Senior Congress member warns US withdrawal from Afghanistan boosts ISIS operation

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press-

 

The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has stated that following the U.S. withdrawal and the fall of the Afghanistan government, “thousands of terrorists” escaped from prisons and are now aiding ISIS in attacks on other countries.

Michael McCaul criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, viewing them as a chance for terrorist groups like ISIS to strike the United States.

The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee reiterated concerns about the consequences of the fall of the previous government of Afghanistan during a CBC interview.

He remarked, “We had the fall of Afghanistan. Thousands of ISIS members escaped from Bagram prison and eventually settled in areas of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan.”

He added, “They [ISIS-Khorasan] are making their way; they are entering the United States through Mexico.”

McCaul highlighted the arrest of eight ISIS suspects in the U.S., questioning how many more might be in the country.

American media reported that eight Tajik nationals were arrested on June 22 for alleged membership in ISIS-Khorasan in New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

Concerns over ISIS-Khorasan’s expansion and its potential impact on U.S. security have prompted heightened vigilance and countermeasures, including a $10 million reward from the U.S. State Department for information disrupting ISIS-Khorasan’s financial operations.

Senior Congress member warns US withdrawal from Afghanistan boosts ISIS operation
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Haqqani, Chinese Envoy Discuss Security Cooperation, Regional Stability

The Chinese ambassador in Kabul expressed appreciation for the security provided for Chinese citizens and diplomats in Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Interior in a statement said that Khalifa Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting Minister of Interior, had discussions with Zhao Xing, the Chinese ambassador, on security issues, including regional stability.

According to the Ministry of Interior’s statement, the continuation of security and technical cooperation and the expansion of relations between the two countries were discussed.

The Chinese ambassador in Kabul expressed appreciation for the security provided for Chinese citizens and diplomats in Afghanistan, the statement said.

The Ministry of Interior said: “In this meeting, the Chinese Ambassador thanked the leadership of the Ministry of Interior for ensuring the security of Chinese projects, diplomats, and citizens and emphasized continued cooperation with this Ministry. During this meeting, both sides emphasized regional stability, ongoing security and technical cooperation, and bilateral relations.”

At the same time, some political and military analysts called the cooperation between the two countries in security areas important for creating stability in the region. They said that to increase cooperation in these areas, the relations between the two countries need to expand.

“Afghanistan needs cooperation from all countries, especially regional countries and Central Asia, and China can cooperate with Afghanistan. From a security perspective, I think Afghanistan is currently not in a bad security situation,” Samim Shamsi, a political analyst, told TOLOnews.

“The land is under the control of the Islamic Emirate, and no harm comes from the borders to anyone, and they do not allow anyone else to do such a thing. Therefore, if the problems that exist in the air, since it is not under the control of the Islamic Emirate, if security is ensured in the air, investors will go where there is security,” said Mohammad Mateen Mohammadi, a military analyst.

Earlier, the Administrative Deputy of the Prime Minister had also asked the Chinese ambassador in a meeting to support the stance of the Islamic Emirate on the international stage.

Haqqani, Chinese Envoy Discuss Security Cooperation, Regional Stability
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Certain Consulates Abroad Not Recognized By Islamic Emirate: MoFA

According to the Deputy Spokesperson of the Ministry, this decision stems from the failure of these consulates to engage with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate announced today (Tuesday) that consular services provided by Afghanistan in several Western countries are no longer recognized.

According to the Deputy Spokesperson of the Ministry, this decision stems from the failure of these consulates to engage with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moving forward, any documents issued by these consulates will not be accepted by the Islamic Emirate’s authorities, and the ministry takes no responsibility for such documents.

“In London, Belgium, Berlin, Bonn, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, and Australia, consular services such as affidavits, certifications, non-liability documents, passport issuance, passport extension stickers, and visa stickers are not accepted by the central administration, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds no responsibility for these documents,” said Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal, the deputy spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Afghan immigrants in European countries call for more consular facilities to be provided for them in European countries.

