Quotes of the Day:
"May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right."
- Peter Marshall
“We fight not for glory, nor for wealth, nor honour but only and alone for freedom which no good man surrenders but with his life.”
- Robert the Bruce
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
- James Madison
1. America's unfortunate 9/11 legacy: Low strategic IQ
2. 9/11 at 20: after war, what? From The Lancet
3. Opinion | The CIA Spent 20 Years on the Front Lines of the War on Terror. It's Time For That to Change.
4. Biden Declassifies Secret FBI Report Detailing Saudi Nationals' Connections To 9/11
5. A Crisis of Credibility: Why Non-Governmental Organizations are Struggling
6. FBI releases details of probe of Saudi’s alleged link to 9/11 – Operation Encore
7. Political uncertainty clouds China Inc.'s Afghanistan ambitions
8. China Makes Sure Everyone Writes Taiwan’s Name Just So—Even a Colorado High School
9. Afghanistan: Lessons From Cambodia
10. Biden Calls Xi as China-US Relationship Grows More Fraught
11. In Chinese eyes, ‘British are bastards’
12. The counterterrorism dilemma
13. Top National Security Posts Sit Empty, Mired in Senate ‘Purgatory’
14. Three terrorist suspects arrested in Indonesia
15. UN Mission to Afghanistan Relocates to Kazakhstan
16. Pak ISI Chief Hosts Security Meeting On Afghanistan With Intel Heads Of China, Iran
1. America's unfortunate 9/11 legacy: Low strategic IQ
Excerpt:
There is more to war than warfare, and more to warfare than killing. Understanding this is the key to strategic thought. In the past, we have been more lucky than smart when it comes to good strategists such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and George C. Marshall. But it need not be this way. Let's break the mold regarding what we think comprises "a good strategist" because it is not working. Critical and creative thinking are the main traits, and we need methods to identify and cultivate strategic geniuses before they get eaten alive by the Washington groupthink blob. They may not be in uniform, have gray hair, or be riding some politico's coattails. We should broaden our aperture. Not everyone can be a good strategist, but a good strategist can come from anywhere.
America's unfortunate 9/11 legacy: Low strategic IQ
BY SEAN MCFATE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
When was the last time the U.S. decisively won a major war? Answer: 1945. Yet we have the best military in the world, something even our adversaries acknowledge. We spend more money on our armed forces than the 10 next biggest militaries in the world combined. So what's the problem? Why do we struggle against low-level foes such as the Taliban?
The problem is we have a low strategic IQ. Our troops have been dutifully winning battles but losing wars since Vietnam. Tactically and operationally we are unmatched, but strategically we are incompetent. Over the decades, a disturbing trend has emerged: Washington has forgotten how to win wars. Our "strategic class" - National Security Councils, generals, admirals, ambassadors - do not know how to marshal all instruments of national power for victory. It's obvious, but no one talks about it because the implications are too terrifying.
Afghanistan is a different dog with the same fleas. U.S. forces successfully chased out al Qaeda in the weeks following 9/11. Truly, mission accomplished. Then in December 2001, the neocons decided to stay and turn the "graveyard of empires" into the 51st state, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. That was their strategy for Iraq, too, but you cannot nation-build where there is no nation to begin with.
Then came the COINistas, led by Gen. David Petraeus, promising easy victory through counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy accompanied by a "surge," flooding thousands of troops into the countryside. Iraq got surged in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009. Somehow COINistas assumed more troops "living among the people" would be greeted as liberators rather than occupiers, reminding us of another strategic lightweight, Vice President Dick Cheney, who said American troops would be "greeted as liberators" by Iraqis. Unsurprisingly, COIN flopped in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the obvious, Petraeus is still embraced as a strategic genius, like Wellington after Waterloo. But he's more like Westmoreland after Vietnam, and that's probably how history will remember him.
After COIN failed, we treaded water in Afghanistan for another decade, probably because of Stockholm Syndrome. Without a clear strategy to win, our strategists played Kabuki theater with the American people and Congress, claiming we were always on the cusp of success. "Our generals did. Our ambassadors did. All of our officials did, [saying], 'We're just turning the corner,'" according to John Sopko, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. "We turned the corner so much, we did 360 degrees. We're like a top."
Many in our strategic class are downright delusional. The August disaster of Kabul made the fall of Saigon look tame, catching President Biden and his team absolutely by surprise, evidencing their very low strategic IQ. However, in criticizing them, former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster revealed his own strategic IQ challenge. When asked recently on Meet the Press, "Do you believe the Taliban could have been defeated?" He answered, "I do believe it." Who is he kidding? The Taliban controlled nearly 70 percent of the country on his watch as national security adviser, and they were expanding. Never let facts get in the way of a convenient theory. This is low strategic IQ in action, and it's how "forever wars" are made.
One of our most serious problems today is that our strategic class does not know what war is anymore, and if they do not understand it, they cannot win it. Unfortunately, the national security community likes to observe lessons rather than learn them, so we should expect little change. We must fix this.
There needs to be accountability for low strategic IQ. A soldier who kills 16 innocent people in war faces life in prison or the death penalty. But nothing happens to strategic imbeciles who start or elongate wars that kill 350,000 civilians. They don't lose their jobs, and some, like John Bolton, get promoted despite their appalling track records. If they apologize at all (and they rarely do), they employ weasel phrases such as "mistakes were made," the king of non-apologies.
There is more to war than warfare, and more to warfare than killing. Understanding this is the key to strategic thought. In the past, we have been more lucky than smart when it comes to good strategists such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and George C. Marshall. But it need not be this way. Let's break the mold regarding what we think comprises "a good strategist" because it is not working. Critical and creative thinking are the main traits, and we need methods to identify and cultivate strategic geniuses before they get eaten alive by the Washington groupthink blob. They may not be in uniform, have gray hair, or be riding some politico's coattails. We should broaden our aperture. Not everyone can be a good strategist, but a good strategist can come from anywhere.
Sean McFate is the author of five books, including "The New Rules of War: How America Can Win - Against Russia, China, and Other Threats" (2019). He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, professor at Georgetown University, and an adviser to Oxford University's Centre for Technology and Global Affairs. He served in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division.
2. 9/11 at 20: after war, what? From The Lancet
Comments from someone who forwarded this article. We read a lot about how we cannot change societies. Seems like there was a lot of change for the good in Afghanistan in many areas by the very objective measures below. But of course politics and political control trumps all and much of these positive changes will be undone, soome sooner and others will take longer to undo by the new (or old) leadership.
The attached article from the British medical journal, The Lancet, presents an interesting point of view of the current status of Afghanistan, including:
- The population of Afghanistan has almost doubled in the past 20 years; it is now one of the youngest countries in the world, with 2/3 of the population under 25 years old
- Nearly all children were enrolled in primary school in 2018, compared to 21% in 2001
- Life expectancy has increased by almost 10 years since 2001, and in 2019 was 65 years of age
- A 29% decline in under 5 years of age mortality between 2003 and 2015
- Maternal mortality was among the highest worldwide, and has since been halved
- Infectious disease incidence has decreased
- Afghanistan's health system is heavily dependent on foreign aid
Among the findings of the authors are:
"The Taliban Government now has a responsibility to the Afghan people to protect and advance the progress made during the past 20 years. But the international aid community also has a reciprocal and urgent responsibility to continue the support provided to the health sector in Afghanistan, withdrawal of which would be a fatal blow. Although a few agencies remain committed, the failure of others to plan for and provide continuity in the face of this eventuality, despite clear indications of the need to do so, is appalling and unjustifiable."
9/11 at 20: after war, what?
Published:September 11, 2021
Two decades after the terrorist attacks that initiated a US-led “war on terror”, what are the implications and prospects for global health and wellbeing? From an American—indeed, western—perspective, the dangers to security today are diverse and complex. The US intelligence community's annual threat assessment report, published in April, 2021, highlights risks from individual nations and destabilising transnational concerns, from conflict to the climate crisis to cyberattacks. The emergency that is today's Afghanistan was already cited as a cause for anxiety. The report anticipated that the Afghan Government would struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if US and coalition forces withdrew, although the risks to health pass without mention. Indeed, within 2 weeks of that withdrawal, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan and commentators now fear the return of terrorist cells to the country. It is reasonable to ask: have 20 years simply been wasted?
No. The people of Afghanistan live in very different circumstances to those that existed before the USA deposed the Taliban in 2001. According to World Bank estimates, the population has almost doubled—to 38·9 million in 2020—making Afghanistan one of the youngest countries in the world. Two-thirds of the population are younger than 25 years. In education, major investments have provided unparalleled opportunities for many young Afghans. According to UNESCO, nearly all children were enrolled in primary school in 2018, compared with 21% in 2001, when girls were prohibited from attending. Major challenges remain, of course. School attendance is often much lower than enrolment and, although literacy has increased, attainment (43% in 2020) is still too low. Despite important improvements in gender equity and visible increases in the number of women working, including in prominent roles, Afghanistan still ranks as the one of the worst countries for gender equality globally.
Some of the most dramatic shifts have been in health. Life expectancy has increased by almost 10 years, up to 65 years in 2019. Remarkable gains have been seen in maternal and child health. According to data published in The Lancet Global Health, Afghanistan had a 29% decline in under-5 mortality between 2003 and 2015 (from 127·8 to 91·0 per 1000 livebirths). Maternal mortality in 2001 was among the highest in the world, but has since halved. The 2019 GBD Study reports substantial decreases in mortality from lower respiratory tract infections, diarrhoeal diseases, and measles since 2009, but increases in deaths from conflict, road injuries, interpersonal violence, and non-communicable diseases.
The health system that has sustained these gains is heavily dependent on aid, most importantly from the World Bank, which financed almost 2500 health clinics across the country but has now suspended funding. The suspension of contracts from the Afghan Government has led many non-governmental organisations to reassess the care services they can provide. This uncertainty risks destroying a nascent health service that has resiliently provided care throughout three waves of COVID-19 and an escalation of conflict. Wahid Majrooh, the minister for public health in Afghanistan, told The Lancet that, aside from the damage to morale and trust, the lack of financial assurance was leading suppliers to default on their contractual commitments. He says that the health sector has stayed deliberately impartial throughout the conflict, but the withdrawal of international aid could now precipitate a humanitarian emergency.
The Taliban Government now has a responsibility to the Afghan people to protect and advance the progress made during the past 20 years. But the international aid community also has a reciprocal and urgent responsibility to continue the support provided to the health sector in Afghanistan, withdrawal of which would be a fatal blow. Although a few agencies remain committed, the failure of others to plan for and provide continuity in the face of this eventuality, despite clear indications of the need to do so, is appalling and unjustifiable.
The health gains made in Afghanistan, although uneven, have been achieved by a small but dedicated group of health workers. Supporting these doctors, nurses, and midwives through intensified international collaboration is now essential. Coalitions that strengthen Afghanistan's brittle health sector must be made with the new regime. The progress in the health status of people in Afghanistan is too valuable to be squandered by delay. 20 years of experience, in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, surely tell us that the real lesson of 9/11 was not the need for a new war. It was and remains the demand for peace, cooperation, and attention to basic human needs—of which health is foundational.
