Quotes of the Day:
“What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.”
- Author David Levithan
“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.”
- Sandy Dahl, wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl
”When Americans lend a hand to one another, nothing is impossible. We’re not about what happened on 9/11. We’re about what happened on 9/12.”
-Jeff Parness, founder of New York Says Thank You
1. How America wasted its unipolar moment
2. What difference did 9/11 make?
3. Noncombatant Evacuation Operation - Afghanistan (Update)
4. History's 'what if' questions
5. The nobility of service in a post 9/11 world
6. Pakistan Is an Arsonist That Wants You to Think It’s a Firefighter
7. House committee demands answers on Afghanistan
8. U.S. Forces Were Training the Guinean Soldiers Who Took Off to Stage a Coup
9. NSW Wraps Up SOF Phase of MALABAR with Partner Nations
10. Beyond Forever War: A Smarter Counterterrorism Approach Is Now Within Reach
11. America Did Al-Qaeda’s Work for It
12. Pro-PRC Influence Campaign Expands to Dozens of Social Media Platforms, Websites, and Forums in at Least Seven Languages, Attempted to Physically Mobilize Protesters in the U.S.
13. Jacksonian America: The Sleeping Giant Awakened by 9/11
14. Opinion | Biden is embracing a redefinition of war — but not an alternative to war
15. How Hollywood Sold Out to China
16. What the U.S. Has Learned About Fighting Terror Since Sept. 11
17. Drastic changes to military pay, benefits needed to meet rising personnel costs: report
1. How America wasted its unipolar moment
A tough critique for us to reflect upon on the 9/11 anniversary.
Competitors, after all, can help. Mr Kennan thought Americans were lucky to have the Soviet Union around. Their very survival, he wrote in 1947, depended on “pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear”. Whatever history may have intended, it proved him more right than wrong about the effects of the cold war. It did give America national purpose. As Mr Gore put it when accepting the Supreme Court decision which delivered the presidency to Mr Bush in 2000, “This is America and we put country before party.”
The war on terror has had no such ennobling or unifying results. Not only has America failed to strengthen an international order that conforms to its values. America’s own public institutions and many of its private ones—whether from confusion, exhaustion, fear or partisan political assault—are also emerging weaker from this 20-year experiment in power projection. One measure is the fact that an act of political grace, of deference to an American ideal, like that of Mr Gore now seems all but unthinkable. The message he saw his concession sending to “our fellow members of the world community”—that the strength of American democracy is shown most clearly through the difficulties it can overcome—may still be true. But the 21 years since have not provided much support for it.
How America wasted its unipolar moment
The war on terror improved neither the nation’s standing nor the nation itself
Sep 11th 2021
NEW YORK
WHEN, IN 1998, President Bill Clinton fired cruise missiles at terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan, a reporter asked the secretary of defence if there wasn’t a “striking resemblance” to the plot of “Wag the Dog”, a film in which a White House consultant confects a faraway war to distract from a presidential sex scandal. Popular culture and sex scandals loomed large in American society during the 1990s; foreign affairs did not. Abroad was where the impediments to Ross and Rachel’s predestined coupledom came from in “Friends”.
Those who still paid attention to America’s role in the world lacked a definition for it. Having become the world’s only superpower, America had very little idea how to use that power—if, indeed, it should use it that much at all.
September 11th 2001 brought this era of distraction and aimlessness to an end. The horror of that day unified the country, all but erasing memories of President George W. Bush’s divisive victory over Al Gore the year before. It also created, for Americans, the prospect of global solidarity. “The world has changed in a way that we are all vulnerable,” said Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate foreign-relations committee, the following day.
America’s mission, he went on, was obvious: to take the lead in “a struggle between civilisation and barbarity”. A few weeks later, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Mr Biden imagined how that new purpose—and specifically a new common cause with Russia which the struggle would make not just possible but necessary—“could shape this half-century as the cold war shaped the last”.
A big claim. The strategy of containing the Soviet Union, first articulated by George Kennan, a diplomat, in 1947, governed America’s conduct in the world from then until the Soviet Union’s dissolution. It provided nine successive presidential administrations with a compass and a rallying point, producing not just a series of capital-d doctrines (preceded by names like Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter), but also a national highway system, a science boom and a common cause—as well as witch-hunts for communists and the folly of Vietnam. It led to a green revolution in developing-country agriculture and put a man on the Moon.
It also justified hard trade-offs in foreign policy. It gave presidents a rationale, however thin, for alliances with despots. It argued for patience in building democratic institutions in South Korea and Taiwan like those established in West Germany and Japan. In 1972 it prompted the boldest stroke in late-20th-century American diplomacy: the opening to China.
When the Berlin Wall fell, America’s accumulated economic, technological, cultural and military power lost its counterweight. After Iraqi troops swept into Kuwait the following year the world soon got a glimpse of what this “unipolar” era might look like. The spectacularly one-sided Gulf war of 1991 provided the first large-scale demonstration of America’s might in decades. Stealth, precision-guided munitions and long-range cruise missiles developed during the cold war found new application beyond it.
The institutions, mindset and, in the form of the first George Bush, leadership demonstrated in that war were also products of the world gone by—and less adaptable to new forms of conflict. Cold-war concerns about coalition-building and the sanctity of state borders worked reasonably well when it came to liberating Kuwait. The lessons of the previous 40 years were far less helpful when it came to shoring up weak states, such as Somalia, or quelling intra-state conflict, as in Rwanda or Bosnia, or fighting transnational threats such as terrorism. And by leaving Saddam Hussein in power the war also implied, unsatisfyingly to some, that while borders mattered to America, tyranny did not.
The lack of a settled idea about what, if anything, the lone hyperpower should do about such problems made foreign policy in the 1990s “like being set loose on the ocean and there wasn’t really any charted course”, as Madeleine Albright, Mr Clinton’s secretary of state, later put it. The task of coming up with a guiding principle for America’s role as overarching as containment became known in the White House as the “Kennan sweepstakes”; aides consulted Mr Kennan himself. But to no real avail. As Joe Biden said in 1998—the same year the Clinton administration had launched its first, derided missile strikes against al-Qaeda—there was “no consensus on the US role in the world”.
When Mr Biden delivered his talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in October 2001 American forces had just invaded Afghanistan in order to accomplish what those missile strikes had not. A new consensus had crystallised, and Mr Biden imagined it being backed by the rest of the world. Vladimir Putin, he said, was a strategic thinker who was taking on reactionaries because he saw “he must cast his lot with the West”. America and China now shared interests in fighting terrorism and maintaining peace in Central Asia. Even Iran might warm to the Americans. It was, after all, helping in Afghanistan.
Twenty years on, the world is not the one Mr Biden hoped for. The framework George W. Bush’s administration adopted for its post-9/11 mission in the world, the global war on terror, certainly put an end to the foreign-policy establishment’s worries about the role of their hyperpower and how fully to use its force. Containing the Soviet Union had kept a lid on America, too, forcing it to acknowledge complex geopolitical interests, accept lesser evils to fend off greater ones and cautiously avoid pushing its nuclear adversary too far. Now America could be uncontained.
But for all the deaths that followed, Afghanistan sits today in the hands from which it was being taken when Mr Biden was giving his speech. The calamitous invasion of Iraq has left behind a country divided and under the sway of an Iran that has not warmed to America one little bit. And the effort expended in the war on terror has undermined America’s ability to face the challenge from China on which Mr Biden needs, and would prefer, to focus. It is a challenge which comes, as the cold war’s did, from a rival great power offering a fundamentally different political settlement and seeking global influence.
With the time long past for imagining China and Russia standing shoulder-to-shoulder with America, Mr Biden now wants to constrain them by reaffirming what his administration, in an incantatory manner, calls the rules-based international order. But having bent and broken those rules for 20 years, America has strained their credibility, as well as its own.
Fighting a furtive, transnational enemy made respect for sovereignty a luxury America no longer chose to afford. To deny terrorists any haven, it could not permit weak states to suppurate. Norms were abnegated, allegiance all: either you were with America, Mr Bush said, or you were with the terrorists. Helpful tyrants were tolerated. America’s neglect of (under Mr Bush and his successor, Barack Obama) and contempt for (under Donald Trump) international institutions like the UN has left them ill equipped to help.
Fools rush in
As the Bush administration began rallying support for war in Iraq, Mr Kennan, then aged 98, warned against the new strategy. Even a sole superpower could not “confront all the painful and dangerous situations that exist in this world”. It was, he said, “beyond our capabilities”. He accused Democrats of going along with Mr Bush out of timidity.
Mr Biden could have been one of those he had in mind. In a speech given in 2002, during the Senate’s debate over the Iraq-war authorisation, he emphasised the importance of UN support for an invasion; he spoke of the danger of any country arrogating to itself the right to wage war to prevent a possible, eventual threat; and he warned of the “sin of Vietnam”, of “the failure of two presidents to level with the American people of what the costs would be”. And then he voted for the war.
So did all other leading Democrats with aspirations to be president. Voicing doubt was left to those whose aspirations were yet to come—such as Mr Obama—and to those whose aspirations had already passed by. Mr Gore, the only nationally elected politician to have served in Vietnam, had supported the first Gulf war in 1991, unlike Mr Biden and most other Democratic senators. In 2002 he strongly criticised the rush to return.
In 2005 Mr Bush’s second inaugural address gave perhaps the loftiest description of what had become known as the Bush Doctrine, calling for the kind of unilateral, preventive action Mr Biden said he opposed but had, in practice, voted for. “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,” Mr Bush declared. “The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world…America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.”
This was not true, and the way the war was prosecuted made that painfully clear. Various strategically placed and well-disposed tyrants were untroubled by the war against terror. Mr Bush, unlike his father, felt no need to secure the blessing of the global assembly which the United States had helped found in order to maintain peace and security. America had been imprisoning people at Guantánamo Bay, beyond the jurisdiction of federal courts, since January 2002. There and elsewhere, America and its fellow travellers tortured people it had captured. In Washington they sought to justify that practice.
The next two presidents tried and failed to escape the dynamic of the war on terror. Mr Obama spoke a language of liberal internationalism as grand as Mr Bush’s. “The people of the world want change,” he said in his first speech to the UN General Assembly, in 2009. “They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.” But he did not share Mr Bush’s appetite for unilateral intervention. He tried to summon other countries to achieve priorities he insisted were not just America’s, arguing—as his vice-president, Mr Biden, had in 2001—that more than at any time in history, national interests aligned. But most other countries persisted in not viewing their interests as identical with America’s. Mr Obama’s commitment to multilateralism and international rules remained at best ambivalent. The 540 drone strikes with which he prosecuted the war on terror over his eight years in office killed thousands, hundreds of whom were in no way targets.
Mr Trump also failed to end the wars that began after 9/11. But he stripped off the idealistic wrapper and tossed it aside. With his zest for puncturing pieties, Mr Trump confirmed many people’s suspicions that America’s professed ideals were camouflage for the exercise of power in the pursuit of self-interest, painting a dark picture of America’s history. “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” he asked in 2017 while defending Mr Putin in an interview on Fox News.
Angels fear to tread
Now Mr Biden has presided over a lurch for the exit in Afghanistan and is ending combat operations in Iraq. American defeat, dissension and bumbling have played into Chinese claims that it is time for someone else to shape the international system. For China, the withdrawal “is just one more bit of evidence for the proposition that the United States is a power in decline,” says Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University.
America—and Mr Biden—have been here before. On April 23rd 1975, when the fall of Saigon was just a week away, Mr Biden rose in the Senate chamber to address America’s history in Asia and its standing in the world. Just 32, brimming with ambition and self-assurance, Mr Biden instructed his colleagues about a pattern in American foreign policy that he saw reaching back to Commodore Matthew Perry’s arrival in Tokyo Bay in the mid-19th century. “It seems that, in respect to Asia, our foreign policy has been one of magnificent obsessions and lost causes,” he declared.
And yet, though Mr Biden had long opposed “the shambles that is Vietnam” (and felt, in a phrase that today has a shameful added resonance, that “the United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese”), he also rejected any suggestion that defeat heralded twilight for America. “In my judgment, there is occurring no ‘fading of America’, as some commentators are trying to call it—no time for pretentious talk of ‘watersheds’ and ‘tides of history’ running against us as a nation,” he said. “As I read the news dispatches, the need is not to reassure other nations that we are not withdrawing into a shell. The need is that we should have more confidence in ourselves.”
Mr. Biden’s confidence in his own judgment, and in America, turned out to be well placed. In the coming years other foreign-policy disasters awaited—in Iran (repeatedly), in Central America, in Lebanon. But so did victory in the cold war.
Whether such confidence would be so well placed today is less clear; certainly today’s Mr Biden has yet to voice that confidence so full-throatedly. Then America could count on allies in NATO and beyond that were committed to the pursuit of shared objectives. Despite the disillusionment of the 1970s, relative to today America’s major public and private institutions generally retained the broad, bipartisan trust of the public, notes Henry Brady, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. That allowed thoroughgoing reforms in the executive branch, the intelligence agencies, the campaign-finance system and the armed forces, reforms that sustained the struggle through the cold war and strengthened democracy at home.
“It was a yeasty time, intellectually,” says Gary Hart, who joined the Senate as a leader of the reform-minded post-Watergate class of 1974. “There were a lot of corridor conversations, particularly among Democrats. Everything was up for debate and resolution.” Now, he adds, “I just don’t sense any systemic reform efforts going on anywhere.”
The sloppy punctuation with which Mr Biden has ended the wars of 9/11 may not signal the “fading of America” in which he disbelieved almost half a century ago. But it does mark the end, for now, of a faded idea, about the imperative of spreading America’s ideals throughout the world. America’s confidence in its own model is shaken. From the vantage of an America where citizens have assaulted their capitol, it can be hard to recall the upwelling of unity on September 11th 2001—a day when legislators of both parties gathered on the steps of the same building and, impromptu, sang “God Bless America”. Conflicted over whether its national story is a source of pride or shame, America is struggling to articulate its ideals, with conviction, to itself, let alone to others. A hardened president leads a tired nation.
It may be that a less righteous yet still influential America will prove a force for patient and durable, rather than destabilising, change. After what Mr Biden’s aides call a decades-long national “detour”, the contest with China may allow the assertion of strength and purpose abroad to redound to the nation’s advantage at home.
Competitors, after all, can help. Mr Kennan thought Americans were lucky to have the Soviet Union around. Their very survival, he wrote in 1947, depended on “pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear”. Whatever history may have intended, it proved him more right than wrong about the effects of the cold war. It did give America national purpose. As Mr Gore put it when accepting the Supreme Court decision which delivered the presidency to Mr Bush in 2000, “This is America and we put country before party.”
The war on terror has had no such ennobling or unifying results. Not only has America failed to strengthen an international order that conforms to its values. America’s own public institutions and many of its private ones—whether from confusion, exhaustion, fear or partisan political assault—are also emerging weaker from this 20-year experiment in power projection. One measure is the fact that an act of political grace, of deference to an American ideal, like that of Mr Gore now seems all but unthinkable. The message he saw his concession sending to “our fellow members of the world community”—that the strength of American democracy is shown most clearly through the difficulties it can overcome—may still be true. But the 21 years since have not provided much support for it. ■
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Uncontained"
2. What difference did 9/11 make?
The "what if" from Professor Nye is a cheap shot here. But the final paragraph he writes is the one we must ponder given where we are today in America.
Imagine what the world would be like if Bush had avoided the tempting rallying cry of a global war on terror and responded to 9/11 by carefully selected military strikes combined with good intelligence and diplomacy. Or, if he had gone into Afghanistan, imagine that he had withdrawn after six months, even if that had involved negotiating with the despised Taliban.
Looking forward, when the next terrorist attacks come, will presidents be able to channel public demand for revenge by precise targeting, explaining the trap that terrorists set, and focusing on creating resilience in U.S. responses? That is the question Americans should be asking, and that their leaders should be addressing.
What difference did 9/11 make?
By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
CAMBRIDGE ― The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a horrific shock. Images of trapped victims leaping from the Twin Towers are indelible, and the intrusive security measures introduced in the wake of the attacks have long since become a fact of life.
But skeptics doubt that it marked a turning point in history. They note that the immediate physical damage was far from fatal to American power. It is estimated that the United States' GDP growth dropped by three percentage points in 2001, and insurance claims for damages eventually totaled over $40 billion ― a small fraction of what was then a $10 trillion economy.
And the nearly 3,000 people killed in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., when the al-Qaida hijackers turned four aircraft into cruise missiles was a small fraction of U.S. travel fatalities that year.
While accepting these facts, my guess is that future historians will regard 9/11 as a date as important as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii killed some 2,400 American military personnel and destroyed or damaged 19 naval craft, including eight battleships. In both cases, however, the main effect was on public psychology.
For years, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had tried to alert Americans to the Axis threat but had failed to overcome isolationism. All that changed with Pearl Harbor. In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush advocated a humble foreign policy and warned against the temptations of nation-building.
After the shock of 9/11, he declared a "global war on terror" and invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq. Given the proclivities of top members of his administration, some say a clash with Iraq's then-dictator, Saddam Hussein, was predictable in any case, but not its manner or cost.
What 9/11 illustrates is that terrorism is about psychology, not damage. Terrorism is like theatre. With their powerful military, Americans believe that "shock and awe" comes from massive bombardment. For terrorists, shock and awe comes from the drama more than the number of deaths caused by their attacks. Poisons might kill more people, but explosions get the visuals. The constant replay of the falling Twin Towers on the world's television sets was Osama bin Laden's coup.