Yar Mohammad Pardis, an Afghan immigrant in France, said: “We want more progress in providing these services, especially in the area of passport issuance and renewal.”

Aziz Maarij, a former diplomat, said: “It is better to implement this principle; otherwise, Afghan citizens abroad will spend their money and receive documents, but if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not recognize them and they are not valid in the administration, it will lead to mistrust and a waste of time. “

Previously, the Afghan embassies in the Netherlands and Spain had reported their cooperation with the Islamic Emirate.

Certain Consulates Abroad Not Recognized By Islamic Emirate: MoFA
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The Taliban say they no longer recognize Afghan diplomatic missions set up by the former government

BY  RIAZAT BUTT

Associated Press

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban said Tuesday they no longer recognize Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions set up by the former, Western-backed government and that they will not honor passports, visas and other documents issued by diplomats associated with the previous administration.

It’s the latest attempt by the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan’s embassies and consulates since returning to power in 2021. Many Taliban leaders are under sanctions, and no country recognizes them as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.

The country’s seat at the United Nations is still held by the former government, which was led by Ashraf Ghani, though the Taliban administration is seeking to claim that seat as well.

In a statement posted on the social media platform X, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that documents issued by missions in London, Berlin, Belgium, Bonn, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Norway are no longer accepted and the ministry “bears no responsibility” for those documents.

The documents would include passports, visa stickers, deeds and endorsements.

The ministry said people in those countries will instead need to approach embassies and consulates controlled by the Taliban administration — the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as they call their government.

“All Afghan nationals living abroad and foreigners can visit the IEA political and consular missions in other countries, other than the above-mentioned missions, to access consular services,” the post said.

The Taliban did not immediately respond to queries seeking clarification or additional details.

An Afghan national living in London where he is pursuing a master’s degree, Asad Mobariz, said he was disappointed and frustrated with the decision. It’s unfair and impractical to expect Afghans in the affected countries to travel to another country for consular services, he said.

“This decision disregards our needs and places an undue burden on us,” he told The Associated Press. “These services are crucial for my ability to travel, work and maintain my legal status in the U.K.”

The move puts the burden on Afghans living in Europe and will lead to increased financial strain and potential legal issues for those unable to access consular services locally, he said.

Another Afghan national, Adnan Najibi, who lives in Germany, said discrediting embassies was unlikely to benefit the Taliban.

“I live in a small town with a relatively low population; however, I still see that there are hundreds of Afghans living here,” Najibi said. “If someone previously obtained an Afghan passport, marriage certificate or any other document in a day, it may now take weeks or even longer.”

The German government said Tuesday it was assessing the potential impact of this announcement.

Afghanistan’s embassy in Britain said on X that it “firmly declares” it will continue all its consular and diplomatic services without any interruption.

In March 2023, the Taliban said they were trying to take charge of more Afghan embassies abroad. Their chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the administration had sent diplomats to at least 14 countries.

The new development means the closest available Afghan embassies for people in Europe are likely to be in Spain and the Netherlands. In October, those two countries said they were working with Taliban authorities in Kabul after the Taliban suspended consular services at Afghanistan’s embassies in London and Vienna over what they said was “lack of transparency and cooperation.”

Since the Taliban takeover, some countries have retained active diplomatic missions in Afghanistan, including Pakistan and China.

Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, said the Taliban were confident and emboldened, buoyed by the informal recognition they have received from many countries.

They are apparently trying to force Afghans to engage with the Taliban instead of with diplomats loyal to the former administration, he said.

“It’s about giving the Taliban more diplomatic clout abroad and consigning the pre-Taliban holdouts to irrelevance. The fact that many of these missions aren’t very active anyway makes Taliban efforts easier to pull off,” Kugelman said. “It’s like pushing on a door that’s already open.”

The Taliban have received informal recognition through establishing bilateral ties with countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan, and holding high-level meetings with officials from those countries. This past month, the Taliban were the Afghan representatives at United Nations-hosted talks on Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar, although the U.N. stressed that this did not amount to official recognition.

