Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:

 "The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. That intellectuality is more vigorous that has attained its strength gradually. It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider — and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation — persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree." 
- Alexander Graham Bell

 "The oldest, shortest words— "yes" and "no"— are those which require the most thought." 
- Pythagoras

 "Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power." 
- René Descartes

1, How to Help Afghan Refugees and the Relief Effort
2. FDD | Biden's catastrophe
3. An Un-American Way of War: Why the United States Fails at Irregular Warfare
4. Terrorism in South Asia After the Fall of Afghanistan
5. Taiwanese shrug off China threat and place their trust in ‘Daddy America’Opinion | My Family Fled Cambodia as the Americans Evacuated. Here's What I Hope for Afghan Refugees.
6. Anti-Taliban leader Massoud wants to talk but ready to fight
7. SAS in dramatic desert raid to save troops from Taliban
8. The failure of intelligence in counterinsurgency - opinion
9. So Much for a ‘Foreign Policy for the Middle Class’
10. Opinion | Could Cyberwar Make the World Safer?
11. America Got Afghanistan Wrong, But It Can Still Make Things Right
12. Some Americans No Longer Believe in the Common Good
13. Liberal Democracy Is Worth a Fight
14. An Army Can’t Defeat Guerilla Fighters
15. Opinion | How the Taliban Turned Smartphones Into Weapons
16. All the President’s Yes-Men
17. Cleaning Up After Biden on al Qaeda
18. Opinion | My Family Fled Cambodia as the Americans Evacuated. Here's What I Hope for Afghan Refugees.






1. How to Help Afghan Refugees and the Relief Effort
I would add No One Left Behind (https://nooneleft.org/) which has been working the issue to get our interpreters and at-risk Afghans out longer than many organizations and especially trying to push the SIV process.


How to Help Afghan Refugees and the Relief Effort
The New York Times · by The New York Times · August 20, 2021
Here are some organizations accepting donations and volunteers to assist in Afghan refugee resettlement.

Thousands of Afghans waiting outside Kabul’s airport on Friday as they attempted to flee the country.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
By
Aug. 20, 2021
In response to reader questions about how to aid the efforts around the world to resettle Afghans fleeing the Taliban, here is a list of some registered charities, organizations and funds accepting help in the United States, Canada and Britain.
United States
Human Rights First is seeking pro bono lawyers to assist Afghan evacuees.
The International Refugee Assistance Project is soliciting donations to offer legal services to displaced Afghans.
The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is directing volunteers to its location-based sign-up page to assist Afghan refugees with travel from the airport, settling into their apartments or providing a meal.
Keeping Our Promise, based in Rochester, N.Y., offers resettlement services, including skilled trades training and accommodation support.
The International Medical Corps, which has operated in Afghanistan since 1984, offers medical training and services in the country and is soliciting donations to its emergency relief fund.
The International Rescue Committee is aiming to raise $10 million to “deliver lifesaving aid” in Afghanistan. Local chapters of the organization are also seeking volunteers to assist those who arrive through the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa in their search for employment and housing.
Commonwealth Catholic Charities, in partnership with community organizations, is providing resettlement services and child care to Special Immigrant Visa holders from Afghanistan in Fort Lee, Va.
The City of Fremont, Calif., home to a large population of Afghan immigrants, is collecting donations to support local charities providing essential items to newcomers.
New American Pathways, a nonprofit for resettlement based in Atlanta, is seeking volunteers to support Afghan refugees.
Canada
United Kingdom
Mercy Corps is assisting displaced families in Afghanistan to access clean water and other essentials.
AfghanAid has been working in Afghanistan for nearly four decades, with its humanitarian projects geared to support United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The charity is collecting donations to provide families with funds, kitchen items, solar powered lamps and other goods.
How to help women
Women for Women International is collecting donations for its emergency relief fund.
Vital Voices has set up the Vital Voices Afghan Women’s Fund to support the safety of women’s rights activists in Afghanistan and those who have been evacuated from the country.
How to help local journalists
The New York Times · by The New York Times · August 20, 2021






2. FDD | Biden's catastrophe

Excerpts:
So, where does that leave us?
The Taliban-al Qaeda terrorist syndicate that brought us the 9/11 terror attacks once again enjoys a largely uncontested safe haven in Afghanistan — just as it did on Sept. 11, 2001. Except now, its fighters’ spirits are emboldened by the defeat of the United States, ranks are replenished with former prisoners, and arsenals are overflowing with new (largely American) weapons.
The United States confronts a dizzying and growing array of threats abroad that can strike Americans at home. As Panetta wrote in December, however, “withdrawing into a defensive and insular crouch here at home risks leaving Americans more isolated and more vulnerable to threats.”
In an interview, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos asked Biden whether he would keep American troops in Afghanistan past the self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline if that was necessary to evacuate all Americans to safety — essentially whether the commander in chief would abandon Americans in Afghanistan. Disturbingly, Biden struggled to answer that simple question.
If Americans don’t demand better from our leaders, we should expect more disasters in the future.
FDD | Biden's catastrophe
fdd.org · by Bradley Bowman CMPP Senior Director · August 20, 2021
Responding to the disastrous fallout of his Afghanistan withdrawal, President Joe Biden declared that the “buck stops with me” — and then spent the rest of his first public address on the crisis shifting blame and proffering the same flawed arguments that led us to this tragic point. We must scrutinize those arguments if we are to learn the lessons of these failures and avoid them in the future.
Indeed, Biden’s obviously incorrect statement that the Afghanistan withdrawal could not have been handled better suggests we have a lot of work to do.
To be sure, the U.S. government’s most important task at this point is completing the urgent evacuation of thousands of Americans stranded in Afghanistan by the incompetent implementation of the administration’s poor decisions. Any remaining time should be used to evacuate Afghans who worked with the U.S. government and who are confronting Taliban retribution.
Once those vital tasks are complete, we must resist the temptation to move on without self-reflection. There are many reasons for the catastrophe we are witnessing in Afghanistan, and we should seek to understand all of them.
That effort should start with Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan based on self-delusions regarding the nature of our enemies there and the need for a continued military presence. To be clear, the failure has been a bipartisan one.
President Donald Trump embraced many of the same misconceptions, including the all-too-prevalent belief that forward-deployed U.S. military forces in the Middle East are often or almost always unnecessary or even the primary source of problems. That false premise leads naturally to the idea that U.S. military withdrawals are almost always the solution.
This “ending endless wars” narrative, long espoused by too many politicians of both parties, ignores the prudent admonition of former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta. We should absolutely scrutinize military interventions and how those interventions are conducted, but “we must also apply the same scrutiny to withdrawals,” Panetta wrote in December. “In doing so, Americans will find that some withdrawals can be equally deleterious to our national security, especially when the withdrawals are conducted precipitously and without clear preconditions.”
One simply needs to look to the 2011 Obama administration withdrawal from Iraq for an example. President Barack Obama, motivated in part by the sincere and misinformed advocacy of then-Vice President Joe Biden, pursued withdrawal based on a timeline and not conditions in the country — against the advice of his military commanders.
Sound familiar?
And what was the result of that 2011 withdrawal from Iraq? That decision catalyzed the rise of the Islamic State and culminated in a costly U.S. military return in 2014.
A decade after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, Biden drew from the same playbook, and we are all witnessing the horrible results. In a bizarre twist of logic, Biden is arguing that the catastrophe his policy catalyzed in Afghanistan is evidence of the wisdom of that policy. The idea is that chaos was inevitable and that inevitability argued against keeping troops there.
This is absurd. When I taught at West Point, I might have flunked a cadet if he or she had attempted that logical maneuver in a term paper. The Afghan security forces, despite their many shortcomings, fought hard for nearly 20 years, with an estimated 66,000 paying the ultimate price to defend their country and fight our common enemy.
Some trend lines were troubling, but the rapid unraveling came after Biden’s April 14 announcement of the impending withdrawal. The psychological impact on Afghan security forces of the American abandonment (which started under Trump) and the denial of air support (by Biden) cannot be overestimated.
When Biden assumed office in January, we had no more than 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria combined. Compare that to a peak of 170,000 troops in Iraq in 2007 and approximately 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2011. Or compare it to 26,000 troops on Capitol Hill after Jan. 6.
The 8,000 U.S. troops in those three countries largely play (or played in the case of Afghanistan) supporting roles for admittedly imperfect partners bearing the brunt of the burden in confronting our common enemies. In Afghanistan, not a single American soldier had been killed in combat in a year and a half. The Taliban certainly would have increased their efforts to target U.S. forces if we had stayed, but that would have been difficult for the Taliban because most U.S. forces were operating in supporting roles for front-line Afghan forces.
And what strategic benefits were we accruing from that modest troop presence? We were preventing the resurgence of the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria, while ensuring that Afghanistan would not be used again to launch terrorist attacks against us. In other words, with relatively modest levels of investment, we were helping brave partners keep pressure on terrorists there so they could not kill us again here at home. It was a disaster avoidance strategy.
It is interesting that the Biden administration now finds that argument, as least for the time being, persuasive when it comes to our military presence in Iraq and Syria but not in Afghanistan.
What explains that? Well, Biden essentially told us in his Aug. 16 address, and his words reveal the flawed premise on which he has built his disastrous policy.
Biden argued that we should “focus on the threats we face today, in 2021, not yesterday’s threats.” I completely agree. But then, he said the “terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan.”
That is interesting wording. If the president is saying that the terrorist threat has evolved over the past 20 years and spread far beyond the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, that is certainly true. If he is saying there is little to no remaining international terror threat remaining in that region, such an assertion is dangerously false.
The absence of another 9/11 attack launched from Afghanistan is not an indication of the absence of a terror threat but rather that our 20-year strategy in Afghanistan, despite its significant shortcomings, was successful in accomplishing our core objective.
Biden was right to express concern about “al Shabab in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Nusra in Syria, [and] ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia.” But the cascading consequences of the catastrophe in Afghanistan will make all of those problems more difficult. Terrorists in each of those areas will be more emboldened based on the defeat of the United States and our partners in Afghanistan. As we saw with the ISIS caliphate, success on the battlefield stokes terrorist radicalization, recruitment, and activity around the world. We should expect the same now.
Biden might respond, as he said in his speech, that “we conduct effective counterterrorism missions against terrorist groups in multiple countries where we don’t have permanent military presence. If necessary, we’ll do the same in Afghanistan.” Setting aside the fact that we do have troops in Syria, that argument neglects the unique geographic challenges associated with Afghanistan, the value of having bases in the country, and the fact that the Afghanistan-Pakistan region remains an epicenter for terrorism. As a result of the withdrawal, we will know less about terrorist activity and be less agile and effective in our response.
Anyone who suggests otherwise has watched too many Hollywood movies and is not listening to the experts. “When the time comes for the U.S. military to withdraw, the U.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish,” CIA Director William Burns said in April. “That’s simply a fact.”
Even before the events of the last month, more than 20 U.S.-designated jihadist terrorist organizations still operated in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and many of them still seek to kill Americans and our allies. Those groups now feel triumphant and can spend more time planning and launching attacks. Indeed, the U.S. intelligence community assessed in April that al Qaeda leaders will “continue calls for attacks against the United States and other international targets, and seek to advance plotting around the world.”
What does that broader argument regarding al Qaeda have to do with Afghanistan? Everything.
Americans should remember that the Taliban provided Osama bin Laden the hospitality he needed to plan and launch the 9/11 terror attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people. As rigorously documented by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s Long War Journal, the Taliban and al Qaeda have remained attached at the hip for more than 20 years.
The relationship between the two was so problematic that the Trump administration demanded in the 2020 agreement that the Taliban break with al Qaeda. Anyone who’s studied the two groups could have told the Trump team the chances of that happening were near zero. And sure enough, the Taliban refused, never complying with the agreement that Biden has used as a fig leaf for the withdrawal he wanted to conduct anyway. In the recent offensive, the Taliban coordinated with Tajik and Uzbek members of al Qaeda to seize control of districts and provinces in the north.
Accordingly, all the Trump negotiation with the Taliban accomplished was sidelining the Afghan government, enabling the Taliban to achieve the release of 5,000 prisoners (many of whom returned to the battlefield, of course), and giving the Taliban more than a year to tell provincial and district governors that they better support the Taliban because the Americans were explicitly committed to a date-certain departure. That fact partially explains the rapid fall of provinces that we witnessed this month.
Anyone doubting this relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda should review a June report issued by the United Nations, an organization not exactly known for its hawkish policy stands. “The Taliban and Al Qaeda remain closely aligned and show no indication of breaking ties,” the report found.
So, where does that leave us?
The Taliban-al Qaeda terrorist syndicate that brought us the 9/11 terror attacks once again enjoys a largely uncontested safe haven in Afghanistan — just as it did on Sept. 11, 2001. Except now, its fighters’ spirits are emboldened by the defeat of the United States, ranks are replenished with former prisoners, and arsenals are overflowing with new (largely American) weapons.
The United States confronts a dizzying and growing array of threats abroad that can strike Americans at home. As Panetta wrote in December, however, “withdrawing into a defensive and insular crouch here at home risks leaving Americans more isolated and more vulnerable to threats.”
In an interview, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos asked Biden whether he would keep American troops in Afghanistan past the self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline if that was necessary to evacuate all Americans to safety — essentially whether the commander in chief would abandon Americans in Afghanistan. Disturbingly, Biden struggled to answer that simple question.
If Americans don’t demand better from our leaders, we should expect more disasters in the future.
Bradley Bowman is the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @Brad_L_Bowman. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Bradley Bowman CMPP Senior Director · August 20, 2021





3. An Un-American Way of War: Why the United States Fails at Irregular Warfare

Podcast at the link. Summary below.


An Un-American Way of War: Why the United States Fails at Irregular Warfare
Andrew Milburn and Shawna Sinnott | 08.23.21






The United States and other nations have spent billions of dollars and invested untold effort, not to mention lives, in a global campaign against Islamist terrorism—and yet the threat landscape is arguably worse now than it was on 9/11.
Despite the importance for national security of understanding how to wage irregular warfare effectively, something in the American way of war, the fundamental culture of the US military, prevents us from doing so. Our guests discuss the question of what needs to be done to reverse this trend and thus ensure that the United States can recover from the mistakes of the past, restore its credibility, and return to its place of prominence on the global stage.
William Wechsler is director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. His most recent government position was deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism, a role in which he advised several secretaries and helped coordinate interagency policies on a wide range of direct and indirect actions. Previously, Wechsler served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics and global threats, overseeing military and civilian programs around the globe. His key areas of focus included integrating law enforcement operations into our military campaigns in Afghanistan and institutionalizing military counter–threat finance structures and doctrine.
Dr. Liam Collins is the executive director of the Viola Foundation, the executive director of the Madison Policy Forum, a senior fellow with New America, and a permanent member with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Liam served in the US Army for twenty-seven years. As a career Special Forces officer, he conducted multiple operational and combat deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, South America, and the Horn of Africa. Liam retired from the military in 2019 as the founding director of the Modern War Institute and the director of the Department of Military Instruction at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Previously he served as retired General John Abizaid’s executive officer for his secretary of defense appointment as the senior defense advisor to Ukraine, and as the director of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.
Our two guests discuss how the United States and our partners have responded and adapted to the various extremist groups that have emerged across the world over the last three decades. The story covers campaigns ranging from the war against narcoterrorists in Colombia to the French intervention in Mali to, inevitably, triumph and tragedy in Afghanistan. They explain the significance of the lessons that we have learned—or should have learned—for national security in this era of great power competition. And they describe how our adversaries have adapted too, often managing to stay several steps ahead of us, as the current situation in Afghanistan bears testament.
Emerging from their discussion is a common theme: the US military and body politic are culturally ill prepared for the kind of long-term, light-footprint, civil-military effort that is needed to garner lasting results in these campaigns. Events of the last two decades, and perhaps most conclusively in the last week, have signaled to the world the end of American leadership—pointing instead to a nation in decline.
At the same time, our guests offer some constructive advice. It’s not too late to reverse this trend, they argue, but it will take a determined commitment from across the national security enterprise, from policymakers and practitioners alike.
The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a collaboration between the Modern War Institute and Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. You can listen to the full episode below, and you can find it and subscribe on Apple PodcastsStitcherSpotifyTuneIn, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to follow the podcast on Twitter!



4. Terrorism in South Asia After the Fall of Afghanistan

Excerpt:

The end of the U.S. military’s involvement in Afghanistan does not mean the end of terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan. The country will continue to host numerous terrorist groups that threaten the interests of numerous states in the region and beyond. Afghanistan may not prove to be the terrorist safe haven that it was immediately before 9/11, but the United States and its allies will have fewer capabilities and resources to combat the threat that does emerge. After the United States and others respond to the immediate crisis on the ground in Kabul, they will be left to put together a counter-terrorism strategy for Afghanistan with fewer tools than they had before. Crafting new approaches will require a deep understanding of the various groups operating in Afghanistan and throughout South Asia.
Terrorism in South Asia After the Fall of Afghanistan - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Kabir Taneja · August 23, 2021
The Taliban won the war in Afghanistan. America and its allies lost. While the Taliban holds press conferences, thousands of desperate Afghans flank the runway at Hamid Karzai International Airport, desperate for a flight out of the country. Several fell hundreds of feet to their deaths trying to cling to a U.S. military aircraft during take-off.
The short-term imperatives of saving as many Afghans as possible will soon give way to an assessment of what the new Afghanistan means for international security. For countries in South Asia — particularly India — the withdrawal of U.S. forces, collapse of the Afghan military, and ascendance of the Taliban pose a massive counter-terrorism threat. Transnational groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as their affiliates and regional branches, will likely step up their activities from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Anti-India terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed could eventually use the country as a base to launch attacks in Kashmir or other parts of India, as they did in the 1990s. While the Pakistani Taliban has lost much of its strength, it could reconstitute in Afghanistan and launch attacks into Pakistan. All of this will have immense implications for the future of jihadism in South Asia and beyond.
In time, the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan may prove to have been the right one for the United States. It may ultimately free up resources for U.S. political and military leaders to focus on China and Russia. However, the challenge for Washington now is to articulate a counter-terrorism strategy in South Asia with far fewer resources at its disposal. Without thousands of troops in Afghanistan, the United States will no longer have the intelligence capabilities to follow terrorist activities along the border with Pakistan. Future airstrikes against Afghan targets will be a costly logistical challenge and would surely undermine any chance Washington has of convincing the Taliban to dissociate from al-Qaeda. With the exception of India, America’s potential partners in South Asia are all problematic: Pakistan has supported the Taliban and the Haqqani network for decades, Russia has no interest in helping America when it is down, Iran is under heavy U.S. sanctions, and counter-terrorism cooperation with China will likely be limited given the downward trend of Sino-American ties. U.S. troops may soon be leaving Afghanistan, but the terrorist threat from there will endure for the foreseeable future.
Al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent
Al-Qaeda and its South Asian branch, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, will benefit from the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. The country was the birthplace of al-Qaeda and many of its branches. Currently, the leadership of the core group and the South Asian faction are active in the country and have been recorded fighting alongside the Taliban against the United States. Although new estimates suggest that there are no more than 600 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, their latent strength is considerable.
While the Taliban agreed to cut ties with al-Qaeda as part of its agreement with the United States in February 2020, there’s little evidence in the historical record that the Taliban will keep its word. Indeed, al-Qaeda has repeatedly pledged its allegiance to the Taliban. Moreover, its leaders have been discovered in Taliban territory as recently as March 2021. It’s true that the Taliban will have incentives to prevent al-Qaeda from using Afghanistan to conduct attacks around the world. However, those incentives are unlikely to be as powerful as the desire to avoid a direct confrontation with al-Qaeda, the pull of history, and opposition to Western pressure.
In fact, the Taliban appear to be unilaterally revising the understanding with the United States. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has added further caveats to the deal with the United States regarding al-Qaeda, saying that “nowhere in the agreement has it been mentioned that we have or don’t have ties with anyone. In fact, the issue of relations is not considered. What has been agreed upon is that no threat should be posed from Afghan soil to the U.S. and its allies.” According to another account by scholar Asfandyar Mir, “at one point during the negotiations [between the United States and the Taliban], the discussion broke down with the Afghan Taliban insisting that there was no proof that al-Qaeda had carried out the 9/11 attacks.”
The Taliban is unlikely to honor its commitments to the United States regarding al-Qaeda because of historic ties, familial relations via marriages between members of both groups, and a shared outlook on the state of Afghanistan and offensive jihad (i.e., taking up arms to establish the rule of God). Both groups want what they consider the rule of God in Afghanistan. However, while al-Qaeda has a far more global outlook, the Taliban is more inward-looking and is influenced by local customs. The Taliban has released thousands of prisoners from Afghan jails since taking over, including the prison at Bagram Air Base, which reportedly contained al-Qaeda operatives. Moreover, it has also delegated the security of Kabul to the Haqqani network — which has close ties to al-Qaeda and was responsible for some of the deadliest attacks of the Afghan war —further illustrating its closeness to the group.
The enduring relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan will have troubling consequences for regional security. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent had already hailed the U.S. withdrawal as a victory, and changed the name of its magazine from Nawai Afghan Jihad (Voice of the Afghan Jihad) to Nawai Ghazwat-ul-Hind (Voice of the Conquest of India) early this year, indicating where its energies could be focused going forward.
Terrorist groups are active in other countries in South Asia besides Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent’s affiliates, such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, are still active in India and Bangladesh. As recently as July 2021, Indian authorities arrested two Kashmiris belonging to Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. According to the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad, the two were allegedly planning to conduct attacks in Lucknow, the state capital. In addition, three Bangladeshi members of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh were also apprehended in the same month for allegedly setting up networks in Kolkata.
The risk of al-Qaeda supporting and inspiring regional affiliates in South Asia is significant and growing. Bangladeshi authorities have noted that three members of Ansar al-Islam (also known as Ansarullah Bangla Team) have travelled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, potentially opening a renewed interest in jihadist operations.
While most international counter-terrorism efforts in South Asia focus on Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, some of South Asia’s smaller countries (e.g., Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Myanmar) are also a target for al-Qaeda. The group was linked to the 2019 killing of a Maldivian journalist. Moreover, al-Qaeda has discussed the treatment of Rohingyas in Myanmar and warns of revenge in case of further atrocities. Ataullah abu Ammar Junni, the leader of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, was born in Pakistan and has travelled to both Pakistan and Afghanistan to seek help for his insurgency. Clearly, terrorist networks transcend borders in South Asia.
Islamic State and Other Terrorist Groups in South Asia
The Taliban and Islamic State are rivals in Afghanistan. The Taliban considers the Islamic State an opponent and resents its efforts to operate independently in Afghanistan. The Islamic State’s claims that the Taliban works with Pakistani intelligence are meant to embarrass the Taliban. A recently released U.N. report highlights that differences within the Taliban could make the Islamic State Khorasan Province in Afghanistan a viable alternative for those who did not agree with the Taliban leadership on its negotiations with the United States over the latter’s withdrawal.
The Islamic State has conducted attacks throughout South Asia. In Pakistan, the group has been active as Wilayah-al-Bakistan (or the “Islamic State Pakistan Province”) since 2019. Its rivalry with the Taliban has already shown some spill over effect with the Islamic State claiming responsibility for the killing of a Taliban leader in an attack in Peshawar, Pakistan. Wilayah-al-Bakistan claimed 22 attacks in Pakistan in 2019 and 13 attacks in 2020.
The Islamic State targets South Asian audiences with its propaganda. Sawt-al-Hind (Voice of Hind), an online pro-Islamic State propaganda magazine, targeted Indian Muslims during communal riots in New Delhi in February 2020. The monthly magazine explores controversial regional and local affairs (e.g., developments at the Ayodhya temple, a highly contentious issue between Hindus and Muslims in India since the early 1990s). It regularly features articles by authors from Maldives, a country that, on a per capita basis, once had the highest number of foreign fighters that joined the Islamic State in the region.
The deadliest terror attack in South Asia’s history took place in Sri Lanka. The 2019 Easter bombings killed more than 270 people. Even though the Islamic State claimed the attack, law enforcement has struggled to confirm direct links between the bombings and the group. The bombings came three years after the terror attack in Dhaka, which killed 22 civilians, which was also done in the name of the Islamic State. These attacks highlight the fluidity of the Islamic State brand, which can be co-opted by local terror actors to gain leverage and recognition.
High-ranking Islamic State officials have publicly singled out South Asia as an important region for the group’s activities. The Islamic State’s new spokesperson, Abu Hamza al Qurashi, recently praised Islamic State ecosystems in India and Pakistan. Despite some successful attacks in the region, the group’s strategy remains disjointed. They have not been able to appoint a leader for South Asia, build a strong chain of command in the region, or sustain branches there.
Apart from the Islamic State, India’s greatest concern in Afghanistan is that the Taliban, once back in power in Kabul, would provide space for groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed — and their alleged handlers in Pakistani intelligence — to operate freely. This is effectively what happened in the 1990s, when terrorist violence in Kashmir was at its peak with close to 1,000 casualties per year. The Afghan landscape is reportedly already providing Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed with both training grounds and recruitment opportunities. New Delhi will do its best to watch this development closely, but that may be difficult without an active embassy in Kabul.
The different groups that will now operate with more freedom in Afghanistan have different approaches to certain hotspots. Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Islamic State have very different narratives concerning Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are recognized as Kashmiri nationalists fighting over lost territory. Moreover, their historic links with each other and actors within Pakistan beginning in the 1990s gives each group bona fides with the Taliban, which also sees itself foremost as a nationalist movement. The Islamic State, by contrast, considers Kashmir to be a Muslim majority region and intends to establish itself as an independent entity separate from India or Pakistan.
The Future of Jihadism in a Post-American Afghanistan
The Taliban’s success in Afghanistan will have far reaching effects on the resilience of other groups looking to conduct attacks across South Asia. Firstly, the Taliban’s perceived victory over the United States will likely inspire jihadist groups. Various groups in Syria and Palestine have celebrated the Taliban’s takeover. Others will be inspired by the Taliban’s new resources and international prestige, especially if other countries begin to formally recognize the government in Kabul.
Second, Afghanistan will almost certainly become an attractive destination for South Asian extremists (and jihadists from other parts of the world) once again. Despite differences with the Taliban, the Islamic State could strengthen its position in Afghanistan from disenfranchised factions of the Taliban and continue to attract more South Asians. Several Indians travelled to Afghanistan and joined Islamic State Khorasan Province in 2016 and 2017. Some former members of disbanded groups such as the Indian Mujahideen and Students’ Islamic Movement of India also joined the Islamic State Khorasan Province. The Taliban victory is sure to make it easier for extremists to enter Afghanistan.
Third, foreign fighters will gain experience in Afghanistan and will eventually go back to their home countries, bringing that experience with them. The Afghan jihad of the 1980s was the progenitor of numerous jihadist movements across South Asia. This was due in part to returning foreign fighters setting up shop back home. A repeat of this dynamic can prove detrimental to not only the security but also the political fabric of the region.
Lastly, the Taliban’s advances have already given it access to major resources and weapons. The Taliban might funnel these to other groups. An increase in financial resources can further help to pay for mid- to high-level operations across South Asia.
What Can the United States Do Now?
In order to secure its counter-terrorism interests after it withdraws from Afghanistan, the United States should increase counter-terrorism cooperation with regional states, especially India. Washington may even find it useful to cooperate or coordinate with Beijing and Islamabad on limited counter-terrorism objectives. The United States should also encourage South Asian nations to work closer on counter-terrorism. Most of these options are suboptimal, but after the U.S. withdrawal, Washington has no other options.
America’s counter-terrorism cooperation with India will be especially important for U.S. interests. New Delhi is Washington’s most capable defense and intelligence partner in South Asia, particularly after the collapse of the Afghan military. Helping India to prevent terrorist attacks will allow New Delhi to focus attention and resources on competing with China.
Despite the fact that Pakistan’s support of the Taliban and the Haqqani network undermined U.S. interests in Afghanistan for decades, the United States may find it necessary to work with Pakistan on some specific regional counter-terrorism efforts. The two countries face common threats from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Tehrik-i-Taliban (or “Pakistan Taliban”) may regroup and threaten Pakistani and U.S. security interests. Pakistan’s insights into the Taliban and developments in Afghanistan may prove valuable to the U.S.-Pakistani intelligence relationship. However, this cooperation can only go so far. U.S. officials will long remember Pakistan’s role in sabotaging America’s efforts in Afghanistan, and Islamabad’s support for anti-India terrorist groups risks a nuclear crisis in South Asia.
Likewise, the United States could attempt to engage with China given its increasing influence in South Asia and strong links with Pakistan. Washington could leverage the recent terror attack against Chinese citizens in Pakistan — allegedly by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, although neither group has taken responsibility — as a starting point to future cooperation on discrete regional issues, if the politics allow it. It is likely that this cooperation may not materialize, however, given the current state of Sino-American ties. Nevertheless, given that terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan threaten the interests of all regional states, there may be some space for collaboration.
The United States could also encourage regional counter-terrorism cooperation. And for this, New Delhi can play a significant role in driving the counter-terror discourse in the region. Such a mechanism would also allow smaller countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Maldives (among others) to achieve their own potential in dealing with terrorism via institutionalized counter-terror solutions from the perspective of local and hyper-local strategies.
Looking Ahead
The end of the U.S. military’s involvement in Afghanistan does not mean the end of terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan. The country will continue to host numerous terrorist groups that threaten the interests of numerous states in the region and beyond. Afghanistan may not prove to be the terrorist safe haven that it was immediately before 9/11, but the United States and its allies will have fewer capabilities and resources to combat the threat that does emerge. After the United States and others respond to the immediate crisis on the ground in Kabul, they will be left to put together a counter-terrorism strategy for Afghanistan with fewer tools than they had before. Crafting new approaches will require a deep understanding of the various groups operating in Afghanistan and throughout South Asia.
Kabir Taneja is fellow and head of the West Asia Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation in India. He is the author of The ISIS Peril: The World’s Most Feared Terror Group and its Shadow on South Asia (Penguin Viking 2019).
Mohammed Sinan Siyech is a doctoral candidate at the Islamic and Middle East Studies Department at the University of Edinburgh. Previously, he was a senior analyst with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
warontherocks.com · by Kabir Taneja · August 23, 2021




5. Taiwanese shrug off China threat and place their trust in ‘Daddy America’

Some similarities to the South Korean population and the view of the threat from north Korea.

Excerpts:
But on the ground in Taiwan, there is no sign of panic.
“We are used to it,” Tsai said about the air activity. Instead of the threat from China, she would rather talk about pension reforms that have cut into her retirement income.
“What you see is not the fear you would expect,” said Richard Bush, a Taiwan expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank.
According to a poll published in April, only 39.6 per cent of respondents believed that China and Taiwan were headed for military conflict. Although that figure was a rise from 35 per cent last year and just 25 per cent in 2004, well over half of Taiwan’s population still believed that war could be avoided altogether.
While President Tsai Ing-wen and her government frequently highlight Taiwan’s plight as a target of Chinese aggression to the international community, they have done little to harden the country against an attack from Beijing, or even prepare society for the possibility of war.
Taiwanese shrug off China threat and place their trust in ‘Daddy America’
Financial Times · by Kathrin Hille · August 22, 2021
Tsai Hui-chun has lived under the roar of fighter jets her whole life. In her hometown Hualien, on Taiwan’s east coast, they can be seen and heard everywhere, taking off from the local air base.
But over the past year, the patrols and exercises have grown almost constant. “They used to do a couple of sorties in the morning,” said the retired teacher. “Now they are active in the afternoons, too, and even take off at night more and more often.”
The jets were being scrambled in response to growing harassment from China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and threatens to invade if Taipei refuses to submit indefinitely. Last week, the Chinese military said it held live-fire drills in the waters and airspace south-west and south-east of Taiwan.
Beijing’s more belligerent stance has alarmed the US, Taiwan’s unofficial protector. In March, Admiral Philip Davidson, then-commander of US forces in the Pacific, said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could be launched within six years.
But on the ground in Taiwan, there is no sign of panic.
“We are used to it,” Tsai said about the air activity. Instead of the threat from China, she would rather talk about pension reforms that have cut into her retirement income.
Taiwan is avoiding ‘the underlying reality’ when it comes to China, analysts have warned © Chiang Ying-ying/AP
“What you see is not the fear you would expect,” said Richard Bush, a Taiwan expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank.
According to a poll published in April, only 39.6 per cent of respondents believed that China and Taiwan were headed for military conflict. Although that figure was a rise from 35 per cent last year and just 25 per cent in 2004, well over half of Taiwan’s population still believed that war could be avoided altogether.
While President Tsai Ing-wen and her government frequently highlight Taiwan’s plight as a target of Chinese aggression to the international community, they have done little to harden the country against an attack from Beijing, or even prepare society for the possibility of war.
Pointing to Afghanistan’s government and army being overrun by the Taliban the moment the US withdrew from the country, Tsai told her compatriots that they would have to stand together to avoid a similar fate at the hands of China.
“Taiwan’s only choice is to make ourselves even stronger, even more united and even more determined to protect ourselves,” she wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
But for most ordinary Taiwanese, there is barely a flicker of concern.
“There is a lack of discussion, and of a clear sense of what the threat is,” said Bush, who argued in a recent book that Taiwan’s democracy has failed to address how the country can survive and preserve its “good life”.
“What we have seen is avoidance of the underlying reality, of real choices.”
Taiwan is scrambling jets more often in response to growing Chinese aggression © Reuters
Public opinion, never in favour of unification, has grown more hostile towards Beijing. Since early 2019, when Xi Jinping, China’s president, rejected flexibility in offering Taiwan a political deal, and during Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s autonomy, pro-independence sentiment has climbed to historical highs.
The youth are even more anti-China than society at large, as reflected in the 2014 Sunflower student protest movement against the previous administration’s engagement with China.
“Since 2014, people just have this natural aversion to anything to do with China,” says Liu Kuan-yin, editor of the English web edition of CommonWealth, a Taiwanese news magazine.
The government argues that the Taiwanese want peace but know the risk of conflict is always present.
Liu, however, blames Tsai’s Democratic Progressive party for channelling the sentiment of patriotism and rejection of China in the wrong way.
“The government should be raising people’s awareness of the military threat. But instead of doing real things, they just talk, telling people to hate China and love the US and Japan,” she said.
As Taiwan’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign gained traction this summer following donations from the US and Japan, many Taiwanese posted pictures of their inoculation records on Facebook with the words, “Thank you, Daddy America!”
Critics said Tsai’s administration had fed complacency by highlighting Taiwan’s ever-stronger relations with Washington. “The public will think that we are so safe, America loves us and will come to our rescue when push comes to shove — it takes away the urge to be self-reliant,” said Liu.
But the root of Taiwan’s failure to tackle the military threat is not a lack of government leadership. The Kuomintang, China’s former ruling party that fled to Taiwan after its defeat in the Chinese civil war in 1949, ruled with martial law for 38 years.
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Cherishing its hard-won democracy, which created a social welfare system and Asia’s most socially progressive society, the Taiwanese public has no appetite for militarising society or even discussing defence.
But there are some attempts to change that mindset.
Enoch Wu, a former special forces officer who chairs the DPP’s Taipei chapter, has teamed up with Admiral Lee Hsi-ming, former chief of the general staff of Taiwan’s military, to educate the public about how Taiwan can better resist a Chinese invasion. He also organises safety and first aid seminars for young people.
“We are getting thousands of sign-ups for these events. That tells me folks are aware we face serious security challenges and believe in the idea that everyone can do more,” Wu said.
But his audience remains limited and for some Taiwanese, there is a sense of futility. Tsai Hui-chun, the retired teacher, believes that although she has no desire for Taiwan to become part of China, it will eventually happen.
She said: “When they come one day, what could we do about it anyway?”
Financial Times · by Kathrin Hille · August 22, 2021



6. Anti-Taliban leader Massoud wants to talk but ready to fight


I am hoping there is strong resistance potential.

Anti-Taliban leader Massoud wants to talk but ready to fight
Reuters · by James Mackenzie
Ahmad Massoud, son of the slain hero of the anti-Soviet resistance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, speaks during an interview at his house in Bazarak, Panjshir province Afghanistan September 5, 2019. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail
Aug 22 (Reuters) - Ahmad Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's last major outpost of anti-Taliban resistance, said on Sunday he hoped to hold peaceful talks with the Islamist movement that seized power in Kabul a week ago but that his forces were ready to fight.
"We want to make the Taliban realise that the only way forward is through negotiation," he told Reuters by telephone from his stronghold in the Panjshir valley northwest of Kabul, where he has gathered forces made up of remnants of regular army units and special forces as well as local militia fighters.
"We do not want a war to break out."
The comments came as a statement on the Taliban's Alemarah Twitter feed said hundreds of fighters were heading towards Panjshir "after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully". A short video showed a column of captured trucks with the white Taliban flag but still bearing their government markings moving along a highway.
Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one of the main leaders of Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s, said his supporters were ready to fight if Taliban forces tried to invade the valley.
"They want to defend, they want to fight, they want to resist against any totalitarian regime."
However there was some uncertainty about whether the operation by Taliban forces had begun or not. A Taliban official said an offensive had been launched on Panjshir. But an aide to Massoud said there were no signs that the column had actually entered the narrow pass into the valley and there had been no reports of fighting.
In the only confirmed fighting since the fall of Kabul on Sunday, anti-Taliban forces took back three districts in the northern province of Baghlan, bordering Panjshir last week. However Massoud he said he had not organised the operation which he said had been carried out by local militia groups reacting to "brutality" in the area.
Massoud called for an inclusive, broad-based government in Kabul representing all of Afghanistan's different ethnic groups and said a "totalitarian regime" should not be recognised by the international community.
The wreckage of Soviet armoured vehicles that still dot the valley show how hard Panjshir has been to defeat in the past. But many outside observers have questioned whether Massoud's forces will be able to resist for long without outside support.
He said his forces, which one aide said numbered more than 6,000, would need international support if it came to fighting. But he said they did not just come from Panjshir, a region of Persian-speaking Tajiks long at odds with the Pashtuns who form the core of the Taliban movement.
"There are many other people from many other provinces who are seeking refuge in the Panjshir valley who are standing with us and who do not want to accept another identity for Afghanistan," he said.
Additional reporting by Ahmad Elhamy in Cairo; Gibran Peshimam in Islamabad Editing by Giles Elgood and Frances Kerry
Reuters · by James Mackenzie



7. SAS in dramatic desert raid to save troops from Taliban
Another story that makes truth stranger than fiction. An amazing special operation and kudos to the crew of the C-130 and note that the C-130 is soon to be retired.