Terrorism can also be compared to jujitsu, in which a weak adversary turns the power of a larger player against itself. While the 9/11 attacks killed several thousand Americans, the "endless wars" that the U.S. subsequently launched killed many more. Indeed, the damage done by al-Qaeda pales in comparison to the damage America did to itself.
By some estimates, nearly 15,000 U.S. military personnel and contractors were killed in the wars that followed 9/11, and the economic cost exceeded $6 trillion. Add to this the number of foreign civilians killed and refugees created, and the costs grow even more enormous. The opportunity costs were also large. When President Barack Obama tried to pivot to Asia ― the fastest-growing part of the world economy ― the legacy of the global war on terror kept the U.S. mired in the Middle East.
Despite these costs, some say that the U.S. achieved its goal: There has not been another major terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland on the scale of 9/11. Bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants were killed, and Saddam Hussein was removed (though his connection to 9/11 was always dubious).
Alternatively, a case can be made that bin Laden succeeded, particularly if we consider that his beliefs included the value of religious martyrdom. The jihadist movement is fragmented, but it has spread to more countries, and the Taliban have returned to power in Afghanistan ― ironically, just before the 9/11 anniversary that President Joe Biden originally set as the target date for withdrawing U.S. troops.
It is too early to assess the long-term effects of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The short-term effects of the chaotic exit are costly, but in the long term, Biden may come to be seen as correct to forswear the effort at nation-building in a country divided by mountains and tribes and united mainly by opposition to foreigners.
Leaving Afghanistan will allow Biden to focus on his grand strategy of balancing the rise of China. For all the damage done to U.S. soft power by the chaotic manner of the exit from Afghanistan, Asia has its own longstanding balance of power in which countries like Japan, India, and Vietnam do not wish to be dominated by China and welcome an American presence.
When one considers that within 20 years of America's traumatic exit from Vietnam, the U.S. was welcome in that country as well as the region, Biden's overall strategy makes sense.
At the same time, 20 years after 9/11, the problem of terrorism remains, and terrorists may feel emboldened to try again. If so, the task for U.S. leaders is to develop an effective counter-terrorism strategy. Its core must be to avoid falling into terrorists' trap by doing great damage to ourselves. Leaders must plan to manage the psychological shocks at home and abroad.
Imagine what the world would be like if Bush had avoided the tempting rallying cry of a global war on terror and responded to 9/11 by carefully selected military strikes combined with good intelligence and diplomacy. Or, if he had gone into Afghanistan, imagine that he had withdrawn after six months, even if that had involved negotiating with the despised Taliban.
Looking forward, when the next terrorist attacks come, will presidents be able to channel public demand for revenge by precise targeting, explaining the trap that terrorists set, and focusing on creating resilience in U.S. responses? That is the question Americans should be asking, and that their leaders should be addressing.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is dean emeritus of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the author of "Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump." His article was distributed by Project Syndicate (
3. Noncombatant Evacuation Operation - Afghanistan (Update)
NEO at Kabul Airport
Noncombatant Evacuation Operation - Afghanistan
Current Situation
AMCITs in Afghanistan Say "When will I get called?". There are a number of private sector organizations that have been in contact with American citizens who are stranded in Afghanistan. These U.S.-based organizations are, in most cases, supplying their lists to the Department of State. However, it is not entirely clear that the DoS is properly collating these inputs from the private sector organizations to ensure that all of the AMCITs are on 'the master list'. As the evacuation at the Kabul airport in late August took place the DoS was contacting AMCITs in Kabul to rally at a specific location for transport to the airport. Some AMCITS were never called. Now that chartered flights to Qatar are taking place DoS is once again contacting some AMCITs to arrange pickup for transport to the airport. AMCITs are contacting the various private sector organizations asking when they will get called - they have great concern that they are not on 'the master list' and will miss their opportunity for a flight out.
2nd Qatar Airways Airliner in Kabul. On Friday another jet from Qatar arrived in Kabul with humanitarian aid cargo for Afghanistan. On its return flight to Qatar it carried American citizens and other foreign nationals from Kabul to Qatar. See "A second Qatar Airways passenger flight has arrived in Kabul", CNN News, September 10, 2021.
DoS Briefing on Afghanistan and AMCITs. The Department of State provided some additional information about the 2nd Qatar Airways flight from Kabul to Qatar. This one flew on Friday with 19 U.S. citizens aboard. In addition, two U.S. citizens and 11 lawful permanent residents departed Afghanistan an overland route. The DoS provided guidance to them, worked to facilitate their safe passage, and embassy officials greeted them once they had crossed the border. The State Department believes that there are still 100 Americans still left in Afghanistan (as of Friday, 10 Sep). (DoS Press Briefing, 10 Sep 2021).
Podcast - No One Left Behind. Two board members of NOLB and former acting SECDEF Chris Miller take part in a discussion about the Global War on Terror and the AMCITs, LPRs, and at-risk Afghans left behind in Afghanistan. The Jedburgh Podcast, September 9, 2021.
Why The Evacuation at HKIA-N Was Such a Mess. Mick Mulroy, a former Deputy Assistance Secretary of Defense for the Middle East (and former Marine and CIA paramilitary officer), explains why the airlift at Kabul airport was so chaotic. Afghanistan's fall and a bottleneck at the Kabul airport were results of a combination of complementary factors.
- the peace deal's effects on the Afghan government and military
- U.S. trained Afghan army's reliance on air support
- Taliban's highly effective military and diplomatic strategies
- U.S. failure to hold a crucial air base
- U.S. failure to keep the Taliban out of Kabul until airlift complete
Task Force Foxfire. A group of veterans and former intelligence officers started a non-government nonprofit and is playing a role in helping a handful of evacuees get out of Afghanistan safely. The team tracks the status of each individual trying to leave the country - determining their disposition as a U.S. citizen, permanent resident, or Special Immigrant Visa status. The organizations then gets the necessary information to the proper authorities through their congressional channels or direct points of contact with the state department.The grop uses encrypted communications and security protocols to make sure an individual's personal information is not compromised during communications with official channels. "Group of BCS veterans, former intel officers helping evacuate families out of Afghanistan", KBTX.com, August 25, 2021.
Contractors - Unsung Heroes. Support, operational, and battlefield contractors supported U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for over 20 years. More contractors have died (8,000) than US service members (7,000) in post 9/11 operations. "In Afghanistan, Contractors Were Unsung Heroes of US Efforts", Breaking Defense, August 30, 2021.
Measles Outbreak Disrupting Flights to States. There is a temporary halt of Afghan refugees flying from Europe and the Middle East transit locations to the United States after four cases of measles were found among recent arrivals. In addition to measles are some cases of TB and COVID. "Measles cases halt US-bound flights of Afghan refugees", CCN, September 10, 2021.
DoD IG Evaluation of Biometric Tracking of Afghans. The Inspector General of the Department of Defense will begin an evaluation to determine the extent to which the DoD is managing and tracking displaced persons from Afghanistan through the biometrics enrollment, screening, and vetting process. The locations to be evaluated include Fort Pickett, Quantico, and the Dulles Expo Center in Virginia. (PDF, Sep 9, 2021).
U.S. Air Force Airmen assigned to the 86th Medical Support Squadron work in
the Expeditionary Medical support system pharmacy set up for evacuees
during Operation Allies Refuge at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Sept. 9, 2021.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Alexcia Givens)
Friday, September 10, 2021
Taliban SF - Badri 313. The Taliban's elite special forces unit known as the "Badri Command" not only has well-trained hardened fighters - it has a component that trains suicide bombers. Read more in "Inside the Taliban's special forces Suicide Squad", The New York Post, September 9, 2021.
Khalilizad - the Face of Failure. The U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation will be remembered for helping author the U.S - Taliban withdrawal agreement approved and implemented by the Trump administration. In February 2020 he tweeted "We have signed an agreement with the Taliban that achieves U.S. objectives". Twenty months later the Afghan government collapsed after the Taliban took district after district and provincial city after provincial city - finally entering Kabul unopposed. "Brokering exit from Afghanistan, U.S. envoy Khalilzad became face of diplomatic debacle", Reuters, September 10, 2021.
Biometrics - the Good and the Bad. From ethical dilemmas on data security to worst-case scenarios unfolding in real time - the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan is spurring urgent concern about the safety of data that aid groups have collected over 20 years. "Biometric data and the Taliban: What are the risks?", The New Humanitarian, September 2, 2021.
The New Regime. The Taliban have named a slate of officials to head an interim government in Afghanistan. A group of experts review the roster and assess it implications for the country's near-term future. "Who Will Run the Taliban Government?", Crisis Group, September 9, 2021. With all the optimism that some folks are expressing for the Taliban 2.0 it is important to remember that 17 out of the Taliban's 33 cabinet ministers are on the United Nations sanctions list for their ties to terrorism. There will be some divisiveness among the Taliban leadership - see "The Taliban's foreign dilemmas", The Stategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, September 10, 2021.
Deutsche Welle Staff Crosses Pakistan Border. Correspondents for DQ were able to leave Afghanistan with their famiies. At first they tried to leave by air from Kabul - attempting entry to HKIA-N via the north gate. They eventually crossed at the Torkham border crossing more than 100 miles to the east of Kabul. But DW still has more staff to bring out. "DW correspondents able to leave Afghanistan", Deutsche Welle, September 10, 2021. In other news there are reports that Germany will soon reopen its embassy in Kabul.
Taliban Governance. Lyse Doucet writes about the makeup of the new government - overwhelmingly drawn from Pashtun tribes and not a single woman. The Ministry of Vice and Virtue is back and the Women's Affairs Ministry is gone. See "Afghanistan: A new order begins under the Taliban's governance", BBC News, September 9, 2021.
Afghanistan and Sources of Revenue. The Taliban 2.0 are working towards ensuring that they are not dependent on external sources of revenue. They are striving to avoid extreme external dependence and achieve finanical and military independence. They began this process before taking power in Kabul. Read "The economics of Taliban takeover", Observer Research Foundation, September 10, 2021.
Evacuees from Afghanistan board a United States bound U.S. Air Force C-17
Globemaster III, at Naval Station (NAVSTA) Rota, Sept. 1, 2021.
(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Nathan Carpenter)
Thursday, September 9, 2021
Taliban Give Permission for AMCITs to Leave. An agreement has been reached with the Taliban that would allow 200 American civilians and third country nationals who remained in Afghanistan after the end of the Kabul noncombatant evacuation operation to depart on charter flights from Kabul airport. Those on the manifest include passport holders from Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Canada, and Germany. The departures are expected to take place on a Qatar Air fight on Thursday, September 9, 2021. See "Taliban gives permission for at least 200 Afghan dual nationals, including Americans, to leave the country", The Washington Post, September 9, 2021. NSC Spokesperson on Qatar Airways Flight. The White House, Sep 9, 2021.
U.S. Govt Collaboration with Vet Groups Aiding Afghans. The White House has approved a recommendation by the nation's top military officer that the administration create a "public/private partnership" with the ad hoc groups that have been working to evacuate American citizens and at-risk Afghans from the country". Read more in "White House approves 'partnership' with vets evacuating U.S. citizens, Afghan allies", Politico, September 9, 2021.
Mazar-i-Sharif - a Bit of a Mess.The blame game on the six grounded aircraft with a mix of AMCITs, LPRs, and at-risk Afghans waiting to depart continues. The Department of State isn't exactly covering itself in glory in this situation. The Taliban, of course, are just being the Taliban. The Taliban cite 'technical issues' and the lack of a fully functioning Interior or Foreign Ministry as complications. Meanwhile, the people on the ground are running out of money, patience, and hope. State claims to not know who the people are that wish to fly out - yet the charitable organizations sponsoring the aircraft have provided State (in most cases) with the passenger manifest. One sticking point is the documentation of the people on the aircraft. They don't fit the 'categories' that will be allowed entry into a transit point and onward travel to the U.S. If it was a case of just AMCITs getting on a plane - the Taliban would probably give it clearance and State wouldn't be an obstacle. But . . . there is a mix of AMCITs, LPRs, SIVs, and just 'others'. Read more in "The dangerous confusion over Mazar-i-Sharif", Politico, September 7, 2021.
Next Steps and Endgame for the DoS? There are some that believe the Department of State actually has a plan - that it is not articulating to the media. The 'plan' is that the State Department is going to concentrate on getting U.S. citizens out. That is what is going to cause the Biden administration the most damage politically if they don't get that done. The U.S. government has limited diplomatic leverage with the Taliban and few resources on the ground. Once they get close to a diplomatic agreement with the Taliban on the evacuation of U.S. citizens the DoS will tell all AMCITs to stay in (or move to) Kabul. The DoS will fly one or two charter planes into Kabul airport and tell AMCITs to proceed to the airport for boarding. Security would be provided by the Taliban - which they can do if they want to. This will be a limited time event. And other than words and bluster that will likely be the extent of DoS doing anything else.
Qatar, US Embassy (Afg), DoS, Talbian, and AMCITs. The relocation of the US Embassy Afghanistan in Qatar, the apparent good relations Qatar has with the new government of Afghanistan, Qatar technicians running the airport (ATC, passenger service, etc.), and other factors may have some bearing on the fate of AMCITS remaining in Afghanistan. It would not come as a surpise if Qatar is playing a major role in the negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban on this issue. In addition, a lot of the legwork (manifesting, screening, and processing) of the AMCITs may be handled by Qatar officials.
Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rachael Scott interacts with an Afghan child during
Operation Allies Welcome at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., Sept. 1, 2021.
Photo by Tia Dufour, Marine Corps.
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
Secretary Blinken on Tour in Europe. After leaving Qatar where the Secretary delivered his victory speech / pep talk to the embassy staff workers he is heading to Germany to visit Ramstein Air Base where thousands of Afghans are being temporarily housed. There are a lot of critics of Blinken - one is Bing West. Read his assessment of America's chief diplomat in "Secretary Blinken's Gibberish about Afghanistan", National Review, September 7, 2021.
SECDEF on Tour as Well. It seems all the heavyweights of the Biden administration are visiting Europe and the Middle East. Secretary of Defense Austin is visiting nations in the ME. (DoD News).
Will Concessions Get Our People Back? It is very likely that there are some negotiations going on that involve the American citizens remaining in Afghanistan. But these negotiations could be problematic. Read more in "Biden Is Running a Hostage Negotiation With the Taliban", FDD, September 8, 2021.
Taliban Leadership Appointments. The new Taliban regime is moving forward in forming up the new government. The leadership appears to be a lot less inclusive than the international community was hoping for. For several weeks the Taliban has indicated that it would have a more moderate and inclusive government - however the positions are currently being filled with senior Taliban figures from the past and present - most of them hardliners.
What Went Wrong? A lot of critics are offering their perspective on how the U.S., allies, and other partner nations didn't achieve success in Afghanistan. Read some recent articles on the failure in Afghanstan.
European Union and Afghan Refugees. The countries of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovaki, Poland, and Hungary have adopted tough stances on immigration in general and are not receptive to the anticipated wave of Afghan refugees that are likely to flow into Europe. (Gandhara, September 8, 2021.
Tuesday, September 7, 2021
FlightRadar24 image shows a Ariana Afghan Airlines Boeing 737-53S landing
at Mazar-i-Sharif airport on Tuesday afternoon (Kabul time), September 7, 2021.
Panjshir Province. The Taliban have taken the main road up into the Panjshir valley . . . but the resistance own the side valleys and continue to fight. Some social media reports indicate that there is a heavy foreign fighter presence assisting the Taliban and that Pakistan is using drones (and maybe aircraft) to bomb the resistance fighters. Bill Roggio provides more details in "Taliban completes conquest of Afghanistan after seizing Panjshir", FDD's Long War Journal, September 6, 2021.
Stranded AMCITs, LPRs, and Afghan SIV Applicants. The State Department and Biden administration would like the U.S. public to believe that the crisis in Afghanistan is over with the removal of U.S. troops and the end of the noncombatant evacuation operation at the Kabul airport. However, . . . it isn't going away. Hundreds of American citizens and even more Lawful Permanent Residents (Green Card holders) are still trapped in Afghanistan with no way to leave. In addition, there are many thousands of Afghans who hold approved Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) or are in the 'pipeline' for SIV approval that are at risk in Afghanistan. It doesn't seem like the State Department is doing any heavy lifting to help the 2,000 people at the Mazar-e-Sharif airport in boarding the six planes on the ground. Read more in "Biden State Dept Says It Has No Resources to Rescue Trapped Flights in Afghanistan, No 'Reliable Means' To Confirm Details: Report", The Daily Wire, September 6, 2021.
Secretary Blinken's Victory Speech. The Secretary of State addressed the staff of the U.S. Embassies of Qatar and Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar on Tuesday, September 7, 2021. Read his remarks is this press release by the DoS (Sep 7, 2021).
Who's Planes Are They? There are various groups trying to get some Afghans out - one is the Ascend group - an NGO attempting to evacuate about 100 Afghan Hazara girls. Read more in "U.S. Citizens and Afghans Wait for Evacuation Flights From Country's North", The New York Times, September 5, 2021. (subcription) Another of the aircraft involved has an association with Eric Montalvo of the Federal Practice Group - it was chartered to fly some 300 people from MeZ to Doha. An Alaska firm reportedly has contracted with Kam Air to fly out some Americans from MeS - but like the others, its plane is grounded. (Must Read Alaska, Sep 6, 2021).
Four US Citizens Cross Border. The U.S. State Department facilitated the departure of four American citizens from Afghanistan via an overland route to a third country - according to a senior State Department official. So . . . only a couple of hundred more to go. And then there are the LPRs and SIVs (approved and pending). See "US helped 4 US citizens leave Afghanistan overland, official says", CNN.com, September 6, 2021.