Also on Tuesday, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said local intelligence officials in May forcibly closed the office of a women-led nongovernmental group for allowing some of its Afghan female employees to show in the office up for work.

The NGO was allowed to reopen days later, after signing a statement saying it would not allow women employees to come to the office, according to the mission’s latest report on human rights in Afghanistan. The report did not disclose the office’s location for “protection reasons.”

Since taking over, the Taliban have stopped girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and banned women from many jobs and most public spaces. Restrictions on women and girls are a major obstacle to the Taliban gaining official recognition as the country’s legitimate government.

The Taliban were not immediately available for comment on the report.

The Taliban say they no longer recognize Afghan diplomatic missions set up by the former government
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Afghanistan War Commission opens inquiry of America’s longest conflict

The Washington Post
The bipartisan panel will study the conflict’s myriad failures with a mandate to recommend how the United States can avoid a repeat performance.

Against the backdrop of America’s roiling political landscape and two raging foreign wars, a coterie of former U.S. government officials and academics on Friday opened what will be an extensive examination of the United States’ 20-year foray in Afghanistan — the nation’s longest conflict.

“Today we make history,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, co-chair of the Afghanistan War Commission. “Never before has the United States commissioned such a wide-ranging independent legislative assessment of its own decision-making in the aftermath of a conflict.”

The mission is daunting. The 16-member bipartisan panel has been tasked by Congress with determining what went wrong and what U.S. leaders could do differently the next time the United States goes to war. Their mandate encompasses policies and actions taken by four presidential administrations, the U.S. military, the State Department, U.S. allies, and many other agencies, organizations and people.

The commission has 18 months to carry out its research and untilAugust 2026 to deliver a final public report.

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 ended the war but delivered the country back into the hands of the Taliban, an enemy Washington spent trillions of dollars trying to vanquish beginning in the aftermath of 9/11. The bloody and chaotic exit resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans; left thousands of American allies behind to an uncertain fate; triggered broad, bipartisan outrage; and gave rise to bitterly politicized congressional inquiries and hearings.

The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee is expected next month to deliver a final report detailing the findings of its investigation of the withdrawal. That inquiry has featured hours of heated and sometimes emotional testimony from Biden administration officials, military commanders, veterans and their families. The committee next week intends to interview Jen Psaki, President Biden’sWhite House press secretary at the time of the withdrawal.

The war commission’s 4½-hour discussion Friday, held in the Washington headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, featured former ambassadors, military officers and CIA personnel as witnesses. It drew a small crowd of observers, many of whom were also connected to the war.

Chaudhary and her co-chair, Colin F. Jackson, a former Defense Department official, are cognizant of the charged atmosphere that surrounds their undertaking. The commission itself was born of the collective outrage that followed the withdrawal three years ago.

But they stressed that they seek a dialogue that is thoughtful and apolitical, even if commission members were handpicked by Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the heat of national anguish. “We are bipartisan in our composition, but our work is nonpartisan,” Chaudhary said.

It’s hard to ignore the issue of blame, they concede. It “keeps coming up in our conversations,” Chaudhary told the panelists. People want to know if the commission will name and shame; if it will deliver some measure of justice by calling out the leaders who made the worst critical decisions in the war.

The commission will try not to do that, while at the same time endeavoring to produce “a full, objective, rigorous, unvarnished and unflinching account of our performance as a government and a military,” Jackson said. “We owe it to the generation that served in Afghanistan, and the generation that will serve somewhere else.”

It isn’t just an assessment of the war’sfailures. The commissioners’report will include guidance, they said: practical advice that could be applied to other wars the United States is involved in, such as those ongoing in the Middle East and Ukraine, or to wars that have yet to happen, but someday will.

If the first hearing can serve as a guide for what commissioners are likely to conclude, it’s that so many different things went wrong.