3. Opinion | The CIA Spent 20 Years on the Front Lines of the War on Terror. It's Time For That to Change.
Excerpts:
Listen carefully and you can hear the warning bells ringing. CIA directors from the last three administrations have all voiced concerns that the global war on terror has pulled the agency too far into tactical, warfighting intelligence and that it needs to get back to the basics. President George W. Bush’s CIA director, Michael Hayden, warned at his 2006 confirmation hearings that the war on terror “just sucks energy into doing something in the here and now” and that “pulling people off for the long view” would be both essential and difficult. John Brennan, who ran the agency under President Obama, told Congress that "the CIA should not be doing traditional military activities and operations” and that the agency’s drone program was “an aberration” from its historic mission. And in a 2019 speech, President Trump’s CIA director, Gina Haspel, said that in its focus on the counterterrorism fight, the agency had fallen behind on tracking Russia, Iran and other adversaries, promising that a shift in priorities was underway.
This won’t be easy. Inertia is the most powerful interest group in Washington. Capabilities once acquired are hard to transfer or draw down. Congressional overseers are rewarded for looking backward — castigating intelligence agencies after the fact rather than looking ahead at how they should adapt before the next disaster strikes. And urgent intelligence needs, especially when dangers are tangible and lives are on the line, naturally crowd out those seen as important yet more distant. But as Hayden presciently warned, a CIA that focuses too much on the here and now “will appear to be successful, but we’ll be endlessly surprised.”
Opinion | The CIA Spent 20 Years on the Front Lines of the War on Terror. It's Time For That to Change.
Magazine
Opinion | The CIA Spent 20 Years on the Front Lines of the War on Terror. It's Time For That to Change.
An enduring legacy of the global war on terror is an approach to intelligence that doesn't serve U.S. national security interests as it once did.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Opinion by AMY ZEGART
09/11/2021 07:00 AM EDT
When Gen. David Petraeus became director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2011, he filled his office with weapons, military challenge coins and other mementos of war — in other words, he made it look like the Pentagon.
The decor was telling. CIA directors often come from the world of intelligence, serving as agency careerists, congressional overseers or military intelligence leaders prior to assuming the top job. Petraeus was none of those. He was an infantry guy, not a career intelligence officer, a retired four-star warrior who had commanded allied forces in Iraq and was fresh off the battlefields of Afghanistan.
As Petraeus was moving into Langley, his predecessor at the CIA, Leon Panetta, was heading to the Pentagon to become secretary of defense. The symbolism of the musical chairs was hard to miss: Intelligence and military operations had never been more fused. The leadership seats were literally interchangeable.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ushered in many organizational changes in the federal government, including the creation of a behemoth new Department of Homeland Security, the establishment of a director of national intelligence and the largest restructuring of intelligence agencies in over half a century. But the integration of intelligence and warfighting may have been the most promising — and problematic — change of all.
Before 9/11, who did what was much clearer: The military fought wars; the CIA collected and analyzed intelligence (and carried out covert operations when it was important to hide official U.S. involvement). After the terror attacks, though, those distinctions blurred, fast. The CIA jumped into Afghanistan and became deeply involved in the day-to-day prosecution of the global war on terror.
Those efforts produced important successes. But along the way, the CIA became stretched thin. One of the more enduring legacies of the post-9/11 era is a style of spycraft that does not serve America’s national security interests as it once did. Waging two decades of war has taken time and talent away from the agency’s original purpose of preventing strategic surprise — that is, anticipating major threats to the nation before they materialize. Twenty years after 9/11, the United States faces escalating threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, conflict in cyberspace as well as physical space, and global challenges like climate change and pandemics. The CIA needs to regain the balance between fighting the terrorist enemies of today and providing the intelligence to detect, understand and stop the enemies of tomorrow.
The first troops on the ground in Afghanistan after 9/11 weren’t troops. They were CIA officers carrying boxes of cash to recruit Afghan warlords. Special operations forces soon followed, then an allied bombing campaign. It’s hard to remember now with the ignominious withdrawal of allied forces from Afghanistan last month, but in 2001, military victory came fast. By November, the Taliban had fallen and al Qaeda was on the run. As Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants retreated to the mountains of Tora Bora, CIA officers were there, too — hunting the al Qaeda leader, working hand in hand with special operators and local Afghan militias, calling in air support from behind enemy lines. Ultimately, bin Laden narrowly escaped the dragnet, but his safe haven was gone. Without it, al Qaeda was unable to wage another mass casualty attack on American soil for the next two decades. CIA Director George Tenet called those early days in Afghanistan “the CIA’s finest hour,” and he was right.
The agency was particularly well-suited for the moment. Afghanistan was more familiar territory to spies than soldiers, the site of the CIA’s largest covert operation of the Cold War. In 1979, just days after Soviet troops rolled into Kabul and installed a puppet government, President Jimmy Carter authorized his first CIA covert action to arm and support the Afghan mujahedeen. “Our ultimate goal,” National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinksi wrote, “is the withdrawal of Soviet troops … if this is not attainable, we should make Soviet involvement as costly as possible.” In one of history’s tragic ironies, the covert operation succeeded, turning Afghanistan into a quagmire for the Soviets and eventually leading to their defeat and withdrawal — but elements of the mujahedeen and their supporters eventually morphed into al Qaeda.
In the two decades since 9/11, the CIA’s reported involvement in counterterrorism activities has deepened and expanded dramatically. Today, it’s often hard to distinguish the work of intelligence officers and military troops. Drone strikes, for example, are sometimes carried out by the intelligence community alone, sometimes by the military and sometimes by the two together. According to Panetta, the covert operation against bin Laden was carried out under CIA authorities, even though the operatives who raided the al Qaeda leader’s Pakistani hideout were Navy SEALs. The military now conducts black operations against terrorists that look a lot like covert action, while the CIA openly engages in activities that resemble military action — like launching the drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who became one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist leaders.
The melding of intelligence and traditional military activities has benefits. Just two weeks ago, seamless integration between the two reportedly enabled a U.S. drone strike to prevent what was believed to be an imminent ISIS-K suicide bombing in Kabul as American forces frantically worked to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies.
But the fusing of intelligence and traditional military activities also brings risks: Paradoxically, the institutional changes that kept us safe during the past 20 years may leave the United States less safe in the next 20.
The CIA’s role is distinct from the Pentagon’s by design. A world in which you can’t tell one from the other is a world in which the CIA isn’t doing its core job well enough — and that makes nasty surprises far more likely.
The CIA’s primary mission is not supporting warfighters on battlefields. It’s preventing “strategic surprise” to the nation. The agency was created in 1947 to prevent another Pearl Harbor. Japan’s devastating surprise attack in 1941 killed 2,400 Americans, decimated the Pacific fleet, precipitated U.S. involvement in World War II and laid bare the dangers of poorly coordinated intelligence. At the time, the Departments of Navy, War and State were all collecting information about Japan’s capabilities and intentions, including signals of the imminent deadly attack, but their efforts were fragmented and disjointed. The nation needed an agency to centralize intelligence, a sentinel whose job was to peer over the horizon to detect dangers before it was too late.
Since the 1940s, the CIA has become the nation’s premier agency for human intelligence collection and all-source analysis as well as the only organization of the federal government legally authorized to conduct covert operations (the only major exception, until 2001, to the general rule that the CIA predicted threats while the military fought them). Still, as Panetta put it during his 2009 confirmation hearings, the agency’s “first responsibility is to prevent surprise.”
It’s a simple phrase that masks complex realities. Intelligence to prevent strategic surprise is not the same as intelligence to support soldiers on the front lines. Battlefield intelligence is about the here and now. It’s tactical, near-term, on-the-ground, nitty-gritty: determining whether a bridge is passable, where a roadside bomb might be in the next village or how insurgent group allegiances are shifting. Intelligence to prevent strategic surprise is longer-term, over-the-horizon, bigger-picture. It’s more about tomorrow than today, like how the Taliban’s relationship with al Qaeda is likely to evolve, what it would take to convince Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program or the prospects of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The intelligence sources may be the same — a satellite capturing imagery from space, a secret human asset on the inside — but the information the sources are asked to gather and the analysis that results are very different.
And although the United States spends billions each year on intelligence, resources are inherently limited. The same satellite cannot operate over different regions simultaneously. Drones can only fly so far and loiter for so long before they run out of fuel. Spies have to be judicious about what they collect, when they collect and how much they collect so they don’t get blown. And analysts are not interchangeable — you can’t just turn a terrorism expert into a China cyber expert overnight.
Defense and intelligence may seem the same, but they aren’t. The Defense Department’s primary activity is fighting. The CIA’s primary activity is understanding. The military is supposed to win wars. The CIA is supposed to prevent them by understanding threats and opportunities better and faster than our adversaries and delivering intelligence to policymakers that helps them make better decisions. Troops are hunters; intelligence officers are gatherers. Military officers are trained, as Samuel Huntington famously wrote, in the “management of violence.” CIA officers are trained in the management of information — acquiring it, analyzing it, protecting it and delivering it at the speed of relevance.
No organization can do it all, no matter how much money it has or how many smart people it employs. And the longer an agency focuses on doing one priority well, the more its other capabilities atrophy, or retire, or walk out the door. As pseudonymous CIA officer Alex Finley wrote in these pages in 2017, for example, clandestine human intelligence collection has changed dramatically. CIA officers used to roam foreign streets to learn the culture and recruit foreign officials by attending cocktail parties and official functions. Since 9/11, however, finding high-value terrorist targets has required CIA officers to take physical risks and work with visible military security in war zones. Old-school, country-on-country spycraft is becoming more important again, yet much of the CIA’s workforce has less experience doing it because they were hired after 9/11.
For 20 years the CIA’s attention to its primary mission has been eroding. The reasons are understandable. Perhaps they’re unavoidable. But the consequences of this tactical tilt are real: a diminished ability to understand, anticipate and counter longer-term threats — like China’s rise and Russia’s information warfare — that could threaten American lives and interests far more than today’s terrorist plots.
Listen carefully and you can hear the warning bells ringing. CIA directors from the last three administrations have all voiced concerns that the global war on terror has pulled the agency too far into tactical, warfighting intelligence and that it needs to get back to the basics. President George W. Bush’s CIA director, Michael Hayden, warned at his 2006 confirmation hearings that the war on terror “just sucks energy into doing something in the here and now” and that “pulling people off for the long view” would be both essential and difficult. John Brennan, who ran the agency under President Obama, told Congress that "the CIA should not be doing traditional military activities and operations” and that the agency’s drone program was “an aberration” from its historic mission. And in a 2019 speech, President Trump’s CIA director, Gina Haspel, said that in its focus on the counterterrorism fight, the agency had fallen behind on tracking Russia, Iran and other adversaries, promising that a shift in priorities was underway.
This won’t be easy. Inertia is the most powerful interest group in Washington. Capabilities once acquired are hard to transfer or draw down. Congressional overseers are rewarded for looking backward — castigating intelligence agencies after the fact rather than looking ahead at how they should adapt before the next disaster strikes. And urgent intelligence needs, especially when dangers are tangible and lives are on the line, naturally crowd out those seen as important yet more distant. But as Hayden presciently warned, a CIA that focuses too much on the here and now “will appear to be successful, but we’ll be endlessly surprised.”
4. Biden Declassifies Secret FBI Report Detailing Saudi Nationals' Connections To 9/11
Biden Declassifies Secret FBI Report Detailing Saudi Nationals' Connections To 9/11
NPR · by Laura Sullivan · September 12, 2021
In this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo, the twin towers of the World Trade Center burn after hijacked planes crashed into them in New York. Diane Bondareff/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Biden administration has declassified a 16-page FBI report tying 9/11 hijackers to Saudi nationals living in the United States. The document, written in 2016, summarized an FBI investigation into those ties called Operation ENCORE.