U.S. Embassy Kabul - Now in Qatar. The State Department is running its Afghanistan operations from Doha, Qatar. The DoS has advised all Americans to 'shelter in place', enroll in the Department of State's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP). The State Department has vowed to improve the visa process for Afghans and rescue those left behind. Details to come? Hmmmm. (Military Times, Sep 3, 2021).
Qatar Aid Flights. The Middle East nation has helped the Taliban restore flight services at the Kabul airport. It is also flying in daily humanitarian aid flights to Kabul. See "Qatar to operate daily aid flights to Afghanistan", Reuters, September 5, 2021.
More News about Afghanistan
Book Review - First Casualty. The role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of the Taliban in 2001 is detailed in this book. It has stories of inter-tribal tensions, the critical role of air power, partnerships with Afghan warlords, and of the death of CIA officer Mike Spann in northern Afghanistan. (The Cipher Brief, Sep 6, 2021).
Commentary on the U.S. Departure from Afghanistan. "The forever war is finally over. The age of unpeace has begun." Read the musings of Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, in "The Afghan tragedy and the age of unpeace", The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), September 7, 2021.
ANDSF Personnel Data Bases - Now a Huge Problem. The various digital databases and applications provided to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are now looming as a big problem for those who served in the security forces. The Taliban know who you are - have your fingerprints, photographs, and in many cases pictures of your iris and face. Over the past 20 years more than 700,000 members of the ANDSF were enrolled in the Afghan Personnel and Pay System - an application that had over 40 data fields about individuals of the ANDSF. Read more in "US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression", Associated Press, September 7, 2021.
Afghan Withdrawal Plan. U.S strategy put the Defense and State departments on divergent paths. The troops were pulling out but the diplomats were staying - and were left exposed when the Taliban took over. One question was why to close Bagram so soon. Read more "Inside Biden's Afghanistan Withdrawal Plan: Warnings, Doubts but Little Change", The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2021. (subscription)
Afghanistan and More Terrorism. Oved Lobel details how the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will embolden and strengthen jihadist groups in Afghanistan and around the world. He provides warnings about Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) - also known as the Pakistani Taliban. Read more in "How Afghanistan's Fall to the Taliban Increases the Global Terrorims Threat", Real Clear Defense, September 7, 2021.
U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Heather Neef, assigned to U.S. Air Force 7th Reconnaissance Squadron, waves goodbye to evacuees from Afghanistan as they prepare to board a bus before departing Naval Air Station (NAS) Sigonella, Sept. 4, 2021.
(U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Erika L. Kugler)
4. History's 'what if' questions
Don Kirk knows how to ask some "what if" questions.
Excerpts:
We also have to ask another hypothetical: What if the presidents after George W. Bush, that is, Barack Obama and Donald Trump and Joe Biden, had wanted to keep American troops in Afghanistan?
That's a tough one, but we do know these presidents, all so different in outlook, style, strategy and tactics, sensed the national mood and believed enough was enough. Was Biden, then, right to respond in a way that led to retreat and defeat, complete humiliation and loss of the investment already made in lives and treasure?
These are not esoteric questions. They are relevant to American allies everywhere, notably Korea ― Japan too. Having fought a "forgotten war" to save South Korea from Communist invasion by the North Koreans and Chinese, might American leaders someday decide South Korea isn't worth fighting for? That's one we might be asking on the 20th anniversary of the bloodiest attack by a foreign adversary on American soil.
History's 'what if' questions
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON ― Millions remember exactly what they were doing when first hearing about awful events. The day John F. Kennedy was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, I'd been sleeping after an overnight shift for a paper in New York.
For some reason I had to call about paying a parking ticket. The woman who took the call was weeping. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me Kennedy had been shot. I forgot about the parking ticket while pursuing on-the-street stories for the paper.
Nearly 38 years later, I had boarded a bus near the central post office in Seoul on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, when I got a call from EBS, the Educational Broadcasting System. The voice on the line asked urgently, what did I think about what had happened?
What the hell happened, I wanted to know. Amazed by the question, the voice told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York and what's your comment? I had no trouble conjuring a spontaneous expression of shock.
She also asked if I had any contact in New York who might comment. I had just the man ― a retired journalist whom I'd known when we were reporters in Chicago. I had often visited his condo on the 58th floor of a high-rise in central Manhattan with a full view of the World Trade Center rising six miles south.
Having dispensed that information, I got to my place in time to see, live on Korean and foreign TV networks, the Trade Center's twin towers crumbling in clouds of ashes, dust and debris.
That was 20 years ago as of Saturday, Sept. 11. The date remains in infamy more than a week after the Americans withdrew their final troops from Afghanistan, forfeiting the country to the Taliban. Now we shudder to think what the Taliban will do as they exert their authority over the country's recalcitrant tribes and regions.
Each of these cataclysmic shocks raises questions of "what if" ― what would have happened "if" ― if they had never happened. We can speculate forever about what Kennedy might have done, what kind of president he would really have been if he had completed his first term and served another four years after that.
Having covered Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia before migrating to northeast Asia, I've often wondered if JFK ― had he lived ― would have pursued a course quite different from that of his successor Lyndon Johnson, who poured more than 500,000 troops into Vietnam before he decided not to run for reelection and his successor, Richard Nixon, beganwithdrawing them all. Would JFK have come to terms with the communist forces from "North" Vietnam that won less than a dozen years after his death ― or would he have poured in still more troops, invaded the North and made sure the U.S.-backed Saigon regime won?
The "what if" questions about what we call "9/11" are still more troubling because they have direct relevance to the present. What if the planes had not flown into the World Trade Center and then the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people?
Would George W. Bush, having been president for less than a year, have never ordered troops into Afghanistan with the urgent mission of driving the Taliban out of power and destroying the strongholds of al-Qaida, whose leader Osama Bin Laden boasted of the raid's success? And if the U.S. had not plunged into Afghanistan, would Osama have ordered still more deadly attacks, leading to a much more violent struggle?
We also have to ask another hypothetical: What if the presidents after George W. Bush, that is, Barack Obama and Donald Trump and Joe Biden, had wanted to keep American troops in Afghanistan?
That's a tough one, but we do know these presidents, all so different in outlook, style, strategy and tactics, sensed the national mood and believed enough was enough. Was Biden, then, right to respond in a way that led to retreat and defeat, complete humiliation and loss of the investment already made in lives and treasure?
These are not esoteric questions. They are relevant to American allies everywhere, notably Korea ― Japan too. Having fought a "forgotten war" to save South Korea from Communist invasion by the North Koreans and Chinese, might American leaders someday decide South Korea isn't worth fighting for? That's one we might be asking on the 20th anniversary of the bloodiest attack by a foreign adversary on American soil.
Donald Kirk, www (donaldkirk.com) spent as much time covering the Vietnam War as watching the confrontation on the Korean Peninsula.
5. The nobility of service in a post 9/11 world
Excerpts:
Today, young men and women who were born after those terrible attacks continue to find their way into recruiting offices. These folks grew up in the era of internet connectivity, where idealism gives way to sour grapes and witty memes, and patriotic duty so often lands like the punchline of a joke nobody dares tell. They didn’t watch those planes bring the Twin Towers down. They don’t have memories of visiting a pre-9/11 New York City. They grew up in a nation at war… and when their time to serve comes up, they willfully discard that comfort I was so afraid to lose.
These young men and women didn’t experience the existential pivot my generation did. They didn’t watch our nation get sucker punched in real time, nor did they feel the anger and sorrow we did, as we watched desperate Americans hurl themselves from the burning towers, hoping to escape the pain brought to them by our nation’s enemies for the fleeting moment it took to reach the ground.
No. This new generation of service members didn’t need to have their hearts broken to push them to serve. They simply hear our nation’s call, and sign on the dotted line.
My generation longed for a chance to prove ourselves, and let me be honest, many of the incredible men and women I served alongside did exactly that… But today’s young Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coasties, and Guardians don’t have to carry that chip on their shoulder into the fight.
You young men and women are the best of us. And as a veteran, a Marine, a father, a patriot, and an American, I thank you.
The nobility of service in a post 9/11 world
For service members of my generation, September 11, 2001 represented a pivot point in our lives.
We’d grown up in the relative comfort of the late ’80s and ’90s, watching movies like “Fight Club” and lamenting our generation’s lack of great purpose. We watched war movies like “Saving Private Ryan,” and through the lens of adolescent testosterone, we missed the carefully recreated horrors of war, seeing instead only the grit, determination, and heroism of the Greatest Generation.
And then 19 terrorists hijacked four airplanes one Tuesday morning. As the passengers on board were subject to brutal treatment, with some being killed in the process of taking over the planes, I slept in. As the first plane made impact with the North Tower, I took a leisurely shower. By the time the second plane hit… The realization had washed over me. My generation had found the purpose we’d so longed for.
(WikiMedia Commons)
But to my utter horror, I wasn’t filled with the calm resolve I watched Tom Hanks carry through France in “Saving Private Ryan.” I didn’t even have the flagrant lack of self-preservation I saw in “Fight Club’s” Tyler Durden.
In that moment, as Americans died before my eyes, I found none of the courage I’d seen time and time again in my TV and movie heroes. Instead, all I found was fear. I knew we were going to war. I knew Americans were dying. And as I sat on my couch, my only thoughts were selfish. Nothing would ever be the same… and from the edge of the precipice, I could see a new era — one full of war that would stretch on for decades. I wished with all my heart that we could just go back.
Go back to longing for a purpose. Go back to lamenting our boredom. I wished I could stay comfortable.
A few months later, a badly broken leg and ensuing surgery took me out of contention for service upon graduation. The Marine recruiter I met with told me they were getting plenty of volunteers, and medical waivers like me just weren’t a priority. I suppose it should have been a relief; after all, I was genuinely afraid… but instead, I felt only shame. I watched young men and women I knew ship off to the fight, each doing their part — from fixing trucks to kicking in doors — and I sat on my couch. Comfortable.
New York City as the towers fell. (9/11 Photos on Flickr)
Just a few years later, with two battlefronts already raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Corps changed tracks. They needed bodies, and they weren’t being nearly as picky about who they’d take. I was working as a pit mechanic for a racing team and living with my girlfriend at the time, but as 2005 gave way to 2006, my girlfriend got sick. At first, we thought it was just a cold. We had bills to pay and no health insurance, so she pushed through… only to find herself in the hospital with pneumonia. With medical bills piling up, I made a decision.
That Wednesday, I visited our local recruiter. I asked him when health insurance would kick in if I enlisted, and he told me the day that I shipped out to recruit training. I asked him when I could ship out, and he told me that depended on what MOS (military occupational specialty) I wanted.
I told him I didn’t care, and left for Parris Island four days later. My new wife would be fine thanks to the Corps, and it was time for me to earn that.
My story isn’t unique among the service members of my generation — trapped somewhere between our Gen-X older brothers and our millennial younger ones, but today’s service members are a different breed entirely. For me, the call to serve was as much about fear as any sense of patriotic duty. I was ashamed of the fear I felt, and I was set on proving to myself that I could do more than just be comfortable. I wanted to live up to memory of my grandfather who fought in World War II. I wanted to prove to my Vietnam veteran father that I too could shoulder the weight of our nation’s hurt.
Shortly after picking up Sergeant while deployed in Africa.
Today, young men and women who were born after those terrible attacks continue to find their way into recruiting offices. These folks grew up in the era of internet connectivity, where idealism gives way to sour grapes and witty memes, and patriotic duty so often lands like the punchline of a joke nobody dares tell. They didn’t watch those planes bring the Twin Towers down. They don’t have memories of visiting a pre-9/11 New York City. They grew up in a nation at war… and when their time to serve comes up, they willfully discard that comfort I was so afraid to lose.
These young men and women didn’t experience the existential pivot my generation did. They didn’t watch our nation get sucker punched in real time, nor did they feel the anger and sorrow we did, as we watched desperate Americans hurl themselves from the burning towers, hoping to escape the pain brought to them by our nation’s enemies for the fleeting moment it took to reach the ground.
(Lance Cpl. Matthew Bragg, US Marine Corps)
No. This new generation of service members didn’t need to have their hearts broken to push them to serve. They simply hear our nation’s call, and sign on the dotted line.
My generation longed for a chance to prove ourselves, and let me be honest, many of the incredible men and women I served alongside did exactly that… But today’s young Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coasties, and Guardians don’t have to carry that chip on their shoulder into the fight.
You young men and women are the best of us. And as a veteran, a Marine, a father, a patriot, and an American, I thank you.
Read more from Sandboxx News:
Feature image: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Tommy Huynh
6. Pakistan Is an Arsonist That Wants You to Think It’s a Firefighter
Dr. Fair has long been one of the leading voices trying to reveal the malign activities of Pakistan. And she has never been afraid to call them out directly to government officials, especially the ISI. My "what if" is what if we had paid attention to her warnings long ago?
Pakistan Is an Arsonist That Wants You to Think It’s a Firefighter
Washington has an endless appetite for Islamabad’s con games.
On Aug. 27, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted, “Any sustainable solution in Afghanistan must include Pakistan,” while also expressing his appreciation for the “efforts of the Pakistani government to assist with the evacuation of U.S. citizens, our allies, and other nations.” His comments reflect a familiar play: Pakistan has spent decades setting fires in South Asia—and then expected praise and renumeration for offering to put them out.
It’s astonishing that U.S. officials continue to peddle Pakistan’s own fictions—alongside such media outlets as the BBC, as I discovered recently when I was cut off in the middle of an interview for speaking about it. But with the Afghanistan debacle on policymakers’ minds, it’s a good time to think critically about Washington’s perpetual vulnerability to Pakistan’s rent-seeking ruses. Both political parties have long been responsible for coddling Pakistan in hopes that there is some mystical U.S. policy that could reform its supposed wayward ally. Even though Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan goes back some seven decades, the Washington elite continues to fall for Pakistan’s efforts to sell itself as the solution to the very problems it created.
Pakistani officials tell a heart-wrenching story. Pakistan was minding its business when, in 1979, the United States persuaded Pakistan to shoulder the burden of the struggle against communism in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan. Pakistani officials contend that they were a victim of American perfidy when the latter forgot Pakistan existed in the 1990s, leaving Islamabad to contend with the mess—while Washington had the effrontery to impose sanctions on a bamboozled ally because of its well-known efforts to secure a nuclear weapon.
On Aug. 27, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted, “Any sustainable solution in Afghanistan must include Pakistan,” while also expressing his appreciation for the “efforts of the Pakistani government to assist with the evacuation of U.S. citizens, our allies, and other nations.” His comments reflect a familiar play: Pakistan has spent decades setting fires in South Asia—and then expected praise and renumeration for offering to put them out.
It’s astonishing that U.S. officials continue to peddle Pakistan’s own fictions—alongside such media outlets as the BBC, as I discovered recently when I was cut off in the middle of an interview for speaking about it. But with the Afghanistan debacle on policymakers’ minds, it’s a good time to think critically about Washington’s perpetual vulnerability to Pakistan’s rent-seeking ruses. Both political parties have long been responsible for coddling Pakistan in hopes that there is some mystical U.S. policy that could reform its supposed wayward ally. Even though Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan goes back some seven decades, the Washington elite continues to fall for Pakistan’s efforts to sell itself as the solution to the very problems it created.
Pakistani officials tell a heart-wrenching story. Pakistan was minding its business when, in 1979, the United States persuaded Pakistan to shoulder the burden of the struggle against communism in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan. Pakistani officials contend that they were a victim of American perfidy when the latter forgot Pakistan existed in the 1990s, leaving Islamabad to contend with the mess—while Washington had the effrontery to impose sanctions on a bamboozled ally because of its well-known efforts to secure a nuclear weapon.
But Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan have deep roots. As Husain Haqqani, Rizwan Hussain, and I have shown, Islamabad inherited the British conception of Afghanistan as a buffer state with Russia. From the point of view of the security managers of a newly minted Pakistan, Pakistan inherited the most turbulent threat frontier with a fraction of the British Raj’s resources.
Pakistan has spent decades setting fires in South Asia—and then expected praise and renumeration for offering to put them out.
Afghanistan made early fateful decisions that would lock the country in an unwinnable security competition with Pakistan. Afghanistan initially attempted to block Pakistan’s bid to join the United Nations. Beginning in September 1950, Afghanistan began military incursions into Pakistan’s tribal agencies and Baluchistan province. Afghanistan’s efforts to antagonize its much stronger neighbor continued well into the 1970s.
Pakistan, seeking to influence its obstinate western neighbor, began supporting the growth of the reformist Islamist organization Jamaat-e-Islami in Afghanistan, where it originally had little support. This development was propitious. The majority of the so-called mujahideen groups that would eventually be mobilized by Pakistan were rooted in Jamaat-e-Islami.
After Mohammed Daoud Khan came to power in Afghanistan in 1973 and established a one-party republic that embarked on an aggressive top-down social reform program and purged Islamists and communists alike, Pakistan saw an opportunity. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took the helm of a vivisected Pakistan, which lost half of its population when Bangladesh gained independence in a 1971 war. Bhutto resolved to lose nothing else.
In August 1973, Bhutto set up the Afghan working group within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate. Despite a brief interregnum, Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq continued with this policy after he ousted Bhutto in a July 1977 coup. Fifty or so Afghan resistance groups were consolidated by the ISI into a smaller, more manageable number. The ISI was tasked with deepening the links between Pakistani and Afghan Islamist groups. These efforts resulted in seven major Sunni Afghan Islamist militant groups, as well as several Shiite groups. By the time the Soviets had crossed the Amu Darya river into Afghanistan, Zia-ul-Haq’s army and the ISI had already created the key Islamist groups that would become the cornerstone of the so-called anti-Soviet jihad.