Consecutive administrations failed to address the critical role that Pakistan — an ostensible U.S. ally — played in sustaining and shielding the Taliban, said Nader Nadery, a witness who served as a senior Afghan government official. U.S. leaders also often prioritized short-term military goals over longer-term values, and sometimes employed rhetoric that undermined the Afghan government’s credibility, he said.

There were convoluted chains of command throughout the war; disruptive personality clashes between American decision-makers and agencies; and commanding officers served tours of duty that were so short as to represent “the institutional equivalent of a frontal lobotomy,” said another witness, Ronald Neumann, a former ambassador to Afghanistan and the author of “The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan” — published 11years before the U.S. withdrawal.

There was a terribly devised system for parliamentary elections that invited fraud, said Noah Coburn, a political anthropologist who provided testimony Friday. There was too much public meddling in Afghan politics by U.S. leaders, and too little policy input solicited from the Afghans. Poor U.S. decisions when it came to security partners, development and investments fueled corruption, which spread mistrust of the government and support for the anti-government Taliban, said Coburn. Civilian casualties, abusive warlords and poor security did that too.

It’s not that no one was saying this during the war. Much has been written. Experts and documentation of on-the-ground events were ample as they were happening, commissioners and panelists acknowledged. But often, U.S. officials failed to absorb the information, and consecutive administrations failed to use that knowledge to change course.

Jackson, the co-chair, said, “A fair question is, but what decisions are you going to look at?”

“The easy answer is we’re going to consider a much larger set of decisions than we can possibly cover in detail, and there will be a very difficult winnowing process,” he said.

Among the obvious points of interest, Jackson said, will be the decision to invade Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The commissioners will examine the decision to surge U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2009. They will look at the decision-making that went into negotiations with the Taliban. And of course, they will look at decisions related to the withdrawal.

The commissioners acknowledged that their mandate has become vast  to cynics, perhaps, so ambitious as to be almost impossible. What started as a mission to understand and to educate is also partly an exercise in collective therapy, the commissioners said, an opportunity not just for governmentofficials, but for the larger population, and particularly veterans,to come to terms with what happened.

“For so many of us, the war still lingers in our minds. We carry the moral, physical and emotional injuries in our daily lives,” Chaudhary said. “Closure may not be possible for everyone.” But a space is needed for “civic discourse,” she added.

Afghanistan War Commission opens inquiry of America’s longest conflict
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Switzerland to return to Afghanistan

27/07/2024

Switzerland will reopen its humanitarian office in Afghanistan in autumn 2024 instead of summer as initially announced, reported SRF.

Four employees will be sent from Switzerland to oversee humanitarian projects financed by the Swiss federal government in the Afghan capital Kabul. According to the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag, a spokesperson for Switzerland’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the information.

The Swiss embassy in Pakistan will continue to be responsible for consular and diplomatic services, however.

After the Taliban seized control of the country three years ago, many Western nations, including Switzerland, fled and closed their offices there. Cooperation with the Taliban government was something many governments could not countenance given the regime’s cruel treatment of some people, women in particular.

However, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan continues to worsen. According to the World Bank, 48% of Afghanistan’s population lives in poverty. Switzerland therefore sees a need for action.

Switzerland to return to Afghanistan
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‘Never Been Done Before’: A True Investigation of a Failed American War

By NAHAL TOOSI

Politico

In their first joint interview since the launch of the Afghanistan War Commission, co-chairs and veteran Afghan policy thinkers Shamila Chaudhary and Colin Jackson discussed their move into an active new phase, including interviewing the diplomats, generals and politicians who shaped the war.

Their goal? To determine just what went wrong in the 20-year conflict.

“No one will look like an unblemished hero, and nobody will look like a complete scapegoat,” Jackson said. “But the key is to be unflinching.”

The commission was established with bipartisan congressional support after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, but it’s obvious the seeds of failure were planted long before that. Chaudhary and Jackson are now tasked with developing a major, multipart report on how such mistakes can be avoided in the future.

