Quotes of the Day:
“Most of my important lessons about life have come from recognizing how others from a different culture view things”
- Edgar H. Schein
“Two monologues do not make a dialogue”
- Jeff Daly
“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university”
- Albert Einstein
1. A Legendary Marine's Name As Code: The Ad Hoc Network That Helped Rescue Afghans
2. Former Special Forces Personnel Stay Behind in Afghanistan to Rescue People Biden Left Behind
3. A Dishonorable Exit
4. US troops lingering in Pakistan ring alarm bells
5. Tony Blair: Afghanistan withdrawal is ‘imbecilic’
6. The UK and US are feuding over the Afghanistan withdrawal, with British ministers calling the president 'doolally' and Biden ignoring Boris Johnson's calls
7. Not clear yet if US is withdrawing or regearing
8. Defense Sec Lloyd Austin ordered by House committee to submit Afghanistan plan on evacuations
9. Failure in Afghanistan Has Roots in the All-Volunteer Military
10. The U.S. ground war in Afghanistan is over. Now it’s the Navy’s turn.
11. Afghans With Ties to U.S. Who Could Not Get Out Now Live in Fear
12. Inside the Afghan Evacuation: Rogue Flights, Crowded Tents, Hope and Chaos
13. This May Be First Step In Curing PTSD With A Pill
14. China’s Type 003 aircraft carrier will be advanced, but not a game-changer for US, experts say
15. Beijing is having trouble selling its citizens on a partnership with the Taliban
16. China exerts growing power right on America's doorstep
17. Opinion | I helped design the SIV program. It needs an urgent update if we want to help Afghan refugees.
1. A Legendary Marine's Name As Code: The Ad Hoc Network That Helped Rescue Afghans
So much tragedy over the past month (and past 20 years). But there are some unbelievable stories that have to make you think about how good people come together to try to do some good for fellow human beings.
A Legendary Marine's Name As Code: The Ad Hoc Network That Helped Rescue Afghans
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Two family members show the signs they held so U.S. troops could spot them in the crowd at the Kabul airport. "Chesty Puller" refers to a legendary U.S. Marine general. "Teufel Hunden" means "Devil Dog," in German and is the name German troops used for Marines in World War I. "10 Nov., 1775," is the day the Marines were founded. All eight family members made it to safety.
- COURTESY OF FAMILY
On Aug. 14, a restaurant owner inside the Kabul airport terminal suddenly sold out his entire stock of food, as passengers flocked to the airport. Then he noticed the Afghan customs officers, airport police and other officials changing out of their uniforms and into civilian clothes. Some were looking frantically for seats on the last flights out.
Other changes also came swiftly. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his cabinet fled the country. The U.S. Embassy staff, already slimmed down, relocated to the military side of the Kabul airport. The civilian side and the runway fell under an avalanche of desperate people afraid of the Taliban.
Some of those people had been trying to leave Afghanistan for years. They included Afghans who worked for the U.S. military. When you added in their immediate family members, they numbered around 100,000.
Others knew they were in danger, but didn't anticipate the Taliban would take all the country's major cities in less than a month. They included human rights proponents, women activists, and minorities.
Thousands more feared an intensified civil war or a return to the near starvation economy of the Taliban in the 1990s. The pictures of those who died clinging to the landing gear of a departing U.S. military transport plane would become a defining image of the end of America's war.
Even as U.S. troops with the 82nd Airborne flooded into Kabul and re-established security around the airport, they were also creating a system for keeping people out. This, despite the fact that their mission was to get people in.
The massive airlift capacity of the U.S. military and private chartered planes was separated from the tens of thousands of Afghans mobbing the airport by a few pedestrian gates. A State Department official described it as two bodies of water separated by a straw.
American friends of these Afghans soon came to another realization –- helping America's Afghan allies escape was down to them. Informal networks of former diplomats, activists, politicians and many, many U.S. war veterans sprang up to help out.
Invoking a legendary Marine
Most Americans, let alone Afghans, don't know the name Chesty Puller. But every U.S. Marine guarding the gates to Kabul Airport last week knows who he was.
Puller is the most decorated Marine in history, legendary for his leadership in World War II and Korea. Which is why the Marines at the gate perked up when they saw an Afghan family of eight, carrying cardboard signs and walking toward them.
"Word had gotten passed down from the battalion leadership, down to the point man on the ground, to look out for a guy who's going to be holding the signs that say 'Chesty Puller,'" said Gus Biggio, who served with the Marines in Helmand, in southern Afghanistan.
The father of that "Chesty Puller" family — whom NPR is not naming for the safety of his family — had risked his life to help Biggio and his Marines in the restive Nawa district of Helmand back in 2009. That made him a marked man as the Taliban took over.
However, his application for a special immigrant visa (SIV) had languished, as was the case for many Afghans seeking the right to move to the U.S. in exchange for their assistance to the Americans.
