugarcoat it. This is going to be hard, given the severe restraint imposed by the Taliban. But we are determined to safely deliver this support to women in Afghanistan,” Blinken said at the event.

Speaking at the event, Blinken noted Deloitte’s commitment to work with the Alliance’s first member Pod in mentoring 2,000 Afghan women under MWMA as an example of how AWER aims to foster economic opportunity for Afghan women and girls, the statement reads.

The announcement of the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience by the Afghan women comes as many women became jobless after the Islamic Emirate swept into power.

“If such programs are launched for girls, they will surely improve. As you and I know that women are contributing half of the society,” said Manizha Nasiri, a women’s rights activist.

“We see that girls have been affected recently. They are deprived of the right to education. They lost their jobs. They are facing a lot of economic challenges,” said Husna Rasuli, a civil rights activist.

Meanwhile, the Afghanistan Chamber Commerce and Industry (ACCI) said that more than 4,000 women entrepreneurs have invested in the country.

“The girls who live in Afghanistan have faced restrictions after the changes happened in the country. Especially considering the situation that many women cannot go to their jobs in government departments,” said Roya Hafizi, acting head of the ACCI.

Poppy Cultivation at ‘Zero’ Says Counter-Narcotics Official

September 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Nazir Shinwari

Tolo News

20 SEPTEMBER 2022

Appeal at UN for world leaders to protect Afghan girls’ education

September 22, 2022 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

21 September 2022

Women urge leaders to unite and demand the Taliban government reopen girls’ schools and offer protection of their rights.

After pleading with world leaders at the United Nations to protect the education and rights of women in Afghanistan a year after the Taliban took over, Somaya Faruqi, the former captain of the Afghan girls’ robotics team, broke down in tears backstage.

“I was in classroom last year, but this year girls are not in classroom. Classrooms are empty, and they are at their homes. So it was too hard to control myself, control my feelings,” Faruqi, aged 20, told the Reuters news agency.

Faruqi, who now attends the Missouri University of Science and Technology, left Afghanistan in August last year when the Taliban seized power and the United States and allies withdrew forces after a 20-year war.

Speaking at the UN in New York this week as world leaders gather for the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly, she urged them to unite and demand the reopening of girls’ schools and the protection of their rights.

“This week, you are all here to propose solutions to transform education to all, but you must not forget those who left behind, those who are not lucky enough to be at school at all,” said Faruqi. “Show your solidarity with me and millions of Afghan girls.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by a Taliban gunman in Pakistan as she left school in 2012, chided heads of state for the lack of action.

“Most of you know what exactly needs to be done. You must not make small, stingy and short-term pledges, but commit to uphold the right to complete education and close the funding gap once and for all,” Yousafzai said on Monday.

Last year, she pleaded with the world not to compromise on the protection of Afghan women’s rights following the Taliban takeover.

‘Lift all restrictions’

The Taliban says women should not leave home without a male relative and must cover their faces, though some women in urban centres ignore the rule.

In March, the Taliban made a U-turn on a promise to open girls’ high schools. Most teenage girls now have no access to classrooms and thousands of women have been pushed out of the workforce because of tighter restrictions and Afghanistan’s economic crisis, international development agencies said.

The Taliban says it respects women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law and that since March they have been working on a way of opening girls’ high schools.

At the Transforming Education Summit on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to the Taliban to “lift all restrictions on girls’ access to secondary education immediately”.

“Girls’ education is among the most important steps to deliver peace, security and sustainable development, everywhere,” said Guterres.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday opened the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience, a partnership between the State Department and Boston University aimed at advancing Afghan women’s entrepreneurship and educational opportunities and expanding workplace opportunities, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“Women, no matter where they live, should have equal rights in every facet of their lives,” Blinken said. “This should be, in the year 2022, self-evident to everyone on this planet. But of course, it’s not, and we have to fight for it. We have to struggle for it every single day.”

Rina Amiri, the US Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls and Human Rights, said the initiative would face a lot of challenges. Instability, a lack of security and financial chaos will weigh on any attempts to support women’s re-entry into Afghan society. “What we want to show is that there’s resilience,” she said.

Fereshteh Forough, the CEO of Code to Inspire, the first coding school for women and girls in Afghanistan, said at the alliance’s event that she had to close her school and move to online learning after the Taliban took over.

She broke down in tears as she said 80 percent of the students were back to school remotely, and that as of Monday, the school was able to get a permit from the Taliban to reopen conditionally.

“We were able to get 300 girls to get an entrance exam and come to our graphic design school. It’s just unbelievable how difficult it’s been this year,” she said, in tears. “The text messages I received from the girls, it was heartbreaking.”