As I wrote recently in Foreign Policy, that involvement continues today. The ISI nurtured, created, and supported the Taliban in their first incarnation; it returned to doing the same after the Taliban regime’s fall in late 2001. Pakistan has deployed its spin doctors to claim otherwise—using the same old strategy. Pakistan opines that it is the real victim of terrorism, that it is being unjustly maligned, and that if the West wants to fight terrorism, it needs to give Pakistan more money—and ignore its wrongdoings, which include sponsoring numerous Islamist terrorist groups as well as vertical and horizontal nuclear proliferation.
Ordinary Pakistanis are, indeed, the victims of terrorist monsters—monsters bred and trained by the military-intelligence establishment. As then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a gathering of Pakistanis in 2011, “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.” Yet Islamabad continues to do so—and to offer its snake-catching expertise when they escape.
Pakistan’s ability to convince Americans of its signal importance might seem baffling—but it represents a sophisticated and strategic diplomatic approach. First and foremost, Pakistan exploits information asymmetries. As Teresita and Howard Schaffer wrote in 2011, the United States is one of the most important portfolios for diplomatic, political, and military officials. They are required to know their briefs and recite them convincingly. Most often their American counterparts lack the most rudimentary knowledge of U.S.-Pakistan relations and tend to be persuaded by the narratives on offer. Even intelligence officials will have little operational familiarity with Pakistan, in part because substantive international contacts and travel pose problems for obtaining clearances. The easiest hires are young graduates with little international experience.
Islamabad understands the value of congressional delegations in shaping policymakers’ opinions. Unlike protocol-bound India, Pakistan dispenses with all diplomatic protocol on these occasions. Delegates meet the army chief, the ISI chief, and the prime minister, and they are often treated to military tourism opportunities.
In addition to having lavish budgets for legal lobbyists, Pakistan also has a history of cultivating shadowy figures who launder Islamabad’s dirty laundry and promote its pet projects to American policymakers and opinion-makers. It discourages criticism by denying visas, restricting access, or outright threatening violence to those who dare expose the dark side of Pakistan’s deep state. Conversely, Pakistan incentivizes apologists: It offers free trips where beneficiaries are treated to the famous Pakistani hospitality, which includes private meetings with important Pakistanis across the civilian and military spectrums, helicopter rides to places ordinarily forbidden to foreigners, and a cultivated practice of appearing open and affable. Such access is critical for people working in think tanks who eat from the grants they secure, which require such access to Pakistan’s corridors of power. The combination of these various measures results in a silenced coterie of critics and a sprawling ecosystem of those who happily promote Pakistan’s narratives in exchange for access.
With the U.S. Embassy in Kabul shuttered, the United States is very likely to do what it usually does: go back to the arsonist and sustain the pretense that it is in fact the fire brigade. The United States will likely find itself more dependent on Pakistan as it seeks a foothold to retain intelligence cooperation and likely drone basing for targeting the terrorist refuges in Pakistan, even while Pakistan continues to cultivate the same refuges. As in the past, whether it was the use of Pakistan territory for U-2 flights or for drones, Pakistan and the United States will likely establish yet another pay-to-play scheme. Pakistan will continue to provide the minimal results to justify the expenditures to a U.S. Congress that is always wary of Pakistan but not enough to do anything meaningful to curtail its myriad outrages. In the meantime, Pakistan’s militant assets cultivated for action in India will benefit enormously from the terrorist safe havens protected by the Taliban-led house of horrors that is the Afghan government.
Read More
The United States is banking on Islamabad to broker successful peace talks with the Taliban. That’s not likely to happen.
Islamabad cheered the fall of Kabul, but the new Afghan regime will embolden domestic terrorist groups that could threaten the Pakistani state.
Rather than hiking along the treacherous course Washington has been treading with Pakistan since the 1950s, can we imagine a different future for U.S.-Pakistan relations? Yes. But it will take political courage—which seems in short supply in Washington.
To begin with, the United States must exorcise the fear that Pakistan is too dangerous to fail. Pakistan coerces the United States and the rest of the international community by raising the specter of a state collapse in which one or more of Pakistan’s varied terrorist groups secure nuclear weapons or fissile material. To fend off such a doomsday scenario, the United States has been loath to sanction Pakistan bilaterally, much less cut off its supply to international financial regimes. Oddly, Pakistan gets its cake and gets to eat it, too. While Pakistan’s deep state wants to be seen as competent, it is perfectly happy encouraging this belief, because it is lucrative. Nor does the deep state truly care about the loss of Pakistani life from blowback, particularly if the losses are suffered by poor, non-Punjabi citizens.
However, Pakistan has proved to be a very stable instability. It was never expected to survive as an independent state given the disparity of human and other resources it inherited from the dismembered Raj. British and Indians alike expected Pakistan to collapse back into India. Following the route of Bengali independence, many subsequent commentators have long expected Pakistan to further succumb to ethnic demands. Yet it has not. Pakistan emerged from the 1971 war stronger and more capable of projecting its interests despite the loss of half of its population, precious natural resources, and considerable landmass. Moreover, Pakistan has survived the most grievous of natural disasters without any of the predicted adverse second-order effects. It’s time to put to rest the idea that Pakistan will collapse—or fears collapsing.
Equally important is the twinned myth that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists. Pakistan’s most important assets are its nuclear weapons. These weapons are useful threats only to the extent that Pakistan has credible command and control over the same. While one can never rule out low-probability events, the fact is that Pakistan’s interests in securing these weapons, fissile materials, and technology are completely aligned with those of the United States.
Washington must let go of the fiction that there is some mystical combination of allurements that will shape Pakistan into a responsible state.
Rather than seeking to retain access to a country by attempting to rent it, the United States must let go of the fiction that there is some mystical combination of U.S. allurements and inducements that will shape Pakistan into a responsible state.
Right now, Washington and its partners must focus on ameliorating the humanitarian disaster that the United States and Pakistan created. The international community must demand that Pakistan provide a safe corridor for those Afghans who do not want to live shackled to the horrors of the Taliban regime. It must provide safe passage even to those Afghans who worked in the legitimate government and who may be viewed as enemies of Pakistan and its Taliban lieges. Pakistan should be compensated for these services via a cost structure that is germane to Pakistan’s economy in contradistinction to the lucrative reimbursement terms of the Coalition Support Funds program. There should be harsh punishments for failing to protect Afghans or facilitate their resettlement elsewhere. Islamabad must be persuaded to put pressure on the Taliban to let the planes that are currently stranded in Afghanistan’s airports depart.
At the same time, the United States must take steps to punish Pakistan for its ongoing military and other support to the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other Islamist militants it uses at home and abroad. At the time of writing, the Taliban announced their interim cabinet, which includes declared terrorist Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of a brutal eponymous terrorist network, as the new acting interior minister, as well as numerous others who are on various American and U.N. sanctions lists.
Congress should act to strip Pakistan of its major non-NATO ally status, which then-Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in 2004. While the designation was meant to bolster Pakistani belief in the U.S. commitment to the country as it sought to enlist Pakistan’s support in its international counterterrorism campaigns, it was also meant as a means of expeditiously getting Pakistan military platforms and spare parts for the same as well as a host of other perquisites. Past congressional efforts to deprive Pakistan of this status, including one mounted this January, have failed. It’s time to end this farce.
Critically, the United States should employ sanctions under the Treasury Department for any Pakistani official for whom there is credible intelligence indicating they have supported the archipelago of terrorist training facilities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Such specific sanctions would focus on the worst offenders, without further immiserating the more than 200 million Pakistanis who are also hostages to its deep state.
The United States should also declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism—with clearly defined benchmarks according to which this status can be reversed. Currently, the State Department designates Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria as terrorism sponsors. How does Pakistan not meet the criteria?
And, even if Washington lacks the guts to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, it should at least allow Pakistan to receive the blacklisting it so deserves when it is next evaluated by the Financial Action Task Force, the global body that evaluates corruption, money laundering, and terrorist funding in national financial systems. The United States and the United Kingdom have unofficially preferred that Pakistan remain on the organization’s gray list to ensure that it can continue to receive IMF funding. This is absurd.
Pakistan fears the possibility of even the most modest of punishments for its endless outrages—which is why it has launched another diplomatic offensive, simultaneously wooing allies and targeting critics. American leaders need to stop falling for this line—and start making sure Islamabad pays a price for its reckless actions and the cost in Afghan, Indian, and Pakistani lives.
7. House committee demands answers on Afghanistan
I imagine there will be some bloodletting in Congressional hearings.
House committee demands answers on Afghanistan - Roll Call
rollcall.com · by John M. DonnellyPosted September 10, 2021 at 6:00pm · September 10, 2021
The House Armed Services Committee is worried about “catastrophic” consequences if the Taliban has obtained biometric information about Afghans who helped the U.S. war effort.
The Taliban may have seized in recent weeks a number of devices storing information about America’s Afghan allies, such as fingerprints, iris scans and biographical information, according to media reports. As a result, Afghans whose information was seized and who remain in the country may now be at greater risk of reprisal by the Taliban.
The committee report accompanying the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act states that the Defense Department’s Automated Biometric Identification System contains about 1 million entries. In the report, made public Friday, the panel expresses grave concern about “the possibility of this data trove falling into the hands of the Taliban or another enemy of the United States.”
If U.S. adversaries have gotten a hold of this information, the committee said, it would be “a catastrophic loss that permanently undermines the safety of Afghan citizens who helped the U.S. during twenty years of war and occupation.”
Moreover, the report warned, “It would also fundamentally weaken Department of Defense biometric collection efforts moving forward because of actual or perceived data security concerns.” The committee directs the Pentagon to provide a detailed assessment of what happened last month in Kabul on this score, including addressing the “current integrity” of the entire biometric database.
The committee is also concerned about reports that the Pentagon itself may have shared “personally identifying information” with the Taliban, as members of that group were helping to screen people seeking to fly out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The panel demands that the Pentagon provide a report on what happened in those instances.
The possible loss of information that would identify potentially endangered Afghan allies is just one of many repercussions preoccupying the committee and others in Congress as they assess last month’s rapid Taliban takeover and the shambolic departure from the country of both desperate Afghans and the last of America’s military forces there.
The committee’s report and bill demand that the Pentagon generate a plethora of reports and briefings to address lingering questions about Afghanistan in the minds of members of both parties. Members want to understand what went wrong, how to minimize the security impact now and how to prevent similar setbacks in the future.
Demands for assessments
The committee approved its bill on Sept. 2, and the House plans to debate it during the week of Sept. 20. The measure would create a 12-member bipartisan commission to provide a detailed assessment of the conduct of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, America’s longest war.
Washington Democrat Adam Smith, the committee’s chairman, was supportive of most of the Afghanistan amendments, including creation of the special commission.
“This is exactly what we need to do,” Smith said of the commission on Sept. 2 during the final hours of the marathon markup.
In keeping with that appetite for answers, the committee report directs the Pentagon to produce a bevy of documents about Afghanistan. Although report language is not binding, the department’s leaders generally heed such requests.
For example, the committee wants an official assessment of how the Defense Department’s “production and communication” of intelligence about Afghanistan could have worked better, particularly this year, and how to improve it in the future.
U.S. intelligence services, by all accounts so far, failed to ascertain the fragility of the Afghan forces and the likelihood the Taliban would finish its long-gathering takeover of the country in days, not weeks or months, as had been the worst-case prediction of U.S. spy agencies.
Members are interested, too, in “understanding the strategic decision” of Defense Department leaders to shut down the Bagram air base outside of Kabul in July, leaving the Hamid Karzai airport, located closer to the densely populated city center, as the only major airfield available.
Troubling questions
The committee report asserts that, after most U.S. forces and contractors had departed Afghanistan earlier this year, a lack of private sector logistics support for the Afghan air force was largely why those units failed to fend off the Taliban.
The committee notes that it asked the Pentagon in May to explain how the Afghan air force could operate without contractor support and never got an answer. It wants an explanation now, according to one section of the report.
The committee also is concerned that the Afghanistan experience raises troubling questions about the efficacy of all its costly train-and-equip programs for foreign militaries. The panel wants the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees such programs, to report on lessons it has learned about this in the aftermath of the Afghanistan experience.
The committee is also dismayed about “the lack of information that was provided” by the Pentagon to lawmakers in the months leading up to the withdrawal, and the panel wants a report on how to improve communications with Congress in such situations in the future.
Members also want a Pentagon report on plans for evacuating from Afghanistan any U.S. citizens who are still seeking to leave the country, and they want that review to also disclose how the department plans to gather intelligence on — and strike, if necessary — terrorists in Afghanistan as U.S. forces are now located outside that country.
Taliban’s wealth, connections
Other reports are required on the security impact of the Taliban’s recent release of hundreds of detainees, including some accused terrorists.
Another requirement is for an evaluation of the consequences of any U.S. military aircraft that may have fallen into the Taliban’s hands, even though the Pentagon has said it destroyed or disabled its major equipment before U.S. troops withdrew. The committee tasks the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction with examining the status of leftover U.S. equipment.
And the panel asks that same auditor to also review how the Afghan security forces proved so incapable or unwilling to fight for the government despite having received billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, supplies, salaries and training. The panel wants to know, too, the degree of Taliban support for terrorist organizations and the extent of the Taliban’s wealth.
Besides these requirements in the committee’s report, its bill also contains Afghanistan-related provisions. One would bar providing assistance to the Taliban, and another would prohibit transporting currency or other items of value to the group.
The bill also would mandate quarterly Pentagon briefings on the security environment in Afghanistan and a quarterly report on terrorism in the country.
rollcall.com · by John M. DonnellyPosted September 10, 2021 at 6:00pm · September 10, 2021
8. U.S. Forces Were Training the Guinean Soldiers Who Took Off to Stage a Coup
But we will be blamed. The AAR on this with the team will be interesting. What did they know and when and if they did not know why not? How was the tradecraft of the coup plotters? Were they effective in compartmenting their operations? Or was their training sufficiently separate from the actual coup? (they were training in an area four hours away). My guess is that this coup was planned well before the training started and nothing in the training program was related to preparing for and assisting the coup. But that will not satisfy those who will want to allege a direct connection. The counterfactual is would the coup have occurred if we had not been conducting this training (my guess is yes because this training had nothing to do with it? That said perhaps the coup was timed to coincide with the training in the belief that this would somehow give the coup leaders some top cover.
I would like to read the team's area study for Guinea and their area assessment done in country. And were they obvesering for indicators of resistance?
UW Standing “PIR” For Resistance
•Assessments – Special Forces Area Study/Area Assessment, PSYOP Target Audience Analysis, and Civil Affairs Civil Reconnaissance
•Who is the resistance?
–Leaders, groups, former military, in or out of government, etc.
•What are the objectives of the resistance?
–Do they align with US and friends, partners, and allies?
•Where is it operating?
–From where is it getting support?
•When did it begin?
–When will it/did it commence operations?
•Why is there a resistance or the potential for resistance?
–What are the underlying causes/drivers?
•How will it turn out?
–E.g., what is the assessment of success or failure of the resistance?
•Most important - An expert recommendation: Should the US support or counter the resistance and if so how?
And on a related note what did our intelligence community and the Embassy know about the coup or prospects for one?
Excerpts:
The United States, like the United Nations and the African Union, has condemned the coup, and the U.S. military has denied having any advance knowledge of it.
For the Pentagon, though, it is an embarrassment. The United States has trained troops in many African nations, largely for counterterrorism programs but also with the broad aim of supporting civilian-led governments.
And although numerous U.S.-trained officers have seized power in their countries — most notably, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt — this is believed to be the first time one has done so in the middle of an American military course.
On Sunday, once the Green Berets realized a coup was underway, they drove straight to the United States Embassy in Conakry, and the training program was suspended, said Kelly Cahalan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Africa Command. The coup, she said, is “inconsistent with U.S. military training and education.”
American officials seeking to downplay the episode initially stressed that the base where the training took place was in Forécariah, a four-hour drive from the presidential palace, close to Guinea’s border with Sierra Leone.
U.S. Forces Were Training the Guinean Soldiers Who Took Off to Stage a Coup
American military officials have denounced the ouster of a president in West Africa, and said they had no warning of what their students were planning.
People celebrating in the streets with members of Guinea’s armed forces on Sunday, after soldiers toppled Guinea’s president, Alpha Condé, in a coup d’etat in the capital, Conakry.
Sept. 10, 2021
NAIROBI, Kenya — American Green Berets were training local forces in the West African nation of Guinea last weekend when their charges peeled away for a mission not listed in any military training manual: They mounted a coup.
Gunfire rang out as an elite Guinean Special Forces unit stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Conakry, early Sunday, deposing the country’s 83-year-old president, Alpha Condé. Hours later a charismatic young officer, Col. Mamady Doumbouya, announced himself as Guinea’s new leader.
The Americans knew him well.
A team of about a dozen Green Berets had been in Guinea since mid-July to train about 100 soldiers in a special forces unit led by Colonel Doumbouya, who served for years in the French Foreign Legion, took part in American military exercises and was once a close ally of the president he overthrew.
The United States, like the United Nations and the African Union, has condemned the coup, and the U.S. military has denied having any advance knowledge of it.
For the Pentagon, though, it is an embarrassment. The United States has trained troops in many African nations, largely for counterterrorism programs but also with the broad aim of supporting civilian-led governments.
And although numerous U.S.-trained officers have seized power in their countries — most notably, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt — this is believed to be the first time one has done so in the middle of an American military course.