Now he needed urgent help from veterans thousands of miles away in America. Biggio, who was in Washington, DC, connected the Chesty family with a grassroots network trying to locate American citizens and vulnerable Afghans, and get them through the gates of the airport.
Among them was an Army vet named Ben Owen, who runs a data intelligence company called Black Rifle in Georgia.
"I started making contact with them just to see if we could locate them," said Owen. "So my role kind of spun from the data side, more to managing the family side. I was communicating directly with families on the ground and trying to get them to the gate."
Coordinating with active duty Marines inside the airport, the family was instructed to make signs that read "Chesty Puller," and "Teufel Hunden," meaning "Devil Dog,' the name German troops used for Marines in World War I. The sign also included the founding date of the U.S. Marine Corps, "10 Nov., 1775."
If the family could get close enough to the gate to be spotted, it seemed like an irresistible message to the Marines.
"People holding up these signs, about 20 inches square with black writing – amongst the densely packed crowd of similarly dressed people. You can't help but notice these six white placards," said Biggio.
While Biggio was waiting for news from his friends, Owen was talking with them by mobile phone, guiding them to the gate. But somewhere in the long-distance game of telephone, the wires got crossed.
"This is a story that repeated a thousand times, we couldn't get him into Abbey Gate despite having all their documentation. We got them literally within meters of the gate and could not get them in," said Owen.
The desperate family, on the run from the Taliban, and now unable to enter the airport, headed back into the crowd, with Owen and Biggio assuring them they shouldn't give up.
The German convoy
Afghans on the "German Convoy" waited for nearly three days on buses near the gates of Kabul Airport.
COURTESY THERESA BREUER
As former ambassadors and retired generals worked any source they could to get their interpreters out, journalists, activists and sympathetic private citizens also scrambled to get their former staff and vulnerable friends out of Kabul.
Breuer had been watching from Germany as the Taliban swept the country. She tapped her connections and raised enough money to charter a plane to Afghanistan, which she arrived on days after Kabul fell.
"I had figured out that there was the option of getting a Qatari escort to the airport, so we thought this was probably the only safe way," Breuer said.
In a few publicized accounts, the Qataris assisted several buses through the city, apparently with the cooperation of the Taliban.
Working with an Australian film-maker named Jordan Byron, who had stayed in Kabul, Breuer's group secured dozens of rooms in a hotel and chartered several buses. Their passenger list soon grew to 189 Afghans, including small children and grandparents.
Time was running short as they loaded the buses. It was a week before the American deadline to leave, but rumors of an early departure or a Taliban shutdown of the airport kept circulating. American security alerts would cause gates to be shut, and now the Taliban were clearly in charge of several checkpoints leading to the airport.
The passengers were halfway through what would be a grueling three-day journey to drive the few miles from the city to the airport, when a suicide bomber attacked the Abbey gate, killing 13 U.S. troops and well over 100 Afghans.
Chesty, Again
That Thursday, Aug. 26, was the day Gus Biggio and Ben Owen instructed the "Chesty Puller" family to try again. Owen guided them to the Abbey gate with their handmade signs, and this time it seemed to be working.
"My understanding is that a team of Marines essentially waded out into the crowd and the best way to describe it is that they went there and they snatched him," said Biggio.
Owen had been guiding them by phone, and when they made it up to the gate he quickly switched to another family the Marines were trying to help.
"We got them back to Abbey gate and at that point, I went back to trying to deal with other families, because I had several at the time that I was trying to get out," he said.
Owen was on video chat with the other family, whom he had code named "Stars and Stripes" because they had been dressing their infant child in an American flag. He was watching over the video as the bomb went off.
"For a little while there, I was just an absolute shock," Owen said, stunned at the loss of life. The "Stars and Stripes" family fled the scene.
"About an hour later I realized "Chesty" was still there when that happened," said Owen.
He assumed the worst. It was another hour or more before word came through that the "Chesty Puller" family, all eight of them, had made it through the gate to the airport just in time. In reply to a frantic call asking if he was ok, the "Chesty" father replied, "Of course I'm good – I'm with Marines."
"So when we found out they actually made it in, I cried. I think a lot of us did," said Owen.
The Germans, again
The suicide bombing not only caused terrible carnage, it seemed to doom the hopes of thousands more who were still trying to get inside. It seemed the Americans might shut down the operation.
"Our bus convoy was roaming about the city for almost two nights straight," said Breuer. "Our guy on the ground had been up for about 48 hours, defending the buses against people trying to break in, people hiding in the luggage compartment."
By this time a bizarre process had evolved, with rings of Taliban security around the airport zone, in direct contact with the U.S. troops and diplomats inside the airport. Since most of the translators had fled, communication was a problem.
"We had random [people] come up," said a U.S. government official on the scene, who was not authorized to speak publicly. "We had people who were American citizens, who volunteered to help. I had one guy who was with me for 10 hours. When we brought him and his family in the gates, he said, 'Hey, you know, I wanna help.' Imagine being an Afghan, and to volunteer to be the interpreter between you and the Taliban, who they're definitely afraid of."