Article also has a wide range of photos as well as criticism of the US. . And some interesting graphics not only deceiving the operation but how neighboring countries line up about the Taliban takeover.


SAS in dramatic desert raid to save troops from Taliban
REVEALED: How elite SAS troops launched dramatic operation to save 20 comrades trapped by advancing Taliban hordes as Kandahar fell - landing a Hercules plane on the desert floor in pitch darkness in 'textbook' raid
  • Around 20 SAS men who were surrounded by Taliban have been rescued from the Afghan desert by comrades
  • The group who were in Kandahar province sent an SOS to commanders as the area fell to Taliban control
  • Military commanders hatched a daring plan to extricate the stranded troops by landing a plane in the desert  
  • Sources describe the astonishing raid - which utilised a makeshift airstrip in pitch darkness - as 'textbook' 
PUBLISHED: 17:00 EDT, 22 August 2021 | UPDATED: 03:46 EDT, 23 August 2021
Daily Mail · by Mark Nicol, Defence Editor For The Daily Mail · August 22, 2021
A team of Special Air Service soldiers who were surrounded by Taliban hordes in Kandahar have been rescued in a dramatic desert operation.
Around 20 elite SAS troops were left stranded in the province hundreds of miles from friendly forces when the militants took over.
As enemy fighters closed in they sent an SOS request to Special Forces bosses back in Britain calling for immediate extraction.
But they could not use Kandahar airfield – once home to 26,000 international troops at the height of the military campaign – because it had already been overrun by Taliban. So the SAS soldiers fought their way to a secret desert location where they went into hiding. The coordinates of the location were then relayed back to Special Forces headquarters in a series of coded messages.
It comes as Boris Johnson prepares to hold a meeting with the leaders of G7 countries to push Joe Biden to delay the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan to allow more time for people to be evacuated.
The UK wants to double its Kabul airlift numbers to 12,000 this week, but the PM accepts that the success of the mission is reliant on US troops maintaining control of Kabul airport.
Mr Johnson said last night: 'It is vital that the international community works together to ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years.'
Despite the entreaties from fellow leaders, Mr Biden has been non-committal, saying yesterday he 'hopes not to' extend his current deadline. He made a pledge to US citizens that 'any American who wants to get home will get home' but pointedly failed to mention his allies.


Members of the Taliban patrol in Kandahar in Afghanistan earlier today. The city fell to the Taliban just over a week ago
The SAS rescue mission was one of the most dramatic moments of the West's withdrawal from Afghanistan so far.
As part of the operation, RAF chiefs planning the evacuation of British nationals and entitled Afghans from Kabul airport had to find a transport aircraft capable of landing and taking off again in the desert.
On Wednesday night online flight trackers picked up a UK Hercules transport aircraft flying over the Gulf, until it turned off its Identification Friend or Foe sensors.
This ensured flight radars could not follow its route towards the area of desert scrub which SAS troops had identified as a possible landing strip.
The aircraft, from the RAF's Special Forces wing, made a dramatic landing in the dead of night with the crew wearing digital night-vision goggles.
A source said: 'It was a very hush, hush mission. Kandahar had fallen to the Taliban on Friday and the guys were down there for five days after that. The enemy were rampant and killing a lot of Afghan Special Forces whom the SAS had been working with. So it was a very urgent mission.

Evacuations have been underway in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control of the country on August 13 after American troops were pulled from the country
'Credit to the Hercules crew from 47 Squadron for landing the aircraft at night on rough terrain and getting her airborne again with the guys and their equipment aboard. It was textbook.'
The aircraft reappeared on Thursday morning on flight trackers as it approached an international military base in Dubai.
Frustratingly for SAS chiefs the C-130J which rescued their troops is due to be retired as part of the latest reorganisation of the RAF.
The Hercules is the RAF's major tactical transport aircraft and in its current versions, has been the backbone of UK operational mobility since it was brought into service in 1999. Praised as 'highly flexible' by the RAF, it has the ability to airdrop a variety of both stores and paratroopers, while landing and taking off from natural surfaces, such as a desert strip.

A US Navy corpsman hands out water to children during an evacuation at the airport in Kabul

A US Airman embraces a mother after she helped to reunite their family at the airport in Kabul

A US Airman high fives a child after helping to reunite their family at the airport in Kabul
To conduct these missions, Hercules crews are highly skilled in low-level flying and trained to perform in both day and night.
The plan to rescue the stranded SAS troops was put together by the Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing. The aircraft and crew came from the RAF's 47 Squadron. It comes as Taliban fighters were on the move last night to take over a key Afghanistan province currently outside of their control.
Hundreds of troops are heading towards Panjshir Valley, an area above Kabul long known for its opposition to extremists.
In a statement, the insurgents said their soldiers were planning to take control of the region 'after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully'. But they are expected to meet significant resistance from thousands of ex-government troops who have joined forces with local militia.

An RAF plane was filled to capacity with embassy staff, British nationals and any Afghans able to settle in the UK


Thousands of Afghans could be left behind in Kabul as ministers push to extend the deadline for the last British evacuation flight beyond Tuesday. Pictured: British citizens catching a flight earlier this week


Taliban fighters stand guard on their side at a border crossing point between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Torkham, in Khyber district, Pakistan


A Pakistani paramilitary soldier, right, and Taliban fighters stand guard on their respective sides at a border crossing point between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Torkham, in Khyber district, Pakistan


A U.S. Navy Corpsman with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Crisis Response - Central Command, hands out water to children during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport
They are led by Ahmad Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, who warned that a new civil war is inevitable without a comprehensive power-sharing agreement.
Massoud claims to have some 9,000 fighters and has openly conducted training exercises showing recruits performing fitness routines. He also claims to have hundreds of military vehicles as well as five helicopters.
Pictures have emerged of a string of armoured vehicles lining up on the banks of the Panjshir River.
Defences are being bolstered at entrances to the Panjshir Valley, the south of which is guarded by a narrow gorge. Massoud said his group wants to push for a new system of government, but is prepared to fight if needed.
'The Taliban will not last long if it continues on this path,' he said. 'We are ready to defend Afghanistan and we warn of a bloodshed.'
Inspired by past victories against the Soviets and the Taliban, Panjshiri soldiers have spoken in recent days about 'a fight to the death'.

Don't cut and run, Joe: Boris Johnson will plead with Biden not to leave UK troops at mercy of ISIS suicide bombers in Kabul - after President said he 'hopes not to' extend US mission beyond August 31
by JAMES ROBINSON for MailOnline and JOHN STEVENS and MARK NICOL for the Daily Mail
Boris Johnson and G7 leaders will plead with Joe Biden to delay the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, amid fears mercy flights could be halted within 48 hours.
The Prime Minister will use a virtual meeting of world leaders tomorrow to push for more time so thousands are not left behind in the clutches of the Taliban.
However they could be facing an uphill battle, with the US President refusing to commit to an extension.
Nearly 6,000 UK citizens and Afghan staff had been airlifted out by the RAF by last night, and, according to reports last night, a further 6,000 people will be flown out this week.
But the rescue mission is reliant on the American military retaining control of Kabul airport. Along with losing key air support, British military officials fear Islamic State (IS) may also target UK soldiers at Kabul airport in suicide bomb attacks.
'It is vital that the international community works together to ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years,' Mr Johnson said last night.
But, while the PM last night issued his plea for co-operation, last night there appeared little hope of US troops remaining in Afghanistan beyond the end of this month.
President Biden said yesterday he 'hopes not to' extend his current deadline. He made a pledge to US citizens that 'any American who wants to get home will get home' but pointedly failed to mention his allies.
It came as dramatic pictures emerged of Taliban fighters and British troops, once sworn enemies, working just yards apart at Kabul airport.
Downing Street insiders said Mr Johnson will ask the US President at the G7 meeting not to leave Western allies in the lurch.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace have also been in contact with their opposite numbers in Washington on the issue.
A Whitehall source said last night: 'The situation on the ground is in flux – it would be unwise to impose a rigid deadline at this stage.'
Mr Biden has set a deadline of August 31 for all Americans to have left the country, but UK military sources said another fortnight was needed.
Asked what he would say if G7 leaders pushed him, Mr Biden said: 'I will tell them we will see what we can do.'
British military commanders are understood to have pencilled in August 25 as the last day they can process refugees, including former British interpreters, before the focus shifts to getting about 1,000 British troops and government officials home safely.
It could mean the last British evacuation flight may have to leave as soon as tomorrow or Wednesday to allow soldiers enough time to withdraw. Reports in the Times today suggested the final date could be pushed back to Friday or Saturday.
Meanwhile, furious former generals last night urged the Prime Minister to continue the UK's Afghanistan evacuation mission even if the US leaves, in the hoping of getting 'every last Britain out'.
It came as:
  • The Ministry of Defence confirmed seven Afghan civilians died in the chaos outside Kabul airport over the weekend, with at least 20 killed in the past week;
  • Britain pledged to work with Moscow and Beijing to exercise a 'moderating influence' over the Taliban, despite a deep mistrust of both regimes;
  • Vladimir Putin rejected the idea of airlifting people from Afghanistan to countries near Russia, saying he did not want 'militants showing up here under cover of refugees';
  • Tony Blair stressed that Britain's involvement in Afghanistan has not been a 'hopeless endeavour', as he accused Mr Biden of following an 'imbecilic policy';
  • Only a last-minute concession by the Taliban and a change of heart by Mr Biden can save the thousands of vulnerable Afghans who face being left behind.


Boris Johnson (pictured left) will attempt to persuade US President Joe Biden (pictured right) to keep American troops in Afghanistan beyond his August 31 deadline when the two leaders take part in a G7 meeting this week



There are fears that the 1,000 UK troops taking part in Britain's rescue operation will have to pull out when America's remaining group of 6,000 leave, due to a lack of air support. Pictured: Evacuees from Afghanistan as they arrive in an Airbus A400 transport aircraft of the German Air Force Luftwaffe in Tashkent, Uzbekista



Afghan families enter into Pakistan through a border crossing point in Chaman, Pakistan


Afghan nationals arrive in Pakistan through the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing point in Chaman today


People stand on a barrier outside Kabul airport, Afghanistan, after the Taliban takeover of the city last week


A man instructs people to queue as they stand with their belongings outside Kabul airport, Afghanistan


US military plans are doing rapid diving combat landings to beat the threat of a missile attack, with video showing a French transport plane yesterday deploying flares designed to confuse heat-seeking technology



Over recent days, the President has remained stubbornly opposed to any plan to extend the rescue operation into September.
His stance means UK nationals and Afghans eligible to relocate to Britain would have to escape themselves to a third country, such as Pakistan, from where they could travel to the UK on commercial aircraft.
Such journeys would be fraught with danger. Scores of interpreters are hiding in Kabul following beatings and shootings by the Taliban; punishment for their service to a foreign power.
Tonight Mr Biden appeared to push back on extending, saying: 'Let me be clear - the evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful,' Biden said.
'No matter when it started, when we began. It would have been true if we had started a month ago, or a month from now.
'There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss and heartbreaking images you see on television. It's just a fact.'
He said about 11,000 people were lifted out of Kabul in less than 36 hours and said defence officials 'hope' they will not have to extend the evacuation operation.
However in a glimmer of hope that an extension was still possible, he added: 'There are going to be discussions I suspect on how far along we are in the process.
'Our first priority in Kabul is getting American citizens out of the situation as quickly and safely as possible,' Biden said.
'Any American that wants to get home will get home.'
He also said the US government is 'looking to move our Afghan allies' out of the country as well, noting that citizens of NATO allies and Afghan allies were amongst the 11,000 individuals evacuated this past weekend.
Meanwhile, Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defence committee, last night stressed the importance of Mr Johnson convincing Mr Biden that the rescue mission should be extended.
He said: 'Time is unquestionably running out and unless there is movement politically on that cut-off point of August 31, we could see flights for former interpreters, other eligible Afghans and refugees ending in the coming days.
'After that, the main effort must switch to the safe withdrawal of our military personnel.
'It simply isn't possible to do both at the same time; the folding up of the military mission cannot be done amid the mayhem and chaos we are currently witnessing; in particular given genuine fears of a terrorist attack.
'Boris Johnson must get the support of other G7 leaders and present a united front to President Biden. More time must be made available.
'I dread to think what the scenes will be at the airport this week as the deadline approaches. There could be carnage. We are perhaps fortunate that more lives haven't been lost and no British troops have been wounded.'
The threat of a terrorist attack is being factored into all military plans as the chaos is thought to provide an 'open goal' opportunity for the Islamic State terror group to strike British and other international forces.
Military aircraft have been seen dropping anti-missile flares and carrying out nosedive combat landings amid fears that terrorists may try to shoot down an aircraft.
Armed Forces minister James Heappey conceded the UK would not be able to rescue everyone who has been promised sanctuary here.
Asked how important it was that Mr Biden approved an extension of the deadline, Mr Heappey said: 'We are assuming nothing... If the programme is extended, then there is the opportunity to continue with flights.
'But the Taliban get a vote in that too – it's not just a decision made in Washington.'
Meanwhile, a former British Army general last night said the UK should go it alone if the US does not push back its leaving date.
Retired Major General Tim Cross, who served in Iraq and Kosovo, told the Sun: 'What's the point of having armed forces if we cannot hold a single airfield? It makes the whole global Britain idea a joke.'
Another, Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told the paper: 'We are one of the most powerful military nations in the world. We should stay until we have got every last Brit, and everyone we need, out.'
The Minister of Defence last night said it would be 'impractical' to secure Kabul Airport and to continue the evacuation mission 'without the partnership (with the US)'.
Meanwhile, fears have been raised about UK and US troops being targeted by IS terrorists as the evacuation at Kabul airport continues. Fears of an Isis attack on the have prompted the US to warn its citizens not to travel to the site without instructions from its officials.


Former British Army generals last night said the UK should go it alone if the US does not push back its leaving date. Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told the Sun: 'We are one of the most powerful military nations in the world. We should stay until we have got every last Brit, and everyone we need, out.'


Tobias Ellwood (pictured left), chairman of the Commons defence committee, last night stressed the importance of Mr Johnson convincing Mr Biden that the rescue mission should be extended. Armed Forces minister James Heappey (pictured right) conceded the UK would not be able to rescue everyone who has been promised sanctuary here


Evacuations have been underway in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control of the country on August 13 after American troops were pulled from the country


A porter pushes a wheelbarrow carrying Afghan children as family members enters into Pakistan through a border crossing point in Chaman, Pakistan


The 19th century struggle for power in Afghanistan between the UK and Tsarist Russia was called the Great Game. As the US and the UK pull its troops and the Taliban retake control by force, who will Afghanistan's new leaders cosy-up with? Turkey, the only Muslim-majority member of Nato, could benefit, partly because it can control the flow of Afghan refugees into Europe. The mullahs in Iran are delighted by the departure of the US and will recognise the new Kabul regime. Russia will also be pleased to see the US leave, but has its own concerns about Islamic extremism. China and Pakistan have also made early noises of support, while Qatar hosted Taliban leaders in its capital Doha since 2013. However India is dismayed by the Taliban's victory. Here Michael Burleigh looks at where each countries vested interests lie, and which countries will be happy and who will be angry at the Taliban takeover
A government source told the Times last night: 'We know they (IS) would love to get a suicide bomb into the crowd and take out some Brits or Americans.
'There is a serious threat of an Isis suicide bomber. The soldiers are having to keep their fingers on the trigger in one hand while holding a baby in the other. It's very fragile.'
It comes as Sir Laurie Bristow, Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, last night said the UK had managed to evacuate more than 5,700 people, including 1,000 in the previous 14 hours.
And British troops could be given extra time to evacuate more people out of Afghanistan. The Times suggest that the military has now managed to push back the final evacuation date to Friday or Saturday, in order to help more people.
The evacuation missions has also been expanded, according to the paper. The expansion is reportedly due to a rise in the number of people who have come forward with eligibility claims to the UK.
The figure is thought to have raised from 6,000 last week to around 12,000. Part of the rise is due to the inclusion of Afghan politicians, civic leaders and humanitarian workers, as well as their families, the Times reports.
Lord Richards, the former chief of defence staff, meanwhile, said extending the evacuation window would 'undoubtedly' save lives if the Taliban agreed to it.
He added: 'Western politicians [are] sleepwalking through this, coming out with all sorts of statements of regret and recrimination,' he told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House. It's so important that we now get a grip of it.
'I think there could be an international consensus and the Taliban ironically might well welcome it, because the alternative is some very bad headlines come September 1 when we see starving Afghans, and worse potentially, simply because they don't have the capacity to deal with it.'
Sir Nick Kay, the former British ambassador to Afghanistan, told LBC radio: 'If you can extend that deadline you can release the Afghan people from the panic that they're in that this is all going to end within a matter of days and hours.'
Former Tory party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said Mr Biden 'needs to be told categorically, you can't go off by this ridiculous artificial date'.




A U.S. Navy Corpsman with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Crisis Response - Central Command, hands out water to children during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport


Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan


The fighters were all seen carrying weapons as they spoke to passing Afghans at the checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul


Taliban fighters were seen carrying automatic weapons and with ammo strap to their chest at the checkpoint in Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood of Kabul
He told LBC: 'The idea that in the next couple of days there will be the last flights is abominable.'
During last night's national address from the White House, Mr Biden said it did not matter when the Afghan evacuation began, it was always 'going to be hard and painful'.
The President added: 'No way of evacuating this number of people would be without pain and loss. It is just a fact.
'We are bringing out citizens, Nato allies, Afghani allies... but we have a long way to go and a lot can still go wrong.'
It comes as today Tony Blair blasted President Biden's 'imbecilic' decision to withdraw US troops from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, calling the President's scuttle 'tragic, dangerous and unnecessary' and claiming the move had 'every Jihadist group round the world cheering'.
Mr Blair, who was in Downing Street when London sent UK troops to the Middle Eastern country 20 years ago following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC, said Britain has a 'moral obligation' to stay until 'all those who need to be are evacuated'.
In a 2,700 article on the threat of 'radical Islam', the former British prime minister said the exit was not in the West or Afghanistan's interest as he lamented the likely reversal of gains made during the occupation, with the Taliban reasserting itself across most of the country in recent days.
Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Mr Blair said he has 'enormous respect' for Mr Biden, but suggested the President - who campaigned on a slogan of ending 'forever wars' and is likely to be keeping an eye on next year's midterms - had withdrawn US troops for domestic political reasons.
He repeated his assertion that the withdrawal was a 'serious mistake' and 'not something we needed to do' and said there had been 'a lot of gains' made in the past two decades, stressing that the deaths of British Armed Forces personnel were 'not in vain'.
Mr Blair also issued a stark warning to Boris Johnson that the manner of the US' handling of the exit indicated the UK could be relegated from the top division of international powers, with reports Britain was largely kept in the dark about when American armed forces would leave.
He added that countries including China and Russia are likely to applaud the withdrawal and occupy the 'vacuum' in Afghanistan left by the NATO powers.
Both the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab have suggested Britain will now have to turn to Beijing and Moscow to assist with exercising a 'moderating influence' over the Taliban post-withdrawal.
Cabinet insiders have suggested the President was 'gaga' and 'doolally' for withdrawing so quickly, while the Prime Minister has allegedly privately referred to Mr Biden as 'Sleepy Joe', the nickname coined by Donald Trump. Mr Johnson also allegedly remarked Britain 'would be better off with Trump' - allegations branded 'categorically untrue' by Downing Street.
'For Britain, out of Europe and suffering the end of the Afghanistan mission by our greatest ally with little or no consultation, we have serious reflection to do,' said Mr Blair. 'We don't see it yet, but we are at risk of relegation to the second division of global powers.'
His comments come as the US President signalled he wanted evacuations from Kabul airport completed by the end of the month as he prepares to withdraw all American troops - a move that would likely force Britain to wrap up its operation at the same time.