The partially redacted report paints a closer relationship than had been previously known between two Saudis in particular — including one with diplomatic status — and some of the hijackers. Families of the 9/11 victims have long sought after the report, which painted a starkly different portrait than the one described by the 9/11 Commission Report in 2004.
While the Commission was largely unable to tie the Saudi men to the hijackers, the FBI document describes multiple connections and phone calls.
Years ago, the Commission wrote that when it came to the Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy, "We have not found evidence that Thumairy provided assistance to the two hijackers." A decade later, it appears FBI agents came to a different conclusion. The report says Thumairy "tasked" an associate to help the hijackers when they arrived in Los Angeles, and told the associate the hijackers were "two very significant people," more than a year before the attacks.
The report also casts new light on the meeting of a Saudi government employee with the hijackers in a restaurant. What was once portrayed as a chance meeting is now painted as a preplanned, well orchestrated event. The 2004 9/11 Commission had described the Saudi employee, Omar al-Bayoumi, as "gregarious." Investigators wrote that they found him "to be an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamic extremists."
The ENCORE report, however, says a witness to the meeting saw Bayoumi waiting by the window for the hijackers to arrive rather than running into them by chance, and engaged in a lengthy conversation with them. The report says a woman told investigators Bayoumi was often saying the Islamic community "needs to take action," and that the community was "at jihad."
In an interview, victims' families said they found other items in the report revealing. For example, both Thumairy and Bayoumi were each just a degree or two of separation away from others on a phone tree of known international terrorists. Bayoumi was in "almost daily contact" with a man with ties to the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and spent the night in a hotel with another man connected to one of Osama Bin Laden's senior lieutenants.
Thumairy's phone, meanwhile, was linked to people associated with the "Millennium Plot Bomber," who was convicted in a plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport on New Years Eve 2000.
While the report does not draw any direct links between hijackers and the Saudi Arabian government as a whole, Jim Kreindler, who represents many of the families suing Saudi Arabia, said the report validates the arguments they have made in the case.
"This document, together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for how al-Qaeda operated inside the U.S.," he said, "with the active, knowing support of the Saudi government."
The Saudi government has long maintained that any connections between Saudi nationals and the hijackers were coincidental, and have pointed to years of fighting al-Qaeda in partnership with the U.S.
"No evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge of the terrorist attack or were in any way involved in its planning or execution," officials said in a statement this week released by the Saudi embassy. "Any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the September 11 attacks is categorically false."
Family members of those who have died say regardless, they have waited years for information to be released. The Encore document is the first of many documents the Biden administration has promised to release in coming months.
NPR · by Laura Sullivan · September 12, 2021
5. A Crisis of Credibility: Why Non-Governmental Organizations are Struggling
Truth in advertising: I am a member of the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (www.hrnk.org). Like all NGOs we are always searching for credible and legitimate sources of funding but we do fall into the category of criticism in the excerpt below.
However, this article is really focused on criticizing human rights groups operating in the Middle East.
Excerpt:
Unfortunately, too many human-rights NGOs—both large and small—suffer from a crisis of credibility. Persistent questions about their sources of funding, political bias, and lack of due diligence undermine the reliability of the information they espouse.
A Crisis of Credibility: Why Non-Governmental Organizations are Struggling
Persistent questions about sources of funding, political bias, and lack of due diligence undermine the reliability of the information that NGOs espouse.
The Biden administration has returned human rights to the forefront of U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently announced that the United States would be rejoining the United Nations Human Rights Council. “The United States is committed to a world in which human rights are protected, their defenders are celebrated, and those who commit human-rights abuses are held accountable,” he said.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focusing on human rights play a vital role in the deliberations of decisionmakers in national governments and international organizations. Approximately three hundred NGOs contribute to the work of the UN Human Rights Council, for example.
Unfortunately, too many human-rights NGOs—both large and small—suffer from a crisis of credibility. Persistent questions about their sources of funding, political bias, and lack of due diligence undermine the reliability of the information they espouse.
Take, for example, two of the world’s best-known human-rights watchdogs, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Too often, their accounts of abuse are based not on reporting by their own employees on the ground but rather on information supplied by third parties—often with less than stellar reputations. In the case of Gaza, many of the accounts of Palestinian civilian casualties have come from organizations run by Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization with a demonstrated track record of distortion.
Funding scandals further compromise the objectivity of purportedly nonpartisan organizations. In 2009, senior officers of Human Rights Watch (HRW) solicited funds from Saudi officials by highlighting HRW’s “battles” with “pro-Israel pressure groups.” Undeterred by the outcry that this incident provoked, HRW was at it again in 2012 when it accepted a secret donation of $470,000 from a Saudi billionaire reportedly involved in human-rights abuses, and who in making his donations stipulated that the organization was to refrain from “criticizing Muslim majority countries for violating LGBTQ rights.”
A plethora of smaller, more opaque and country-specific organizations dot the Middle Eastern landscape. Their backers and funders are often clouded in secrecy. In the case of the Arab Gulf states, for example, multiple UK and U.S.-based NGOs focus on Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia, especially in the wake of 2011’s Arab Spring. Prominent international NGOs and certain media outlets have increasingly relied on reports produced by such organizations in their assessments of human-rights situations in Arab Gulf countries.
The problem here is that their work is deeply flawed. Most of the Middle East human-rights NGOs more closely resemble advocacy organizations. Their interests lie in pursuing highly partisan political agendas, as opposed to engaging in good faith interactions with concerned governments. They routinely contend that citizens are unjustly imprisoned and mistreated while in custody.
Unfortunately, the facts often do not substantiate such claims. In many cases, governments produce compelling evidence linking prisoners to designated terrorist organizations. On other occasions, credible assessments of a government’s adherence to international human-rights standards are blithely dismissed in favor of more alarmist yet fictional narratives.
In 2018, The Washington Post interviewed a number of Bahraini detainees suspected of militant activity, without the presence of government personnel, and found that the detainees’ accounts of Iranian-backed conspiracies were consistent with the charges brought by the authorities. But when Bahraini officials opened their detention facilities to foreign inspection by neutral observers who gave them a clean bill of health, they were accused of a whitewash.
The sad fact of the matter is that not all dissidents are peace-loving Jeffersonians. And not all Arab governments are run by legions of knee-jerk torturers. Committed insurrectionists willfully distort the truth to undermine stable and popular regimes. Well-intentioned government officials struggle to protect the rights of their citizens in the face of very real threats. Regrettably, too many human-rights advocates reflexively validate the former, while minimizing the significance of the latter.
The State Department’s 2020 human-rights report noted that government officials in the Arab Gulf were generally “not responsive to NGOs they believed were politicized or unfairly critical.” The report added that their attitudes towards NGOs reflected declining trust and engagement over the past few years. Their skepticism is not without foundation. A large portion of these organizations’ funds comes from anonymous donors whose provenance is open to question. Their persistent distortion of the facts, absence of due diligence, and failure to credit host governments for positive actions taken offers little incentive for cooperation.
The international human-rights community can and should take meaningful action to restore confidence in their methods and management. More robust oversight, financial transparency, and due diligence on political bias and accuracy are long overdue. Absent such sweeping measures, journalists and policymakers should be more circumspect regarding the community’s reporting of abuses. The more powerful these organizations become, the greater the need for independent judgment.
Prof. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Opinions expressed are his own.
Image: Reuters
6. FBI releases details of probe of Saudi’s alleged link to 9/11 – Operation Encore
FBI releases details of probe of Saudi’s alleged link to 9/11 – Operation Encore
Independent · by Support usContributeSubscribe · September 12, 2021
The document details the contacts several of the 9/11 hijackers had with Saudi associates in the US. Yet, the information did not appear to provide conclusive proof that senior Saudi government officials themselves were complicit in the plot.
Saudi Arabia has always denied that its government or officials played any role in the attacks, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
A week after Joe Biden signed an executive order vowing to make public any information the government had into the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington DC that killed almost 3,000 people, the Department of Justice released the first tranche of such information – a heavily-redacted, 16-page summary of Operation Encore, the FBI’s own probe into possible links between the hijackers and Saudi officials.
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Educating The Next Generation On 9/11
While the document may not be the smoking gun some were hoping for given that so many names were blanked out, lawyers representing survivors and relatives, claimed it was just that.
“With this first release of documents, 20 years of Saudi Arabia counting on the US government to cover up its role in 9/11 comes to an end,” New York attorney James Kreindler said in a statement, first reported by the Florida Bulldog, a watchdog site.
“The findings and conclusions in this FBI investigation validate the arguments we have made in the litigation regarding the Saudi government’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. This document, together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for how al-Qaeda operated inside the US with the active, knowing support of the Saudi government.”
Meanwhile, Brett Eagleson, whose father died in the Word Trade Centre, said the release of the FBI material “accelerates our pursuit of truth and justice”.
Mr Biden had promised that an FBI electronic communication dating from 4 April 2016 would be made public by the 20th anniversary of the attacks.
Survivors, along with relatives of those who died, had long suspected the document could relate to Operation Encore, an investigation that the FBI continued, long after the 9/11 Commission issued its report in 2004, and which suggested America’s greatest error in not preventing the attacks had been a “failure of imagination”.
As it was, the previously classified document was slipped out with minimal fanfare by the Department of Justice shortly before midnight on Saturday, and in doing so just meeting Mr Biden’s promise. It was located on a part of the DoJ website called the “The Vault”.
Particular scrutiny has centred on the first two hijackers to arrive in the US, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar and the support they received.
In February 2000, shortly after their arrival in southern California, they encountered at a halal restaurant a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi who helped them find and lease an apartment in San Diego, had ties to the Saudi government and had earlier attracted FBI scrutiny.
Among Mr Bayoumi’s contacts was Fahad al-Thumairy, at the time an accredited diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who investigators say led an extremist faction at his mosque. The two men left the US weeks before the attacks, and have always denied any wrongdoing.
The document details interviews carried out in 2015 by the FBI with someone who had contact with Mr Bayoumi. The name of the individual was redacted from the report and was referred to as “PII”.
The New York Times said PII was applying for American citizenship, and that he had detailed his work at the country’s consulate in Los Angeles and shared anecdotes about his personal interactions with embassy leadership. The document also summarised his contact with people who investigators said had provided “significant logistic support” to two of the hijackers.
The document also says communications analysis identified a seven-minute phone call in 1999 from Mr Thumairy’s phone to the Saudi Arabian family home landline of two brothers who became future detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
Saudi Arabia has also insisted it had no role in either planning or financing the attacks, the 20th anniversary of which was marked in services and ceremonies across the US.
Last week, the Saudi embassy in Washington DC repeated the kingdom’s previous denial of any complicity.
“Previous declassification of materials relating to the September 11 attacks, such as the “28 Pages”, only have confirmed the 9/11 Commission’s finding that Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with this terrible crime,” it said.
“It is lamentable that such false and malicious claims persist.”
In a statement on behalf of the organisation 9/11 Families United, Terry Strada, whose husband Tom was one of the 2,977 victims, said the document released by the FBI on Saturday put to bed any doubts about Saudi complicity in the attacks.
“Now the Saudis’ secrets are exposed and it is well past time for the kingdom to own up to its officials’ roles in murdering thousands on American soil,” the statement said.
Additional reporting by agencies
Independent · by Support usContributeSubscribe · September 12, 2021
7. Political uncertainty clouds China Inc.'s Afghanistan ambitions
Excerpts:
The International Monetary Fund last month halted financing for Afghanistan, citing "a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government," while the World Bank has frozen funding for development and reconstruction projects that total billions of dollars. International trade has been disrupted by the turmoil, and the United Nations on Tuesday said basic services were unraveling in the country.