U.S. hails release of Taliban captive following prisoner swap

September 20, 2022 Current News Articles

By Haq Nawaz Khan, Susannah George and Missy Ryan

The Washington Post

September 20, 2022

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Mark Frerichs, an American contractor held captive by the Taliban since his abduction in Kabul in 2020, was freed in exchange for an Afghan imprisoned on drug trafficking charges in the United States, U.S. and Afghan officials said Monday.

Frerichs’s family hailed his release, saying they were “grateful and excited” to learn he had been set free after more than 2½ years in militant captivity.

“Our family has prayed for this each day,” Charlene Cakora, Frerichs’s sister, said in the statement from Camden Advisory Group, which had been advocating for his release. “We never gave up hope that he would survive and come home safely to us.”

President Biden applauded the release of Frerichs, who U.S. officials said was in U.S. care in Doha, Qatar. “Bringing the negotiations that led to Mark’s freedom to a successful resolution required difficult decisions, which I did not take lightly,” the president said in a statement.

U.S. officials said Frerichs’s release capped months of behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Taliban, the insurgent group that has governed Afghanistan since August 2021, when the United States withdrew from the country.

To obtain his freedom, an official said, the U.S. government released detainee Bashir Noorzai (also known as Haji Bashir Noorzai), a warlord with ties to the Taliban who was sentenced to life in federal prison for drug trafficking after being lured to the United States and arrested in 2005.

In Kabul, acting Afghan foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi hailed Noorzai’s release. “This will open a new chapter in the bilateral relations between the United States and Afghanistan,” he said at a news conference that was broadcast by local television outlets.

“We have been persistent in our efforts to free [Noorzai], and now he is with us in his own country,” Muttaqi continued. He said the two men were swapped at Kabul’s international airport.

Senior U.S. officials, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said Frerichs was in “stable health” and was being offered U.S. support. They declined to provide details on where Frerichs was kept during his long captivity.

Frerichs’s release illustrates the delicate path the Biden administration must tread in its dealings with Afghanistan’s new leaders, whom the United States fought for two decades before they took over after the collapse of the U.S.-backed government.

The United States, like other nations, has not officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government, but U.S. officials have engaged with it regularly as they seek to provide aid to Afghans in need and advocate for the rights of women and girls as the group imposes new restrictions on them.

The Frerichs deal comes weeks after the United States conducted a drone strike in downtown Kabul that killed al-Qaeda’s top militant, a development that highlighted the Taliban’s ongoing ties to terrorist organizations and posed a major setback to the potential normalization of U.S. ties with Afghanistan’s new leaders.

One U.S. official said the Biden administration told Taliban leaders after that strike that “we would hold them directly responsible if any harm were to come to Mark, and that the best way they might begin to rebuild trust with the United States with the world was to immediately release him.”

“If the Taliban are as interested as they say they are in normal relations with the international community, then that practice must resolutely end,” another official said, referring to hostage-taking.

Officials said there was a “narrow window of opportunity” following Biden’s initial decision this summer to potentially grant Noorzai clemency. They contrasted the conviction of Noorzai, who was alleged to have been distributing heroin in the United States since the 1990s, with the fact that Frerichs hadn’t been tried for any crime.

The swap is not the first the United States has undertaken in Afghanistan. In 2014, the Obama administration approved the exchange of five senior Afghans held at the Guantánamo Bay prison for U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, then a Taliban hostage. Other Americans abducted in Afghanistan have escaped or been freed.

The officials declined to say whether other U.S. citizens are now being held by the Taliban. Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists said an American filmmaker and an Afghan producer had been taken into Taliban custody. It was not immediately clear whether they were still being held.

The release of Frerichs comes as the Biden administration attempts to secure the release of two Americans it says are being wrongly held by Russia, potentially via another prisoner swap.

In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said officials had made Moscow a “substantial proposal” to secure the release of basketball star Brittney Griner and businessman Paul Whelan. The offer was believed to include the release of convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is imprisoned in the United States. On Monday, the Russian government accused Washington of holding up talks to secure their releases.

Laurel Miller, who served as a senior official for Afghanistan during the Obama and Trump administrations, said that while Frerichs’s release was a positive development, it wouldn’t necessarily lead to progress on other issues the United States has cited as impediments to fuller global support of the Taliban government, like allowing all girls to return to school.