Tony Blair has branded Joe Biden an 'imbecile' over his 'tragic, dangerous, unnecessary' decision to withdraw the US troops from Afghanistan, and claimed that the move had 'every Jihadist group round the world cheering'



Mr Blair issued a stark warning to Prime Minister Boris Johnson that the manner of the US' handling of the exit indicated the UK could be relegated from the top division of international powers, with reports Britain was largely kept in the dark about when American armed forces would leave
Mr Blair told Sky News on Sunday: 'I've enormous respect for Joe Biden, I've known him for many years - he is a good man and he's a decent man. But on the other hand ... I think it is important to realise this was not something we needed to do.
'I understand the political pressure but our footprint had really been reduced to a much smaller level, and by the end of 2019 we were in a situation whereby we could have held firm for some considerable time and helped the Afghan people through the next stages of their progress.'
Mr Blair said there had been 'a lot of gains' made in the past two decades and stressed that the deaths of UK armed forces personnel were 'not in vain'.
He added: 'Our troops were fantastic in Afghanistan, and a lot of them made the ultimate sacrifice, a lot of them were injured. And it's really important that they know that this wasn't a hopeless endeavour, and it wasn't a bad cause.
'What I'd say to them is the sacrifice was not in vain, that those 20 years matter. What we achieved in Afghanistan matters today. I think it's really important that people realise this, the story of Afghanistan, the story of the Taliban takeover, it's not over. It's tragic what's happened, I think it's unnecessary, I think we've made a serious mistake in doing this in this way, but it isn't over yet.'
In his article, Mr Blair urged for there to be 'no repetition of arbitrary deadlines' - a reference to Washington's Doha agreement with the Taliban, committing to vacate Afghanistan in time for the 9/11 anniversary - in the rescue mission.
'We must evacuate and give sanctuary to those to whom we have responsibility - those Afghans who helped us and stood by us and have a right to demand we stand by them,' said the former Labour Party leader.
'There must be no repetition of arbitrary deadlines. We have a moral obligation to keep at it until all those who need to be are evacuated. And we should do so not grudgingly but out of a deep sense of humanity and responsibility.'
Mr Blair defended his own decision making in 2001 when he worked with former US president George Bush and NATO allies to avenge the New York World Trade Centre attack. After the Taliban refused to evict al Qaeda, the terror group that masterminded the hijacking of the planes in 2001, Mr Blair said Western allies, who feared worse attacks were to come, felt there was 'no safer alternative' than to strike.
He continued: 'There is no doubt that in the years that followed we made mistakes, some serious. But the reaction to our mistakes have been unfortunately further mistakes.
'Today we are in a mood which seems to regard the bringing of democracy as a utopian delusion and intervention virtually of any sort as a fool's errand. The world is now uncertain of where the West stands because it is so obvious that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in this way was driven not by grand strategy but by politics.
'We didn't need to do it. We chose to do it.
'We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars', as if our engagement in 2021 was remotely comparable to our commitment 20 or even 10 years ago, in circumstances in which troop numbers had declined to a minimum and no allied soldier had lost their life in combat for 18 months.'
The former Middle East envoy said that, although 'imperfect', the 'real gains over the past 20 years' were likely to be lost following the Taliban victory, including advances in living standards, education particularly of girls, and other freedoms.
He called for the UK, in its role as president of the G7 this year, to help coordinate an international response to 'hold the new regime to account'.
The UK Government has been working diplomatically to ensure there is no unilateral recognition of a Taliban government in Afghanistan, with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab refusing to rule out applying sanctions if the militants renege on their promise to be more inclusive, especially in their attitudes towards women, than when last in control.
Mr Blair said: 'We need to draw up a list of incentives, sanctions, actions we can take including to protect the civilian population so the Taliban understand their actions will have consequences. This is urgent. The disarray of the past weeks needs to be replaced by something resembling coherence and with a plan that is credible and realistic.'
The Prime Minister's feelings about America's withdrawal from Afghanistan have been variously described by sources as 'furious', 'a betrayal' and 'let down'.
Downing Street dismisses the claims - it is in neither country's interests to stoke tensions when the future of Afghanistan hangs in the balance - but there is little question that the UK has been left exposed by the speed of Washington's pull-out.
No 10 also denies claims that the Prime Minister was disappointed by Mr Biden's victory in the Presidential elections and had declared that it would have been 'better' if Mr Trump had won a second term, and say it is 'categorically untrue' that Mr Johnson employs the President's derogatory nickname of Sleepy Joe during jocular conversations.
However, one minister denounced US isolationism and warned the Government would have to 'revisit' the recent review on defence and foreign policy because the US was no longer a reliable ally.
They told the Sunday Times: 'America has just signalled to the world that they are not that keen on playing a global role. The implications of that are absolutely huge. We need to get the integrated review out and reread it. We are going to have to do a hard-nosed revisit on all our assumptions and policies.



Pakistan's soldiers check the documents of Afghan and Pakistani nationals for crossing into Afghanistan at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing point in Chaman



People gather outside the Pakistani embassy, to obtain a visa. after Taliban took over in Kabul




A soldier carries someone amid the chaos at Kabul airport in Afghanistan yesterday, with thousands desperate to flee the country



Hundreds of Afghans desperately trying to flee the Taliban are pictured outside Kabul airport
'The US had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the First World War. They turned up late for the Second World War and now they are cutting and running in Afghanistan.'
Speaking to Sky News today, Mr Blair said 'the only people really cheering this decision are the people hostile to Western interests' - listing among them the Chinese and Russian regimes.
'We've got to realise we were in a situation where... we could've managed the situation,' he said. 'The problem with what's happened now is that it's not just about the Afghan people and our obligation to them... it's about us and our security.
'Because you've now got this group back in charge of Afghanistan. They will give protection and succour to al Qaeda, you've got ISIS (Islamic State) already in the country trying to operate at the same time. You look round the world and the only people really cheering this decision are the people hostile to Western interests.'
Mr Blair said the UK and its G7 allies will need to come up with a 'strategy' to deal with the Taliban regime to make sure 'we don't end up with a security threat'.
He added: 'We should be putting together the leading countries who are part of this coalition in the first place and who have supported Afghanistan in the last 20 years and we need to work out what our strategy and tactics are going to be in respect of the Taliban government.
'We need to be drawing up a list of incentives and sanctions and other things we can do in order to use the leverage we have, which is not insignificant. The Taliban will find that governing is a lot harder than they thought. The population of Afghanistan is different.
'There's going to be a lot that we can still do but it's important that we mobilise now after the disarray frankly of the last few weeks, that we mobilise as the leading countries and make it clear that we still understand we have an obligation in our own interests to try and resolve this situation and to put as much pressure on the government in Afghanistan as possible to make sure that we don't end up either with a security threat in play for us or with the Afghan people losing the gains they've made over the last 20 years.'
Across Whitehall and in British embassies around the world, officials and diplomats are adjusting to the fact that Mr Biden has adopted an America First policy every bit as isolationist as his predecessor's.
There are also whispered concerns that the 78-year-old might be, in the words of one Government source, 'a bit doolally' - unable to exert full executive grip on the White House and with a world view forged decades ago and out of step with the demands of leadership in the 2020s.
The Times claimed yesterday that Mr Johnson finds Mr Biden 'lightweight and inward-looking'.
Observers of the two men's relationship believe that there is a degree of wariness, with Mr Biden regarding Mr Johnson as a 'mini-Trump' because of his personality-driven style of politics and the pair talking far less frequently than Mr Johnson and Mr Trump did.
There are also policy differences, with Washington reluctant to accede to the UK's demand to ramp up spending on 'green' policies ahead of the COP26 climate change summit being hosted by the UK in November.
Of particular irritation in London during the Afghan endgame has been the fact that British military commanders have been cut out of discussions between the US and the Taliban.
But a No 10 source said yesterday that Mr Johnson had not expressed any anger over the US withdrawal, and said the two men had enjoyed a 'warm and constructive' phone conversation on Tuesday evening.
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'These claims are categorically untrue. The Prime Minister has not criticised President Biden, and they have a very strong working relationship.
The President's first call to a leader outside of North America after his election win was to the Prime Minister.
They have worked together on a range of issues, including at the recent G7, where they secured an additional one billion Covid vaccine doses for developing countries, and signed the Carbis Bay Declaration to improve global health co-operation and prevent future pandemics'.
President Biden cancelled plans to spend the weekend at his home in Delaware. Instead he is meeting his national security team 'to hear intelligence, security and diplomatic updates on the evolving situation in Afghanistan,' the White House said.
Lord Ricketts, who served as the Government's first national security adviser from 2010 to 2012 under former prime minister David Cameron, said the UK will need to 'rethink' its foreign policy stance following the United States' handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Speaking to Times Radio, he said: 'It has been a humiliating period for the UK. I'm afraid we've learnt that (US President) Joe Biden has put US politics ahead of NATO alliance solidarity and Britain hasn't counted for much in that decision, if anything at all.
'The hard fact is we are going to need to continue to work with the Americans in all sorts of areas and this has been a difficult experience, but we need to bring the Americans back to working with their allies, taking account of our views.
'But we can't somehow invent a foreign policy without the Americans so we've got to take a deep breath and do some frank talking to Joe Biden and then get back to work with him.'
The former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee continued: 'We need to rethink a lot of that rhetoric in the integrated review published by the Government a few months ago about Britain as an independent sovereign operator, turning the dial on international crises.
'We have shown actually that we are pretty impotent in a situation where the Americans take a decision - we have little choice but to follow.'
Daily Mail · by Mark Nicol, Defence Editor For The Daily Mail · August 22, 2021




8. The failure of intelligence in counterinsurgency - opinion

Excerpts:

The origin of the failure of US intelligence can be traced to its culture. The US has oriented itself toward technology, which has weakened the real capacity for human intelligence. Decision-makers normally have a preference for intelligence from nonhuman sources. Reports based on political attitudes and intentions are not dominant.

While the British taught us that every soldier can be a collector of intelligence, cooperation from the local population is essential. And in Afghanistan, with US dependence on air power and the resulting high civilian casualties, the locals’ perception of the US military was hurt, and as such this decreased information sharing.

Most importantly, the United States and its allies failed to exploit, penetrate, and manipulate the structural weaknesses of the Taliban.
The failure of intelligence in counterinsurgency - opinion
As we have witnessed over the last 20 years, Afghanistan has proven to be a remarkable example of the failure of US intelligence.
By CARLO J.V. CARO   AUGUST 17, 2021 18:35
As we have witnessed over the last 20 years, Afghanistan has proven to be a remarkable example of the failure of US intelligence.

The precedent for this had already been witnessed in Somalia due to the lack of suitable intelligence developed by the United States.

The need for adequate intelligence on the Taliban movement was a prerequisite for the success of US strategy. Superior technology did not have to lead to success in unconventional warfare. Indeed, the advantage of the Taliban was in its ability to disperse its force in a decentralized and mobile manner.

The origin of the failure of US intelligence can be traced to its culture. The US has oriented itself toward technology, which has weakened the real capacity for human intelligence. Decision-makers normally have a preference for intelligence from nonhuman sources. Reports based on political attitudes and intentions are not dominant.

While the British taught us that every soldier can be a collector of intelligence, cooperation from the local population is essential. And in Afghanistan, with US dependence on air power and the resulting high civilian casualties, the locals’ perception of the US military was hurt, and as such this decreased information sharing.

Most importantly, the United States and its allies failed to exploit, penetrate, and manipulate the structural weaknesses of the Taliban.

In April of 1996, Mullah Omar appeared before his subjects in Kandahar, who saw him as the Amir al-Mu’minin or Commander of the Faithful. Twenty-five years later the Taliban is back in Kandahar, but ironically it has always been plagued by the problem of guaranteeing the loyalty of its fighters to its leadership. Ever since the Taliban was formed, the interests of its shura council have not always coincided with the interests of its regional commanders.

The Taliban in Afghanistan is made up of a network of groups, each based on ethnic, financial or tribal affinities, and each group’s commander creates a particular degree of commitment with the rest of the network and the shura council. While the leadership was normally loyal to Mullah Omar, as the Taliban’s hierarchy descended, there was less cohesion to the center, and there were even rivalries among the different groups that made up the movement, in terms of tribal, ethnic and personal factors.

Why US intelligence failed to exploit this remains puzzling.

While much of the Taliban’s strategy is dictated from its leadership, this strategy has always taken time to reach its fighters on the ground, and while each group’s commanders might have sworn allegiance to the shura council, this has never translated into blind following. Tribal and regional commanders have had to engage in strenuous dialogue to reach consensus within their own group and with each other before adopting the strategy prescribed by the shura council.

Thus the Taliban movement was always vulnerable to fragmentation and disintegration. This weakness had even been observed by its own leadership, which is why the death of Mullah Omar was originally kept hidden.

Of course, there are some advantages to this structure – mainly, that it allowed the Taliban more sources of recruitment. Also, casualties in a given region did not necessarily have a direct effect on the capacity of the Taliban in another region. This is another reason that the Taliban has tried to show itself as a movement that is not exclusively Pashtun and thus gain more influence at a national level against the government.

IN COMPARISON, locals always perceived the government in Kabul as out of touch and corrupt. Its politicians did not really understand their own country, as they had spent too much time abroad.

Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), was largely absent from rural areas, and compiled most of its intelligence in regions under the control of the government, leading to incorrect assessments and actions.

The intelligence services were also largely under the control of ethnic Tajiks, something problematic since it was crucial to gain leverage over the Pashtun population.

In 2015 during the Battle of Kunduz, when the Taliban overran the government, the NDS failed to see the attack coming, and did not initially consider the Taliban’s actions as serious enough.

The lack of communication between the NDS and other state organisms like the NSA (National Security Agency of Afghanistan), the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior, always made it impossible to guarantee security in the country.

This was notably different from Colombia, where the US propped up the government, and intelligence played a crucial role in defeating the insurgency. In Colombia, for example, it is estimated that a network was established with over a million informants in rural areas, which fed information and developed functions of military intelligence.

THE RELIGIOUS character of the Taliban was also underestimated, as it had always been the web that tied the movement together. This has helped Afghans to identify with the Taliban, and it has seduced local leaders, since under the Taliban’s religious system they can gain more influence.

The loyalty of the commander of each group to the shura council has been another reason that the Taliban did not splinter on its own, and it is what has kept the movement alive.

The existence of two shura councils, after 2012, in Peshawar and in Quetta, two different sources of leadership for the Taliban, further proved the organizational problems of the Taliban. While Peshawar followed a stricter command and control center, Quetta was marked more by decentralization. The leadership in Quetta always showed more instability with the regions under its authority.

After the US invaded Afghanistan the Taliban started to reorganize itself and mobilize its fighters. Some of the insurgency fled to Pakistan, but other local commanders stayed in their respective territories. The failure to identify them or to reintegrate them led to the consolidation of the Taliban in 2002

While the United States and the Northern Alliance effectively defeated the Taliban in a few months, their presence in the southern regions was nonexistent, which also helped the return of the Taliban.

OF COURSE, the most important point here is Pakistan, and I am not referring to the fact that it has given armament and refuge to the Taliban.

In 2010, Pakistan captured some leaders of the Taliban, including Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan and Abdul Salam Baryalai Akhund. The United States and its allies might have seen this as a blow to the Taliban or as Pakistan’s pledge to finally cooperate against international terrorism.

But, in practice, Pakistani intelligence had always known how to pressure and manipulate the structure of the Taliban. It is impossible for Pakistan’s intelligence services to not know that members of the Taliban had been operating in their country, and all of the individuals captured were open to negotiations with the government in Kabul, which was not in Pakistan’s interests at the time.

After the US occupation in Afghanistan, Pakistan tried to manipulate the nature of the Taliban, by attempting to place people more akin to Pakistani interests. There have been indications of members with dual nationality in the Taliban, who crossed the border undetected by the Afghan security services and have been able to coordinate with the shura council in Pakistan and the different regional commanders in Afghanistan. Many Taliban members were also Afghan refugees in Pakistan who attended madrassas there and had been influenced by their host country.

As the Taliban takes over Kabul, we can see how intelligence and failing to exploit the structure of our enemy was a critical element for the failure of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

The author is an analyst on warfare and intelligence. He holds postgraduate degrees from Columbia University.