On Sunday, once the Green Berets realized a coup was underway, they drove straight to the United States Embassy in Conakry, and the training program was suspended, said Kelly Cahalan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Africa Command. The coup, she said, is “inconsistent with U.S. military training and education.”
American officials seeking to downplay the episode initially stressed that the base where the training took place was in Forécariah, a four-hour drive from the presidential palace, close to Guinea’s border with Sierra Leone.
By The New York Times
But on Friday, U.S. officials said they were investigating reports that Colonel Doumbouya and his fellow coup-makers had set off in an armed convoy from that same base early on Sunday — raising the prospect that they slipped away while their instructors were sleeping.
Col. Mamady Doumbouya, center, after a meeting with a delegation from the Economic Community of West African States on Friday in Conakry.Credit...Sunday Alamba/Associated Press
“We do not have any information on how the apparent military seizure of power occurred, and had no prior indication of these events,” Bardha S. Azari, also a spokeswoman for the U.S. Africa Command, said in an email.
The coup in Guinea, the fourth military takeover in West Africa in 12 months, following two coups in Mali and a disputed succession in Chad, fueled worries of democratic backsliding in a coup-prone region of Africa.
The discomfort of U.S. officials over their proximity to the coup plotters was made worse by video footage circulating in recent days that showed smiling American military officers in a crowd of joyous Guineans on Sept. 5, the day of the coup.
As a four-wheel-drive vehicle with Guinean soldiers perched on the back pushes through the crowd chanting “Freedom,” one American appears to touch hands with cheering people.
“If the Americans are involved in the putsch, it’s because of their mining interests,” said Diapharou Baldé, a teacher in Conakry — a reference to Guinea’s huge deposits of gold, iron ore and bauxite, which is used to make aluminum.
American officials confirmed that the video showed Green Berets returning to the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, but denied it implied support for the coup. “The U.S. government and military are not involved in this apparent military seizure of power in any way,” Ms. Azari, the spokeswoman, said.
A video verified by The Times shows cars with American Green Berets driving through a jubilant crowd near the U.S. Embassy in Conakry, the Guinean capital, on Sept. 5, after a military coup unseated the president. The clip circulated widely on social media, and some Guineans interpreted the images as tacit American support for the coup, which the U.S. government has condemned.
For many Guineans, the Americans’ cameo role in the coup was just one element in a week of dizzying change driven by Colonel Doumbouya, 41, now the second-youngest leader of an African state.
The youngest is in neighboring Mali, where Col. Assimi Goïta came to power only in May, also following a coup.
After an hourlong gun battle outside the presidential palace on Sunday in which at least 11 people were killed, Guinean and Western officials said, Colonel Doumbouya appeared on state television wearing sunglasses and draped in Guinea’s tricolor flag.
He said he had been forced to seize power because of the actions of President Condé, a one-time democracy campaigner elected president in 2010 after an earlier coup paved the way for elections.
But Mr. Condé’s legitimacy slumped last year after he amended the constitution to enable him to seek a third term, which he won. After the election, over 400 political opponents were cast into Guinea’s squalid prisons, where at least four died, Amnesty International said.
Footage that circulated after the coup showed a disheveled Mr. Condé, surrounded by soldiers, slouched on a sofa and looking dejected. Colonel Doumbouya has refused to say where he is being held, though envoys from West Africa’s main political and economic bloc met with Mr. Condé on Friday and said he was in good health.
The president has been ousted by an officer whose career he once blessed.
Colonel Doumbouya shot to public attention in October 2018 during celebrations for Guinea’s 60th anniversary of independence, when he paraded the country’s newly formed Special Forces unit through central Conakry. Images of the parade went viral on Guinean social media.
“People were very impressed by the choreography of the soldiers, and synchronized movement of their vehicles,” said Issaka K. Souaré, director of the Sahel and West Africa program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Mr. Condé, in a 2018 interview, lavished praise on the young officer — a fellow member of the Malinke tribe. Colonel Doumbouya, as a French Legionnaire, served in Afghanistan and Ivory Coast and completed a commando training course in Israel, according to his official biography.
Married to a French military police officer, he is also a French citizen and graduated in defense studies from a university in Paris.
Although public disaffection with Mr. Condé laid the ground for the coup, it was also fueled by smoldering rivalries inside Guinea’s defense establishment, a Western official and an analyst, who could not be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said.
They said that tensions grew between Colonel Doumbouya and Guinea’s defense minister, Mohamed Diané. Fearing a putsch in the capital, Mr. Diané moved the Special Forces unit to the base in Forécariah.
Colonel Doumbouya complained publicly that his unit was being starved of resources.
American officials have known Colonel Doumbouya since the start of his rise. A photo posted to the U.S. Embassy Facebook page from October 2018 showed him standing with three American military officials outside the U.S. Embassy.
Col. Mamady Doumbouya, center, in a Facebook post from Oct. 15, 2018, put up by the U.S. Embassy.
But on Friday American officials said they were puzzled why he would choose to mount a coup at a moment when he was working closely with Americans.
It’s not the first time that coups in Africa have cast a shadow over American training programs on the continent. As insurgents surged across Mali’s northern desert in 2012, United States-trained commanders of the country’s elite army units defected at a critical time, taking troops, trucks, weapons and their newfound skills to the enemy.
Declan Walsh reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington. Abdourahmane Diallo contributed reporting from Conakry, Guinea, and Christiaan Triebert from New York.
9. NSW Wraps Up SOF Phase of MALABAR with Partner Nations
A NAVSPECWARCOM contribution to the Quad in the face of great power competition.
NSW Wraps Up SOF Phase of MALABAR with Partner Nations
SANTA RITA, GUAM (NNS) - U.S. Naval Special Warfare (NSW), Indian Navy Marine Commandos, and Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) Special Boarding Units completed the special operations forces (SOF) phase of MALABAR 21 in Santa Rita, Guam, Sept. 5.
MALABAR 21 is a multilateral naval field training exercise between the Royal Australian Navy, Indian Navy, JMSDF, and U.S. Navy conducted to improve collective maritime capabilities and relationships.
“Our combined forces have a common understanding of a shared working environment at sea,” said U.S. Navy Capt. David Abernathy, commander, Naval Special Warfare Group 1. “Exercises like these provide practical, hands-on training between multinational special operations forces, allowing our forces to share our skills. Naval Special Warfare consistently looks for opportunities to enhance this ongoing professional partnership.”
The two-week SOF phase of MALABAR 21 focused on interoperability and information-sharing, to include practicing high-end tactics in complex maritime environments. The training scenarios allowed the operators to integrate with traditional fleet assets, both in port and at sea.
SOF teams participated in mission planning and close-quarters battle simulations that tested endurance and incorporated elements of combat-casualty care, hostage rescue, and improvised explosive devices.
The SOF phase of MALABAR 21 also included fast-rope, combat dive operations, maritime strike warfare, explosive ordnance disposal subject matter expert exchanges, and visit, board, search, and seizure drills.
U.S. 7th Fleet’s Task Force 75 (CTF 75) also participated in the exercise, hosting the urban combat training scenario and an explosive ordnance disposal subject matter expert exchange.
MALABAR 2021 is an example of the enduring partnership between Australian, Indian, Japanese and U.S. maritime forces, who routinely operate together in the Indo-Pacific, fostering a cooperative approach toward regional security and stability.
NSW is the nation's premier maritime special operations force and is uniquely positioned to extend the fleet's reach and deliver all-domain options for multinational forces.
10. Beyond Forever War: A Smarter Counterterrorism Approach Is Now Within Reach
Excerpts:
The sudden collapse of the Afghan government has refocused the United States’ attention on the jihadi threat. But that threat is not as grave as it once was, at least not in the United States and Europe, and it is just one of many terrorist dangers that Washington must address. Instead of a boundless war on terror, the United States needs counterterrorism policies that are comprehensive enough to deal with multiple threats but sufficiently discerning about the costs and benefits of action.
The collision of the pandemic and the United States’ broken political system, which has turned an unprecedented public health crisis into a unbounded political brawl, has given Americans a taste of the danger ahead if the country continues down its current path. The terrorist threats the United States faces are manageable. The question is whether the country’s political leaders can rise to the occasion and manage them.
Beyond Forever War
A Smarter Counterterrorism Approach Is Now Within Reach
Among the many bitter ironies of the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, few are as painful as the prospect of a resurgence of al Qaeda and other jihadi groups in the country where so much American blood and treasure was spilled. After 20 years of war that cost more than 6,000 U.S. service members and contractors their lives and the American public $2 trillion, a revival of the organization that triggered it all is difficult to stomach.
That possibility has come as a surprise to many. In the foreign policy establishment, the global “war on terror” ended in 2018, when U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis issued a National Defense Strategy that identified China and Russia, America’s great-power rivals, as the biggest threats to U.S. security. For the broader public, the end came even earlier, when major print and broadcast media outlets reassigned many reporters from the terrorism beat to cover President Donald Trump, his shady relationship with Russia, and the subsequent raft of scandals. Even the first terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 by a foreign national—a Saudi air force officer who killed three sailors and wounded 13 others in Pensacola, Florida, in 2019—did nothing to distract the public from the Trump imbroglios. The sense that the jihadi violence had receded carried over into the Biden administration, which turned its attention to right-wing white supremacist terror and made little mention of jihadi violence before the nightmare in Kabul.
Now, Americans are once again focused on the threat of Islamist terrorism, partly thanks to the kind of fear-mongering that characterized pre-Trump discussions of jihadi terror. Nathan Sales, who served as coordinator for counterterrorism in Trump’s State Department, told The New York Times with apodictic certainty that “the terrorism risk to the United States is going to get dramatically worse” and that “it is virtually certain that al Qaeda will reestablish a safe haven in Afghanistan and use it to plot terrorism against the United States and others.” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, declared on television that “the chance of another 9/11 just went through the roof.”
After years of hopeful delusions that the era of jihadi terrorism was past, it is indeed time for U.S. policymakers to refocus on the threat. But returning to the fearfulness and hyperventilation that plagued the decade and a half before Trump is not the way to do it. A wiser, more durable approach to the enduring threat of terrorism is possible now that the forever wars are ending. It will require the government to confront multiple threats at once—from far-right extremism to jihadi terrorism to antisocial, misogynist violence—instead of swinging wildly between them. It will also require administrations from both parties to calm partisan tensions, which have driven maximalist policies that are unfeasible and ultimately counterproductive. And finally, it will require acknowledging that terrorism is an ineradicable fact of modern life. Because of the availability of dangerous technologies, the profusion of grievances in many quarters, and the openness of Western societies, there will always be someone somewhere who is ready to kill for ideological purposes. A more sensible approach to counterterrorism, therefore, will require Americans to recognize the great strides that have been made in protecting them, cultivate resilience, and accept a modicum of risk.
ALIVE AND WELL
The sudden prospect of a jihadi resurgence in Afghanistan might have come as a shock to many, but Islamist terrorism never disappeared. Although attacks against Americans and Europeans have grown less frequent, global levels of terrorism have remained relatively high. The failure of the Arab Spring, the defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS), and the Syrian civil war all rechanneled Islamist energies inward on the Muslim world. As a result, jihadi groups have “relocalized,” focusing more effort on Muslim or heterogeneous societies in the developing world and less on the Western nations they blame for supporting “apostate” and frequently authoritarian regimes. The Sahel and West Africa are currently the most active fields of jihad, and violent groups in these regions often affiliate with al Qaeda or ISIS as a branding strategy.
Still, the basic drivers of the global jihad—economic stagnation, political exclusion, resentment born of repression—have been little touched by the global war on terror and in some cases grown stronger because of it. In Egypt, where the modern jihadi movement was born during the harsh days of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the repression of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime may outstrip that of its predecessor. Across the Arab and broader Muslim world, corruption flourishes and disregard for civil liberties remains common.
The United States and its allies have gotten much better at neutralizing threats from those groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS that have sought to target the “far enemy”—thanks in part to armed drones, capable special operations forces, and long-range surveillance. The United States has also dramatically strengthened its border and aviation security, expanded intelligence collection and analysis, improved communication within and between law enforcement and the intelligence community, and forged a global network of like-minded spy agencies to track and fight the terrorist threat. Nonetheless, as long as the jihadi flame burns, it is not just possible but probable that some group will eventually find a reason to target the United States and its allies again.
The collapse of Afghanistan will surely make U.S. counterterrorism efforts more difficult.
The collapse of Afghanistan will surely make U.S. counterterrorism efforts more difficult. A rejuvenation of al Qaeda is indeed possible, since the Taliban never truly broke with the group. The United States will also have less ability to collect intelligence in a country where it may have no embassy or military bases (although it has a sizable universe of potential intelligence assets after 20 years of war and its ability to collect intelligence through technical means has improved dramatically). But the Taliban’s tolerance for al Qaeda terrorist conspiracies could be more limited than the more exercised commentators have assumed. As the former CIA official Paul Pillar has argued, the Taliban originally welcomed al Qaeda because they needed military support in the civil war. But if there is no civil war in Afghanistan, and the Taliban rule largely uncontested, they will not need the terrorist group.
Al Qaeda’s ability to threaten the United States will also depend far more on its ability to rebuild international networks, which Washington and its allies have 20 years of experience rolling up, than on a restored safe haven in Afghanistan. The Taliban will not enjoy sovereign control over Afghanistan’s airspace, where U.S. aircraft will have free rein well into the future. U.S. air assets launched from more distant bases in nearby countries will not have as much time to loiter over potential targets, but if they are given the necessary resources, they will still be able to get the job done.
As for penetrating the United States to carry out another mass casualty attack, al Qaeda and its imitators will have to evade the vast web of surveillance the United States and its partners have spun since 9/11. Would-be attackers will also have to learn to deceive a much-improved border security system. Leaks to the press have revealed that the United States has placed 1.9 million individuals on its no-fly list, which is just a subset of the much larger interagency terrorism watch list. The enemy knows this now, too, of course, which is a decidedly bad byproduct of the leaks, and many people will suffer inconveniences as a result of being misidentified as suspected extremists. Even if a new generation of jihadists embraces the old doctrine of striking Americans on American soil, however, it will struggle to succeed.
RULE OF REASON
This picture of the jihadi threat—alive, but more potent in Africa and the Middle East than in Western cities—demands a better approach to counterterrorism than the war on terror. After 9/11, the United States lost its ability to distinguish between real and notional threats. The intelligence community suddenly discovered al Qaeda operatives in 90 countries. Driven by the “one percent” doctrine of President George W. Bush’s administration, which demanded open-ended warfare if there was so much as a one percent chance that a terrorist foe possessed unconventional weapons, the United States declared war on the world. That war’s core element of decades-long military deployments was not only unsustainable but counterproductive, as ISIS’s rise out of Iraq’s sectarian chaos and the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan both demonstrated. Occupation, clearly, is a well-traveled road to radicalization.
Instead of forever war, the United States must embrace a rule of reason: it should be vigilant but not feel compelled to take military action against terrorist threats that are not directed at the United States or its closest partners. This will require doing more than one thing at a time, however—walking and chewing gum, to use the bowdlerized version of President Lyndon Johnson’s famous phrase. This has not been the norm in U.S. counterterrorism. Government agencies focused intensely on the threat of far-right extremism after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 but largely ignored it after the watershed of 9/11. During the Trump administration, the subject of right-wing extremism was taboo within the government.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan poses the risk of the pendulum swinging in the other direction—away from far-right extremism and back to jihadi threats. This oscillation must stop. The United States needs to be able to deal with jihadis, white supremacists, and other extremists who have not yet emerged—all at the same time. Dozens of groups carried out terrorist attacks in the United States between 2015 and 2019. Movements that blend ideology with religion or race have the potential to do the most damage, but others can draw blood, too. Violence by “Incels”—misogynists who blame their sexual frustration on women—have carried out multiple lethal attacks. Bizarre as such threats may be, the United States ignores them at its peril.
After 9/11, the United States lost its ability to distinguish between real and notional threats.
The growing range of weapons available to would-be terrorists is also a cause for concern: cyber, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons all pose a threat that will inevitably grow with time. The cyberthreat emanates from states but has also been privatized. It has not yet been deployed to kill, but it could easily be, given the penetrability of the data control systems that regulate industry, services, aviation, and health care, to name a few targets. The lethal potential of the biological threat is also considerable, owing to advances in life sciences, dissemination of technical knowledge on social media and the Dark Web, and uneven regulatory control of laboratories engaged in research and experimentation. The pandemic that swept the globe beginning in late 2019 underscored this danger: although the origins of COVID-19 might never be known, it is at least plausible that the virus escaped accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers were experimenting on coronaviruses.
Whether terrorists have been inspired by the pandemic is unknown, at least to the public. But terrorist groups have used chemical and biological weapons in the past. In the 1990s, the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo used several different toxins, including nerve gas, in both targeted and indiscriminate attacks. Al Qaeda and ISIS both consider these weapons doctrinally and morally legitimate and have pursued their development. Terrorists have also used anthrax and ricin in small-scale attacks, and combatants in Syria’s civil war have normalized deployment of chemical agents, probably lowering ethical and strategic inhibitions to their use elsewhere.
There are many reasons that terrorists have not sought to use such weapons on a broader scale. They are difficult to produce and dangerous to use. Their effects are unpredictable and could undermine their users’ claim to the moral high ground. Terrorists have also often found it easier to inflict mass casualties with conventional weapons than with exotic ones. Nevertheless, it is not too far-fetched to imagine a terrorist engineering the release of a highly lethal virus from a sloppily managed laboratory.