Jackson is an academic, a military veteran and a former Defense Department official. Chaudhary is a former White House and State Department official. Both worked on Afghanistan policy during their years in the federal government, adding to their strong desire to understand why things fell apart.

In the interview, they discussed everything from talking to the Taliban to whether November’s presidential election could upend their work. And while they told POLITICO Magazine that they weren’t focused on ascribing blame, they acknowledged there’s plenty to spread around.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Your commission launched its work roughly a year ago. Where are you at now?

Jackson: We’re at the end of the building the team, sort of midway into the genuine research part of the project. The nature of commissions is it takes some time to assemble the right team. We’re going to end up having a team of close to 50 people on the professional staff.

Chaudhary: The research and analysis stage allows us to do all the important pickaxe work that commissions do, which is put out requests for information and documents to the different executive branch agencies, to develop our extensive timeline of the war, and the decisions and the inflection points that we want to analyze in the course of our project. And then to also build our extensive list of people that worked on the war that we want to interview.

How granular is the timeline going to be? Am I going to be able to climb up and down it?

Chaudhary: So there’s the early part of the war, which was heavily focused on counterterrorism. During the Obama administration, we saw a surge, both military and civilian, and that needs to be documented. Then the latter part of the war which involved these intense discussions about negotiations. All of these themes were present throughout, but they got more complex over time, and we all have our own little sliver of it.

What’s really important about this project is that we’re able to put them all together into one overarching narrative that no one has ever seen before. What’s so critical about getting this right is producing quite a historic project and report for not just policymakers but for the American public and a global audience.

Your three key goals are to write an official history of the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan; lay out lessons learned from the experience; and make recommendations that could include changes in government process and structures. How will you ensure that people in power listen to you and follow through on your ideas?

Jackson: The imperative behind the entire project is learning. The experience of Afghanistan over 20 years is in the rearview mirror. The question is what can we make of it to improve the performance of a future generation in some unknown, future U.S. involvement abroad? We can’t guarantee the reaction of the U.S. government to this, but we can control the quality, depth, seriousness, rigorousness of the study that we produce.

Chaudhary: We believe just by virtue of existing, this project has impact. This has never been done before in relation to any other previous conflict or war. No other commission has been given this much time, this large of a scope, and this much independence and authority to do the work on such an intense issue in our foreign policy — and in recent memory. People are still kind of processing these issues. So I think that impact will be there, and it will speak for itself.

I know you’re trying to avoid making your report about laying blame. But let’s talk about blame.

I find it highly amusing when the Defense Department tries to blame the withdrawal chaos on the State Department, as if the Pentagon played no role in the Afghan army’s failures, or when members of Congress act like they had nothing to do with making it so hard to get visas for Afghan interpreters. Or when the CIA pretends it’s invisible in all this.

If you don’t assign blame here, there, maybe everywhere, then how will anyone be held responsible? And shouldn’t people and institutions be held responsible?

Jackson: My guess is that we will see flattering and unflattering portrayals of different institutions and agencies over this 20-year span. No one will look like an unblemished hero, and nobody will look like a complete scapegoat. But the key is to be unflinching, to pursue the truth as best we can understand it and lay it out to an informed general audience so that they can come to the conclusions that are appropriate.

Chaudhary: I think that we can draw a throughline throughout the conflict, in that there was a very limited approach at one point of the war, which then evolved into a whole of government approach. The dissonance amongst the agencies — that’s important for our work. We need to understand where the different U.S. stakeholders are coming from.

How does your work compare to the 9/11 Commission?

Jackson: We’ve been in active discussions with the 9/11 Commission, with the folks who were involved in that team on the professional side. And we’re doing our best to sort of extract what they learned from that process. They were the first to point out that the scope we had been given was considerably more challenging in many ways than looking at a single episode and looking to the left and right of it, which is what the 9/11 Commission did.

Chaudhary: The accessibility of the 9/11 Commission report is something that we want to reflect in our outputs, not just in the final report, but also how we engage with stakeholders throughout the process. A lot of people have read the 9/11 Commission report; it’s studied in high schools and colleges and universities.