9. So Much for a ‘Foreign Policy for the Middle Class’

Excerpts:

Worried about the popularity of Donald Trump’s attacks on America’s foreign commitments—including its presence in Afghanistan—key players in Washington have, over the past few years, embraced the idea of a “foreign policy for the middle class.” To win public support for America’s role as a guarantor of the liberal international order, and to stop authoritarian populists like Donald Trump from winning elections, those who backed this approach argued, the country would need to abandon unpopular missions such as that in Afghanistan and focus on actions that directly boost the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans.
But the first important test of this policy has now shown that it is likely to fail. Far from making a Trump comeback less likely, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has perilously reinforced the impression that the country’s traditional elites are too weak and incompetent to be trusted with power. If the Biden administration is to avert similar disasters in the years to come, it must abandon the framework through which it now views American foreign policy.
So Much for a ‘Foreign Policy for the Middle Class’
Biden’s answer to Trump’s approach lasted only as long as its first major test.
BY YASCHA MOUNK
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
AUGUST 22, 2021
defenseone.com · by Yascha Mounk
The fall of Kabul is a major disaster.
It is a major disaster for the people of Afghanistan, who will now have to live under a theocratic regime that suppresses their most basic liberties, ruthlessly punishes dissenters, and proudly oppresses women. It is a major disaster, in particular, for the tens of thousands of Afghans who helped Western journalists and diplomats in an attempt to build a better country, then looked on in impotence as promises of harbor were shamefully abandoned, and now face the deadly wrath of the Taliban. It is a major disaster for many countries in the region, which will now have to deal with the deeply destabilizing effects of yet another massive refugee crisis. It is a major disaster for the credibility of the West, whose promises to stand up for the safety of allies threatened by authoritarian competitors such as Russia and China will now sound even more hollow. And it is a major disaster for the United States, which will be much less secure now that the Taliban has freed a significant number of al-Qaeda operatives, and may once again allow terrorist groups to establish training grounds in Afghanistan.
Among these horrors, a more indirect upshot of these past days has understandably been overlooked: America’s abject failure in Afghanistan also serves as an indictment of a theory that stands at the heart of Joe Biden’s foreign policy.
Worried about the popularity of Donald Trump’s attacks on America’s foreign commitments—including its presence in Afghanistan—key players in Washington have, over the past few years, embraced the idea of a “foreign policy for the middle class.” To win public support for America’s role as a guarantor of the liberal international order, and to stop authoritarian populists like Donald Trump from winning elections, those who backed this approach argued, the country would need to abandon unpopular missions such as that in Afghanistan and focus on actions that directly boost the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans.
But the first important test of this policy has now shown that it is likely to fail. Far from making a Trump comeback less likely, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has perilously reinforced the impression that the country’s traditional elites are too weak and incompetent to be trusted with power. If the Biden administration is to avert similar disasters in the years to come, it must abandon the framework through which it now views American foreign policy.
Trump’s foreign policy was an incoherent mess. During the 2016 campaign, he repeatedly denounced Xi Jinping and incessantly warned about the danger posed by China. Then he met Xi and was suddenly full of praise for him. “He’s now president for life,” Trump said in 2018, “and he’s great.” Trump’s appraisal of other statesmen, including both democratically elected leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Japan’s Shinzo Abe and autocrats such as North Korea’s Kim Jung Un and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, underwent similarly wild swings, seemingly motivated by nothing more than the determination with which they flattered him.
But it would be a mistake to let Trump’s personal fickleness obscure the cold-hearted consistency that characterizes his basic convictions about the world. Broadly speaking, his views about foreign policy are, like those of many other populists around the world, guided by three simple principles. First, he believes that political leaders should at all times place their country’s immediate self-interest over any other consideration. Second, he believes that America’s national self-interest is rarely served by costly or lengthy engagements in foreign countries. And third, he believes that the pursuit of that self-interest often requires the United States to break both the formal and the informal rules of international politics.
This basic outlook was on full display in Trump’s attitude toward Afghanistan. During his first election campaign, he frequently criticized the mission. The allied effort there, he argued, was exacting too high a price on American life and treasure. As he put it in one tweet, “We should leave Afghanistan immediately … Rebuild the US first.” (Once in office, Trump didn’t deliver on his own promise. Though he put some of the gears for America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan into motion, a small but crucial contingent of American troops remained in place throughout his tenure.)
Deeply disturbed by Trump’s ascent, the traditional foreign-policy establishment in Washington gradually took parts of his critique to heart. Think tanks had long fretted about the unpopularity of the “liberal international order” and the lack of popular support for American engagements abroad. Trump’s success seemed to prove that the old ways had grown unsustainable. What was to be done?
Senior foreign-policy makers believed that the question forced by Trump was how to preserve the basic international rules that secure America’s prosperity without feeding a populist backlash that threatens to destroy both the country’s alliances and the survival of its institutions. Many of the people who are running the foreign policy of the Biden administration—including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan—coalesced around a particular answer to that question. Voters, they came to believe, are convinced that America’s foreign policy has failed to serve the country’s national self-interest. To compete with Trump, they concluded, Democrats need to abandon unpopular foreign entanglements and recast the country’s commitment to international rules as an effective way to serve voters’ financial interests.
Far from being a mere slogan, the idea of a “foreign policy for the middle class”has deeply shaped the foreign policy pursued by Joe Biden during the first seven months of his presidency. It has guided the first international successes of his administration, like the series of deals that will ensure a minimum rate of taxation for large international corporations. It explains some otherwise baffling steps, like the administration’s recent attempts to push OPEC to raise its production quotas on oil. And, yes, it also makes sense of Biden’s determination to get out of Afghanistan with reckless speed.
In polls, a clear majority of Americans have consistently favored withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. The U.S. presence in the country did not serve any significant economic interests. An endgame was not in sight. From the perspective of a “foreign policy for the middle class,” Afghanistan was an easy case. By withdrawing troops, Biden could demonstrate that he was willing to defer to public opinion about foreign policy, that he wouldn’t get entangled in costly foreign adventures, and that he would refocus America’s efforts on initiatives that deliver tangible benefits to ordinary Americans. It seemed like a win-win-win.
But America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan not only is having a host of tragic consequences for that country and the world, it also fails to meet its intended purpose. Designed to weaken the hands of populists like Donald Trump, it will only make their resurgence more likely.
The images of helicopters rescuing American diplomats from the Kabul embassy and of Afghans clinging to the outside of U.S. transport planes in a desperate bid to escape the Taliban are likely to become iconic. They symbolize a new era of American weakness and will help define Biden’s foreign-policy record.
A lot of Democrats seem to disagree with this diagnosis. Confident that the fall of Kabul won’t cost them dearly, senior officials in the Biden administration were, as recently as Sunday, telling journalists that “Americans support bringing troops home.” But though most Americans did indeed support bringing troops home, that was before they realized how badly such a policy would turn out, and they are likely to judge Biden harshly for the scenes of national humiliation now playing on television and social media.
So far, attacks on Biden as incompetent have lacked punch outside the right-wing media echo chamber; voters had little reason to think that he was unable to lead the country. But the videos now emanating from Afghanistan give a visceral visual to a line of attack that is sure to ramp up in the coming months. Fairly or not, they connect Republicans’ preferred characterization of Biden with a real-world catastrophe he oversaw.
These attacks could grow even more potent if foreign terror returns to the United States in the coming years. According to early reports, the Taliban have already freed a significant number of al-Qaeda operatives. The group may again allow terrorist cells to establish training grounds or take shelter in the country it now controls. If any future terrorist attack does seem to have a connection to Afghanistan, the administration’s decision to tie the withdrawal of its troops to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 could come back to haunt it.
By the fall of 2022 or 2024, a lot of Americans will likely have forgotten all about the Afghan people. But even when its original source fades from memory, the impression of the administration’s weakness and incompetence will likely linger. And for a populist like Trump, who always ran as much on his ability to restore American strength as on his promise to reduce the country’s foreign entanglements, that creates a giant opening.
The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan was meant to signal that the Biden administration had carefully listened to voters’ concerns and put their material welfare first. Instead, it is directly feeding the perception of elite failure and weakness on which populist strongmen thrive. Among many other lessons, this suggests that the establishment’s consensus about how to respond to the challenge posed by Trump has gone badly awry.
Foreign policy is not the most effective tool for raising the paychecks of steelworkers in Michigan or nurses in Georgia. The idea that anything the administration could do during negotiations at the G8 or the United Nations would sufficiently change the material well-being of average Americans to affect their voting behavior was always a chimera. Whatever the merits of a foreign policy for the middle class as a substantive proposition, as a political strategy it has always been naive.
But the fall of Kabul also showcases a second shortcoming of the idea. In polls, American voters may say they prefer that their country pursue a self-interested foreign policy that focuses on boosting their standard of living. But they are still likely to judge their leaders harshly if their actions humiliate the country in dramatic fashion or fail to protect the homeland. And as it happens, what is required to avoid national humiliation and preserve national security is often precisely what many voters will perceive as politicians straying from the pursuit of the country’s immediate self-interest.
This does not mean that American leaders should ignore public opinion or go looking for the kinds of misguided military adventures that have diminished the country’s standing over the past decades. But in the end, voters deserve to hear the truth. And the truth is that, rightly understood, America’s self-interest demands meaningful loyalty to its allies and often necessitates painful actions to frustrate the designs of the most dangerous forces in the world. And over the past months, that meant doing what it took to ensure that the Taliban wouldn’t take over all of Afghanistan and kill scores of America’s most loyal allies.
Even after the dramatic images from Kabul, many American voters will be reluctant to accept that some of the policies that help to keep them safe and prosperous seem to have only a highly indirect connection to their lives. But it is a lesson that American leaders need to take to heart if they are to avoid more dangerous humiliations like the ones we have lived through over the past days.
This story was originally published by The Atlantic. Sign up for their newsletter.
defenseone.com · by Yascha Mounk



10. Opinion | Could Cyberwar Make the World Safer?


Quite a provocative headline. Somehow I do not think physical and kinetic fighting IRL (in real life) will never be replaced by conflict only in cyber space.

I am reminded of the quote attributed to Einstein: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” - Albert Einstein

Cyber war could so devastate our physical infrastructure that we would end up going to physical war. The bottom line in my mind is cyber war will not replace war in all other domains, air, land, sea, etc.

And rather of course there is this quote from the article that illustrates the lack of understanding of the nature of war: "Tempered by responsible use and appropriate controls, cyberwarfare is a safer and more flexible strategic alternative, one critical step between sanctions and bombs."  Consider Clausewitz' trinity and his views

War is the province of chance. in no other sphere of human activity must such a margin be left for this intruder. it increases the uncertainty of every circumstance and deranges the course of events.
- Clausewitz
War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.
- Clausewitz
The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish ... the kind of war on which they are embarking.
- Clausewitz
The first and most important rule to observe...is to use our entire forces with the utmost energy. The second rule is to concentrate our power as much as possible against that section where the chief blows are to be delivered and to incur disadvantages elsewhere, so that our chances of success may increase at the decisive point. the third rule is never to waste time. unless important advantages are to be gained from hesitation, it is necessary to set to work at once. By this speed a hundred enemy measures are nipped in the bud, and public opinion is won most rapidly. Finally, the fourth rule is to follow up our successes with the utmost energy. Only pursuit of the beaten enemy gives the fruits of victory.
- Clausewitz

Excerpts:
As the post-Sept. 11 conflicts come to an abrupt end, we are now at an important crossroads when it comes to determining just how far we are willing to take cyberwar. One possible avenue points to perilous conflict escalation between great powers further enabled by digital technologies.
But an alternative perspective sees cyberwar as an opportunity to decrease global violence. Could such tactics shift war’s focus away from human casualties?
In other words, can nations settle for slugging it out online, rather than with guns and missiles?
Fighting digitally offers a unique opportunity: the continuation of politics by other means, without the physical invasion of a sovereign territory or the inevitable sacrifice of lives. Tempered by responsible use and appropriate controls, cyberwarfare is a safer and more flexible strategic alternative, one critical step between sanctions and bombs.

Opinion | Could Cyberwar Make the World Safer?
The New York Times · by Cybèle C. Greenberg · August 22, 2021
Cybèle C. Greenberg
Could Cyberwar Make the World Safer?
Aug. 22, 2021, 3:37 p.m. ET

Credit...Gisel X Florez
By
Ms. Greenberg is a fellow with the editorial board.
The battles in a global cyberwar are visible only through periodic glances in the rearview mirror: IndraColonial PipelineSolarWindsWannaCry.
Such an episodic view obscures the fact that this jousting by nation-states, criminal networks and private actors is happening constantly — right now — without foreseeable end.
It’s hard to wrap our minds around that. It’s a departure from thousands of years of conventional warfare that leaves us wondering how exactly to categorize cyberattacks. Are they espionage? Sabotage? Acts of war? Some cyberattacks, like North Korea’s targeting of Sony Pictures, entail central involvement from states. Others, like ransomware, are simply criminal. But the spy and the hacker have a lot in common: They both trespass into others’ information.
During the Cold War, the United States, China and Russia sat on stockpiles of world-ending weapons. Now, these same countries routinely employ an array of offensive cyberweapons, though not quite to their full power grid-zapping, water system-clogging, society-crippling potential.
Indeed, despite its many consequences and dangers, there is no documented instance in which cyberwarfare has directly killed anyone (although it has come close).
As the post-Sept. 11 conflicts come to an abrupt end, we are now at an important crossroads when it comes to determining just how far we are willing to take cyberwar. One possible avenue points to perilous conflict escalation between great powers further enabled by digital technologies.
But an alternative perspective sees cyberwar as an opportunity to decrease global violence. Could such tactics shift war’s focus away from human casualties?
In other words, can nations settle for slugging it out online, rather than with guns and missiles?
Fighting digitally offers a unique opportunity: the continuation of politics by other means, without the physical invasion of a sovereign territory or the inevitable sacrifice of lives. Tempered by responsible use and appropriate controls, cyberwarfare is a safer and more flexible strategic alternative, one critical step between sanctions and bombs.
“The purpose of warfare is not to fight; it is to achieve a political objective,” said Nora Bensahel, a visiting professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “If you can achieve this objective without kinetic conflict, so much the better.”
Consider Nitro Zeus. In the late 2000s, as The Times reported, the U.S. government developed a detailed plan for cyberattacks that would disable sections of Iran’s air defenses, communications systems and power grid. The plan provided President Barack Obama with a nonlethal means to neutralize Iranian military assets in case negotiations to halt the country’s rogue nuclear enrichment program failed and Tehran sought to retaliate.
The Nitro Zeus contingency plan remained active until the fulfillment of terms in the nuclear deal signed in 2015, ready to offer phased escalation short of all-out war if diplomatic and economic pressures proved ineffective.
Since Nitro Zeus was ultimately shelved, it is difficult to assess the scope and likelihood of the collateral damage it could have caused. The integration of cyberweapons into a national security strategy points to a certain reluctance to default to the conventional — and more lethal — option. But whether it’s a drone strike or the hacking of a telecommunications network, a cyberattack will always have harmful repercussions for civilians and private enterprises.
Counterintuitively, however, cyberweapons can also increase geopolitical stability.
Cyberattacks have helped nations achieve nuclear nonproliferation in a way that, in the past, would have required physical force and increased risk to personnel, said Vipin Narang, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who specializes in nuclear strategy.
In 2007, Israeli fighter jets equipped with 500-pound bombs struck a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria. The facility was destroyed and Israel was internationally criticized for violating another country’s sovereignty. Ten North Korean scientists reportedly may have been killed in the attack.
The U.S.-Israeli offensive cyber operation known as Stuxnet, which was launched around the same time, achieved a similar objective — impeding a rogue nation’s enrichment efforts — but from afar, with no human cost. The program destroyed nearly one-fifth of Iran’s operating centrifuges and may have slowed its nuclear program by up to two years. No one was reported to have been physically harmed or killed during the yearslong operation. It may have even deterred Israel from launching a conventional attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment site.
What does responsible use of cyberweapons look like going forward?
If cyberwar has the potential to channel conflict into a nonlethal form, now is the moment — before it is fully tested on the battlefield — to develop both treaties and unwritten customary laws governing its employment.
Leaders in the technology sector such as Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, and William Leigher, a retired Navy rear admiral and former cyber strategist at Raytheon, have repeatedly called for the creation of a digital Geneva Convention that would mandate restraint in the exercise of cyberweapons and prevent the sabotaging of civilian infrastructure.
Informal norms are just as important as formal laws. In May, the United Nations released an advance copy of its report on responsible state behavior in cyberspace. It urged countries to crack down on cybercrime within their borders and report the discovery of digital vulnerabilities within networks.
When it comes to international deterrence, history shows us that U.S. leadership is key: Cold War-era multinational organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency were chartered at the behest of U.S. presidents, after all. The Biden administration should continue to champion restraint and caution in the context of cyberwarfare.
This means avoiding misattribution and curbing for-profit cybercrime. The cyber realm is still shrouded in secrecy. A mechanism to keep open lines of communications between the U.S. and its adversaries after an attack could limit false accusations and prevent events from spiraling out of control. Regarding ransomware, the Biden administration is right to encourage reporting, discourage compliance with perpetrators and provide financial assistance to victims.
The much feared cyber-Pearl Harbor that’s so much fodder for cable news? “Chances are, we will never see such an event,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and now chairman of the think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator. “But it’s death by a thousand cuts, where every week, every day, we get hit by a ransomware attack.”
With proper controls and some rules of the road, cyberwar between nations may not be all that bad. Instead of endangering lives, it could actually help save them.
That’s an important idea to keep in mind when news of the next big hack breaks.
Cybèle C. Greenberg is a fellow with the editorial board.
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The New York Times · by Cybèle C. Greenberg · August 22, 2021




11. America Got Afghanistan Wrong, But It Can Still Make Things Right



Somehow I do not think our "middle class foreign policy" will lead to the author's recommendations.

Americans are hurting. But Washington does not have the luxury of wallowing in emotion. It must quickly formulate a foreign policy based on the three elements that were conspicuous by their absence so far: wisdom, compassion, and common sense. It must regain its position on the world stage through word and deed and put the fall of Kabul behind it. America must do what it does best: it needs to lead a coalition to help rebuild Afghanistan. But this time, it should arrive in the land with plans for schools, colleges, and development schemes, not missiles and drones. Refugees must be assisted urgently. America should lean more heavily on its Muslim population for assistance. What the drones and Humvees could not do, American Muslim imams and scholars would be able to do: to make friends for America. With rivals China and Russia already wooing the Taliban, the United States must get its diplomatic moves in order.

It is not easy. A superpower just cannot understand how it could lose to men in chappals and shalwar kameez. Yet in their tactics and strategy, the Taliban could teach Erwin Rommel about the meaning of blitzkrieg.

As for the Taliban, they need to organize a stable government as soon as possible. The last time around their attitude to women and the minorities was violent and barbaric. Their cruel and unthinking behavior has given Islam a bad name and damaged their fellow Muslims.

Pakistan is being blamed by many as a scapegoat, but it must stop behaving as if it has special dispensation in the affairs of Afghanistan and cease planning for what it has called “strategic depth.” Its rival India’s Afghan policy is in shambles, and it is accused by Pakistan of using its investments in Afghanistan as a cover to meddle in Baluchistan. Both India and Pakistan must stop fishing in the troubled waters of Afghanistan. They must set aside scoring points against each other and truly help the people of Afghanistan to recover from the chaos and violence of the last four decades. The Afghans have once again proven that they are the giant killers of history. But the world must see the costs of such a victory.


America Got Afghanistan Wrong, But It Can Still Make Things Right
America must do what it does best: it needs to lead a coalition to help rebuild Afghanistan. But this time, it should arrive in the land with plans for schools, colleges, and development schemes, not missiles and drones.
The National Interest · by Akbar Ahmed · August 22, 2021
“I would rather be a grass cutter in the British camp than the ruler of Afghanistan.” Uttering these immortal words, Yaqub Khan, the former king of Afghanistan in the nineteenth century, stumbled into the British camp in Peshawar. Ashraf Ghani, the latest ruler of Afghanistan, taking lessons from history, stuffed cash into suitcases and bolted from Kabul under the cover of darkness. The fall of Kabul was a seminal moment in history.
My mind went back twenty years to the National Press Club in Washington, DC, where a high-level press conference on 9/11 and Afghanistan had been organized. I had shortly before assumed the post of Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington and had been invited to speak on the panel. It was October 2001 and we attracted an overflowing, excited, and angry audience. It had the feel of a lynch mob.
I made three points: number one, do not go charging into Afghanistan—known as the “graveyard of empires”—without a clear idea of the timeframe and objectives; have a very clear idea of the exit plan; and, whatever you do, do not underestimate the Afghans, a people known to make their opponents—especially those who come with hubris—pay for every mistake.
I gave the example of the First Anglo-Afghan war that ended in a catastrophe for the British in 1842. William Brydon, half-dead and half-crazed, appeared on a starving horse outside the Jalalabad fort as the sole survivor of the British army.