"In the base case (a 60% probability), the Taliban are unable to establish an inclusive government that unlocks significant foreign assistance and widespread recognition or placates ethnic minorities," the Eurasia Group, a U.S. risk consultancy, wrote on Sept. 3. Eurasia put the chances of a "minimally inclusive" government at 40%, but in both scenarios Afghanistan remains a hub for foreign terrorist organizations.
Chinese companies' expressions of hope of being able to do business in Afghanistan chime with Beijing's warmer approach to the new regime. The U.S. has said recognizing a Taliban government is not in the cards. Analysts say U.S. ally India is likely to see its influence wane and Pakistan's rise in Afghanistan following the resumption of Taliban rule.
India, one of the few countries that trades with Afghanistan, was already pulling back. Bilateral trade declined to $1.4 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, from $1.52 billion the year before, Sribash Dasmohapatra, executive director at the Plastics Export Promotion Council told Nikkei Asia.
Political uncertainty clouds China Inc.'s Afghanistan ambitions
CK TAN, SINAN TAVSAN and KIRAN SHARMA, Nikkei staff writers
September 9, 2021 12:27 JST
India pulls back but Turkish players keen to remain in country under Taliban
An Afghan laborer at a chalk factory on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif: Mining, along with infrastructure, is one area where foreign companies hope to continue operating now that the Taliban has taken power. © AFP/Jiji
CK TAN, SINAN TAVSAN and KIRAN SHARMA, Nikkei staff writersSeptember 9, 2021 12:27 JST | Afghanistan
SHANGHAI/NEW DELHI/ISTANBUL -- Foreign companies active in Afghanistan face prolonged uncertainty as the new Taliban caretaker government grapples with a financial crisis and international reluctance to offer help.
Since the Taliban seized power last month, at least 10 publicly listed companies in China have expressed hope that they will be able to participate in mining or infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, but they linked doing business to political and diplomatic developments.
Businesses that had traded with Afghanistan or worked in the country under the previous U.S.-backed government are racing to assess the changing financial and security situations, or to build ties with Taliban officials.
The Beijing-based Metallurgical Corporation of China, which has a license to the Aynak Copper Mine 40 km southeast of Kabul, said it remained committed to the long-stalled development.
"In the future, the company will strive for the support of national policy and actively promote the development of the project," state-controlled MCC told the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Aug. 30.
MMC was given a 30-year contract to develop the world's second-largest copper deposit in 2008 but has suffered repeated delays. Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party-controlled media outlet, reported on Aug. 17 that several major projects involving Chinese companies had stalled due to political instability, the Aynak Copper Mine project among them.
Jiangxi Naipu Mining Machinery, which sells to countries including Chile, Kazakhstan and Zambia, said it would not rule out the possibility of pursuing opportunities in Afghanistan. Metal mining company Tibet Summit Resources said it will consider mineral resource projects but added they are subject to "progress in [the] China-Afghanistan relationship and sufficient assurance."
The head of the Taliban's political commission, Abdul Ghani Baradar, had vowed to foster an "enabling investment environment" at a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin on July 28. On Tuesday, he was named deputy prime minister.
The provisional government will be run by Mullah Hasan Akhund, an associate of the Taliban's late founder Mullah Omar. One appointment, the interior minister, is under U.S. sanctions.
The appointments did little to satisfy demands for a politically inclusive administration, a precursor to international recognition, while the participation of sanctioned individuals adds a further complication to businesses needing to deal with the regime.
The International Monetary Fund last month halted financing for Afghanistan, citing "a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government," while the World Bank has frozen funding for development and reconstruction projects that total billions of dollars. International trade has been disrupted by the turmoil, and the United Nations on Tuesday said basic services were unraveling in the country.
"In the base case (a 60% probability), the Taliban are unable to establish an inclusive government that unlocks significant foreign assistance and widespread recognition or placates ethnic minorities," the Eurasia Group, a U.S. risk consultancy, wrote on Sept. 3. Eurasia put the chances of a "minimally inclusive" government at 40%, but in both scenarios Afghanistan remains a hub for foreign terrorist organizations.
Chinese companies' expressions of hope of being able to do business in Afghanistan chime with Beijing's warmer approach to the new regime. The U.S. has said recognizing a Taliban government is not in the cards. Analysts say U.S. ally India is likely to see its influence wane and Pakistan's rise in Afghanistan following the resumption of Taliban rule.
India, one of the few countries that trades with Afghanistan, was already pulling back. Bilateral trade declined to $1.4 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, from $1.52 billion the year before, Sribash Dasmohapatra, executive director at the Plastics Export Promotion Council told Nikkei Asia.
"[Afghanistan] is a landlocked country and the air route, the main medium of [trade] has been disrupted [amid the ongoing turmoil there]," said Dasmohapatra. "Private [businesses] will have to deal through [a third country] to export to Afghanistan, but it depends on how the situation evolves."
Quadra Akos, a Jaipur-based agricultural product supplier that makes a fifth of its annual sales in Afghanistan, said trade has been halted completely since the Taliban took control of Kabul on Aug. 15. The group supplied spices, including cumin, red chili and coriander as well as wheat flour to Afghanistan.
"We are keeping a close eye on hourly developments [there] through various news channels, social media platforms [and] our sources in [government] ministries and export councils," said Quadra Akos managing director Indra Pal Singh.
Turkey's 77 Insaat is constructing this hydroelectric power plant in Helmand Province. The company's chairman remains optimistic. (Photo provided by 77 Insaat)
Some businesses with a presence in Afghanistan remain committed. Suleyman Ciliv, head of the Turkey-Afghanistan Business Council, said he met with Taliban officials in Kabul within days of their takeover. "I got the impression that the Taliban wanted to deliver results to convince the public at large," he said.
Ciliv is also the chairman of 77 Insaat, an Istanbul-headquartered construction group that has operated in Afghanistan since 2009. It has already built a solar power plant in the country and is now constructing one wind and one hydroelectric plant there. Turkish contractors have undertaken about $7 billion of work in Afghanistan over the past two decades, according to the Turkish government.
The officials promised to safeguard Turkish investment, Ciliv said, and followed up by sending a Taliban-appointed governor to visit 77 Insaat's hydropower plant sites in Helmand Province to ensure workers' safety.
"There are of course question marks. It is still not clear if the U.S. will recognize them or not, if Afghan central bank money will be released or not, the situation of the airport, etc.," Ciliv told Nikkei Asia. The ability to safely fly into and out of the country will be key, he suggested, expressing optimism. "Bottom line," he said, "is always someone will fly."
Additional reporting by Ojaswi Rao in Mumbai
8. China Makes Sure Everyone Writes Taiwan’s Name Just So—Even a Colorado High School
Perhaps we should push for the standard use of Taiwan's official name: Republic of China (ROC). We can have two "rocks:" the ROC and the ROK (Republic of Korea). Two "rocks" will really confuse everyone. But they are two countries that now provide rock like anchors of democracy (along with Japan) in Northeast Asia. (note my only half sarcasm).
China Makes Sure Everyone Writes Taiwan’s Name Just So—Even a Colorado High School
Beijing has long used its rising clout to challenge governments and multinationals over its claim that Taiwan is part of China. It’s also increasingly pushing around the runts of global diplomacy, like Regis Jesuit, over the issue.
“We are small potatoes,” said Christina Vela, the Spanish teacher in charge of the Aurora, Colo., school’s application.
China sits on the U.N. Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, which authorizes groups big and small to participate at U.N. functions. At its publicly held meetings, any representative can hold up an application. Chinese bureaucrats scour each group that comes before the committee, scrutinizing every nook and cranny of their websites for references to Taiwan, say researchers who’ve studied the committee. If groups don’t include Beijing’s preferred language, China asks the committee to request changes.
At a committee meeting in May, China requested that Regis Jesuit change how it refers to Taiwan. Soon afterward, the committee emailed the school to point out a year-old article on its website about a student joining the Girl Up Teen Advisory Board, alongside youths from countries including Taiwan, Ms. Vela said.
“No one was ever going to randomly stumble upon that webpage,” Ms. Vela said.
She found the request odd but added “Province of China” to the article as requested. A week ago, the U.N. committee endorsed her application.
A United Nations Security Council meeting.
Photo: Xie E/Xinhua/ZUMA PRESS
During the committee’s summer session that ended Friday, China cited improper Taiwan terminology to stall applications from at least six other groups, including the World Bicycle Industry Association, a French nature society called the Association of 3 Hedgehogs and For All Moonkind, a volunteer team of space lawyers trying to preserve lunar landing sites so they don’t become tourist traps in the far-off future.
“They are consistent and bullish about it,” said Eleanor Openshaw, whose nonprofit, the International Service for Human Rights, closely follows the committee. “And they will not sleep until an NGO makes a change that they seek.”
Taiwan has governed itself since 1949, when China’s then-government fled the mainland to the island after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists. The U.N. recognized the government in Taiwan as China’s ruler until switching to Beijing in 1971. Taiwan hasn’t had U.N. membership since.
The U.N. has since adopted Beijing’s characterization. A U.N. spokesman said participants should refer to the territory as “Taiwan, Province of China,” and the committee “asks NGOs to respect U.N. terminology for all geographical names.” The Chinese delegation of the U.N. Committee on NGOs has taken on the job of making sure everyone wanting to do business at the U.N. knows that.
Many organizations seeking U.N. credentials, including Regis Jesuit, don’t attend committee meetings and learn about the name request via email, which doesn’t identify which country asked for the change. Oblivious or indifferent to the political dispute, many do as asked to expedite their applications, said Rana Siu Inboden, a fellow at the University of Texas Strauss Center for International Security and Law, who studied the committee.
Iain Patton, chief executive of the U.K.’s Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges, had “Province of China” added to a couple of the group’s more obscure webpages after being asked by the committee.
“We did it because we’re intent on getting in and influencing that [U.N.] system from within,” he said.
The U.N. headquarters in New York.
Photo: ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images
In a committee hearing in May, Chinese representative Zhang Zhe asked that the World Yoga Community, which promotes a “yogic lifestyle globally without any discrimination,” change the Taiwan terminology on its website. At a subsequent meeting, Mr. Zhang asked Dileepkumar Thankappan, the organization founder who attended in person, whether he had resolved the issue.
“We already took the Taiwan name out,” Mr. Thankappan replied, according to the meeting’s online broadcast. He said the oversight was because his webmaster forgot to press the button to upload the latest version of the site.
He told Mr. Zhang the mistake was fixed. Gone were Claudia Lin’s headshot, name and title: “Youth Ambassador Taiwan.” The U.N. committee endorsed the application.
Ms. Lin said Mr. Thankappan didn’t tell her before deleting her from the website. She said she was fine with the change and didn’t want to get involved in geopolitics. Mr. Thankappan declined to comment.
Last year, the U.S. representative on the committee challenged China over the practice. Groups should be able to refer to Taiwan however they want, said Courtney Nemroff, and insisting on “terminology in support of particular political positions…would have the effect of censoring organizations’ online presence.”
China’s Mr. Zhang responded that “sovereignty and territorial integrity of U.N. member states” is a core U.N. principle, so “using correct terminology is one of the most basic criteria for submitting applications.”
Tim and Michelle Hanlon, founders of For All Moonkind. A U.N. committee that China serves on objected to how their group referred to Taiwan.