KEEP CALM, CARRY ON
In order to keep its eye on multiple threats from multiple sources, the United States will need to shield counterterrorism from the bitter partisan battles that have spread to nearly every policy arena. When politicians see every terrorist incident—whether it causes casualties or is a near miss—as an opportunity to pummel those in power, policymakers are driven to maximalist, unsustainable policies and to overkill. Politicized—and often overhyped—terrorism concerns crowd out other policy concerns, undermining the United States’ ability to deal with an array of global problems and weakening its global standing. The blood sport of blaming elected officials for counterterrorism setbacks also consumes precious time and political space that could be used for constructive purposes. One need think only of the endless congressional hearings that followed the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans—or the gleeful remarks Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy, now the House minority leader, made in 2015 about the political damage this circus did to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Such political warfare also gradually erodes public trust in government. Setting aside the disastrous, unnecessary military expeditions the United States undertook in the wake of 9/11, its counterterrorism efforts have been extraordinarily successful. Anyone observing the catastrophe of 9/11 would have justifiably expected that the United States would face a long struggle during which terrorists would claim thousands of American lives on American soil. But in the two decades since then, scarcely more than 100 people have been murdered by jihadi terrorists in the United States. This remarkable record of success appears to have had little effect on Americans’ thinking about the severity of the jihadi terrorist threat, however. Fear-mongering and political infighting, amplified through the media, have obscured all that has been achieved. U.S. leaders must dial back the politics of division and join together in common cause—or else continue to weaken the country and its position in the world.
Americans must learn to live with some level of terrorist risk.
Just as important as political leadership, however, will be resetting Americans’ threat perceptions and their tolerance for uncertainty. The one percent doctrine must be permanently discarded, and Americans must learn to live with some level of terrorist risk. Countering the deeply ingrained idea that any risk at all is unacceptable will be difficult. It will require educating the public about the actual chance of various kinds of terrorist attacks and about risk assessment more generally. Armed with a better understanding of the facts, Americans will be more resilient when the next attack inevitably happens. “Keep calm and carry on” has devolved into a comic meme, but the wartime British government that coined the phrase understood its importance.
RISE TO THE CHALLENGE
The sudden collapse of the Afghan government has refocused the United States’ attention on the jihadi threat. But that threat is not as grave as it once was, at least not in the United States and Europe, and it is just one of many terrorist dangers that Washington must address. Instead of a boundless war on terror, the United States needs counterterrorism policies that are comprehensive enough to deal with multiple threats but sufficiently discerning about the costs and benefits of action.
The collision of the pandemic and the United States’ broken political system, which has turned an unprecedented public health crisis into a unbounded political brawl, has given Americans a taste of the danger ahead if the country continues down its current path. The terrorist threats the United States faces are manageable. The question is whether the country’s political leaders can rise to the occasion and manage them.
11. America Did Al-Qaeda’s Work for It
Excerpts:
Today’s al-Qaeda enjoys a much stronger foundation on which to build. Its component groups are embedded as combatants in conflicts in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere. Collectively, these franchises have thousands of fighters. Al-Qaeda has long been renowned for its “strategic patience,” its ability to wait until the time is right before renewing attacks on the West. Today, little barrier remains to such a renewal. Indeed, as the competition for recruits picks up once more, al-Qaeda may again see it as an existential necessity.
With phase one of the Management of Savagery plan more or less complete, al-Qaeda will move to phase two: extorting the vacuums created by these conflicts to eventully build up “Islamic” regimes like the Taliban’s, aided by American withdrawal across the Muslim world. To the extent that this goes well, instability and anti-Westernism will deepen. To the extent that it does not, there is a high risk that al-Qaeda may return to attacking the West directly. Of course, it may pursue both strategies simultaneously. To guard against either scenario, the U.S. must work urgently to rebuild its diplomatic influence and intelligence networks throughout the region to effectively counter the threat and help reach political resolutions for the various ongoing conflicts.
Otherwise it faces the prospect of phase three: the areas controlled by al-Qaeda and its followers being declared a caliphate. The last time something like that happened was in 2014 in Iraq and Syria, and its consequences were disastrous.
America Did Al-Qaeda’s Work for It
U.S. influence has been systematically dismantled across much of the Muslim world, a process abetted by Washington’s own mistakes.
About the author: Ali Soufan is a former FBI Special Agent and the author of Anatomy of Terror. He investigated highly sensitive and complex terrorism cases including the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks. He is Chairman and CEO of The Soufan Group.
Alex Majoli / Magnum
The United States today does not have so much as an embassy in Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria, or Yemen. It demonstrably has little influence over nominal allies such as Pakistan, which has been aiding the Taliban for decades, and Saudi Arabia, which has prolonged the conflict in Yemen. In Iraq, where almost 5,000 U.S. and allied troops have died since 2003, America must endure the spectacle of political leaders flaunting their membership in Iranian-backed groups, some of which the U.S. considers terrorist organizations.
Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, with trillions of dollars spent and countless lives lost, U.S. influence has been systematically dismantled across much of the Muslim world, a process abetted by America’s own mistakes. Sadly, much of this was foreseen by the very terrorists who carried out those attacks.
In 2004, al-Qaeda published a treatise titled Management of Savagery. The book codified existing al-Qaeda strategy, breaking it down into three phases, the first of which involved using violence to create adjoining “regions of savagery” where the writ of traditional governments does not extend.
We now see the success of that strategy. It is startling to realize how much of the Muslim world is in the hands of non-state actors. In Libya, armed factions battle for supremacy. Militias backed by Iran hold sway in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen—often fighting against rival Sunni groups, some of them affiliated with al-Qaeda. Somalia shows little sign of emerging from the grip of the local al-Qaeda faction, al-Shabaab. And of course, the Taliban once again controls Afghanistan. Taken together, that makes for an arc of chaos from North Africa to Central Asia.
Afghanistan presents the worst tragedy yet. Long before the U.S. withdrawal last month, al-Qaeda had begun re-creating the network of training camps it operated in the country before 9/11. As far back as 2015, one such camp near the Pakistani border required 63 coalition air strikes and a ground force of 200 U.S. troops to dismantle. Nor is al-Qaeda alone in Afghanistan. Today’s Taliban seeks to shelter a variety of foreign terrorist groups, just as it did in the 1990s. In May 2021, a United Nations monitoring team estimated the number of foreign fighters in Afghanistan at 8,000 to 10,000, including Arabs, Central Asians, and Uyghurs. These fighters’ primary goal is the same as it was in the ’90s: to train in Afghanistan for deployment around the world. Monitoring by my intelligence and security consultancy, the Soufan Group, is already picking up social-media “chatter” suggesting that jihadist groups in Syria and Southeast Asia are redirecting would-be recruits to Afghanistan for initial training.
This combination—a hands-off approach from the U.S. plus a proliferation of jihadist groups in Afghanistan—ought to trigger alarm bells for anyone familiar with the history of al-Qaeda’s campaign of murder against America. Except now, Afghanistan is not the lone region of “savagery.”
When Osama bin Laden declared war on the U.S. in 1996—a few months after returning to Afghanistan—prominent among the factors that prompted him to do so was intense competition for recruits. His group at the time was well funded thanks to his own fortune, but al-Qaeda needed to distinguish itself from the many other terrorist groups based in Afghanistan. Attack America and provoke a response, bin Laden reasoned, and he would make himself even more of a hero among jihadis.
But the U.S. response to al-Qaeda’s first major attacks disappointed bin Laden. Following the 1998 bombings of American embassies in East Africa, in which more than 200 people died, the U.S. launched some 66 cruise missiles against al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Without precise intelligence to guide them, however, they destroyed only a kitchen, a mosque, and a bathroom block. Not one of al-Qaeda’s leaders was killed or wounded. The suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole, in 2000, drew no response whatsoever; American public attention was focused on that year’s presidential election. When I interrogated bin Laden’s driver and confidant, Salim Hamdan, in late 2001, he told me, “You brought 9/11 on yourselves. You didn’t respond to the Cole, so bin Laden had to hit harder.”
The “Planes Operation,” as it was called within al-Qaeda, was the brainchild of a freelance terrorist facilitator named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who happened to be the uncle of the original 1993 World Trade Center bomber, Ramzi Yousef. KSM, as he is known in American law-enforcement and intelligence circles, made his way to Afghanistan in 1996, around the same time bin Laden returned to the country. KSM told bin Laden his plan as it then stood: buy small Cessna planes, load them with explosives, and fly them into U.S. landmarks.
Bin Laden thought the seemingly outlandish plan was, if anything, not ambitious enough, and instead suggested using fuel-laden commercial airliners as missiles. “Why go to war with an ax,” he asked, “when you can use a bulldozer?”
Over the next few years, the plans were developed by a handful of senior al-Qaeda leaders, able to coordinate closely and maintain secrecy because of the organization’s secure base in Afghanistan. All 19 of the eventual hijackers were selected from the many foreign recruits undergoing training in al-Qaeda’s Afghan training camps. All 19 received valid U.S. visas. (It helped that 15 of them were Saudis, and therefore unlikely to be suspected of planning to become undocumented workers.) Some entered the U.S., left, and returned. One was able to make no fewer than five trips to see his girlfriend in Germany during the roughly 14 months between his initial arrival and September 11, 2001, when he crashed United Airlines Flight 93 into a field in rural Pennsylvania.
Twenty years later, Afghanistan is more attractive than ever as a launchpad for global jihad. The Taliban is orders of magnitude more sophisticated, and likely to endure far longer than the five years it managed last time. It is, for example, already in talks with China, a potential benefactor that holds veto power over any proposed Security Council sanctions. America’s longest war has flooded Afghanistan with advanced weaponry, much of it now in the hands of the Taliban. And the West has spent billions upgrading Afghanistan’s infrastructure. Meanwhile, U.S. influence in the country and its most important neighbors, Pakistan and Iran, is practically nonexistent. With America seemingly in retreat across the Muslim world, Afghanistan may become the hub for groups with a networked presence in many of the resultant power vacuums.
When bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, al-Qaeda was close to defeat. The Sudanese government had not only expelled him but confiscated almost all his assets in the country. His followers had dwindled to just a few dozen. In the five years that followed, al-Qaeda trained thousands of recruits in its Afghan camps, sent them to destabilize regimes across the region, and planned the worst terrorist attack in history.
Today’s al-Qaeda enjoys a much stronger foundation on which to build. Its component groups are embedded as combatants in conflicts in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere. Collectively, these franchises have thousands of fighters. Al-Qaeda has long been renowned for its “strategic patience,” its ability to wait until the time is right before renewing attacks on the West. Today, little barrier remains to such a renewal. Indeed, as the competition for recruits picks up once more, al-Qaeda may again see it as an existential necessity.
With phase one of the Management of Savagery plan more or less complete, al-Qaeda will move to phase two: extorting the vacuums created by these conflicts to eventully build up “Islamic” regimes like the Taliban’s, aided by American withdrawal across the Muslim world. To the extent that this goes well, instability and anti-Westernism will deepen. To the extent that it does not, there is a high risk that al-Qaeda may return to attacking the West directly. Of course, it may pursue both strategies simultaneously. To guard against either scenario, the U.S. must work urgently to rebuild its diplomatic influence and intelligence networks throughout the region to effectively counter the threat and help reach political resolutions for the various ongoing conflicts.
Otherwise it faces the prospect of phase three: the areas controlled by al-Qaeda and its followers being declared a caliphate. The last time something like that happened was in 2014 in Iraq and Syria, and its consequences were disastrous.
12. Pro-PRC Influence Campaign Expands to Dozens of Social Media Platforms, Websites, and Forums in at Least Seven Languages, Attempted to Physically Mobilize Protesters in the U.S.
Conclusion:
Our aim with this blog post is to provide early warning of two significant developments that we believe are important to monitor for despite the limited impact of this pro-PRC campaign thus far. First, the activity is taking place not just on the big three social media giants, but on at least 30 social media platforms and dozens of additional websites and forums, and in languages including not just English and Chinese, but also German, Russian, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. This suggests that the actors behind the campaign have significantly expanded their online footprint and appear to be attempting to establish a presence on as many platforms as possible to reach a variety of global audiences. Second, the attempt to physically mobilize protesters in the U.S. provides early warning that the actors responsible may be starting to explore more direct means of influence and may be indicative of an emerging intent to motivate real-world activity outside of China’s territories.
Pro-PRC Influence Campaign Expands to Dozens of Social Media Platforms, Websites, and Forums in at Least Seven Languages, Attempted to Physically Mobilize Protesters in the U.S.
In June 2019, Mandiant Threat Intelligence first reported to customers a pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) network of hundreds of inauthentic accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, that was at that time primarily focused on discrediting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Since then, the broader activity set has rapidly expanded in size and scope and received widespread public attention following Twitter’s takedown of related accounts in August 2019. Numerous other researchers have published investigations into various aspects of this activity set, including Google’s Threat Analysis Group, Graphika, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Stanford Internet Observatory and the Hoover Institution, and the Centre for Information Resilience.
Since we began tracking the campaign in mid-2019, we have observed multiple shifts in its tactics, many of which have been reported on publicly elsewhere, including the use of artificially generated photos for account profile pictures and the promotion of a wide variety of narrative themes related to current events, including multiple narratives related to the COVID-19 pandemic, narratives critical of Chinese dissident Guo Wengui and his associates, and narratives related to domestic U.S. political issues. However, other evolutions in the network’s activity do not appear to have been reported widely, and our aim with this blog post is to provide early warning of two significant developments that we believe are important to monitor despite the limited impact of the network so far:
- The scope of activity, in terms of languages and platforms used, is far broader than previously understood. Most reporting has highlighted English and Chinese-language activity occurring on the social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. However, we have now observed this pro-PRC activity taking place on 30 social media platforms and over 40 additional websites and niche forums, and in additional languages including Russian, German, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. While some platforms have hosted hundreds or thousands of accounts in the network, other platforms have hosted a smaller number. Collectively, these observations suggest the actors behind this campaign have significantly expanded their online footprint and appear to be attempting to establish a presence on as many platforms as possible to reach a variety of global audiences.
- Accounts in the network have actively sought to physically mobilize protestors in the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, though we have seen no indication that these attempts motivated any real-world activity. While previous public reporting has highlighted limited instances of organic engagement with the network on Twitter and we have continued to track similar instances of organic engagement on both social media and niche online forums, this direct call for physical mobilization is a significant development compared to prior activity, potentially indicative of an emerging intent to motivate real-world activity outside of China’s territories. While this attempt did not appear to achieve any success, we believe it is critical that observers continue to monitor for such attempts in case greater degrees of organic engagement are later realized by the network.
Activity Expands to Dozens of Social Media Platforms, Websites, and Forums in at Least Seven Languages
Similar to previously reported activity that has spanned Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, we have observed coordination between suspected accounts in the network across 30 social media platforms and over 40 other websites and online forums. These accounts have posted similar, and in many cases identical messaging and engaged in the coordinated sharing, commenting on, and liking of text, image, and video content. For example:
- We have observed thousands of identical text posts, images, and videos promoted by accounts on Vimeo, Vkontakte, TikTok, and a number of other platforms claiming that Chinese dissident Guo Wengui, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan are “liars” in response to Dr. Yan’s Claim that the coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab (Figure 1). Videos featured characteristics typical of those promoted by the network historically, including Chinese and automated English-language voiceovers.
- In some instances, accounts on one platform have directly provided their corresponding social media handles on other platforms in their bios. For example, we have observed accounts on LiveJournal posting in Russian, English, and German provide handles for corresponding Twitter accounts that all posted in English (Figure 2). Different accounts across different platforms have also appropriated the same profile photos, including photos of models and stock photography (Figure 3). We also observed instances of forum posts linking to other accounts in the network (Figure 4).
Figure 1: Vimeo account (left) shares identical video as TikTok account (right)
Figure 2: LiveJournal account (left) linking to Twitter account (right); accounts use identical profile photo and display name
Figure 3: Tumblr account (top) uses same profile photo as LiveJournal account (bottom)
Figure 4: A forum post links to a Twitter account in the network
We have observed extensive promotion of Russian, German, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese-language content on U.S. and non-U.S.-based platforms, in addition to the typical English and Chinese-language activity that has been widely reported on. This represents a significant development in our collective understanding of this pro-PRC activity set. For example:
- We observed Russian-language posts on LiveJournal claim that U.S. Ft. Detrick was the source of the coronavirus and that China was “not the source” of the virus, a long-promoted and extensively reported narrative of this activity set that has also been promoted by Chinese state-run media outlets since early 2020 (Figure 5). Additionally, we have observed Russian-language posts on both LiveJournal and VKontakte by accounts we have tied to the network cite unconfirmed studies to claim COVID-19 may have appeared in the U.S. as early as December 2019.
- We have observed several instances of multiple inauthentic VKontakte accounts reposting Russian translations of posts by what appear to be authentic English-language Twitter accounts belonging to individuals who claim to have contracted COVID-19 in late 2019 in the U.S. and other locations outside China (Figure 6). We also observed a small number of Russian-language posts by VKontakte accounts in the network state that Taiwan and Hong Kong are Chinese territories.
- We observed German and Spanish-language content on LiveJournal and the Argentine social media site Taringa that also attempted to cast doubt about the origins of COVID-19. Posts in German on LiveJournal cited unconfirmed studies to claim that COVID-19 may have appeared in the U.S. before January 2020, while posts in Spanish on Taringa claimed that U.S. Ft. Detrick was the source of COVID-19 and linked to third-party articles that claimed that the virus appeared in the U.S. and Europe before China (Figures 7 and 8).