But no one was really heeding my words that day. I worried that if the invasion of Afghanistan would be launched in anger—a word President George W. Bush used again and again—it would inevitably end in disaster. Benjamin Franklin was prophetic: “Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.”
In order to promote better understanding between Muslim groups and Americans, I began a series of lectures, wrote books, and made documentaries. Among the books I wrote was The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam. I first presented a detailed model of what tribal society looks like. I pointed out the core features of tribal societies: the code of honor with its emphasis on hospitality and revenge; loyalties based on lineage; and the constant confrontation with the central government for power and ancestral land. I called this version of Islam “tribal Islam.” While tribal Islam emphasizes revenge as it is influenced by tribal custom, Islam in contrast advocates compassion and kindness over everything.
I then extended the model to forty tribal societies stretching from Morocco to the Caucasus Mountains. I presented an alternative method and strategy for success in tribal areas. The importance of dealing with tribal societies on their own terms, with dignity, was emphasized. I underlined the central feature of the council of elders. These steps would ensure stability in tribal societies.
When the book came out it was hailed by serious scholars like Rowan Williams as “ground breaking...compulsory reading for Western governments.” Noam Chomsky described it as “a very important book” and “a highly praised anthropological study.” Others like Ambassador Anthony C. E. Quainton criticized the book because it did not agree with the way the war was being conducted. Quainton complained that I characterized the American war effort in Afghanistan “as the mediocre leading the confused in pursuit of the dubious.”
Twenty years ago, few listened to what I had to say and I was dismissed with the hubris of the ignorant and the arrogant. I hope now, twenty years later someone will listen.
To start with, Americans need to squarely confront the deep sense of hurt and anger especially among those veterans who are acutely aware of the loss of honor and the senseless ending to a war that costs trillions of dollars and countless lives. Second, the full impact and scale of this defeat and the damage to American prestige on the international stage has not fully sunk in. The United States is being openly ridiculed in the region.
Americans must not equate all Muslims to the Taliban. Pakistan, for example, has lost thousands of its citizens in the fight against different varieties of the Taliban. Most mainstream Muslims reject the tribal interpretation of Islam. America must control its Islamophobic impulses.
American commentary in place of serious self-reflection or humility is caught up in the blame game. Few connect cause-and-effect: urinating on Afghan corpses and flushing the pages of the Quran down the toilet, reportedly the actions of U.S. troops, were not calculated to win Afghan hearts and minds, whatever their persuasion, Taliban or not. Unfortunately, such actions negated the noble efforts of many Americans, many of whom I have had the privilege of knowing, who genuinely attempted to build bridges of understanding in near-impossible conditions. Adding to the current confusion are the Americans who wish to undo President Joe Biden’s withdrawal and are currently implying another round of invasion. Recently on the BBC, General David Petraeus argued to “literally reverse the decision.”
Americans are hurting. But Washington does not have the luxury of wallowing in emotion. It must quickly formulate a foreign policy based on the three elements that were conspicuous by their absence so far: wisdom, compassion, and common sense. It must regain its position on the world stage through word and deed and put the fall of Kabul behind it. America must do what it does best: it needs to lead a coalition to help rebuild Afghanistan. But this time, it should arrive in the land with plans for schools, colleges, and development schemes, not missiles and drones. Refugees must be assisted urgently. America should lean more heavily on its Muslim population for assistance. What the drones and Humvees could not do, American Muslim imams and scholars would be able to do: to make friends for America. With rivals China and Russia already wooing the Taliban, the United States must get its diplomatic moves in order.
It is not easy. A superpower just cannot understand how it could lose to men in chappals and shalwar kameez. Yet in their tactics and strategy, the Taliban could teach Erwin Rommel about the meaning of blitzkrieg.
As for the Taliban, they need to organize a stable government as soon as possible. The last time around their attitude to women and the minorities was violent and barbaric. Their cruel and unthinking behavior has given Islam a bad name and damaged their fellow Muslims.
Pakistan is being blamed by many as a scapegoat, but it must stop behaving as if it has special dispensation in the affairs of Afghanistan and cease planning for what it has called “strategic depth.” Its rival India’s Afghan policy is in shambles, and it is accused by Pakistan of using its investments in Afghanistan as a cover to meddle in Baluchistan. Both India and Pakistan must stop fishing in the troubled waters of Afghanistan. They must set aside scoring points against each other and truly help the people of Afghanistan to recover from the chaos and violence of the last four decades. The Afghans have once again proven that they are the giant killers of history. But the world must see the costs of such a victory.
Professor Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington DC, the former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK, and author of, most recently, The Flying Man: Aristotle, and the Philosophers of the Golden Age of Islam: Their Relevance Today.
Image: Reuters.
The National Interest · by Akbar Ahmed · August 22, 2021



12. Some Americans No Longer Believe in the Common Good

What is the correct balance between individual liberty and responsibility for contributing to the public good? Of course selfishness is not the definition of individual liberty (or should not be).

Conclusion:

Those who are unwilling to sacrifice a small part of their daily comforts for the good of our country seem to be the loudest right now. But the statistics show that they are not in the majority. Most of us are thinking of one another. My grandmother would be proud.

Some Americans No Longer Believe in the Common Good
They now are thinking only of themselves.
The Atlantic · by Silas House · August 22, 2021
As a child in eastern Kentucky, I often helped my grandmother work in her large garden, lush with tomatoes, beans, okra, potatoes, and peppers. Granny was born in 1909, 62 years before me. As we hoed the long rows, I loved to hear her stories of living through the Great Depression and World War II. During the hard times of the 1930s, she said, neighbors banded together to help one another, pooling money to assist a destitute family or leaving food on the doorstep of a widow raising several children. While many fought fascism overseas, she and others saved rubber and tinfoil for the war effort and scrimped on food because of rationing on sugar, butter, gasoline, coal, and oil. “Not everybody was selfless, but most of us tried our best,” she told me as the heat bugs screamed around us. “That’s what you should always do.”
My own parents put these words into action. They cut corners so that they could help less fortunate kids from my school, or our church. I was taught to sacrifice my own comfort for the good of others, whether it be by volunteering my seat to elders in a crowded waiting room, letting a pregnant woman go in front of me in the grocery line, or giving half of my sandwich to a hungry classmate. I may not have always lived up to these standards, but I was taught to try. I’m sure I’m not alone. Sacrificing for the common good was something most of us were taught when I was growing up. Just a few decades later, I’m seeing people in my hometown, and all over the country, thinking only of themselves. They’re not just unwilling to make sacrifices for others during a pandemic; they’re angry about being asked to.
Last week, Governor Andy Beshear imposed a mask mandate for our schools here in Kentucky. After the brief respite offered by vaccination, I know it is tough to go back to masking and social distancing. But the backlash was immediate and charged. Parents gathered in front of schools and central offices with signs bearing slogans such as Let Our Kids Breathe and My Kids, My Choice. They expressed their outrage on social media. Our attorney general, Daniel Cameron, a protégé of Mitch McConnell, filed a petition with the state’s supreme court to stop the mandate, despite the fact that cases in Kentucky are climbing to pre-vaccination rates.
Jimmy Dyehouse, the superintendent of Science Hill Independent School District, near Somerset, not far from where my parents live, sent out a robocall to all the parents of the 440 students in his district announcing the mask mandate. On the recording, an exasperated Dyehouse apologized to parents for the fact that their kids would have to wear masks, called the governor “this liberal lunatic,” and said that he hoped the mandate would be overturned in court.
I spoke with Dyehouse because I wanted to understand exactly why he had such a problem with masks. He told me his students are “suffering” by wearing the masks, which were “nasty” and “unsanitary.” He said that many studies had proved that masks were ineffective. He didn’t cite any sources, but at least 49 scientific studies go against his claims, emphatically stating that masks are effective in the fight against COVID-19. Dyehouse feels that “the mental aspect of it on my little ones is more damaging than not wearing a mask,” claiming that it’s too scary for children to go into a school full of masked people. I brought up the idea that wearing a mask is a small sacrifice that could be seen as a patriotic duty, but he dismissed the notion. “Why should I have to wear a mask to help protect whoever, or somebody who chose not to be vaccinated, when they could put a mask on?” he told me. He didn’t seem to see any contradiction in the fact that his district includes only kindergarten through eighth grade, a tiny percentage of whom would be of age to get vaccinated. Besides, he added that he didn’t think that vaccination was going to get rid of the coronavirus, anyway.
My two children are grown now, but if they were too young to be vaccinated, I would be grateful to have the mandate. A lot of parents feel similarly, but I was struck by how many were aligned with Dyehouse’s line of thinking. I know parents who have complained about their children “being forced” to be masked. I wanted to speak with some of them about their decision. No one wanted to be identified by name or quoted. In public Facebook conversations, two of them said that their children broke down in tears at the news of having to go to school in a mask. Others say the masks hamper social life, hinder education by being a distraction, and keep students from understanding their teachers. Several told me the masks are making kids sick because they are breathing in the same carbon dioxide repeatedly, a claim that has been widely debunked. Doctors, nurses, factory workers, and others have long worn masks throughout the workday without adverse health effects. Many parents say their biggest issue is being denied their personal choice for their children. A common refrain is that some feel Beshear is enforcing the mask mandate for “a power trip.” Last year the governor was hung in effigy on the state-capitol grounds after issuing similar public-health mandates.
The situation is only made worse by the many elected officials in my state who seem determined to make masks a political issue. While our Democratic governor is begging people to get vaccinated and to mask up, Thomas Massie, one of Kentucky’s Republican representatives, joined two other members of Congress in suing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for enforcing a mask rule in the House of Representatives chambers. In July, Representative Regina Huff, a Republican who chairs the House Education Committee, tweeted photos comparing Anthony Fauci’s encouragement to get vaccinated to the cult leader Jim Jones’s orchestration of the Jonestown massacre. Republican Senator Rand Paul recently had his YouTube channel briefly suspended because he was sharing false claims about the efficacy of masks, a punishment he welcomed as “a badge of honor.”
My grandmother had very little patience for political showboating, and I believe she would have been disgusted by the politicization of a virus that has now killed more than 620,000 Americans. I also know that she was a stridently independent and stubborn person who would have resented being told what to do. But any time I doubt that she would have supported masking, I think back to her tales of living through the 1918 flu epidemic as a child, of her belief that she had to help in the war effort, of her fears that one of her children might contract polio in the surge of the early 1950s. Maybe too few people today understand the necessity of putting aside one’s own comforts to help others. Perhaps our sense of community has suffered in the digital age. It seems to me, however, that most of the blame should go to politicians who care more about stirring up fear to defeat their opponents than they do about people’s lives or the economy. And I blame anyone who intentionally spreads misinformation to further their own agenda.
Refusing to sacrifice for the common good is an American problem, not just a Kentucky one; opposition to masking and vaccination is happening in such disparate places as San DiegoPhoenixPortlandKenosha, and New York City. A protest in Franklin, Tennessee, led to parents yelling at medical professionals who had spoken in favor of masking. One parent told them there was “a bad place in hell” for them. “We know who you are,” another threatened. “We will find you.” In Texas a parent ripped off a teacher’s mask, and in Northern California an anti-masker assaulted a teacher on the first day of school. In Los Angeles a reporter was attacked and one man was stabbed in an anti-vaccination protest. Likewise, a host of conservative politicians across the country are adding fuel to the flames with anti-vaccination rhetoric and legislation against masks.
When I witness the vitriol swirling around the slightly uncomfortable prospect of wearing a little piece of cloth throughout the day, it is easy to grow weary. I admit that I’ve had moments of “COVID rage” at those who are not doing their part. Yet I remind myself that despite the complaints of Dyehouse and other superintendents, most school administrators in our state and country are going forward with their school year professionally. In support of Beshear’s mandate, the Kentucky Board of Education unanimously approved requiring masks in all schools. Even though parents are gathering to protest the mandate across the country, their numbers have been small in comparison with the many others who have been thankful for the requirement, realizing that this is one way to get children back into classrooms.
I try to remind myself that most of us are looking out for our neighbors when I see the bantam-rooster blustering of politicians such as Senator Rand Paul. The majority of us—about 170 million, or roughly 62 percent of all Americans adults—are fully vaccinated as of this writing. In Kentucky, we are in line with the national average, with 58 percent of adults fully vaccinated. According to a poll earlier this month, 56 percent of Americans agree that masking indoors is necessary again.
Those who are unwilling to sacrifice a small part of their daily comforts for the good of our country seem to be the loudest right now. But the statistics show that they are not in the majority. Most of us are thinking of one another. My grandmother would be proud.
The Atlantic · by Silas House · August 22, 2021







13. Liberal Democracy Is Worth a Fight


Damn right it is.

Excerpt:
The fall of Kabul should refocus Americans—in the administration, in Congress, in the leadership of both parties, but above all, ordinary Americans across the country—on the choices that are now coming thick and fast. Afghanistan provides a useful reminder that while we and our European allies might be tired of “forever wars,” the Taliban are not tired of wars at all. The Pakistanis who helped them are not tired of wars, either. Nor are the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian regimes that hope to benefit from the change of power in Afghanistan; nor are al-Qaeda and the other groups who may make Afghanistan their home again in future. More to the point, even if we are not interested in any of these nations and their brutal politics, they are interested in us. They see the wealthy societies of America and Europe as obstacles to be cleared out of their way. To them, liberal democracy is not an abstraction; it is a potent, dangerous ideology that threatens their power and needs to be defeated wherever it exists, and they will deploy corruption, propaganda, and even violence to do so. They will do it in Syria and Ukraine, and they will do it within the borders of the U.S., the U.K., and the EU.
We might not want any of this to be true. We might prefer a different world, one where we can stay out of their way and they will stay out of ours. But that’s not the world that we live in. In the real world, the battle to defend liberal democracy is sometimes a real battle, a military battle, not merely an ideological battle. It cannot always be fought with language, arguments, conferences, or diplomacy, or by deploying human-rights organizations, UN declarations, and fierce EU statements of concern. Or rather, you can try to fight it that way, but you will lose.

Liberal Democracy Is Worth a Fight

Not all battles can be won with language, arguments, conferences, or diplomacy.
AUGUST 20, 2021

About the author: Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.
The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · August 20, 2021
Moises Saman / Magnum
Of all the empty, pointless statements that are periodically repeated by Western politicians, none is more empty and pointless than this one: “There can be no military solution to this conflict.” That was what Ban Ki-moon, then the UN secretary-general, said back in 2013: “There is no military solution to the conflict in Syria.” John Kerry, then secretary of state, echoed those same words—“No military solution to the conflict in Syria”—on many occasions, including in 2013 and again in 2015. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, said this on August 3: “We believe there is no military solution” in Afghanistan. “Ultimately, for Afghanistan to have peace and stability there needs to be a negotiated political settlement.” Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson repeated this, solemnly, in July: There is “no military path to victory for the Taliban.”
The phrase sounds nice, but it’s not true. In many conflicts, probably Syria and certainly Afghanistan, there is a military solution: The war ends because one side wins. One side has better weapons, better morale, more outside support. One side has better generals, better soldiers, more stamina. Or, sometimes, one side is more willing to use violence, cruelty, and terror, and is more prepared to die in order to inflict violence, cruelty, and terror on other people.
Peace negotiators, experts in conflict prevention, UN officials, European Union officials, and myriad American and international diplomats don’t want to believe that this is true, because it doesn’t reflect the values of the world that they inhabit. They don’t know any Taliban fighters, Hezbollah militants, or Russian mercenaries and can’t imagine what the world looks like from their point of view. But violent extremists, contrary to the popular image, can be quite rational: They can calculate exactly what they need to do to win a battle, or a war, which is precisely what the Taliban has just done in Afghanistan. There was a military solution, and the group has been waiting for a long time to achieve it. Now it will convert the violent extremism of its movement into a violent, autocratic, tyrannical state.
The need to prevent this from happening in other places—to prevent violent extremists from invading places where people would prefer to live in peace and in accordance with the rule of law—is precisely why we have armies, weapons, intelligence agencies, and spies of various kinds, despite all of the mistakes they make and the ugly things they sometimes do. The need to prevent violent extremists from creating structures like al-Qaeda or rogue, nuclear-armed regimes is precisely why North Americans and Europeans get involved in distant and difficult conflicts. That’s why the U.S. has military bases in Germany, South Korea, and Kuwait, among other places. That’s why even the Dutch were persuaded to set up a base in Afghanistan, which I visited in 2008 (and which even then seemed pretty precarious).
That’s also why the phenomenon of liberal internationalism—or “neocon internationalism” if you don’t like it—exists: Because sometimes only guns can prevent violent extremists from taking power. Yet many people in the liberal democratic world, perhaps most people, don’t want to believe this. They have long found these tools either too distasteful or too expensive. Like Ban Ki-moon and his many imitators, they sometimes even pretend that these tools are not necessary at all, because conflicts can be resolved by “talks” and “dialogue” and “cultural exchange.” They pretend that there are always peaceful solutions that have somehow not been considered, that there is always a nonviolent answer that has somehow been ignored, and that “solidarity” with the women of Afghanistan, without a physical presence to back it up, is a meaningful idea. “Hang in there sisters!” wrote the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, in a tweet that celebrated the fall of “liberal neocon imperialism” and unwittingly illustrated just how delusional the anti-war left has become. Hang in there, sisters? The fall of Kabul makes a mockery of that kind of language and shows up those who use it as fools.
Many will argue, in the coming days, that Afghanistan was not in fact an American defeat or a Western defeat, and in a sense they are right. The U.S. did not surrender; it lost patience and decided to leave. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former President Donald Trump signed a deal, announced the withdrawal of troops, and then began to withdraw them. President Joe Biden simply completed that task. But the pictures from Kabul tell a different story, one that isn’t just about decisions made by Biden or Trump, or anything to do with U.S. politics at all. The story is this: A theocratic, misogynistic, militaristic organization is rapidly destroying whatever elements of liberal society managed to take root in Afghanistan during two decades of “neocon imperialism.” Within hours of the Taliban victory, women were told not to enter Herat University, Taliban forces fired on peaceful protesters, and those who worked with Americans or Europeans in any capacity went into hiding or tried to escape. In the streets of Kabul, men began hastily whitewashing posters showing the faces of women, who will now once again be banished into the shadows.
The events in Afghanistan are part of a much bigger story, and they illustrate that story with painful clarity. Rarely is the contest between “open” and “closed” societies, between democracy and dictatorship, between freedom and autocracy so crystal clear; rarely has the victory of the latter over the former been so rapid or so complete. A Hugo Chávez or a Vladimir Putin needs years to impose repressive control on their nation. The Taliban might carry it off in days or weeks.
For that reason, the fall of Kabul will necessarily cause some U.S. allies to question whether their own liberal society is safe. They understand why Americans were tired of Afghanistan; maybe it’s true that the country was too distant, too alien, to justify a continued presence, as Biden has so forcefully said. But which countries are close enough, or culturally similar enough, to be confident of long-term American support? They aren’t at war right now, but still: If the U.S. military were to abruptly withdraw air support and logistics from Europe, say, or from the South Korean peninsula, then many countries might suddenly find themselves vulnerable to aggression. Germany would not be able to defend itself from one day to the next. Nor would Poland. Or Estonia. Or Japan. An enormous question mark lies, of course, over the islands of Taiwan.
The fall of Kabul should refocus Americans—in the administration, in Congress, in the leadership of both parties, but above all, ordinary Americans across the country—on the choices that are now coming thick and fast. Afghanistan provides a useful reminder that while we and our European allies might be tired of “forever wars,” the Taliban are not tired of wars at all. The Pakistanis who helped them are not tired of wars, either. Nor are the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian regimes that hope to benefit from the change of power in Afghanistan; nor are al-Qaeda and the other groups who may make Afghanistan their home again in future. More to the point, even if we are not interested in any of these nations and their brutal politics, they are interested in us. They see the wealthy societies of America and Europe as obstacles to be cleared out of their way. To them, liberal democracy is not an abstraction; it is a potent, dangerous ideology that threatens their power and needs to be defeated wherever it exists, and they will deploy corruption, propaganda, and even violence to do so. They will do it in Syria and Ukraine, and they will do it within the borders of the U.S., the U.K., and the EU.
We might not want any of this to be true. We might prefer a different world, one where we can stay out of their way and they will stay out of ours. But that’s not the world that we live in. In the real world, the battle to defend liberal democracy is sometimes a real battle, a military battle, not merely an ideological battle. It cannot always be fought with language, arguments, conferences, or diplomacy, or by deploying human-rights organizations, UN declarations, and fierce EU statements of concern. Or rather, you can try to fight it that way, but you will lose.
The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · August 20, 2021

14.  An Army Can’t Defeat Guerilla Fighters

This is quite a provocative essay that goes beyond guerrilla warfare and into the rise and fall of all nations.