“It’s very difficult to see that this solves any problems in the U.S.-Taliban relationship other than the specific problem of Frerichs being wrongfully held as a hostage,” she said. “This was a transactional exchange.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill)., whose office has described Frerichs as an “Illinoisan,” said she had been advocating for his release since the Trump administration. In a phone interview, she said she had urged the Biden administration to free Noorzai, arguing that the Afghan prisoner is elderly and in poor health.

“He’s being kept alive at taxpayers’ expense; we’re providing his health care,” Duckworth said she told U.S. officials. “And I’d rather have Mark come home.”

George reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Ryan reported from Washington. Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

U.S. looks to trade former Afghan aircraft for counterterrorism help in Central Asia

September 20, 2022 Current News Articles

By LARA SELIGMAN

Politico

The U.S. is negotiating with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to trade nearly 50 military aircraft flown across the border as the Afghan government collapsed last summer for help hunting terrorists in Afghanistan, according to two people with knowledge of the talks.

The fate of the U.S.-donated aircraft has been in limbo for more than a year, after Afghan air force pilots flew them to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan last August to escape Taliban capture. The Taliban have insisted the aircraft — a mixture of light attack planes and helicopters — are Afghan property and demanded them back. But Uzbek authorities say they are the property of the United States and will not be returned.

Little has been said publicly about the issue, in part because of the sensitivity of Afghan-Uzbek relations and Russia’s economic and military influence in Central Asia. But behind the scenes, U.S. officials have been quietly working to use the aircraft as leverage to gain a foothold in a region where the U.S. military no longer has a presence on the ground, according to a senior Defense Department official and a congressional aide with direct knowledge of the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.

The U.S. is planning to conduct an assessment of the aircraft to see if they are flyable, the official said. The goal is to provide a number of aircraft to the Uzbek and Tajik governments in exchange for an informal agreement to “deepen our security relationships” on border security and counterterrorism, the official said.

The deal could include anything from increased intelligence sharing to, in the long-term, basing troops or aircraft in those countries as a regional staging post for keeping an eye on terrorist activity in Afghanistan — something the Biden administration tried and failed to arrange before the withdrawal. Both countries border Afghanistan and are much closer than the American bases hundreds of miles away in the Middle East the U.S. military relies on for access to the country.

But for now, it’s more likely the agreement would involve access to information the Uzbeks and Tajiks have about terrorist networks in Afghanistan.

“If I give you an airplane, then I call you and say, ‘Hey, can you tell that guy who has a cousin in Afghanistan to go look at something’ — that might be the nature of the relationship. That’s a hypothetical,” the senior DoD official said. “It might not be that I want to fly from there, but it might be, do I have access to networks of people that have access into Afghanistan?”

The Biden administration touted the U.S. military’s ability to conduct “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism operations after American troops left Afghanistan last August. The U.S. has since conducted only one counterterrorism strike since then, a drone mission that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in July.

As the Taliban overran Kabul last summer, Afghan air force pilots flew about 25 percent of the total usable aircraft — 46 total — to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, according to a 2022 report assessing the collapse of the Afghan government. The aircraft included C-208 utility aircraft, A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft, as well as Mi-17, Mi-25 and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, according to satellite images analyzed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Most of the planes had been supplied by Washington to build up the capability of the Afghan air force.

Both Central Asian countries are “certainly very interested” in keeping those aircraft, the senior DoD official said.

As for any kind of basing agreement, the issue isn’t on the table at the moment, a DoD spokesperson said.

“DoD is not currently seeking any basing or permanent presence of U.S. military forces in Central Asia for any purpose,” spokesperson Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick said.

In the short-term, it’s unlikely either country would allow the U.S. to use their territory for basing given their close ties to Russia. Uzbekistan cooperated more closely with the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, leasing the Karshi-Khanabad air base to the Americans from 2001 to 2005 for Afghanistan operations. But that agreement was shut down amid unrest and pressure from the Kremlin. Uzbekistan also has close ties to the Taliban, and Uzbek society views any intervention in the Afghanistan conflict negatively.

Further, any U.S.-basing agreement in Uzbekistan would require a change to Uzbek law, which stipulates that the country cannot host any foreign military base on its territory.

Tajikistan, too, has a history of working with Washington, including permitting U.S. military planes to refuel at the country’s airports after the 9/11 attacks. But more recently, relations with Washington have been frosty, and the economy is also heavily dependent on both Russia and China. On the military front, Tajikistan is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance of selected former Soviet states, and already hosts a Russian military base on its territory.

However, of the Central Asian states, Tajikistan is “by far the most cooperative” on counterterrorism, the congressional aide said, noting that the country collaborates with the U.S. on border security and training.

A State Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

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