Photo: Henry M. Hanlon
Watching the committee’s online broadcast last week, For All Moonkind co-founder Michelle Hanlon saw China query groups over Taiwan terminology. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, jeez,’ ” said Ms. Hanlon, who runs the University of Mississippi Center for Air and Space Law.
“Then it happened to us,” she said. “I had no idea we even referenced Taiwan.”
The next day, the committee emailed her to direct her toward her site’s donation webpage, where a dropdown menu of countries listed Taiwan and the Chinese-controlled territories of Hong Kong and Macau. The email suggested dubbing Taiwan a Chinese province, as well as appending “Special Administrative Region of China” after both Hong Kong and Macau.
Wanting to resolve the issue quickly so her organization could make statements at the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, she deleted the webpage.
“Honestly, we don’t get that many donations through the website,” Ms. Hanlon said. She hopes the committee will approve her application at its next session.
—Chao Deng contributed to this article.
9. Afghanistan: Lessons From Cambodia
Sadly, an alternative perspective to the Vietnam analogy that I do not think is a completely "better" one (given the tragic suffering that occured in Cambodia and may soon occur in Afghanistan) though the comments below make some interesting points
But this is a very insightful excerpt upon which we should reflect:
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated unspeakable horrors. Khmer Rouge leaders oversaw a regime of terror in which genocide, war crimes, and other crimes against humanity were committed in the name of furthering an empty communist ideology that was built on a warped conception of a utopian society. Despite the horrors I witnessed, and losses I suffered, I did not harbor resentment or a sense of abandonment. As a child, I only had the knowledge that the United States was the land where dreams can occur, and it was this hope that kept me and many other survivors alive.
The resurgence of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan state necessarily compels an examination of American foreign policy and the international community’s commitment to human development goals, but it would be wrong to see these circumstances as foreclosing on the opportunity for the United States and the international community to influence a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Alongside images of helicopters on rooftops, chaos in the streets, and a suicide bombing that killed innocent Afghans and Americans, there were also many positive images of heroism, struggle, and hope.
...
The United States’ and international community’s history in Cambodia is not a roadmap or guide for Afghanistan, but it is a reference point that bears important insights and reminders that can inform future approaches and policies. Despite the tragedy of Afghanistan, there is still hope, and we must begin thinking about how to leverage this hope and build on the future of Afghanistan, not only for the Afghan people, but to honor our commitment to humanity and future global security.
Afghanistan: Lessons From Cambodia
There have been many references to the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam as an important historical analogy for today’s Afghanistan. A better analogy is Cambodia.
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The resurgence of the Taliban and the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is an incredible tragedy that has provoked emotional memories of past wars and policy debates. There have been many references to the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam as an important historical analogy in assessing the implications of the situation in Afghanistan; however, a better analogy is Cambodia. The history of Cambodia offers not only important critical insights into the implications of the current situation in Afghanistan, but also important reminders that there is still hope for future U.S. foreign policy and the international community’s approach to the Afghan people.
We must be serious and forward thinking in our approach; the very future of Afghanistan hangs in the balance.
It is hard not to compare the images of the chaotic air lifting of American and Afghan peoples with images of the United States’ departure from Southeast Asia. Many popular news media have made this comparison, drawing from the images of the rooftop airlift to evacuate personnel by helicopter from Saigon, Vietnam. One cannot deny that the frenzied departure of Americans from the rooftops of hotels in Kabul appears remarkably similar to the images of the chaotic evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Vietnam almost 50 years ago. But the similarities really end there, and Cambodia, for a number of reasons, is the better analogy.
When the Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, U.S. forces conducted a rushed departure from Cambodia — overseeing a chaotic evacuation of U.S. personnel, Cambodian government officials, and anyone who could secure refugee or other status. The evacuation was marked not only by chaos but also strong sentiments of abandonment by many Cambodian people, particularly civil servants that had worked closely with American officials.
The late former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia (then the Khmer Republic), John Gunther Dean, shared a note delivered to him a few hours before the United States evacuated Phnom Penh. Written by a political leader of the Khmer Republic, and a member of the Cambodian royal family, Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, the note reads:
Dear Excellency and Friend:
I thank you sincerely for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot alas leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave, and my wish is that you and your country find happiness under the sky. But mark it well, and if I shall die here in my country that I love, it is too bad. I have only committed this mistake—of believing in you, the Americans. Please accept Excellency, and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiment.
Signed, Sirik Matak.
Prince Sirik Matak was killed one week later.
Like Prince Sirik Matak, many Cambodians felt abandoned by the United States when they left the country to the Khmer Rouge — a communist movement that ultimately killed over 2 million people. No doubt the sense of abandonment, insecurity, and sheer terror that pervaded many Cambodian people in 1975 is shared by many Afghans as well, particularly those who dedicated their lives to a free Afghanistan.
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This sense of abandonment, however, is not directed only at the United States. Washington led the campaign that overthrew the Taliban regime and attempted to rebuild the Afghan republic, but the United Nations and the international community bear an equal portion of the responsibility for the situation in Afghanistan – just as they bore some degree of responsibility for what occurred in Cambodia in the latter part of the 20th century. One insight to come out of this comparison between Cambodia and Afghanistan is that there is no substitute for U.S. leadership. U.S. leadership is still a critical, and arguably the essential, component to preventing, as much as resolving, most international security problems.
Another insight to glean from this comparison between Afghanistan and Cambodia is the revelation (or affirmation) that the pursuit of human development goals, such as the protection of human rights, the commitment to vulnerable populations, and the support for civil society, is qualified, conditional, and transitory. Skeptics, and historians in particular, would likely argue that this circumstance is hardly a revelation, but there is no doubt that the world community’s professed commitment to human development goals has lost credibility that will matter in future endeavors. The implications of this circumstance continue to evolve.
Despite public statements by the Taliban leadership, there should be little doubt that the pursuit of human development goals in Afghanistan has been handed over to a terrorist organization. The regime has already demonstrated a propensity for atrocities and a hostility toward civil society, and their recently established cabinet is not inclusive nor representative of their promises of reform. Recent suggestions that the contemporary Taliban might be different from their predecessors can be disputed by just the facts on the ground. Public beatings of innocent civilians, reprisal attacks on former supporters of the Afghan republic, and the change in women’s abilities to live and work free from repression show that the worst is yet to come.
The international community’s contemplation of working with the Taliban reminds me of a similar situation in Cambodia, when the international community allowed the Khmer Rouge to temporarily represent the people of Cambodia before the United Nations General Assembly. Attempts to rationalize working with a terrorist regime in the name of advancing limited objectives should be met with an equally serious assessment of how much human development goals will be sacrificed on the altar of political necessity or security. In other words, how many atrocities are we willing to accept in the name of practical or political necessity? And how much can the acceptance of a terrorist regime (or a regime built on terror) diminish our credibility and integrity as a world community dedicated to human rights and democracy?
But there is a hope that resonated in the wake of the disaster that beset Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and it is this hope that still rings clear even today in Afghanistan.
Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated unspeakable horrors. Khmer Rouge leaders oversaw a regime of terror in which genocide, war crimes, and other crimes against humanity were committed in the name of furthering an empty communist ideology that was built on a warped conception of a utopian society. Despite the horrors I witnessed, and losses I suffered, I did not harbor resentment or a sense of abandonment. As a child, I only had the knowledge that the United States was the land where dreams can occur, and it was this hope that kept me and many other survivors alive.
The resurgence of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan state necessarily compels an examination of American foreign policy and the international community’s commitment to human development goals, but it would be wrong to see these circumstances as foreclosing on the opportunity for the United States and the international community to influence a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Alongside images of helicopters on rooftops, chaos in the streets, and a suicide bombing that killed innocent Afghans and Americans, there were also many positive images of heroism, struggle, and hope.
The future of Afghanistan will not be defined by abandonment and resentment, but heroism, struggle, and hope. Like Cambodia, the future of Afghanistan resides in the hopes and dreams of its youth, and American foreign policy and the international community’s strategies in dealing with Afghanistan should include Afghan youth in its long-term planning.
Notably, Afghan youth are not as prominent in recent news coverage as their proportion of the population would dictate. The voices of Afghan youth are notably missing in most contemporary analyses on Afghanistan, which contrasts with their overwhelming percentage of the total population. It is estimated that almost 70 percent of Afghans are under the age of 25, and yet the vast majority of the voices one hears about Afghanistan are from former civil servants and adult refugees.
The Afghan adults are necessarily the population that bears studying to determine what happened, and what went wrong, in the American and international community’s departure from Afghanistan. But it is the Afghan youth who bear the utmost relevance in future answers to the question of what comes next. There is probably no population group more important to the future of Afghanistan than the youth, and there is no better time than now to begin thinking about how to engage this population.
The United States’ and international community’s history in Cambodia is not a roadmap or guide for Afghanistan, but it is a reference point that bears important insights and reminders that can inform future approaches and policies. Despite the tragedy of Afghanistan, there is still hope, and we must begin thinking about how to leverage this hope and build on the future of Afghanistan, not only for the Afghan people, but to honor our commitment to humanity and future global security.
10. Biden Calls Xi as China-US Relationship Grows More Fraught
Excerpts:
Biden from the start of his presidency has sought to put greater focus on China, rallying allies to speak in a more unified voice about Beijing’s human rights record, its trade practices, and its military’s increasingly assertive behavior, which has unnerved U.S. allies in the Pacific. He sees Beijing as the most significant economic competitor to the United States and a growing national security concern.
But the president has also expressed hope that his long-running working relationship with Xi, one that dates back to when he served as Barack Obama’s vice president, could pay dividends in the two nations’ cooperation on certain critical issues. The two spent time on the call reminiscing about their time traveling together when they were both vice presidents, the administration official said.
The White House said the leaders during the call agreed to engage “openly and straightforwardly” on issues where the nations are at odds and where there is agreement.
Biden Calls Xi as China-US Relationship Grows More Fraught
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President Joe Biden spoke with China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday amid growing frustration on the American side that high-level engagement between the two leaders’ top advisers has been largely unfruitful in the early going of the Biden presidency.
Biden initiated the call with Xi, the second between the two leaders since Biden took office. It comes at a moment when there is no shortage of thorny issues between the two nations, including cybersecurity breaches originating from China, Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and what the White House has labeled as “coercive and unfair” trade practices by the Chinese.
But Biden’s aim with the 90-minute call was less focused on any of those hot-button issues and instead centered on discussing the way ahead for the China-U.S. relationship after it got off to a decidedly rocky start in his tenure.
The White House said in a statement the “two leaders had a broad, strategic discussion in which they discussed areas where our interests converge, and areas where our interests, values, and perspectives diverge.”
The White House is hopeful the two sides can work together on issues of mutual concern — including climate change and preventing a nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula — despite growing differences.
Beijing, however, has pushed back against U.S. pressure and increasingly has suggested it could remain broadly uncooperative until Biden dials down criticism on what it deems Chinese internal matters.
Xi in the call appeared to echo some of the complaints, telling Biden that U.S. government policy toward China caused “serious difficulties” in relations, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
“Chinese-U.S. confrontation will bring disaster to both countries and the world,” Xi added.
Xi said the two sides should cooperate on climate change, epidemic prevention, economic recovery, and other issues, Xinhua reported.
Ahead of the call, a senior administration official said the White House has been unsatisfied with early engagements with the Chinese.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said White House officials were hopeful that Xi hearing directly from Biden could prove beneficial.
The White House official said Biden made clear to Xi that he had no intention of moving away from his administration’s policy of pressing China on human rights, trade, and other areas where it believes China is acting outside international norms.