Excerpts:

Guerilla warfare is the hardest to win for an organized army. It roars in with tanks and fighter jets but it can’t do anything if no tanks or fighter jets meet it, but partisans, guerilla fighters, or simply, terrorists. The only way to defeat partisans is with other partisans.
This brings up the question of motivation. Militias consist of amateur fighters, adolescents, semi-trained individuals whose only advantage is their zeal to protect their country and their faith. They know they have to win since they are fighting for the only land they’ve got. The enemy’s soldiers, on the other hand, are fighting because they are paid to do so. They have superior weaponry, superior logistics, superior training, but no motivation to risk their lives. Fighting for the principle of freedom? No one really fights for it. No one even thinks about it!
...
In conclusion, we are living through a historic tipping point. Either we realize that we are interdependent even if we hate each other and decide to unite above our hatred, or we will let hatred win and destroy the vast majority of humanity and life on Earth.



An Army Can’t Defeat Guerilla Fighters
blogs.timesofisrael.com · by Michael Laitman · August 22, 2021
The United States’ chaotic retreat from Afghanistan is not the first time that the Afghans have pushed an army of a superpower out of their country. The one before them was that of Russia. It is also not the first time that the US has been forced out of a country by a militia. Vietnam, Iraq, and Korea were also among America’s military botched attempts to instate a pro-American government.
Guerilla warfare is the hardest to win for an organized army. It roars in with tanks and fighter jets but it can’t do anything if no tanks or fighter jets meet it, but partisans, guerilla fighters, or simply, terrorists. The only way to defeat partisans is with other partisans.
This brings up the question of motivation. Militias consist of amateur fighters, adolescents, semi-trained individuals whose only advantage is their zeal to protect their country and their faith. They know they have to win since they are fighting for the only land they’ve got. The enemy’s soldiers, on the other hand, are fighting because they are paid to do so. They have superior weaponry, superior logistics, superior training, but no motivation to risk their lives. Fighting for the principle of freedom? No one really fights for it. No one even thinks about it!
The pullout from Afghanistan will not end America’s woes there. Along with its European allies, America will have to pay heavily for the Taliban to let them out. In the coming months, we will see more and more bodies being flown out of there until America pays the Taliban what they want, and they will want a lot.
Anyone can see that the future of today’s established countries is grim. Countries such as the US, France, Russia, the UK, and Germany are already paying hefty sums to keep themselves intact, but they are disintegrating from within.
It is no one’s fault; it is the recurring historic process by which countries are born, live, and die. Once countries reach a certain peak, they dim and step down from history’s spotlight. The same will happen to China, though it is not there yet.
Nevertheless, in some countries decay has begun even though they have only recently begun to shine. Look at what is happening in Brazil, Argentina, and other countries in Latin America and you will see.
In the end, the factions within countries will either collide and multiple wars will break out, or they will realize that there are no winners in these wars, and they will agree on mutual disarmament. However, such agreements can still come after very perilous situations since these fragments can be very powerful and in possession of very powerful, including nuclear weapons.
In conclusion, we are living through a historic tipping point. Either we realize that we are interdependent even if we hate each other and decide to unite above our hatred, or we will let hatred win and destroy the vast majority of humanity and life on Earth.
blogs.timesofisrael.com · by Michael Laitman · August 22, 2021


15. Opinion | How the Taliban Turned Smartphones Into Weapons

Lead with influence. The Taliban gets it. When will we?


Opinion | How the Taliban Turned Smartphones Into Weapons
The New York Times · by Richard Stengel · August 23, 2021
Guest Essay
How the Taliban Turned Smartphones Into Weapons
Aug. 23, 2021

By
Mr. Stengel launched and managed the State Department’s efforts to counter Russian disinformation and combat ISIS propaganda under President Barack Obama.
On Aug. 14, a day before armed fighters swarmed into Kabul, a Twitter account for one of the Taliban’s magazines posted a video of six nervous Afghan government soldiers sitting in a truck surrounded by Taliban warriors. The post included a snippet of text, in Pashto, one of the two main languages of Afghanistan: “While the mujahedeen behave generously to soldiers, the children of the village threw stones at them and called them dogs. That’s what happens in response to their atrocities.” The same day, a spokesman for the Taliban posted another Twitter message, this time in English, promising that the group would create “a secure environment” for all diplomats, embassies and nonprofits, both domestic and international. It ended with the Arabic benediction, “Inshallah,” God willing.
For months, on social media, the Taliban have sought to project an image of strength and moderation, an aura of inevitability within Afghanistan and an air of legitimacy to the outside world. Through text messages and encrypted apps, they have targeted government soldiers directly, depicting them as mercenaries and urging them to surrender or face the brutal consequences. At the same time, they have attempted to assure the international community that the Taliban of today are more enlightened than the Taliban that once staged grisly public amputations and executions in a Kabul soccer stadium. As they have racked up a string of victories over the past few weeks, they have also trumpeted their respect for women and girls, within Islamic law, of course. Have they changed? Well, they’ve changed their messaging. It’s too early to know whether that’s just better marketing.
Americans have questioned how roughly 70,000 Taliban soldiers can seemingly demolish a well-funded, U.S.-trained government security force listed at 300,000 on paper. The answer is not about training or firepower, but hearts and minds. The Taliban understand Sun Tzu’s familiar dictum that every war is won or lost before it is fought and that the ultimate victory is to break the enemy’s resistance without fighting. That’s what they did.
For years, on social media and in analog publications, the Taliban have claimed that they are the true heirs to Afghanistan, that their fighters are martyrs, that the Americans are “invaders,” and that government soldiers are the immoral “hirelings” of foreigners. Their primary theme going back to the 1990s is that Afghanistan is a Muslim nation occupied by non-Muslims and that Allah has blessed their fight for liberation. There’s just not much the United States can do about such claims — these are Afghans talking to Afghans. They have waged the kind of modern war — an old-fashioned local insurgency coupled with a rapid-fire media strategy designed to intimidate the enemy — that the United States is not much good at fighting. As the Taliban marched through the country inviting government soldiers to surrender or die, those soldiers complied by the tens of thousands. Most never fired a shot.
What is concerning is that as effective as the Taliban’s social media strategy has been, it is still awfully clumsy. Remember, they started from zero. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they banned the use of the internet, not to mention television and music. Since then, like savvy military strategists, they adapted to a new terrain. The media environment in Afghanistan has evolved since the days when the country had a single radio station: Now it has over 100 radio stations and dozens of television stations; 70 percent of people have access to a cellphone; and about a third of the population of 38 million are on social media. The Taliban understand that the information war is modern warfare. They are not trying to build a new platform — they’re trying to integrate into and dominate the existing landscape.
To that end, they have taken a digital page from the ISIS playbook. While the Taliban are less sophisticated and less prolific than ISIS was on social media — more like Hamas or Hezbollah — they have learned some basic lessons from the jihadi group. ISIS’s brand was a mixture of strength and warmth — grisly beheadings coupled with pictures of fighters riding Ferris wheels or giving candy to children. You can see echoes of that strange mix of folksiness and horror playing out in Afghanistan: Last week, a video circulated on social media of armed Taliban warriors riding colorful bumper cars at an amusement park while children watched. Now that they have a country to govern, they are less intent on inspiring fear than trust. But while ISIS saw itself as a global organization, the Taliban are hyperlocal. They care far more about Helmand Province than they care about international jihad. In 2019, according to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, they launched more than 60 Twitter accounts to try to undermine Afghanistan’s presidential race. For ISIS, social media was a recruitment tool. For the Taliban, social media is primarily about winning over their domestic audience — and not alienating their international one.
The real insight into their strategy is revealed not by what they have done but by what they haven’t. They haven’t posted images of the many assassinations people believe they committed over the last six months. They haven’t posted pictures of reprisal killings or stern enforcement of Shariah law. They don’t want social media companies to ban them completely; after all, they will soon be the official government of Afghanistan. (Facebook and YouTube have already banned the group, though the Taliban have found ways around those restrictions.) Nor do they want to alarm international donors; more than 70 percent of Afghanistan’s state budget comes from governments in the West.
What they are doing now is something familiar in history: They are trying to execute a tricky transition from a rebel force to a governing coalition. Taliban spokespeople have tweeted out promises that they will protect government technocrats and civil servants. Come back to work, they say; Afghanistan needs you. They have also been tweeting out happy images and videos of girls in school, women walking to work. One tweet from a Taliban spokesman shows a middle-aged burqa-wearing woman in Kabul saying, “This system is much better than before.”
When I worked in the Obama administration, I helped start an entity at the State Department called the Global Engagement Center that monitors and responds to the rise of disinformation around the world. But the Taliban, unlike the Russians, are not so much in the disinformation business as they are in the propaganda and self-promotion business. Their efforts until now have revolved around touting their victories and taunting their enemies. Their goal is to change the narrative.
Going forward, is there a role for the United States to respond when the Taliban, for example, say they are not mistreating women? The answer is, yes, if the Taliban return to their medieval oppression of women and we can document it. We should continue to support human rights, like the right of girls to go to school. But the United States should not make it a habit, as we sometimes did with ISIS, of debating the finer points of Muslim theology or whether the Taliban are really doing Allah’s will. That’s not exactly one of our core competencies.
Meanwhile, the Taliban will continue to target one particular audience: global elites. They attend conferences, visit capitals, publish op-eds and hold news conferences. A tweet last week from a Taliban spokesman shows a Taliban official responding to a question about free speech in Afghanistan. His reply was, “This question should be asked to those people who are claiming to be promoters of freedom of speech.” The question, he said, should be asked of Facebook.
That should get a few likes.
Richard Stengel (@stengel) served as President Obama’s under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. He is the former editor of Time magazine and the author, most recently, of “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”
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The New York Times · by Richard Stengel · August 23, 2021


16. All the President’s Yes-Men

Excerpts:
To solve this problem, Mr. Biden should look closely at the quality of debate and discussion in the White House. He should seek out diversity of thought and reward those who have the courage to challenge orthodox beliefs.
It isn’t too late for the Biden administration to rethink its internal process to make sure it can handle internal disagreements productively. An early administration failure can provide an opportunity to recalibrate and potentially avoid worse failures in the future.
All the President’s Yes-Men
JFK remade his decision-making process after the Bay of Pigs debacle. Biden could learn something.
WSJ · by Tevi Troy

President Kennedy displays the combat flag of the Cuban landing brigade that took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Dec. 29, 1962.
Photo: Corbis via Getty Images

White House infighting can be a bad thing. But when advisers refuse to disagree with the president, an administration can be at risk of groupthink. The history of the U.S. presidency has shown that this can lead to disaster. We now see how fear of disagreement with President Biden doomed the decision-making process for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The problem of groupthink was evident during the Vietnam War, when Lyndon B. Johnson was mostly intolerant of differing opinions on Vietnam. One adviser, George Ball, was designated as the in-house skeptic, but this role made Ball an outcast among his colleagues. As Johnson aide W. Marvin Watson wrote of Ball, “The arguments he expressed—always calmly but forcibly stated—were, to say the least, annoying to the President’s other advisors.”
And if you weren’t Ball, standing apart from Johnson on Vietnam was dangerous. Johnson maintained a narrow circle of advisers on Vietnam, dismissed internal dissenters, and berated those, like Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who became more skeptical about the war over time.
Johnson called one McNamara proposal for a bombing halt in Vietnam “a load of s—.” He suspected McNamara was more loyal to “the Kennedys” than to him, and eventually Johnson dismissed him. Staffers who disagreed with Johnson’s Vietnam policy had to meet secretly in what they called the “nongroup” so he wouldn’t know about their conversations. Had Johnson sharpened his thinking with dissenting opinions, he might have reduced the 35,000 Americans who died in Vietnam on his watch, prevented the souring of U.S. public opinion on Vietnam, and stayed in office past 1969.
There is a historical example of an administration that fell into groupthink, saw the disastrous consequences, and righted the ship. The 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle occurred in part because no one among John F. Kennedy’s advisers was willing to play devil’s advocate. As the historian and Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger wrote of the decision to send poorly trained Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro, “our meetings were taking place in a curious atmosphere of assumed consensus, [and] not one spoke against it.”
Following the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy was determined to change. He created The Executive Committee of the National Security Council—known as ExComm—a group that could debate national-security issues openly. The ExComm deliberately included people outside the National Security Council to get external opinions. It held informal meetings without an agenda to allow for unrestricted conversations. It met both with and without the president to ensure that his opinions didn’t stifle debate. The Kennedy team successfully used the ExComm for deliberations during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which was resolved without nuclear confrontation.
In the aftermath of the Afghanistan disaster, the Biden administration should consider this history. Part of the problem with the Afghanistan decision-making process was that the president didn’t appear to be hearing dissent from his political aides. Some military and intelligence advisers seem to have pushed back against withdrawal, but his top political aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, were reluctant to do so. The pair raised the possibility of Taliban attacks on U.S. forces and diplomats, as well as on Afghans who worked with the U.S., but neither disagreed with Mr. Biden, knowing that he had made up his mind. This is reminiscent of Johnson and the Vietnam War. It also suggests that a Kennedy ExComm approach, in which some meetings take place without the president, might allow aides to question administration policies more freely.
The National Security Council process, which is supposed to develop interagency consensus on foreign policy and defense issues, can raise different points of view, even uncomfortable ones, if the president allows it. But Mr. Biden has to be willing to allow robust internal debates, and he must signal that he and his team won’t ostracize those who put forth contrarian ideas.
Another problem is that Biden seems particularly sensitive to stories about internal disagreements. According to the book “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Mr. Biden dislikes “process stories,” by which he means news articles about “palace intrigue.” If aides know the president doesn’t want to read about infighting, they will strive to make him happy by minimizing behaviors that signal disagreement.
To solve this problem, Mr. Biden should look closely at the quality of debate and discussion in the White House. He should seek out diversity of thought and reward those who have the courage to challenge orthodox beliefs.
It isn’t too late for the Biden administration to rethink its internal process to make sure it can handle internal disagreements productively. An early administration failure can provide an opportunity to recalibrate and potentially avoid worse failures in the future.
Mr. Troy is a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former senior White House aide. His latest book is “Fight House: Rivalries in the White House From Truman to Trump.”
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WSJ · by Tevi Troy


17. Cleaning Up After Biden on al Qaeda

Excerpts:
This isn’t a game of gotcha with the President. Al Qaeda has been diminished in Afghanistan thanks to the U.S. presence in the country, CIA listening posts on the ground, and a friendly government. The question is whether, with its allies the Taliban now in control, al Qaeda and other terror groups will again have a sanctuary, be able to attract new recruits, and again plot against Americans.
Mr. Biden’s answers aren’t merely wrong. They misunderstand the continuing threat from Islamic terrorism.
Cleaning Up After Biden on al Qaeda
Biden’s falsehoods show a misunderstanding of the continuing threat from Islamic terrorism.
WSJ · by The Editorial Board

Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Associated Press

Cleaning up President Biden’s many false statements on Afghanistan is a difficult job, but someone in his Administration has to do it. On Sunday that task fell to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the matter of al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan.

“Look, let’s put this thing in perspective here. What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point with al Qaeda gone?” Mr. Biden said on Friday at the White House. “We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, as well as—as well as—getting Osama bin Laden. And we did.”
That wasn’t correct. A Pentagon spokesman acknowledged as much on Friday, and a recent United Nations report said al Qaeda was active in 15 of 34 Afghanistan provinces. On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace put the question to Mr. Blinken: “Is al Qaeda gone from Pakistan—from Afghanistan?”
Mr. Blinken: “Al Qaeda’s capacity to do what it did on 9/11—to attack us, to attack our partners or allies from Afghanistan—is vastly, vastly diminished.”
Mr. Wallace: “Is it gone?”
Mr. Blinken: “Are there al Qaeda members and remnants in Afghanistan? Yes. But what the President was referring to was its capacity to do what it did on 9/11. And that capacity has been very successfully diminished.”
This isn’t a game of gotcha with the President. Al Qaeda has been diminished in Afghanistan thanks to the U.S. presence in the country, CIA listening posts on the ground, and a friendly government. The question is whether, with its allies the Taliban now in control, al Qaeda and other terror groups will again have a sanctuary, be able to attract new recruits, and again plot against Americans.
Mr. Biden’s answers aren’t merely wrong. They misunderstand the continuing threat from Islamic terrorism.
Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
WSJ · by The Editorial Board