- Notably, some of the Russian and German-language posts we observed contained recurring grammatical errors, a limited indication that they may have been authored by non-native speakers of those languages. For example, we observed Russian-language LiveJournal posts by accounts purportedly operated by female bloggers use a masculine-tense verb for the phrase "Я увидел" (Translation: "I saw"), which should read "увидела" if written by a female Russian speaker (Figure 9).
Figure 5: LiveJournal accounts promote identical text in Russian claiming that "U.S. Ft. Detrick was the source of COVID-19" and that "China is not the source of the virus"
Figure 6: Inauthentic VKontakte accounts (top) repost in Russian a post from what appears to be an authentic English-language Twitter account (bottom)
Figure 7: LiveJournal accounts post identical text in German claiming that COVID-19 may have appeared in the U.S. before Jan. 19, 2020
Figure 8: Spanish-language Taringa accounts post articles and text to cast doubt about the origin of COVID-19
Figure 9: LiveJournal accounts post identical, grammatically incorrect messages in Russian implying that American netizens believed they were infected with COVID-19 in late 2019 and early 2020
Attempts to Physically Mobilize Protestors in the U.S.
In April 2021, thousands of posts in languages including English, Japanese, and Korean, images, and videos were posted across multiple platforms by accounts we assess to be part of this broader activity set that called on Asian Americans to protest racial injustices in the U.S. (Figure 10). The accounts specifically called on Asian Americans to protest on April 24 in New York City and “fight back” against the purported “rumors” caused by Dr. Li-Meng Yan, Guo Wengui, and Steve Bannon, and in some instances provided an address that they claimed Guo lived at.
Figure 10: Twitter account calls for physical protests in Japanese (left), Korean (middle), and English (right) (Note: We have censored the address listed by the accounts)
Subsequently, we observed posts by accounts in the network portray the advocated April 24 New York City protest as a success, claiming that Asian Americans, other minority groups, and Caucasian protestors attended (Figure 11). Other posts claimed that these protesters were met by Guo Wengui’s “supporters”, who “violently assault[ed]” them. As part of this claim of success, we observed a manipulated image in which the face of Dr. Yan was superimposed onto a sign held by a purported protestor and shared across nearly all the social media platforms and forums that we have seen leveraged as part of this broader activity set. We identified the image to be a manipulation of a picture taken at a rally against racial discrimination that took place in Jamestown, NY, on or around April 23, 2021 (Figure 12).
Figure 11: A Medium account (left) and an Underlined account (right) post identical text claiming Asian Americans protested racial violence in the U.S. The sign being held in the picture on the left has been photoshopped
Figure 12: Photoshopped image of Dr. Yan's face on a sign (left), shared across nearly all platforms (original photo on the right)
Despite these claims, we have not observed any evidence to suggest that these calls were successful in mobilizing protestors on April 24. However, it does provide early warning that the actors behind the activity may be starting to explore, in however limited a fashion, more direct means of influencing the domestic affairs of the U.S. We believe it is important to call attention to such attempts and for observers to continue to monitor for such attempts in future.
Conclusion
Our aim with this blog post is to provide early warning of two significant developments that we believe are important to monitor for despite the limited impact of this pro-PRC campaign thus far. First, the activity is taking place not just on the big three social media giants, but on at least 30 social media platforms and dozens of additional websites and forums, and in languages including not just English and Chinese, but also German, Russian, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. This suggests that the actors behind the campaign have significantly expanded their online footprint and appear to be attempting to establish a presence on as many platforms as possible to reach a variety of global audiences. Second, the attempt to physically mobilize protesters in the U.S. provides early warning that the actors responsible may be starting to explore more direct means of influence and may be indicative of an emerging intent to motivate real-world activity outside of China’s territories.
13. Jacksonian America: The Sleeping Giant Awakened by 9/11
Excerpts:
So a Jacksonian verdict on the war on terror twenty years hence might dwell on purpose and power. Purpose: it might be necessary to pursue terrorists to the ends of the earth to safeguard America, but interminable projects such as nation-building in Iraq or Afghanistan distract from genuinely vital interests endangered by the likes of China and Russia. Drawing down peripheral efforts should find favor with Jacksonian America. And power: the sudden collapse of the U.S.-supported Afghan regime and the haphazard evacuation of the country go against the Jacksonian preference for winning big and decisively. They doubtless find the denouement in Central Asia less than inspiring.
To all appearances, then, the giant roused on 9/11 is slumbering again on the twentieth anniversary of that day. But the Xi Jinpings and Vladimir Putins of the world should mute their glee. If Professor Mead is right—if different strains in U.S. foreign policy combine and recombine as circumstances change—China and Russia are precisely the kind of challengers that could summon forth Jacksonian America anew.
With fateful consequences.
Jacksonian America: The Sleeping Giant Awakened by 9/11
In a previous life, I was the foreign-affairs columnist for the local paper in my adopted hometown of Athens, Georgia. The month after 9/11 the family and I motored over to the Stone Mountain Highland Games, an event much frequented by Americans of Scottish or Scots-Irish descent. The outpouring of patriotic sentiment was overpowering in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The Stars & Stripes, martial regalia, or both adorned most attendees in some fashion or another.
What became of that resolve and the fury that drove it?
History furnishes clues. Historian Walter Russell Mead coined the phrase Jacksonian America in a 1999 issue of The National Interest (subsequently expanded into a splendid volume titled Special Providence that’s eminently worth your time). Back then historians were wont to explain U.S. diplomatic history as a product of interactions among contending schools of thought. Mead connected international-relations traditions with key figures among the founding generations. He saw Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian traditions, for instance.
Andrew Jackson, the pugnacious, populist seventh president of the United States, lent his name to an equally ornery strain in U.S. foreign policy. According to Mead, the Jacksonian tradition is less a school of thought than a collection of folkways—an American subculture. Or as he puts it, it’s “an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public.” Jacksonian America is “a folk community with a strong sense of common values and common destiny; though periodically led by intellectually brilliant men—like Andrew Jackson himself—it is neither an ideology nor a self-conscious movement with a clear historical direction or political table of organization.”
Jacksonian individualism had its origins with the rural Scots-Irish community found chiefly in Southern states, but over time it sprawled well beyond narrow ethnic and geographic boundaries. Mead espies a social code among Jacksonians that is grounded in such virtues as honor, self-reliance, individuality, equality, and courage. Those who honor the code are accepted into the community over time—regardless of ethnicity, race, or other superficial characteristics.
In foreign affairs, says Mead, Jacksonians hew to bareknuckles realism. They hold that “international life is and will remain both anarchic and violent,” and thus that “the United States must be vigilant and strongly armed. Our diplomacy must be cunning, forceful and no more scrupulous than anybody else’s. At times, we must fight preemptive wars.” And Jacksonian sentiment perseveres over time when the community is convinced vital national interests are at stake, as in World War II, the Cold War, and Desert Storm.
As a corollary, though, Jacksonians evince little interest in foreign enterprises undertaken for reasons not directly related to defending the national interest. Humanitarian intervention is one venture that leaves them cold. Or—in the case of Afghanistan after twenty years of warfare—they may lose interest in enterprises that once seemed worthwhile by realist standards but no longer do.
Jacksonians also harbor strong views about how wars should be fought. Unless a vital national interest is in peril, they insist America ought to mind its own business. If a compelling interest is at stake, the United States ought to use all martial means at its disposal and refuse to stop short of complete victory—preferably manifest in the foe’s unconditional surrender. Yet Jacksonians welcome a magnanimous peace once victory is in hand—witness the clement treatment afforded the erstwhile Confederacy, imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany.
New York, N.Y. (Sept. 15, 2001) — A New York City fireman calls for 10 more rescue workers to make their way into the rubble of the World Trade Center. U.S. Navy Photo by Journalist 1st Class Preston Keres. (RELEASED)
So a Jacksonian verdict on the war on terror twenty years hence might dwell on purpose and power. Purpose: it might be necessary to pursue terrorists to the ends of the earth to safeguard America, but interminable projects such as nation-building in Iraq or Afghanistan distract from genuinely vital interests endangered by the likes of China and Russia. Drawing down peripheral efforts should find favor with Jacksonian America. And power: the sudden collapse of the U.S.-supported Afghan regime and the haphazard evacuation of the country go against the Jacksonian preference for winning big and decisively. They doubtless find the denouement in Central Asia less than inspiring.
To all appearances, then, the giant roused on 9/11 is slumbering again on the twentieth anniversary of that day. But the Xi Jinpings and Vladimir Putins of the world should mute their glee. If Professor Mead is right—if different strains in U.S. foreign policy combine and recombine as circumstances change—China and Russia are precisely the kind of challengers that could summon forth Jacksonian America anew.
With fateful consequences.
A 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a nonresident fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.
14. Opinion | Biden is embracing a redefinition of war — but not an alternative to war
So there is either over the horizon counter terrorism or a war of invasion, occuptation, and counterinsurgency? Is that really all there is? Of course there is a lesson in the second: Don't be an occupier and maybe you will avoid COIN.
Excerpts:
In conducting this continuing, over-the-horizon war on terrorism, what is the most likely event that would draw the United States back into a war of invasion, occupation and counterinsurgency? We know the answer by remembering the white-hot emotions of 20 years ago. Imagine a biological attack on the United States by al-Qaeda operatives sheltered by Afghanistan. Or a radiological attack from terrorists supported by Iran. A successful attack by a terrorist enemy would most likely result in another American ground war against a state sponsor of terrorism.
And who is most likely to invite such a catastrophic outcome? It is those who say the threat of terrorism is really a myth — despite contrary evidence every morning in the president’s daily intelligence briefing. It is those who argue that the war on terrorism has been a failure — even though the United States has been largely free from two decades of escalating terrorist violence. It is those who would have us unlearn every lesson of the 9/11 attacks and adopt a pose of defiant vulnerability. The alternative to success in the forever war on terrorism is not peace; it is the prospect of warfare on a greater scale.
Opinion | Biden is embracing a redefinition of war — but not an alternative to war
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Michael GersonColumnist Today at 1:22 p.m. EDT · September 9, 2021
For those of us present at the beginning of the war on terrorism, the effective surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban just in time for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has been a very jagged pill.
A younger me saw the plane flying low toward the Pentagon and smelled that building burning while driving to the White House at dawn the next morning. I remember being handed the text of the ultimatum to Taliban leaders by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice for inclusion in the Sept. 20 address to a joint session of Congress. I was with President George W. Bush in the Cross Hall at the White House when he announced the commencement of hostilities in the Afghan war.
None of us working for the president in those moments would have imagined that a future American president would regard the hasty withdrawal of American troops ahead of advancing Taliban forces as a vindication of his foreign policy views and a victory for his administration.
But at least in my case, anger at this abdication is tempered by a recognition that — in the broadest outlines — President Biden is correct about the future of the war on terrorism. A counterterrorism mission is more sustainable than a counterinsurgency mission. America’s “over-the-horizon capability” will determine future success or failure.
This shift did not, however, originate with Biden. A transition in the theory of the war on terrorism actually began in the closing years of Bush’s presidency. In his determination to transfer roles to Afghan authorities, and in his negotiation of a Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq that set a date for the withdrawal of American combat forces, Bush was moving the United States toward a counterterrorism stance. Bush’s aggressive use of drones and Special Operations forces was adopted, expanded and systematized by President Barack Obama. What some have called the second war on terrorism — the silent war of precision strikes and midnight raids — actually started during Bush’s second term.
This, in its own way, is a forever war. It involves the preemption of threats with lethal force across national boundaries on a moment’s notice. It is easier to conduct this war when the United States has bases of operation closer to dangers. Striking over-the-horizon from Bagram air base is more effective than over-the-horizon from Doha, which is more effective than over-the-horizon from Omaha. And identifying risks still often depends on local intelligence assets. But both Republican and Democratic presidents have accepted the basic theory of attacking from a distance to remove emerging terrorist threats — an aggressive redefinition of war in its own right. Biden may be embracing an alternative to counterinsurgency operations, but he is not adopting an alternative to war.
There are practical and ethical questions about this method of warfare. On what basis are lethal decisions made and who makes them? Is this a role we would want to concede to other global powers in the future? Does the precision targeting of death make warfare too routine and acceptable?
Whatever the objections, this is not an authority that American presidents will easily surrender. Our country’s assumption of this preemptive role is, in many ways, a function of technological change. There is the technology that allows nonstate actors to make low-cost asymmetrical attacks that have enormous human and economic consequences. There is the technology that allows the identification and surveillance of emerging threats. And there is the technology that allows for the incapacitation of those threats with limited civilian casualties. Under these circumstances, any president will be held politically responsible for allowing foreseeable attacks on American citizens.
In conducting this continuing, over-the-horizon war on terrorism, what is the most likely event that would draw the United States back into a war of invasion, occupation and counterinsurgency? We know the answer by remembering the white-hot emotions of 20 years ago. Imagine a biological attack on the United States by al-Qaeda operatives sheltered by Afghanistan. Or a radiological attack from terrorists supported by Iran. A successful attack by a terrorist enemy would most likely result in another American ground war against a state sponsor of terrorism.
And who is most likely to invite such a catastrophic outcome? It is those who say the threat of terrorism is really a myth — despite contrary evidence every morning in the president’s daily intelligence briefing. It is those who argue that the war on terrorism has been a failure — even though the United States has been largely free from two decades of escalating terrorist violence. It is those who would have us unlearn every lesson of the 9/11 attacks and adopt a pose of defiant vulnerability. The alternative to success in the forever war on terrorism is not peace; it is the prospect of warfare on a greater scale.
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Michael GersonColumnist Today at 1:22 p.m. EDT · September 9, 2021
15. How Hollywood Sold Out to China
Chinese unrestricted warfare is...well...unrestricted.
Excerpts:
Supplication, then silence: That’s consistent with Hollywood’s larger publicity strategy when the hint of a China-related scandal arises. “The reason why no one wants to talk about this is because there’s no advantages to talking about this,” Tager told me. “They want this issue to go away.”
According to analysts, studios are in a lose-lose position. Aynne Kokas, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Hollywood Made in China, explains that if Hollywood were to acknowledge self-censorship, the media blowback in the West would be significant, and China’s risk-averse government might blacklist Hollywood films to minimize attention. At the same time, she told me, studios might draw scrutiny from certain American legislators, harming their reputation at home. But Hollywood won’t stop caving to demands from Beijing, because that’s simply where the industry’s growth is. No other market, especially during the pandemic, comes close. “So in some ways it’s a problem with the American model,” Kokas said. “Can you make a product that is profitable without being in the Chinese market?”
The answer, it seems, is no. So much of Hollywood’s business today resides on shaky ground. The pandemic’s effects, the streaming wars, the consolidation of studios, the expansion of franchises into theme-park attractions—they’re all unpredictable variables. Yet even as China’s investment in Hollywood has slowed amid a trade war with the U.S., Chinese moviegoers provide a rare constant for studios: a market for guaranteed profit, as long as Beijing approves. Tager suggested to me that perhaps Hollywood studios could band together to rewrite the rules, but few experts offered measures that would fundamentally change an asymmetrical relationship between the world’s largest producer of films and its most lucrative audience. In the end, Schwartz observed, “I don’t think we’ll ever really draw a line in the sand.”
How Hollywood Sold Out to China
A culture of acquiescing to Beijing’s censors is now the norm, and there’s little sign of it changing.
Chloé Zhao, the director of Nomadland, is new Hollywood royalty. In April, she made history as the first woman of color to win Best Director at the Oscars. In November, her big-budget Marvel movie, Eternals, will arrive in theaters. She commands so much admiration from the industry right now that she gets away with showing up to the red carpet of a film premiere in jeans.
Zhao was, for a time, just as warmly regarded in China. Born in Beijing, she also has ties to Chinese entertainment royalty: Her stepmother, Song Dandan, is one of the most celebrated comic actresses in the country. And Zhao’s success in Hollywood made her the model of a crossover artist, bringing Chinese sensibilities to American filmmaking. In March, the Communist Party–owned newspaper Global Times anointed her “the pride of China.”
But then an eight-year-old interview in which Zhao called the country a place “where there are lies everywhere” spread online. Beijing responded by deleting social-media celebrations of her Oscar win and canceling the release of Nomadland. Eternals, which should have been a shoo-in to screen across China, now faces a potential ban. Swiftly and quietly, Zhao’s native country appears to have disowned her—at least, for now. (Zhao declined to comment on the matter.)
Hers is a cautionary tale—and a common one these days. No matter their clout in Hollywood, filmmakers and actors have always been subject to bosses who decide which movies get to soar at the box office and which are left to languish. Now, more than ever before, that boss is Beijing.
In 2020, the Chinese film market officially surpassed North America’s as the world’s biggest box office, all but ensuring that Hollywood studios will continue to do everything possible for access to the country. This also means China will assert itself more aggressively to control Hollywood. The country, which already places a quota on the number of foreign films that can be screened every year, banned them for nearly two months this summer because of celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding.
Meanwhile, China’s film industry now churns out its own big-budget franchises, lessening the country’s dependence on the next Fast & Furious installment. Though some American filmmakers, such as Quentin Tarantino and Judd Apatow, have pushed back on China’s demands, they are the rare exceptions willing and able to weather any potential repercussions. Instead, the film industry has regularly shaped its productions to please Beijing; whenever Hollywood fails, it either issues self-flagellatory public apologies or remains silent on the matter altogether. (Universal, Disney, and the other major Hollywood studios I reached out to for this story all declined to comment or did not respond to my requests.)