High-level engagement in the early going has been most notable for each side blasting the other with recriminations.
Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned Biden climate envoy John Kerry that deteriorating China-U.S. relations could undermine cooperation on climate change. Wang told Kerry, who was visiting Tianjin for climate talks with his Chinese counterparts, by video link that such cooperation cannot be separated from the broader relationship and called on the U.S. to take steps to improve ties, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
In July, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman faced a long list of demands and complaints, including accusations that the U.S. was trying to contain and suppress China’s development. Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng urged the U.S. “to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy.”
In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had heated exchanges with Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi when they met with top Chinese officials in Anchorage. At that meeting, Yang accused the U.S. of failing to deal with its own human rights problems and took issue with what he said was American hypocrisy.
Administration officials suspect that some of the rhetoric in those high-profile meetings was more about playing to a domestic audience through the press than sending a message to the White House. With that in mind, Biden highlighted the importance of the two leaders’ ability to have private conversations and be clear about their priorities, the administration official said.
Biden from the start of his presidency has sought to put greater focus on China, rallying allies to speak in a more unified voice about Beijing’s human rights record, its trade practices, and its military’s increasingly assertive behavior, which has unnerved U.S. allies in the Pacific. He sees Beijing as the most significant economic competitor to the United States and a growing national security concern.
But the president has also expressed hope that his long-running working relationship with Xi, one that dates back to when he served as Barack Obama’s vice president, could pay dividends in the two nations’ cooperation on certain critical issues. The two spent time on the call reminiscing about their time traveling together when they were both vice presidents, the administration official said.
The White House said the leaders during the call agreed to engage “openly and straightforwardly” on issues where the nations are at odds and where there is agreement.
11. In Chinese eyes, ‘British are bastards’
It is all about the hundred years of humiliation.
As an aside and a very inexpert thought from a non-China specialist- Is China on a path to humiliation in the foreseeable future? Are its actions, which seemingly are designed to overcome the hundred years of humiliation, going to blow back on China and leave it humiliated once again (though in much different ways than the first hundred years). And if that was somehow the case is there some leverage to be gained in exploiting that possibility? Could there be a better way for China and for the international community? As they say, just spitballing here.
Excerpts:
But to the discomfiture of jingoistic Britons – and to strategists in Tokyo and Washington – China can claim to be more sinned against than sinner on the broader scoreboard of historical reckoning.
“When it comes to historical psychology, what the CCP is educating its kids in is ‘The Century of Humiliation’ – that is the phrase they repeat over and over again,” Lee Seong-hyon, a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University told Asia Times.
The century ended in 1949, when the CCP took full control of Mainland China, but had started in 1839, when the First Opium War was initiated by the UK.
Seen in this light, “The British are bastards!” Lee said.
Indeed, it is difficult to paint British policy in 19th century Qing Dynasty China as in any way principled
In Chinese eyes, ‘British are bastards’
UK carrier’s Asian deployment united the 19th, 20th and 21st century foes of a nation simmering with historical grievances
The high-profile East Asian voyage of the United Kingdom’s carrier strike group has passed its apex: After flying the flag in Japan, the mailed fist of Britannia’s 21st century naval arm is poised for the homeward cruise.
From London’s perspective, points have been made.
The potent new super vessel, HMS Queen Elizabeth, has, since leaving Portsmouth on May 1, made the rounds of friendly ports, drilled with friendly fleets, promoted the concept of rules-based freedoms and made the case for stronger ties with Asian partners. And it has demonstrated that the Royal Navy, deploying naval air projection capabilities that it lacked for five years, is back in the big league.
From Beijing’s perspective, points have been taken.
The post-imperialist force opted not to challenge the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, with provocative maneuvers in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait or East China Sea. Even so, its joint drills with multiple nations on China’s maritime periphery, many of them at odds with China, suggest that Washington’s aim for a naval “coalition of the willing” is gaining traction – with the UK a particularly willing player.
Seen through the prism of the PLAN, these may be concerning developments. Seen through the prism of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, they provide useful domestic ammunition in a state where history is alive, well-disseminated and connected to the present.
Toned down though it was, London’s gunboat neo-diplomacy stirred memories convenient for President Xi Jinping’s CCP – for opium-trading, gunboat-wielding Brits kicked off China’s “Century of Humiliation.”
That period is central to state messaging that references the weaknesses of the past in its clarion call for a muscular new China. And the messaging is central to a widely noted conundrum of today’s China: The world’s second largest economy and military power remains acutely sensitive to historical wrongs.
Ironically, much of the content of that messaging is echoed in the UK, where historical reinterpretations are in full swing, focusing unflinchingly on Britain’s many and bloody colonial depredations.
Doubly ironically, any such process of harsh historical introspection is impossible in a China where foreign predation is widely trumpeted, but where the CCP’s own deadly history is uneasily airbrushed out of the national narrative.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group heads east. Photo: US Marines Corps via AFP
China’s foes, historical and contemporary, unite
As the focus of an information war where history is deliberately merged with geopolitics, the British carrier’s voyage is not just about the Brits.
While the United Kingdom was China’s premier-league villain in the 19th century, its aircraft carrier’s ultimate destination was Japan – China’s deadliest enemy of the 20th century.
And perched on the Queen Elizabeth’s flight deck were F35s stealth fighters manned by pilots from the United States – China’s key 21st century rival, and the closest ally of both Japan and the UK.
China’s historical messaging cannot be dismissed as mere propaganda, for it is grounded in very real past events that connect to the present – most notably, a 21st century world where China is dueling the US for global hegemony.
That duel may explain trends currently at-play in a China which has realized that President Donald Trump was no aberration: His successor in the White House Joe Biden, continues anti-China policies.
The CCP is currently taking down powerful businessmen and cracking down on consumer-focused tech firms, while promoting strategic industries and even railing against un-macho male role models in popular entertainment.
One analysis: Beijing is building a fortress China by shifting society and economy into confrontation mode, while decoupling it from global dependencies.
Certainly, the cynical political principle of “generating enemies abroad to generate solidarity at home” could prove handy to Xi as he gears up to win an unprecedented third term as president next year.
PLA members parade. Beijing’s state messaging mingles a focus on current might with an acute sense of historical victimhood. Photo: AFP
‘British bastards’ and the ‘Century of Humiliation’
In current affairs, the West fires multiple accusations at China. Human rights violations in Xinjiang! Suppression of rights in Hong Kong! Threats toward Taiwan!
But to the discomfiture of jingoistic Britons – and to strategists in Tokyo and Washington – China can claim to be more sinned against than sinner on the broader scoreboard of historical reckoning.
“When it comes to historical psychology, what the CCP is educating its kids in is ‘The Century of Humiliation’ – that is the phrase they repeat over and over again,” Lee Seong-hyon, a visiting scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University told Asia Times.
The century ended in 1949, when the CCP took full control of Mainland China, but had started in 1839, when the First Opium War was initiated by the UK.
Seen in this light, “The British are bastards!” Lee said.
Indeed, it is difficult to paint British policy in 19th century Qing Dynasty China as in any way principled
Then, as now, Britons were great drinkers of tea – a Chinese plant whose cultivation had been a closely guarded trade secret, and which would only be farmed in British India from the 1840s. Chinese refused to accept British goods in return for its tea, demanding silver. That left British merchants and London facing long-term depletion of bullion reserves.
Aggressive British merchants opted to rebalance trade by shipping opium into China. When Qing officials responded to imports of what was known to be a dangerously addictive drug by seizing opium shipments, the trade war ended. Real war erupted.
Britain, armed with steam gunboats, professional troops and field artillery, routed China in the First Opium War (1839-42). Unequal treaties were signed, Hong Kong was ceded and British success encouraged other foreign powers to grab a slice of China.
The Second Opium War (1856-60) saw an Anglo-French force fighting far deeper into China. Qing forces were again routed, and the dynasty’s Summer Palace – a dreamy masterpiece that blended architecture with landscaping – was sacked and destroyed in retaliation for the torture of British captives.
Then eight powers, the UK prominent among, intervened in China to suppress the proto-nationalist Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901). Yet again, Chinese arms were humiliated. The “Middle Kingdom” – home to one of the world’s greatest civilizations – had been reduced to “The Sick Man of Asia.”
Subsequently, Imperial Japan would replace Imperial Britain as China’s deadliest enemy. After seizing Manchuria in 1931, Japan invaded China proper in 1937. A brutal war, marked by Japanese atrocities including the Rape of Nanjing and the biological warfare of Unit 731 would kill an estimated 14-22 million Chinese.
After Japan’s 1945 defeat, the Chinese Civil War was won by Mao Zedong’s communists. That victory automatically pitted Beijing against Washington, which replaced a shattered Japan as national enemy number one.
In 1950, in a stunning turn of the hinge of history, Mao’s troops would radically alter China’s global image and avenge their nation’s past humiliations at British hands.
With its shock intervention in the Korean War, China routed the US-led UN Command – with the British as the second-largest foreign contingent – in North Korea. Subsequently, in South Korea, the Chinese incurred on the British Army the bloodiest defeat of its post-1945 history: The Battle of the Imjin River in 1951.
But if the “sleeping dragon” awoke in Korea under Mao, it has become a “global dragon” under Xi. Today’s China – with its huge industrial base, global infrastructure investment portfolio and world-class military – stands in stark contrast to the humbled Qing.
Despite this multi-dimensional renaissance, an acutely prickly national victimhood narrative still has currency.
The British steamship Nemesis destroys Chinese war junks during the First Opium War. Image: National Maritime Museum
Remembering a dark past
In state media, gunboat diplomacy and the Opium Wars are favorite references, while the heft of today’s PLAN has been gleefully compared to Britain’s much reduced naval prowess.
The paper warned, “It is not the 19th century anymore….China’s military forces are developing rapidly – China’s navy has grown by the equivalent tonnage to that of the whole Royal Navy over the past five years.”
More was to come. “The current rickety Royal Navy has repeated problems in training and equipment,” Global Times jeered last December. “Does any rational military mind think this rust bucket fleet can threat China militarily?”
Indeed, across state education and historical site signage, the anti-British message is reinforced.
For example, the site of the Summer Palace – burned masonry, stone-dotted lawns, weed-choked ponds is a hugely popular tourist attraction. As a topic, it “constantly resurfaces in Chinese popular films, angry social media debates and furious rows about international art sales” of looted items, according to the BBC.
“In general, you could say almost all countries weaponize history,” said Lee, who mentioned Seoul’s endless disputes with Japan over its colonial depredations, and how the Afghan Taliban has used a history of resistance to foreign occupiers to its advantage.
“But I think in China, there is a qualitative difference,” Lee continued. “The degree of imbuing that national narrative into people’s psychology is much more severe in China, it is almost part of the way Chinese people see themselves. It is not just a national identity. it has become a personal identity issue.”
This may explain the many “history wars” raging between proud-but-highly-sensitive Chinese and other netizens on global platforms like YouTube.
“With China, the formerly colonized not only come out from under the boot of colonization, but became a powerful country,” said Michael Hurt, who teaches cultural theory at Korea National University of the Arts. “A country like China can push back against dominant narratives in the UK or US and say, ‘We are going to teach this – and fuck you!’”
Emotive media messaging connects old foes with the issues of the day and China’s current global rival, the US.
“Japan’s Unit 731 is still regularly mentioned in state media in the counter narrative to Covid-19, and that raises the issue of the Japan-US alliance,” said Alex Neill, a Singapore-based security consultant and China specialist.