It almost won the National Book Award.

Chaudhary: That’s right. The other critical aspect of the 9/11 Commission’s work that applies to us is how they objectively represent the perspectives of foreigners in their work. They do an excellent job of outlining interests and motivations of people and states and governments that a lot of Americans don’t know anything about.

What about Afghans? How can and will they play a role in your work? Because there’s no direct Afghan representation on the commission itself from what I can tell.

Chaudhary: Representation of multiple perspectives is really important for our work, in particular the Afghan perspectives and the Afghan experiences of the war. We’ve done several things to meet this need. We’ve hired a senior adviser for Afghan outreach. We are planning several outreach events and private engagement opportunities that will help educate us on the Afghan experience.

Several of our commissioners have lived and worked in Afghanistan for long periods of time, have published on these issues and are world-renowned experts. As we continue to do these engagements, we will meet more people and individuals who will inform our work.

Are you going to talk to the Taliban?

Chaudhary: That is under consideration, at the right time. Obviously, we want to talk about everyone that is part of the story of the war.

They were kind of a big part of the story of the war.

Jackson: The question of sort of timing on that is a relevant one, but we’re certainly open in principle as we are talking to all sorts of actors in the story.

The Pakistanis?

Jackson: Absolutely.

Chaudhary: Congress has asked us to look at the Pakistanis. They’ve asked us to look at the foreign interlocutors, other governments. We are willing to talk to everyone who is involved in the U.S. decision-making and the impact of that, and so whoever is involved in that we will have to consider that.

Jackson: We would be telling half the story, one hand clapping, if all we did was look at U.S. government plans in isolation.

On a technical level, some of these groups involved are designated terrorist organizations in one fashion or another. Can you nonetheless engage with them?

Jackson: Any engagement with groups like the Taliban is complicated. We see this in the story of the Afghan War, the United States government came up with ways of interacting with challenging groups and audiences. My guess is that something similar is at least in the realm of the feasible for the commission.

American politics are far more polarized than the post-9/11 years. How are you going to ensure that your work is not distorted by partisanship or that partisans won’t try to weaponize your work, including along the way?

Jackson: The payoff of this project, if done the right way, will not occur in the here and now, it won’t occur in this political season. It will be a future generation of professionals in the U.S. government who are applying insights that hopefully derive in this 20-year experience. So I think to become too narrowly focused on what will be inevitably polarizing sorts of attitudes in this year would be to miss the larger point here. If learning is the imperative, the political tensions of the present are decidedly secondary in our view.

Chaudhary: Our commissioners were appointed in a bipartisan manner from all the relevant committees, but as actors and agents of the commission, we are nonpartisan and we’ve built a nonpartisan professional staff and we’ve established bylaws to guide our work and to protect minority views and to protect that nonpartisan nature of our work. The history of this commission when it gets written, it will show that it came into existence because of bipartisan support.

A lot of folks ask us, “What happens if Trump wins the election? What happens to your work?” Our work is going to stay the same. We are persistent in our mandate. We are going to keep pursuing our goal of looking for answers and explanations of the war.

If I’m a government employee who played a role in Afghan policy in the past three decades, how could I be affected by your ongoing work? Will I get called in for an interview? Can I say no?

Jackson: We’ve been engaged in discussions with past and current decision makers in all branches of government, and I think those conversations will likely continue in various ways. There’s no way for us to fully understand the conflict — the decisions that were made, the alternatives that were considered — without canvassing the people who were involved.

So the bottom line for government employees is, “Yes, I could get called in.”

Chaudhary: The legislation is worded that we are to analyze U.S. decision-making, the individuals and the institutions that were involved in that. We will begin to delineate a process by which we identify who we want to talk to. It would be hard to interview everyone at every level that was involved. And so, depending on how we define decision-making, and which decisions we actually look at, that will determine who we speak with.