With studios now implementing their own limits on free speech, America’s supposedly gutsy, creative entertainment industry is at rapid risk of making preemptive self-censorship the standard. During the blacklist era of the 1940s and ’50s, Hollywood studios infamously submitted to domestic political pressure. Today, film censorship—the rise of which you can literally watch on screen—has become one of the most visible examples of American businesses bending their values to satisfy China, and a worrying harbinger for any industry that wants access to the country’s consumers. China has simply become too lucrative for Hollywood to resist.
Gilles Sabrié / The New York Times / Redux
What critics might call censorship, Hollywood studios might label a market-entry strategy. The phenomenon has long been part of the global film industry. Post–World War II West German audiences saw a different version of Casablanca than the rest of the world. Last Tango in Paris, with its notoriously explicit sex scenes, was edited before it could be released in Britain and barred from being shown in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Three Nordic countries placed an age restriction on the film E.T. in 1982 after child psychologists accused the film of portraying adults as “enemies of children.”
Thus, when China re-allowed Hollywood movies in the late 1980s and ’90s (they were banned during the Cultural Revolution) as long as it could select and edit the ones it wanted, American companies didn’t see red flags. “It’s all a version of self-regulation we’ve been going through for decades,” says Russell Schwartz, a former president of marketing at New Line Cinema and at Relativity Media, who oversaw campaigns for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Rush Hour sequels.
When China began seriously investing in—not just importing, but co-producing or financing—Hollywood films in the 2000s, the country represented pure opportunity. “Everybody was doing backflips” to get their films screened, Schwartz told me. The Chinese government, which oversees the country’s entertainment industry, imposes a quota on international movies—34 a year, occasionally a couple extra—and determines release dates, how much advertising a film receives, and the number of theaters in which it can screen. Foreign studios, Schwartz told me, lobby fiercely for their titles to be allowed entry.
Hollywood’s admittance into China might have appeared to be an opportunity for America to promote Western ideals in an authoritarian country. However, according to Wendy Su, an associate professor of media and cultural studies at UC Riverside and the author of China’s Encounter With Global Hollywood, Hollywood only ever had one, all-encompassing objective: “the vast Chinese market and the potential for greater profits,” she wrote over email. The country had been “extraordinarily underscreened” only two decades ago, Schwartz noted, but built theaters so quickly that it now boasts more than 75,500 screens, according to a report released in February (the U.S. had roughly 41,000 as of 2020). Films that underperform in the States can thus recuperate their losses abroad.
Today, China’s box office doesn’t just represent opportunity for Hollywood; it can mean the difference between a studio’s success and failure. This has resulted in “anticipatory self-censorship” by the American film industry, says James Tager, the research director at PEN America, a nonprofit that promotes free expression, and the lead author of the organization’s exhaustive 2020 censorship report. Besides casting mainland-Chinese actors and shooting on location in China, the study says, studios even have regulators visit their sets—as was reportedly the case for Iron Man 3. (Marvel and Disney did not respond to a request for comment.)
The Chinese government encourages this chilling effect by setting confusing, ever-shifting expectations, Tager told me. Time-travel narratives like Back to the Future were deemed “frivolous” and disrespectful of history—especially if such stories suggested the ability to alter reality. But 2012’s Looper, featuring scenes shot in Shanghai, with dialogue depicting China as a representation of the future, made it past censors. A culture of trying to predict the country’s needs is now the norm: Stories portraying Chinese characters as antagonists or featuring disagreement with Beijing in regions such as Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiang have been assumed off-limits. But China has also banned scenes from Bohemian Rhapsody, apparently for depicting same-sex relationships, and prohibited Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest altogether for including ghosts and cannibalism.
Still, obvious pandering to Beijing can backfire in China. Audiences call a Chinese actor who appears in a Hollywood movie but plays a minimal role a hua ping, or a “flower vase”: nothing more than a recognizable face lazily included to help sell tickets. As the country’s own filmmaking industry has grown stronger, Chinese moviegoers have become more discerning about which foreign films to watch, and Hollywood’s share of the Chinese box office has lessened. Though action-thrillers such as Ready Player One fill seats in China, comedies still struggle to connect. “Many prospective clients have misinformed notions that China can be a savior market if you can only gain access,” Rance Pow, the CEO of Artisan Gateway, a consulting firm focused on Asia’s film industry, told me over email. “In fact … China can be a challenging, sometimes unforgiving environment for foreign fare.”
If China’s apparent crackdown on Chloé Zhao’s work is a cautionary tale, then the case of John Cena is a tragicomic one. The WWE star turned actor appeared in this summer’s F9, the latest Fast & Furious blockbuster, and Universal Pictures jumped through all the right hoops to ensure its success. The film, co-produced with the state-owned China Film Group Corporation, premiered in China as well as several other places more than a month ahead of its stateside release—the longest lag ever for a Hollywood movie and a date seemingly chosen to accommodate the CCP’s centenary plans.
Shortly after the film came out, Cena, who stars as the beefy villain in F9, posted a puzzling video to the Chinese social-media platform Weibo in which he awkwardly apologizes over and over in stilted Mandarin for “my mistake.” While Cena doesn’t name his offense, he had called Taiwan a country—a characterization the Chinese government adamantly opposes—during a press interview not long before the video. Cena’s apology made him a darling to Chinese nationalists and a punching bag for U.S. media. But the contrition paid off: F9 grossed $136 million in China its first weekend, nearly double its North American opening. Universal never confirmed what precipitated Cena’s video, and Cena hasn’t revisited the subject since. The only point of it, apparently, was to appease Beijing and move on.
Supplication, then silence: That’s consistent with Hollywood’s larger publicity strategy when the hint of a China-related scandal arises. “The reason why no one wants to talk about this is because there’s no advantages to talking about this,” Tager told me. “They want this issue to go away.”
According to analysts, studios are in a lose-lose position. Aynne Kokas, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Hollywood Made in China, explains that if Hollywood were to acknowledge self-censorship, the media blowback in the West would be significant, and China’s risk-averse government might blacklist Hollywood films to minimize attention. At the same time, she told me, studios might draw scrutiny from certain American legislators, harming their reputation at home. But Hollywood won’t stop caving to demands from Beijing, because that’s simply where the industry’s growth is. No other market, especially during the pandemic, comes close. “So in some ways it’s a problem with the American model,” Kokas said. “Can you make a product that is profitable without being in the Chinese market?”
The answer, it seems, is no. So much of Hollywood’s business today resides on shaky ground. The pandemic’s effects, the streaming wars, the consolidation of studios, the expansion of franchises into theme-park attractions—they’re all unpredictable variables. Yet even as China’s investment in Hollywood has slowed amid a trade war with the U.S., Chinese moviegoers provide a rare constant for studios: a market for guaranteed profit, as long as Beijing approves. Tager suggested to me that perhaps Hollywood studios could band together to rewrite the rules, but few experts offered measures that would fundamentally change an asymmetrical relationship between the world’s largest producer of films and its most lucrative audience. In the end, Schwartz observed, “I don’t think we’ll ever really draw a line in the sand.”
16. What the U.S. Has Learned About Fighting Terror Since Sept. 11
Excerpts:
“This can’t be a war on terrorism or it will never end, but you can struggle against some organizations that are threatening you,” says Seth Jones, director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
When the goals have been more limited, the outcomes have tended to be more impressive. Efforts to clamp down on funding for terrorist groups have been a notable area of success. After Sept. 11, the UN Security Council sped up efforts to sanction groups associated with al-Qaeda via the UN’s 1267 sanctions committee—work that by 2019 had blocked more than $4 million worth of al-Qaeda assets.
“We’ve learned that it’s not just war,” says Jones. “There need to be other instruments from diplomatic engagement to information, intelligence, and law enforcement.”
Second, boots on the ground cannot transform a society and might not even be able to stand up a reliable government. Witness the rise of Islamic State in Iraq after President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw troops in 2011, or the astonishing collapse of the Afghan army in the wake of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan despite two decades of U.S. military presence there.
“I think there’s been some humility on the limits of U.S. military power,” says Jones, who also served as an adviser to U.S. Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan. “There are limits to what you can do with conventional U.S. forces that haven’t been trained for counterterrorism or counterinsurgency missions.”
The hope now is that improved intelligence, unmanned systems, and the use of precision strikes will allow the U.S. to reach overseas terrorist targets without massive overseas troop deployments.
What the U.S. Has Learned About Fighting Terror Since Sept. 11
Boots on the ground cannot transform a society.
By Peter Martin and Roxana Tiron
September 11, 2021, 4:00 AM EDT
U.S. soldiers stand guard behind barbed wire as Afghans hoping to flee the country sit on a roadside near the military part of the airport in Kabul on Aug. 20. PHOTOGRAPHER: WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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Washington is experiencing an uncharacteristic bout of humility about the uses of military power.
In recent weeks, our screens have been dominated by images of the rushed U.S. withdrawal and the scramble to relocate Afghans who assisted with the war effort, along with reports that women’s rights are already backsliding across the country. The scenes raise the question: What if anything did America learn from two decades of conflict across the greater Middle East? Five tentative lessons stand out.
Afghans who were unable to get into the Kabul airport to evacuate the country watch as a U.S. military transport plane takes off on Aug. 23.PHOTOGRAPHER: MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES/GETTY IMAGES
One, learned that hard way, is that you can’t fight a war against a tactic. Just like the “war on drugs,” it was always going to be difficult to judge victory in the “war on terror.”
“This can’t be a war on terrorism or it will never end, but you can struggle against some organizations that are threatening you,” says Seth Jones, director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
When the goals have been more limited, the outcomes have tended to be more impressive. Efforts to clamp down on funding for terrorist groups have been a notable area of success. After Sept. 11, the UN Security Council sped up efforts to sanction groups associated with al-Qaeda via the UN’s 1267 sanctions committee—work that by 2019 had blocked more than $4 million worth of al-Qaeda assets.
“We’ve learned that it’s not just war,” says Jones. “There need to be other instruments from diplomatic engagement to information, intelligence, and law enforcement.”
Second, boots on the ground cannot transform a society and might not even be able to stand up a reliable government. Witness the rise of Islamic State in Iraq after President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw troops in 2011, or the astonishing collapse of the Afghan army in the wake of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan despite two decades of U.S. military presence there.
“I think there’s been some humility on the limits of U.S. military power,” says Jones, who also served as an adviser to U.S. Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan. “There are limits to what you can do with conventional U.S. forces that haven’t been trained for counterterrorism or counterinsurgency missions.”
The hope now is that improved intelligence, unmanned systems, and the use of precision strikes will allow the U.S. to reach overseas terrorist targets without massive overseas troop deployments.
Jason Dempsey, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who as an infantry officer deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, argues that civilians have been too quick to trust military leaders. “It has been a symbiotic relationship,” Dempsey says of the ties between uniformed officers and civilian leaders during the war in Afghanistan. “Military leaders didn’t lie, but they were absolutely delusional about the goals they were pursuing and the way they were pursuing them.” Either way, “the end result is still failure,” he says.
The third lesson is that pivoting to other regions is hard because the Middle East has a way of pulling you back in.
George W. Bush’s presidency began with a pledge to treat China as a “strategic competitor,” only for the U.S. to look to Beijing as a counterterrorism partner in the wake of Sept. 11. Obama attempted to pivot, but ended up waylaid by the rise of ISIS, as well as the political difficulties of pushing his Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal through Congress. President Donald Trump made competing with China the central focus of his foreign policy, but largely disregarded Asia’s multilateral institutions as he did so.
“For me, the big picture story of the last 20 years is a story of continued false starts when it comes to Asia,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush.
Now, many in Washington fear that the circumstances under which the U.S. exited the country could open the door to continued terrorist operations and renewed involvement from America.
Some, like Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, argue that the U.S. can’t take its eye off the greater Middle East where continued threats from terrorist organizations fester. “What I’ve always advocated for—and what’s become increasingly clear as a result of the debacle in Afghanistan—is that a small, tailored footprint in strategic locations, including the Middle East and Africa, helps protect America and Americans,” Inhofe says.
Others argue that without a strong focus on the Middle East, Biden’s pivot to Asia could fall short. “If you believe, as I do,” says Wisconsin Republican Representative Mike Gallagher, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, that the Chinese Communist Party “is our paramount national security threat, it would have been far more prudent to leave a small rotational force to do low-cost, high-impact counterterrorism missions and maintain control of Bagram Air Base in order to project power along China’s western periphery.”
Stepping back from the greater Middle East, the last two decades have taught America painful lessons about the nature of deterrence and the limitations of the country’s conventional military superiority.
After watching the U.S.’s swift victory in the 1991 Gulf War and its decisive display of naval power in the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China and Russia decided that they would need to meet America’s conventional superiority with unconventional means. In response, each developed “gray zone” tactics—provocations such as cyberattacks or influence operations that exceed the normal limits of peacetime competition but that fall short of warranting a military response. Thus, China’s initial expansion in the South China Sea was pursued by using dredging equipment to build artificial islands, and Russia’s expansion into Crimea and eastern Ukraine was driven by special operations forces and disinformation campaigns.
The last 20 years have been a “reminder that conventional power let alone nuclear power is not going to be sufficient to prevent our adversaries from engaging in provocations that aren’t worth us risking war over,” says Carter Malkasian, who worked as special assistant for strategy to former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, from 2015 to 2019. “To some degree, if we really care about these things you have to be more willing to play their game or to have your own punitive measures.”
Finally, the last two decades caution that competition isn’t just about spending enough.
The U.S. has continued to spend far more than anyone else on its military and yet somehow China has still managed to make bewildering progress in closing the capabilities gap. “If you had told anyone working at the Pentagon in the year 2000 that China would have made the advances that it has made and that the U.S. would have done so little in response, people would have been shocked,” says Cooper.
It’s a point that has continued to frustrate Pentagon planners spanning both the Trump and Biden administrations. “We already outspend the Chinese by a fair amount,” says Randy Schriver, who served as assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs in the Trump administration. “But arguably we aren’t transitioning rapidly enough to the kind of acquisition strategy that would better position us for greater competition. There are a lot very expensive legacy platforms that will continue to eat into that.”
Others worry that the U.S. will fail to learn lessons from the last two decades at all. California Democratic Representative Barbara Lee, the only lawmaker to vote against the war in Afghanistan and a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq, has spent almost two decades trying to convince Congress to scrap the authorizations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Lee has spoken on the House floor about how these authorizations repeated the mistakes of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which paved the way for President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation in Vietnam. For her, the takeaway is that the executive branch has been left with too much control over decisions of war and peace.
“Both the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs have been used by three successive presidents to wage war well beyond the scope that Congress initially intended,” Lee says. “It’s long past due to end our forever wars. We are well on our way.”
17. Drastic changes to military pay, benefits needed to meet rising personnel costs: report
Whenever these reports come out I am reminded of Kipling:
"In times of war and not before,
God and the soldier we adore.
But in times of peace and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted."
-Rudyard Kipling”
Drastic changes to military pay, benefits needed to meet rising personnel costs: report
“While today’s U.S. military is near its smallest size since the end of World War II in terms of active duty end strength, personnel costs are at a historic high,” wrote Seamus Daniels, associate director for Defense Budget Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Left unaddressed, high personnel costs may limit resources for Department of Defense modernization initiatives and could threaten the long-term sustainability of the force.”
The CSIS report notes that as military manpower totals have decreased over time, personnel costs for the department have continued to rise. From 1952 to 2016, end strength numbers for the military fell by more than 64 percent, but total DOD personnel spending rose by 110 percent.
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The issues arose last month as Big Navy transitions over to a new personnel system.
The average cost per active duty service member for the department in fiscal 2021 was $136,000. That takes into account things like basic pay, specialty bonuses, housing stipends, and medical benefits.
Adjusted for inflation, that figure is down slightly from the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when it peaked at around $142,000. In fiscal 2001 the cost per troop for the military was about $89,000, and in fiscal 1991 it was about $70,000.
The report said part of that expense is due to a rise in the percentage of officers in the services over the last few decades, since they receive higher pay and benefits. Officers made up less than 14 percent of total active-duty end strength in fiscal 2001 and nearly 18 percent this fiscal year.
But compounding annual pay raises and rising medical benefits costs also play a major role, Daniels found. Personnel costs account for about 30 percent of the entire military budget.
“Higher personnel costs, coupled with rising costs to operate and sustain existing platforms, necessitate continual increases in the defense budget topline to simply keep the force at its current size,” he wrote.
Defense officials in the past have struggled with the issue of rising personnel expenses and constrained military funding. After 2013, when the Budget Control Act capped annual military spending (along with other federal agencies), Pentagon planners backed smaller-than-expected annual pay raises for troops to save funding for modernization and training priorities.
But after a few years of that plan, lawmakers overrode administration plans for flattened pay raises, arguing that the potential injury to families’ finances and troops’ morale outweighed the budget flexibility advantages.
The report proposes several policy changes defense leaders should consider to address the problem, or at least to keep the issue of rising costs at the forefront of future budget discussions.
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The pay boost would be slightly lower than what troops saw this year but equal to federal formulas for civilian wage increases.
They include offering smaller annual military pay increases and boosting more specialty pays and bonuses, to “reduce turnover for high-skilled occupations while similarly increasing it for low-skilled occupations, where retention is not as important.”
It also suggests capping pay for service members after a several years if they fail to gain promotions, and “gradually” increase the years of service for full military retirement benefits from 20 years to 25. In 2015, Congress’ Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission backed both ideas.
“DoD has a sacred responsibility to adequately pay and provide for service members and their families, which are the core of the U.S. military,” Daniels wrote. “But the current cost of personnel is unsustainable and must not be accepted as an immutable fact.”
Defense Department officials did immediately respond to a request for comment about the findings. The full report is available on the CSIS web site.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
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David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