Moreover, media are “bundling together the UK with the US” in regard to a recent US freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea, he said.
Chinese visit the site of the Qing Dynasty’s masterpiece of landscape architecture, the Summer Palace. It was looted and destroyed by Anglo-French forces in retaliation for the torture and death of British captives during the Second Opium War. Photo: AFP
Cultural clashes
Much of this nationalistic pushback is visible in popular culture. Take the most successful Chinese cinematic genre in the wider world: kung fu film.
The genre’s first international hero, Bruce Lee, in his classic “Fist of Fury” battled evil Japanese, but in what was perhaps the film’s most iconic scene, smashes an English-language sign he encounters in a Shanghai Park: “No dogs or Chinese allowed.” Even today, the sequence remains one of the most powerful pieces of anti-colonial cinema.
His successor, Jackie Chan – who has announced his intention to join the CCP – has played an intrepid investigator who hunts down items looted from the Summer Palace.
A current hit film franchise based (very, very loosely) on Lee’s kung fu teacher, Yip Man, has featured a parade of foreign villains. The first in the series was a thuggish British boxer – aided and abetted by a corrupt British colonial cop.
And of course, the Ramboesque “Wolf Warrior” action movies – which feature US villains – have lent their name to assertive Chinese diplomacy.
Granted, this is hardly the entirety of Anglo-China relations. While political, security and diplomatic relations are tense, there are significant upsides in both trade and national image.
Moreover, many aspects of Brand Britannia – modern Brand Britannia, that is – are positive in China.
“The general population in China will have been affected by the [historical] narrative,” said Neill. “But admiration of British culture is still prevalent.”
He cited the multiple branches of British prep schools established in China and the high worth accorded British brands. And a $2 billion hotel/casino complex “The Londoner” is being built in Macau modelled on the Palace of Westminster – complete with Big Ben and double decker buses – and with football/fashion icon David Beckham engaged in the project.
There may even be an emerging shared space when it comes to historical remembrance.
Kung fu superstar Donnie Yen, playing legendary master Yip Man (left) faces up to thuggish British boxer “Twister” (right). Guess who wins…? Photo: YouTube
East and West meet – and diverge
Currently, the Anglosphere’s politics, academia and popular discourse are being convulsed by a renewed focus on past national misdeeds and their legacies. These misdeeds are primarily conquest, slavery and colonialism; the legacies are racism and other injustices embedded within today’s multicultural societies.
Much of China’s victimhood narrative gels with the emerging conventional wisdom that the UK was a far worse colonial actor than has previously been admitted beyond the narrow circles of historians and history buffs.
That admission stems from a process that combined the empowerment of minorities with new research and communication tools.
“Certain histories have always been repressed, but now the Internet is giving tools to access all kinds of resources – previously this would have taken much more academic prowess,” said Hurt, an African-American. “The focus on people of color who do not have power is part of the overall trend, and not only are professional academics going in that direction, ordinary people are coming into contact with academic works and concepts.”
Ironically, though many CCP heads may enthusiastically nod at the outcome of any research that puts the boot into uber-Imperialist Britain, state information control means that no such process is likely to take root in China.
In another irony, there are good reasons for the CCP to nip any such process in the bud.
“China is looking very carefully at the US and Europe, particularly at how the anti-slavery movement is working, as the toppling of statues is a touchy subject,” Neill said. “In 1989 there was a statue of Lady Liberty erected in middle of Tiananmen Square.”
All this means that while CCP messaging attacks – with considerable justice – historical aggressors, gaping holes dot its domestic narrative.
When it comes to Mao’s disastrous policies which killed millions – notably the rushed industrialization of “The Great Leap Forward” (1958-62) and its attendant famine, and the “Cultural Revolution,” (1966-76) and its attendant violence and vandalism – there is radio silence.
Today’s CCP prefers to point to the hundreds of millions of citizens it has lifted out of poverty, and the mighty state infrastructure and industrial base that have been created, post-Mao.
More recent killings of pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square, not to mention ongoing crackdowns on the Uighar ethnic minority, are airbrushed out of the national story. Yet the CCP cannot control the narrative entirely.
Older Chinese who lived from the 1950s-‘70s personally experienced the depredations of those years.
“Anything negative about that period is glossed over, it is the elephant in the room for everyone of that generation,” said Neill. “How this is discussed privately among those Chinese is a great question.”
And even youthful Chinese are being exposed to Tiananmen Square.
Teaching visual sociology to Chinese students in Seoul, Hurt showed a selection of iconic news images – including the famed shot of a nameless protester halting a tank column in Tiananmen. A Chinese student questioned the veracity of the image, given that she, a graduate of an elite Beijing institution, had never seen it before.
“I said, ‘It is very real, I watched this live on TV, now this is one of the most famous pictures in the world, so you may want to think about why you have not seen this before,’” Hurt recalled. “She said, ‘Ah – OK.’ She got it.”
PLA tanks in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. Such images are virtually unknown to the younger generation of Chinese. Photo: AFP
12. The counterterrorism dilemma
An ominous warning from my old boss.
Terrorist groups strike and succeed when intent, capability and opportunity collide. In Afghanistan, intent never diminished; only capability did, and that will surely replenish as U.S. pressure eases. Now, they themselves will decide when the opportunity is right.
The counterterrorism dilemma
The Hill · by Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, opinion contributors · September 11, 2021
On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, one question seems to be on everyone’s mind: Are we safer today than we were then? Until last month, the answer would have been “yes.” But given the recent events in Afghanistan that returned the Taliban to power and resurrected that country’s status as a terrorist haven, there is no longer an obvious answer.
Twenty years ago, the U.S. was at the apogee of its strength as the globe’s unrivaled remaining superpower. We faced the threat of one terrorist group — al Qaeda —essentially concentrated in one place — Afghanistan. How utterly different is the situation today. Al Qaeda maintains a global movement of at least six franchises and well over a dozen local affiliates in Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and South and South East Asia. In addition, today we are confronted with threats from two terrorist movements not one — that of the Islamic State with its eight official branches and more than two dozen networks — covering an almost identical geographical ambit, including the group — ISIS-K — responsible for the tragic bombing at Kabul’s international airport that killed 13 U.S. service personnel as well as nearly 200 Afghans.
In 2001, the U.S. also had the luxury of not being distracted by challenges from peer competitors like China, newly assertive powers like Russia and would-be nuclear powers like Iran, notwithstanding the daily preoccupation with preventing cyberattacks, mitigating climate change and managing the COVID-19 pandemic, as well a resurgent domestic terrorist threat. International counterterrorism once stood as the lone priority; that is no longer the case.
The late renowned historian, Walter Laqueur, once reflected how “Having spent some of my formative years in a particularly nasty and brutal dictatorship immunized me against a certain facile optimism frequently found in the United States.” That same “facile optimism” has characterized both the Trump and Biden administration’s credulous negotiations with the Taliban and the shameful handling of our withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It begins with a fundamental lack of understanding of the ideology that underpins the Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS. They all share the same principles of resistance to Western influence and encroachment and the unstinting defense of Muslim lands most forcefully expounded four decades ago by the leading jihadi theorist and propagandist of his time, Abdullah Azzam. Azzam’s thesis that an aggressive war is being waged against Islam by its enemies long ago became a staple of the sustaining narrative embraced by each of these terrorist movements.
The need for global jihad to defeat these enemies is thus an integral aspect of both al Qaeda’s and ISIS’s respective mindsets. The Taliban, admittedly, is more focused on governing Afghanistan and dissolving the perceived artificial border that separates that country from Pakistan. But for all, the establishment of an Islamic caliphate where fundamentalist Islam is the only accepted religion and where Sharia, the legal system based on Islamic religious precepts, is the only law — is an equally shared priority.
There is, of course, no guarantee that the Taliban will provide al Qaeda with the freedom to conduct external operations — 9/11, after all, resulted in the Taliban losing power for 20 years. But the Taliban’s triumph is indicative of a bigger victory — having defeated the U.S. goliath, jihadists worldwide will strive for a global golden age. The U.S. thus finds itself in a situation not seen since the days before 9/11, with al Qaeda, and perhaps others, set to enjoy a terrorist safe haven requiring the interventions of geographically distant military assets.
But the Afghanistan crisis is also emblematic of broader problems in the U.S. counterterrorism landscape. Those charged with protecting the American homeland from terrorism threats at home and abroad are dealing with two, mutually reinforcing crises: our resources are being spread thinner, while those resources themselves are dwindling.
Firstly, terrorism threats are proliferating. Although the Salafi-jihadist threat dominated much of the 21st century, it has, over the past half-decade, been eclipsed by far-right extremists inspired by white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or anti-government views. In the U.S., mass shootings at Charleston, Pittsburgh and El Paso targeted the most vulnerable segments of our society, while deadly mobs at Charlottesville and the U.S. Capitol showcased the movement’s strength-in-numbers. As Lorenzo Vidino and Seamus Hughes write, “Unfortunately, we are in a time of fractured threats. Our country would do well to recognize that reality and not vacillate too much between them depending on the news of the day.”
The Salafi-jihadist campaign, too, is growing more diffuse. Syria and Iraq remain hotbeds of violence and instability, as the Islamic State caliphate’s dying embers continue to enflame ongoing domestic insurgency and international terrorism. Groups in Yemen and Somalia continue plotting against the West, sometimes successfully. And both al Qaeda and ISIS franchises grow more emboldened in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. Western media barely registered ISIS’s ideological expansion to southern Africa and the mass murder of over 50 civilians in Mozambique last November. And the most imminent threat still comes from “homegrown” extremists — born and radicalized in the United States itself.
Afghanistan, then, offers an unwelcome addition to an already-stretched counterterrorism portfolio. And yet, as terrorist threats proliferate, counterterrorism is no longer a predominant concern among Washington, D.C.’s many analysts, eclipsed by an array of domestic and international threats. The de-prioritization of counterterrorism on the national security ladder may have been long overdue — terrorism simply does not claim that many American lives. But it should be approached with extreme caution. The relative security we enjoy in our homeland today is not because threats have dissipated. Instead, it is precisely because of our well-trained, well-resourced and well-executed counterterrorism capability that Americans so rarely lose their lives to acts of terrorism. Weakening that capability will have consequences. Whether we respond with the requisite patience and a longer-term perspective is another question.
Terrorist groups strike and succeed when intent, capability and opportunity collide. In Afghanistan, intent never diminished; only capability did, and that will surely replenish as U.S. pressure eases. Now, they themselves will decide when the opportunity is right.
Bruce Hoffman is the senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Georgetown University. Jacob Ware is a research associate for counterterrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Hill · by Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, opinion contributors · September 11, 2021
13. Top National Security Posts Sit Empty, Mired in Senate ‘Purgatory’
A problem shared by the last 3 administrations and the current one. The administration and senate must do better.
Top National Security Posts Sit Empty, Mired in Senate ‘Purgatory’
Two decades after the Sept. 11 attacks, there are again dozens of unfilled Senate-confirmed national security positions.
White House officials said on Friday that clearing the logjam of confirmations was critical to national security and the nation’s foreign policy and urged the Senate to move forward.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times
By
Sept. 10, 2021
Follow our live coverage of the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
WASHINGTON — Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, nearly half of the federal government’s Senate-confirmed top national security jobs sat empty, making the United States more vulnerable, the 9/11 Commission found. Two decades later, the situation — by at least one measure — is worse.
Only 26 percent of President Biden’s choices for critical Senate-confirmed national security posts have been filled, according to a new analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, which aids presidential transitions and tracks appointments. Immediately before the 2001 attacks, 57 percent of key national security positions were occupied.