How do you expect and want U.S. military veterans to play a role in your work?

Jackson: There is no audience more interested in our work at some level than the veteran community — they’re intensely interested, and there is a hunger for accountability, understanding and the like. I think the way we ultimately get at that is by laying out for them the logic of the war in these key decisions.

I’m a veteran of the Afghanistan war. I served in uniform there in 2011. I have a son who’s an infantry officer now. I have a deep personal, visceral interest both in understanding the conflict in its totality and better arming my son and his comrades with a level of understanding that will ideally make them better.

Chaudhary: We’ve hired several professional staff who are also veterans of the war in Afghanistan and are guiding our extensive outreach. One of the reasons I took this project on was that I felt like I didn’t actually get exposed enough to the perspectives of veterans and Afghans as I was doing the important work of diplomacy from Washington.

What’s been the hardest part so far?

Jackson: Probably the hardest part and the greatest opportunity is the scope. It will be illuminating to take a look at how these parts fit together.

Chaudhary: I see the high level of expectations for our work from the different communities that participated in the war as one of the biggest challenges, but it’s also an opportunity for us to do good work together in a collaborative way that we weren’t able to do during war time.

The other challenge which is also an opportunity is the deep emotion and visceral response that looking at the war in Afghanistan elicits from people. That I see as something very organic and not to be ignored. And how we address emotion and empathy and moral injury through a policy project is a very challenging situation, but I see it as something that we should boldly take on because our country deserves this. Americans deserve it.

Jackson: If we do our work well, it will be foundational.

What’s a question you wish I had asked?

Jackson: You talk about key decisions — what key decisions?

I think the hardest part of the project will probably be narrowing even that set of key decisions to a manageable number. Clearly, there are ones that stand out in the popular understanding of the word, but there may also be ones that we discover in the process of inquiry where we say, “This was a critical inflection point in which there were opportunities to act differently. Why did we choose as we did? If we had chosen differently, what would that have done?”

And a key decision might be something like the decision to surge troops or go into peace talks or decisions about how to build the Afghan army.

Jackson: Or the organization of the Afghan government at the Bonn conference. We’re going to identify a series of sort of critical decisions or critical program decisions that were made.

We’re also going to say, okay, across all these strands of government, which were the large things and look to both the left and right of those decisions. What alternatives were considered? Why did we choose as we did? We’ll look at implementation of those decisions, and then a reaction of actors in Afghanistan and around Afghanistan.

Do you ever wake up and think, “Oh boy, what did I get myself into?”

Chaudhary: This is an incredible project to work on. I feel like all of the work that we all did, inside and outside government, deserves this chapter in the story now, because if we didn’t have this opportunity, it would remain unfinished.

Jackson: The best problem in the world is a job that’s sufficiently challenging that keeps you engaged all the time. And no matter how challenging the day-to-day stuff is, you’ve got this sort of North Star in that the American public deserves a full understanding and accounting of this intervention.

Nahal Toosi is POLITICO’s senior foreign affairs correspondent. She has reported on war, genocide and political chaos in a career that has taken her around the world. Her reported column, Compass, delves into the decision-making of the global national security and foreign policy establishment — and the fallout that comes from it.

‘Never Been Done Before’: A True Investigation of a Failed American War
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Traders end monthslong protest at Pakistan-Afghan border crossing

Initial reports indicate that small traders can now resume crossing with Pakistani and/or Afghan identity documents. Abdul Hadi, a trader, told VOA that the sit-in ended Sunday and that he crossed into Afghanistan on Tuesday.

The protesters’ committee spokesperson, Sadiq Achakzai, told VOA that Chaman Sit-in Committee members held talks with military leadership to resolve the issue. However, no official notification regarding the change has been issued by the government.

Former Balochistan caretaker interior minister Inayat Ullah Kahan Kasi, who mediated talks between Pakistan’s government and protesters, played a crucial role in ending the 9-month protest.

“I do not represent any government authority but government and security agencies assigned me the job to end the protest and I did it,” Kasi said.

Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind refused to discuss the issue when VOA contacted him.

Pakistani officials have said that cross-border movement must be regulated to improve security and control smuggling.

Pashtun tribes straddling both sides of the British-era border’s Durand Line have historically moved freely for businesses and communal life.

A surge in violence in Pakistan since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan nearly three years ago has triggered security concerns and Pakistani government officials have insisted the border must be regulated.

Pakistani officials have blamed the Afghan Taliban for sheltering terror group Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which, according to Pakistani authorities, carries out cross-border attacks targeting Pakistani security forces. The Taliban denies the accusations.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Afghan interim government, said recently in an interview with Khurasan Diaries, a Pakistani digital news platform, that border trade issues and other matters should be dealt with separately.

Pakistan’s military said in a statement July 16 that eight soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into an army compound in Bannu, a remote city in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

A splinter group of Pakistani Taliban, led by militant commander Gul Bahadur, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Traders end monthslong protest at Pakistan-Afghan border crossing
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EU sounds alarm on worsening water crisis in Afghanistan

The European Union Delegation to Afghanistan has expressed concern over the worsening water crisis in the country, emphasizing the need to protect lakes and groundwater for future generations.

In a statement posted on X on Saturday, July 27, the organization highlighted that drought, pollution, and excessive water use are threatening the country’s water resources.

According to the EU Delegation in Afghanistan, “Together, we can build a safer Afghanistan and world in the face of water challenges.”

The organization noted that approximately 80% of the population in Afghanistan lacks adequate access to drinking water and urged, “Let us protect our rivers, lakes, and groundwater for future generations.”

Previously, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had warned of the water scarcity crisis in Afghanistan, stating that this challenge affects millions of people.

The UNDP identified severe drought, economic instability, the damaging effects of prolonged conflicts, and climate change as key factors exacerbating the crisis in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, the drought and lack of potable water are particularly severe, compounding the daily struggles of residents. The city faces a critical shortage of clean drinking water, with many areas relying on unsafe sources or purchasing expensive bottled water. This shortage not only affects public health but also exacerbates existing socio-economic issues.

Efforts to address the water crisis in Kabul are hampered by ongoing conflicts and political instability, making it difficult to implement effective solutions.

The situation calls for urgent international support and coordinated efforts to develop sustainable water management systems and infrastructure to alleviate the severe water scarcity faced by the city’s population.

EU sounds alarm on worsening water crisis in Afghanistan
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Chinese Firm to construct three Hydroelectric Dams in Kunar, Afghanistan

The Ministry of Water and Energy of Afghanistan has announced that a Chinese company is ready to invest in large-scale hydroelectric dams (Shal, Sagi, and Sartaq) in Kunar province.

On Sunday, July 28th, the Ministry released a statement about the meeting between Abdul Latif Mansoor, the acting Minister of Water and Energy, and representatives of a Chinese company in Kabul.

The statement quotes the Chinese company officials expressing their interest in investing in these projects. They have indicated their eagerness to sign a cooperation agreement with the Ministry as soon as possible and to start the work in practice.

The acting Minister of Water and Energy welcomed the Chinese investment in this sector, emphasizing that “the capacity to generate electricity from the Kunar River is sufficient. If all these dams are constructed in the future, Afghanistan could even export electricity to neighboring countries.”

Details about the Chinese company and the construction costs of the dams have not yet been provided.

In recent years, China has invested in numerous developmental projects in Afghanistan, particularly in mining, hydroelectric dam construction, and other development initiatives.

This continued investment underscores China’s commitment to supporting Afghanistan’s infrastructure development and economic growth.

The investment by the Chinese company in the hydroelectric projects in Kunar represents a significant step toward enhancing Afghanistan’s energy infrastructure. These dams are expected to bolster the region’s power supply, potentially enabling Afghanistan to export electricity to neighboring countries in the future.

Chinese Firm to construct three Hydroelectric Dams in Kunar, Afghanistan
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