18.  Afghanistan, a Green Beret’s Perspective

Afghanistan, a Green Beret’s Perspective | Erik Kramer
Watching the pictures of Afghans holding on to U.S. aircraft taking off from Kabul makes my heart break. My daughter used the adjective “cruel” which I think is very apt. I personally feel a sense of betrayal and shame. It makes you ask, what was it all for? Did anything good come out of the 20 years we spent there?
If you were a Green Beret in Group between 2001 and 2021, it is highly likely you went to Afghanistan multiple times (the official title is U.S. Army Special Forces and the nickname is the “Green Berets” based on our distinctive head gear). Every active duty and National Guard Group deployed teams there. Afghanistan defined Army Special Forces for two generations. I would argue even more so than Iraq. It was an Special Forces mission to conduct unconventional warfare and counter insurgency.
I personally spent two tours there in 2004-2006. During that time, the Afghanistan mission was secondary to the chaos that was Iraq. It is easy to understand why most Americans do not understand how quickly the country collapsed after 20 years, $2.261 trillion spent, (according to the Brown University’s Watson Institute & Boston University’s Pardee Center, and more importantly 2448 U.S. service members and 3846 contractors killed (“How Many Americans died,” AP, 16 August 21).
Why we failed
As a young Green Beret captain at Naval Postgraduate School when we entered Afghanistan, I was concerned over the U.S. going into the graveyard of empires. I had read “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” and “The Other Side of the Mountain”, two definitive case studies on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They were both very sobering reads and one of the key takeaways is how a technologically advanced, well-trained military was defeated by a primitive force in comparison. Those lessons learned were on my mind when we entered Afghanistan and I was ridiculed for my trepidation. After having spent a significant amount of time there as well observing and studying our operations there, I conclude that we failed due to the following reasons: endemic corruption throughout Afghanistan, attempting to implement a Western style centralized government and military on a tribal society, a failure to understand the tribal culture that is Afghanistan, and frankly U.S. arrogance and a culture of spending your way to success.
Anyone who has spent anytime in Afghanistan knows that bribes, graft, and corruption are part of every facet and level of society, the government, and the military. The example that sticks in my head is the graft involved with the transportation of goods to the outlying firebases. The contract provided funds to the contractor to supply fuel, but when the trucks arrived, they were always on empty. The drivers would throw up their hands dramatically and say that they have no idea what happened. We always had wooden yard sticks on hand to measure the true amount of fuel in the vehicle. At the end of the day, the supplies needed to be delivered so we refueled the trucks.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) basic unit was the kandak which are battalion-sized units of up to 600 Soldiers. The official rosters versus the number of Soldiers never came close to matching. I saw a 300 plus Soldier kandak rarely muster more than 150 Soldiers. The rest of the Soldiers not present were paper Soldiers who many times, with the collusion of the unit commander, would sign up for the recruiting bonus, share it with the commander and never show up again. Often these paper Soldiers
would go from kandak to kandak signing up to receive numerous bonuses. Can you imagine fighting a war with units only partially manned, but officially at full capacity? The corruption with pay, food budgets, ammo allocations, etc. started at the top. At every level, leaders would skim all the way down to the kandak. There was always a shortage of pay, food, and ammunition. Knowing that your leaders are stealing from you does not instill loyalty or confidence. The rampant corruption made the entire system rotten to the core and hence the ANA units melting away without a fight. They were an Army in name only. I must add in a caveat, Afghan special forces, CIA forces, and some of the militias that supported U.S. Army Special Forces were the notable exceptions. Many of them fought honorably and were true Afghan patriots.
The structure of Afghanistan is based on tribal allegiance, not allegiance to the province or the national government. The predominant tribe, the Pashtuns, whose area straddled the border with Pakistan are a key example of how difficult it was to foster allegiance to a national idea. It was not uncommon to have a family with members in the army, police, and the Taliban. Add in the fact that the Pashtuns were located in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, one can easily see that outside of their tribe, their allegiances were fluid. This tribalism made it folly to try and build a Western style military based on a strong central control. That is why that, besides Afghan special forces, some of the most effective fighting forces were village militias. Everything was local.
Our attempts to structure the government of Afghanistan based on Western norms also conflicted with the culture. Little things matter and holding meetings in the heat of the afternoon in Afghanistan with Afghan officials is the equivalent of someone holding a regular business meeting in the U.S. during the middle of the night. Due to the extreme afternoon heat, Afghans do not work during the heat of the day, but will go home and sleep. This small cultural ignorance was common place even after 20 years of an American presence. The U.S. military “battle rhythm” was not based on Afghan norms, but a 9 to 5 U.S. business day. Again, the basics matter which is a hallmark of Special Forces.
I always laughed when senior leadership would tout how successful our Afghanistan counterinsurgency efforts were by showing how many regional warlords and power brokers were on our side. To put it bluntly, especially at the beginning of the war, it is because we paid them and they were making money off of us! During the years prior to our entry, tribal leaders would repeatedly switch sides based on the who was the strongest and who paid them the most. In Afghanistan, loyalty and allegiance are available for a price and based on who is the strongest. Once we said we were pulling out, the U.S. was no longer the strongest so of course that house of cards collapsed.
The U.S. attitude towards foreign policy and outreach is that there is no problem that cannot be fixed with more money and resources. That attitude only further deepened the level of corruption throughout the country. The U.S. built countless school buildings that were never used or were subsequently abandoned such as water treatment plants, etc. The Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP), designed to provide funds to unit commanders for local projects in many ways just exasperated problems even though the projects were designed with the best intentions.
The American way of war, for most forces, was also not conducive to Afghanistan and a counterinsurgency fight. American military operations are centered on kinetic (use of lethal force) operations. In a counterinsurgency, restraint is key. Unfortunately, besides Army Special Forces, most other U.S. forces, to include other special operations units, would quickly become frustrated with the mundane business of counterinsurgency which involves many hours of idle talk and tea drinking. Middle
of the night raids and large scale operations searching villages with dogs (considered a very unclean animal by Afghan culture), while necessary in many cases, were the frequent cause of much resentment from the Afghan people. On a side note, I had to personally deliver a “solatia payment” (or blood money payment) to the family survivors for a U.S. special operations raid gone horribly wrong in Iraq. These payments were also commonplace in Afghanistan. The end result of the idle talk and rapport building sometimes resulted in less violence and village leaders bringing suspected militants wanted by coalition forces directly to firebases. At a minimum, it served as a force protection measure. The better you know someone, the less likely they are to attack you.
Future
One of the saddest and most ironic likely outcomes of the end of the U.S. mission is that we will be back in some shape form or fashion. Our original mission to keep Afghanistan from being a safe haven for terrorist groups to attack the U.S. was not completed. Al Qaeda still has a robust presence there and ISIS affiliates are still present and operational. According to a August 17, 2021, report from the Congressional Research Service, “Al Qaeda and the Taliban remain closely aligned and show no indication of breaking ties,” furthermore “the Taliban have reportedly freed prisoners, including Al Qaeda members.” Anyone who has fought the Taliban and seen the results of their brutal and violent behavior knows that this current “charm offensive” is just a farce. A review of recent U.S. military withdrawals from unfinished conflicts shows the U.S. returning in Iraq and Somalia. I am not arguing for wars with no end, but completely pulling out when fighting is still ongoing is a recipe for the future loss of more Americans and the expenditure of additional resources.
If you take a step back and look at Afghanistan’s history from Alexander the Great, to the British, to the Soviet Union, and now the U.S., it eventually consumes the national (or empire’s) will to fight and eventually the vanquished return to influence things on the periphery. China is waiting in the wings to gain influence over Afghanistan, especially with the Belt & Road Initiative and a potential oil and gas pipeline from Iran through Afghanistan. The irony is that China will more than likely have to fight a Muslim extremist insurgency in their own backyard, and the U.S. will, in a geopolitical twist of fate, end up backing the Taliban. China shares a 50-mile border with Afghanistan and it buts up against the Xingjiang Province which is the home of the persecuted Muslim Uighurs.
Unintended Consequences
The U.S. withdrawal will lead to a civil war and a return to the endless conflict days of pre-September 11th. Already anti-Taliban forces are gathering in Panjshir province north of Kabul. Two prominent leaders are based there, Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who declared himself the caretaker president after Ashraf Ghani fled, and Ahmad Massoud, the son of famed rebel fighter, Ahmad Shah Massoud (“What’s Happening in Afghanistan’s Last Anti-Taliban Holdout,” The Week, 17 Aug 2021). Even if the Taliban overrun resistance forces in the Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan has many warlords and fighters who know they under a death sentence if they surrender to the Taliban. The war continues…
The U.S. departure from Afghanistan does not mean an end of U.S. involvement. From being a participant and observer of U.S. foreign policy for the past 30+ years, we will be back in some shape form or fashion. As mentioned previously, the irony is that the U.S. will probably covertly support the Taliban as a counter balance to Chinese influence in the region in the not too distant future.
It goes without saying that American credibility abroad is at low point. In the eyes of our allies who fought alongside us, there is a feeling of abandonment and betrayal. To our competitors and enemies, it is a victory. One of the unintended consequences will likely be a further U.S. step back from the world stage and a diminished moral authority.
Domestically, the U.S. withdrawal is comparable to the post-Vietnam era of a national identity crisis and what does America mean and stand for. The Afghanistan pull out coupled with our already divided nation will require a period of soul searching; especially within our military. It will take time to rebuild trust in our values, institutions, and leaders. Looking through the long lens of U.S. history, these periods of soul searching and “systems shock” to our national psyche seem cyclic and tend to roughly correlate to a decade of healing and reflection. This time feels different. Only time will tell.
One of the saddest outcomes of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal is veterans of Afghanistan will be looked at with pity much like the way Vietnam veterans are viewed. A perceived military defeat changes the way veterans are viewed; from heroes to people who you feel sorry for; participating in a noble, but lost cause. That is the exact opposite of the way veterans want to be treated, but it is a likely outcome from well-intentioned fellow Americans.
Gold Star families, Veterans, & Afghans Who Supported U.S. Efforts
The hardest hit of the different groups actively involved in the Afghanistan War are the Gold Star families who lost loved ones, the veterans who served multiple tours and carry physical and hidden mental scars for the rest of their lives, and the Afghans who bravely supported our efforts and are desperately trying to escape.
My former company operations sergeant and friend, “T”, deployed eight deployments to Afghanistan with a total of six years, 9 months, and 22 days of his life there. He gave up over six years of his life for this cause and suffered wounds that he will carry with him the rest of his time on this planet. I remember telling Afghans who would say to me that “you Americans will do what you always do, cut and run when you lose interest.” I told them that this time it was different, our nation was attacked and we are not going anywhere. Again, a feeling amongst veterans of promises made and promises broken. As a result, “local and national veterans facilities are seeing an increase in the number of veterans seeking mental health treatment,” (“VA seeing increase in mental health service utilization as U.S. leaves Afghanistan, 9/11 anniversary nears,” WCSC News, 19 August 2021). For U.S. and allied Afghan veterans, the fast withdrawal is personal.
The Afghans who supported us, especially the interpreters who lived and fought with U.S. special forces in remote firebases with names like Noway Naray, Chapman Airfield, or Lwara, sacrificed even more than us. Americans serving in Afghanistan knew that our families were safe back in America over 7000 miles away. Afghans working with us did not have that luxury. Their families were under constant threat, because of their affiliation with us. Some Afghans working with American forces wore masks to cover their identity. We owe them and as one American reporter aptly put it, there is an unprecedented “digital Dunkirk” ongoing with American veterans trying everything in their power to get their brothers in arms out of harms way. I foresee a lifetime brotherhood between Green Berets (and other veterans) and the Afghans who served with us similar to the relationship with the Montagnards in Vietnam.
Finally and most importantly, I want to address the service members who have served in Afghanistan and the Gold Star families who lost their fathers, wives, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. I run a nonprofit, Special Ops Survivors, that provides long-term assistance to the surviving spouses of U.S. special operators and support personnel across all the services who were killed in combat or training since September 11, 2001. I have heard the anguish and resurfacing of old wounds. I sent our Survivors the following message:
“As I try to make sense of it all, I think of you and your sacrifices. I am sure many of you are asking some of the same questions that have crossed the minds of many veterans. What was it all for? Was it worth it? I will say this much, when you are down range, you are not fighting for the national goals or considering the geopolitical implications, you are thinking about not letting your buddies down. You are thinking about stopping the bad guys overseas so they cannot harm your families back home. You are thinking about bringing honor to your family and how proud they are of you. Also, you are doing it because you love being a U.S. special operations operator, are well trained, and are good at what you do. You work with the best of the best; salt of the earth Americans who want to serve at the tip of the spear.
I do not want to try to rationalize your losses or justify our Afghanistan pullout, I just want you to know that you are not alone. Please reach out to your fellow Survivors and veterans; without being prompted. A lot of us are in pain right now and we need the fellowship and community that the special operations community provides now more than ever.”
Please reach out to Gold Star families and veterans that you know and just check in with them. Do not pity them. We all volunteered and understood what we were getting in to. We are proud of our personal efforts, but this is a very trying time and the best thing you can do is reach out and ask them how they are doing. Provide them an outlet to vent and possibly an activity that gets them out of the house and off of social media.
The U.S. Army Special Forces motto is “De oppresso liber,” to free the oppressed. That is what we went to Afghanistan to do. It was our core mission. As we struggle to process the hasty U.S. withdrawal and see the images of Afghans clinging to a U.S. C17 taxiing down the Kabul Airport runway, Green Berets know we did everything that was asked of us and more. We showed Afghans what right looked like. That is the best I can come up with right now.
Erik Kramer
De Opresso Liber
18. Opinion | My Family Fled Cambodia as the Americans Evacuated. Here's What I Hope for Afghan Refugees.

I served with a refugee from Cambodia. He is a great American. He is now a Sergeant Major in the US Army.

But note what the author recommends and is personally willing to do for these new refugees who will become Americans just like those in the past from Vietnam and Cambodia and other places. We need to understand the trauma America's new refugees arrivals will face.

Excerpts:
I think about the disorientation and dislocation the Afghan refugees may feel, and worry about the discrimination they may face as they begin to settle in communities across the U.S., particularly when our nation remains so polarized over issues of immigration. I fear that as they begin new lives in America, they will one day learn of the human catastrophe unfolding back home and weep helplessly, as my mother did.
I grew up in a culture that gave my parents, and by extension me, no outlet to convey the stress and strain of starting over in a foreign country and the homesickness that comes with being a refugee. I grew up in a family that lacked both the vocabulary and license to speak of topics like depression and PTSD, even though I eventually found my way to these words that described the chaos and conflict inside of me. In bigger cities, like Seattle, culturally sensitive support groups were set up to help Cambodian refugee women process their emotions and experiences of war. But where I grew up, such programs did not exist.
I hope for Afghan refugees who arrive in America, there will be a place or a person to help them process the pain of being torn from their country and loved ones.
I’m buoyed when I hear from a friend there is already a sign-up to volunteer to help Afghan refugees who have arrived in recent days in Washington State. I sign up and spread the word.
“You must go,” my mother says. “People helped and welcomed us.”
Let it be this way then, that we do all that we can to help and welcome the Afghans who must make new lives in our midst, far from home. It is the least we can, and the thing we must, do.


Opinion | My Family Fled Cambodia as the Americans Evacuated. Here's What I Hope for Afghan Refugees.
Yahoo · by Putsata Reang
My mother called on Monday to ask if I was watching the news.
“It’s so scary,” she said, her voice specked with sadness. “All the Afghan people fleeing, running this way and that way. Everyone so desperate to escape. That was us.”
Kabul had fallen and the images that vibrated from my mother’s television screen thrust her backwards into the past. Even though it hurt to watch, she couldn’t look away: scenes of Afghans so desperate to escape the certain brutality of reinvigorated Taliban rulers that they clung to the landing gear of an American military plane, as hundreds of others raced down the runway, shalwar kameezes flapping in the draft as the plane took off, canting skyward away from war and the ruins of another bungled American nation-building project.
As we watch the tragedy of Afghanistan continue to unfold, thousands of Cambodian refugees in America and across the globe are freshly triggered by scenes of Taliban fighters toting AK-47s in truck beds, victorious smiles etched on their faces, and of over 800 terrified Afghans crouching elbow-to-elbow in an American C-17 meant to transport less than a quarter of that number.
The events in Afghanistan over the past week have evoked comparisons to the U.S. war in Vietnam—perhaps most poignantly, the infamous scramble to evacuate the embassy in Saigon in 1975. But just a few weeks prior to that, the U.S. also evacuated its embassy personnel from Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh, just 140 miles to west, as Communist Khmer Rouge soldiers closed in, preparing to take power.
Those refugees who were able to escape with American colleagues on April 12, 1975, as well as those like my family who fled by sea five days later, saw history repeating itself this week. The echoes can be heard not just in the years of failed U.S. intervention and the mad dash to get out, but also in the new lives that many refugees, scarred both by what they saw and what they will not be able to witness unfolding back home, are about to begin.
For the Afghans who are lucky enough to leave, if their experience turns out like mine, what will follow them out of their burning country is survivor’s guilt and the kind of trauma that will live not only in their minds and hearts, but in their bodies. They will need to make a new life in a country where some will welcome them with open arms and others will treat them as outsiders. I know. It happened to me and my family.
On April 17, 1975, it was my family jostling to find space aboard an overcrowded Cambodian naval ship when the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government capitulated to the Khmer Rouge. Because my father worked as an accountant in the Cambodian Navy, our family was allowed one of the coveted spots on the U.S.-made vessel. Then-President Richard Nixon, with Henry Kissinger as his secretary of state, had illegally extended the Vietnam War into neighboring Cambodia, bombing villages along my home country’s border in an effort to rout Vietcong and Khmer Rouge soldiers. But the American pilots often missed, obliterating villages and killing hundreds at a time; as many as 500,000 Cambodians had died in America’s secret bombing campaign by 1974.
I was a baby when I was severed from my homeland. Growing up in the safety and beauty of a small town in Oregon, where strangers filled our apartment refrigerator with food and volunteered to help my parents and relatives find jobs, and enroll us kids into school, I nonetheless felt the weight of my family’s escape from war. I felt it in the way my mother’s whole body heaved with grief when news arrived in the 1980s of relatives who had died in the genocide. (The Khmer Rouge killed about 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.) I felt it in my father’s absence from our lives as he dedicated all of his energy and evenings to filling out immigration forms to bring survivors of the genocide to America. I felt it in my mother’s sense of indebtedness to the United States—a complicated debt toward a country that bombed ours, but then allowed us asylum so we could start new lives.
In America, my parents’ trauma became mine, passed down like inheritance. My mother keeps three freezers full of discount meat, rationalizing that we must always be prepared—but I know it’s because hunger hunted her for the 23 days we spent at sea. I do the same, relentlessly anxious there will not be enough food. My father and I both flinch when we hear a sunglass case slam shut, simple, everyday sounds that come into our ears too much like the pop of shots going off. Trauma rivets itself to both memory and muscle. When my mother called on Monday, I felt the fear that had lodged somewhere deep inside her all those years ago when she, like the Afghan women she saw on the news, was clutching a baby and a bag and sprinting for safety.
That trauma—and a relentless need to tell the story of war—was one of the reasons I became a journalist. That’s how I found myself in Kabul in 2008. I worked with media professionals in a training program focused on building investigative reporting skills. After class, the female students nervously approached me and whispered into my ear: the Taliban left another night letter, threatening their lives for doing “the job of a man.” They kept coming to my trainings and writing their stories anyway.
Over the past week, my mother and I have lost sleep for different reasons—her, because the memories of fleeing Cambodia have raced back, crystal clear; me, because I worry about her and how she is being triggered, and about the female journalists I worked with in Afghanistan, who showed me a deeper kind of courage, who are now among the Taliban’s top targets.
Soon, the news cycle will shift, the images of a crumbling Afghanistan replaced by the next natural disaster, the next pandemic, the next war. For Americans who have never had to flee their homes, whose hearts do not reverberate with the thud of bombs and staccato of gunfire, this day, these images are easy enough to forget. For refugees, like me and my family, it is one more reminder of the elongated limbs of war, how it reaches greedily across the years, contaminating subsequent generations with trauma.
I think about the disorientation and dislocation the Afghan refugees may feel, and worry about the discrimination they may face as they begin to settle in communities across the U.S., particularly when our nation remains so polarized over issues of immigration. I fear that as they begin new lives in America, they will one day learn of the human catastrophe unfolding back home and weep helplessly, as my mother did.
I grew up in a culture that gave my parents, and by extension me, no outlet to convey the stress and strain of starting over in a foreign country and the homesickness that comes with being a refugee. I grew up in a family that lacked both the vocabulary and license to speak of topics like depression and PTSD, even though I eventually found my way to these words that described the chaos and conflict inside of me. In bigger cities, like Seattle, culturally sensitive support groups were set up to help Cambodian refugee women process their emotions and experiences of war. But where I grew up, such programs did not exist.
I hope for Afghan refugees who arrive in America, there will be a place or a person to help them process the pain of being torn from their country and loved ones.
I’m buoyed when I hear from a friend there is already a sign-up to volunteer to help Afghan refugees who have arrived in recent days in Washington State. I sign up and spread the word.
“You must go,” my mother says. “People helped and welcomed us.”
Let it be this way then, that we do all that we can to help and welcome the Afghans who must make new lives in our midst, far from home. It is the least we can, and the thing we must, do.
Yahoo · by Putsata Reang










V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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