“What appalled the 9/11 Commission has gotten dramatically worse,” said Max Stier, the organization’s chief executive. “The Senate confirmation system is not working. It’s designed for an era of simplicity and bipartisan cooperation, which we don’t have.”
Empty seats dot the federal government’s top tier. Of 1,200 Senate-confirmed jobs across the government tracked by the group, 144 of 442 nominations submitted had been filled by the August congressional recess.
Within those 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions are 170 national security-related posts in the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State, and Justice. Of those, only 44, or 26 percent, have been filled.
To be sure, the universe of security-related positions is far more expansive than it was in 2001, when there was no Department of Homeland Security and few officials were focused on cybersecurity or infrastructure security. There have been other changes in the 20 years since, including a network of counterterrorism centers across the country and major advances in technology that allow the intelligence agencies to track terrorists around the globe in real time.
The Partnership analysis looked only at Senate-confirmed positions, which account for a small fraction of key national security jobs. More than 70,000 positions in the intelligence agencies and more than 200,000 in the Department of Homeland Security, for example, are not subject to confirmation.
But White House officials said on Friday that clearing the logjam was critical to national security and the nation’s foreign policy and urged the Senate to move forward.
Bipartisan Stalling
To limit the nation’s vulnerability during the period between outgoing and incoming administrations, the 9/11 Commission sought to speed the transition, in part by recommending that a president-elect nominate a full slate of national security leaders no later than Inauguration Day.
Not only has that not happened, Senate logjams and partisan battles over nominees have gotten worse. It now takes nearly four months for a presidential nominee to be confirmed, compared with half that time in the Reagan era. More than 200 Biden nominees are languishing in “confirmation purgatory,” some of them for months, Mr. Stier said.
The problems started in January, when, amid a surge in domestic terrorism, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, slowed confirmation of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, saying he had questions about his stance on immigration. At the time, Michael Chertoff, a homeland security secretary during the George W. Bush administration, called the slow-walking “irresponsible and unconscionable,” saying it could “put the lives of Americans in jeopardy.”
This spring, Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, slowed the confirmation of three Department of Homeland Security nominees — the deputy secretary, the under secretary for strategy, policy and plans and the general counsel — seeking greater administration attention on the U.S. border with Mexico. The deputy secretary, John K. Tien, has been on the job for less than two months, and Robert Silvers, the under secretary for strategy, for less than a month.
In August, the Senate left for its monthlong summer break with nearly 30 State Department nominees in limbo. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, is blocking their confirmation votes while demanding that Mr. Biden impose sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany. Among the nominees that Mr. Cruz has bottled up is Brett M. Holmgren, who was nominated in March as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.
But it is not only Republicans slowing the process.
Democrats grouse that liberal members of their party balk at nominees with corporate backgrounds, making acceptable appointees harder to find. Moderate Democrats have also raised objections about some nominees.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden withdrew his nomination of David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, joined Republicans in objecting to Mr. Chipman’s past statements supporting some gun control.
Jamie S. Gorelick, who served on the 9/11 Commission, called the Senate’s approach “lackadaisical” and “dangerous.” During the Clinton administration, Ms. Gorelick was the Pentagon’s general counsel, and later the deputy attorney general. Then too, “it was hand-to-hand combat getting individual assistant secretaries and the like confirmed,” she said.
“I was not surprised that by September of 2001 we had a similar situation, and I’m not surprised now.”
The Biden administration, however, took office with nearly a full National Security Council staff — key posts in the White House — which was a vast improvement over the Trump administration.
But Mr. Biden has been late on some Senate-confirmed national security picks. He nominated Celeste Wallander to be assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in late June, and last month he named Melissa Dalton to be assistant secretary of defense for homeland security and global security affairs. Both picks still await confirmation.
At the Homeland Security Department, Mr. Biden has not yet nominated anyone for under secretary for intelligence and analysis or for under secretary for science and technology.
‘Our Enemies Don’t Wait’
In September 2001, the 2000 election recount battle had slowed the presidential transition, and bitter partisan fights over some nominees delayed filling the government.
Mr. Chertoff, who was leading the Department of Justice’s criminal division on Sept. 11 and would later become homeland security secretary, recalled officials doing “double and triple duty” to cover the vacancies.
After the attacks, “the clear sense we got, and it was reaffirmed by the 9/11 Commission, is that it is a security risk not to have the process go right away,” Mr. Chertoff said in November. “Our enemies don’t wait until we’ve had a year to settle in.”
Currently more than half of the 17 top Senate-confirmed jobs at the Department of Homeland Security remain vacant. The department was abysmally understaffed during the Trump administration, complicating the pandemic response. Some top jobs have sat vacant for years because Mr. Trump failed to appoint anyone.
“The absence of confirmed positions has made it very difficult for the agency to carry out its mission,” Mr. Chertoff said.
Government watchdogs have for years recommended trimming the number of positions subject to Senate confirmation. The Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011 converted 163 Senate-confirmed positions to direct presidential appointments. But the numbers have been creeping upward since, from 1,212 in 2012 to 1,237 in 2016.
Elsewhere in the government, according to the Partnership for Public Service’s appointments tracker, an array of other nerve-center agencies function with acting leaders, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Communications Commission and the Office of Management and Budget.
“Every department has some significant missing individuals,” Mr. Stier said. “There’s no agency where you could say ‘we’re all fine and good.’”
Eileen Sullivan, David E. Sanger, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Alan Rappeport and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
14. Three terrorist suspects arrested in Indonesia
Three terrorist suspects arrested in Indonesia » Borneo Bulletin Online
JAKARTA (XINHUA) – The Indonesian police yesterday arrested three suspected terrorists in separate operations in the national capital Jakarta and Bekasi in West Java province.
The National Police’s spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan said that these suspects were allegedly affiliated with a homegrown terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which is linked to Al-Qaeda.
Ramadhan said that further investigations are underway.
The JI group was behind the 2002 Bali bombings which killed more than 200 people on the
holiday island.
The group was declared an illegal organisation in 2018.
15. UN Mission to Afghanistan Relocates to Kazakhstan
UN Mission to Afghanistan Relocates to Kazakhstan
As the world adapts to a “new” Afghanistan, there is much work to be done to help Afghans in need. From its temporary base in Almaty, UNAMA will continue to work toward this goal.
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As the international community reacts to a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, one proposal that has been suggested is the deployment of a United Nations-led peacekeeping mission to Kabul in order to create a safe zone for future evacuations. In the ongoing chaos, it is easy to forget that the U.N. already has a mission in Afghanistan, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which has temporarily relocated some staff to Kazakhstan to continue its operations. This is not a random choice, as Nur-Sultan has a strong record of cooperation with the U.N.
In connection with the increasingly problematic situation in Afghanistan last month, the U.N. requested permission from Kazakhstan to move some of its staff to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s financial capital, in order to continue its work from a safer location. In the spirit of cooperation with the United Nations, and within the framework of Kazakhstan’s U.N. obligations, the Kazakh government accepted this request. A September 8 report by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres on the current situation highlights this strategic transfer of personnel, mentioning how the U.N. presence around Afghanistan “by means of relocations, including a portion of staff members, … were moved temporarily to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where they continue to carry out their work on Afghanistan.”
As to how exactly this operation happened, an August 23 report by RFE/RL explained that at least two flights transported U.N. personnel, including “members of several Afghan nongovernmental organizations who cooperated with the [UNAMA] and other UN agencies accredited in the war-torn country.” UNAMA chief Deborah Lyons said in mid-August that 60 of her team members will remain in Kazakhstan to remotely coordinate the group’s activities in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, an August 20 U.N. press release explained that personnel, “numbering up to around 100 in total, will establish a temporary office in Almaty.”
According to media reports, the Kazakh government is cooperating with the U.N. personnel to help them get organized and back to work. An August 18 press release by the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that this deployment is expected to last six months, and “all expenses for the personnel’s accommodation, rental of office space, etc. will be fully financed from the UN budget.” UNAMA, a political mission with no peacekeepers assigned to it, has not released info about where exactly in Almaty it is now located.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev reportedly decided “to fulfill the UN request as part of Kazakhstan’s commitments as a full-fledged member of the organization,” demonstrating Nur-Sultan’s pro-U.N. disposition. This initiative is not unprecedented, as the Central Asian nation aims to become a vibrant member of the international community and make a name in conflict resolution and peace-oriented initiatives.
For example, Kazakhstan has played a role in attempting to settle the war in Syria via the Astana Peace Process, which aims to provide a platform for dialogue for all parties to the conflict. While unfortunately that has not managed to achieve a permanent ceasefire, it is important to keep open methods of communication.
Kazakhstan has also cooperated with U.N. missions by providing blue helmets. As of July 31, there were 36 Kazakh troops in the U.N. mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and five Kazakh experts in the mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO), according to U.N. statistics. The country is the only regional state to have obtained a non-permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council (in 2017-2018).
As for Kazakhstan’s role in Afghanistan in recent months, Kazakh Air Force aircraft reportedly extracted from Kabul Kazakh diplomats in addition to 14 citizens from Kyrgyzstan, one from Russia, and one from Lithuania, who had previously asked Kazakh diplomatic authorities for assistance. Moreover, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan also host many Afghans, specially young women, that purse higher education studies. One of the many unanswered questions is the future of these U.N.-sponsored educational programs.
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As the situation on the ground remains tense and violent, brave international humanitarian personnel in Afghanistan continue to provide assistance to Afghans in need. Therefore, the temporary remote office in Almaty will be an important communication and coordination center for UNAMA’s personnel for the coming months, while the possibility of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan is debated.
As the world adapts to a “new” Afghanistan, there is much work to be done to help Afghans in need; from its temporary base in Almaty, UNAMA will continue to work toward this goal. Without a doubt, the situation in Afghanistan has become a real test for the international community regarding how much it is willing to support democratic values and the principles of mutual assistance. Kazakhstan is doing what it can to help the U.N. mission reorganize, but fixing Afghanistan has proven to be no easy task.
16. Pak ISI Chief Hosts Security Meeting On Afghanistan With Intel Heads Of China, Iran
Pak ISI Chief Hosts Security Meeting On Afghanistan With Intel Heads Of China, Iran
Pakistan’s ISI chief on Saturday hosted a key security meeting on the evolving situation in Afghanistan with intelligence heads of regional countries, including China and Iran, according to media reports.
The Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, discussed the issue of Afghanistan with intelligence heads of China, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan in Islamabad, The Express Tribune reported.
Although there was no official confirmation from any side, sources confirmed that the Director General of ISI discussed the situation in Afghanistan and how to cooperate for ensuring peace and stability.
However, there was lack of information about the countries attending the rare moot.
The Pakistan Observer newspaper reported that intelligence chiefs of Russia, China, Iran, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan attended the meeting.
Geo TV reported that chiefs of intelligence agencies of Russia, China, Iran, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan took part in the meeting.
However, Dunya News TV reported that only intelligence chiefs of China, Russia, Iran and Tajikistan attended the meeting.
“They discussed the ongoing security situation in Afghanistan during the meeting,” the channel quoted the sources as saying.
But all news outlets agreed that the participants of the meeting exchanged views on the measures needed for lasting peace and stability in the region.
So far, there was no official confirmation about the meeting and the countries attending it.
Earlier, the ISI chief visited Afghanistan recently where he met the Afghan leadership in Kabul and discussed different issues. Days after the visit, the Taliban announced their interim government.
(PTI inputs)
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