The Afghans on the German convoy were also afraid as the Taliban stopped their bus at various checkpoints. On Friday night, Aug. 27, they reached the second ring of Taliban security, and watched in disbelief as Taliban fighters board the bus and take a list of names. Then they sat at the checkpoint. It seemed the Taliban were cooperating with the Americans to evacuate U.S. citizens only.
"The Taliban had decided that no normal Afghans should leave. The convoy had to turn around because the Taliban pushed the convoy back and then set up a checkpoint with MRAPs," said Breuer, using the term for huge American-made armored trucks looted from the Afghan Army.
As the convoy looked desperately for other ways in, the U.S. Embassy sent out another alert about a credible threat of attack on the crowd outside the airport. After the bombing, the warning couldn't be ignored, and the gates shut down. The convoy had no choice but to leave. The families went home or to safe houses, relieved to be off the bus and safe, if demoralized. By the next morning, the organizers of the convoy sent them a sobering note.
"We are out of options," it said. "There is absolutely no way we can help you to get into the airport anymore. Everything is shutting down there. It is absolutely heartbreaking for us, but you are on your own now. Try to get to a safe place."
The note went on, "We are so sorry to say that, we did our best, but it was not enough."
It was two days until the last American troops would leave Afghanistan, and the military had begun transitioning to getting its own people and equipment out. Vulnerable Afghans started fleeing by land toward the borders. Still, the momentum to rescue these Afghans kept building among the informal networks pressuring governments and military officers to make it happen.
"To be perfectly honest, I still don't really know how everything fell into place. I received mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night. Places in the U.S. saying, I heard your convoy didn't make it through. Let me see what I can do," said Breuer. "And then the next day, they seem to be a much larger effort and will on the American side of the airport, to assist them, to assist our team."
If the Taliban says No
Only hours after sending the heartbreaking note, Breuer's team sent out another to their points of contact.
"There might be a small window to get into the airport now. We are currently trying to organize the logistics," it said.
Breuer, still inside the Kabul airport, discovered that the coordination with the Taliban had reached a new level as she lobbied American officials for help.
"They said, 'Well, basically if the Taliban say no, the Taliban say no.' And it had only on that day become clear to me that the Americans were giving the passenger manifests to the Taliban and the Taliban had to approve them as well," the documentary filmmaker said.
"It was a very uncomfortable feeling because it makes you think like what will happen to all the convoys that were turned around because the Taliban do have these manifests," she said.
The weary travelers assembled again, with little more than the clothes on their backs. This time when they approached the Taliban checkpoints, the passenger's names were already known, and required to match exactly with the manifest from the day before.
In the early hours of Sunday, 189 Afghans left the buses and walked in through the gates of the airport. Four passengers were turned back by the Taliban, says Breuer, and her organization is still trying to get them out.
"I think it's not for us to feel guilty about who didn't get in because...it's the international community that failed the Afghan people," Breuer said. "Everybody who knew anything about Afghanistan, knew this was coming, maybe not this rapidly, but it was coming and there was no strategy in place to help the people who deserve it."
For the large informal networks of veterans, it's hard to feel guilt-free. Many personally promised to help their Afghan partners in the sincere belief that the SIV program would keep their word.
Instead the program was hobbled by red-tape in the decade that it worked. What the Biden Administration has called the greatest airlift in history may have managed to evacuate less than half of the SIVs according to a recent State Department estimate.
Included in those left behind is the "Stars and Stripes" family that Ben Owen was speaking with as the bomb went off
"They are still in. It's killing me inside," he said. "My wife has spent hours on the phone with these women crying and praying. It's a surreal experience. We're Christian and they're Muslim and we're on the other side of the world and we've never met, but we're sending each other pictures of our kids. I can't even describe the level of gratitude these people have. And we keep failing them."
The network Owen is part of estimates they helped 1,000 Afghans escape, but he says the story now is about those left behind.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
2. Former Special Forces Personnel Stay Behind in Afghanistan to Rescue People Biden Left Behind
A lot of organizations are being stood up to continue the evacuation. I think we are going to see various versions of non conventional assisted recovery (NAR)/unconventional assisted recovery (UAR) by private entities and volunteer organizations. For those who would like to know what NAR/UAR consists of here is the unclassified open sources doctrine. I would add that most people have a very rudimentary understanding of unconventional warfare and have no idea this is one component of it because everyone tends to focus on the historical mission of overthrowing governments. This is one of the many reasons why training and education in unconventional warfare is so important. This doctrine obviously begs questions about a way ahead.
Nonconventional Assisted Recovery (NAR) - Personnel recovery conducted by indigenous/surrogate personnel that are trained, supported, and led by special operations forces, unconventional warfare ground and maritime forces, or other government agencies’ personnel that have been specifically trained and directed to establish and operate indigenous or surrogate infrastructures. Also called NAR. (JP 3-50) (Also refer to DODI 3002.04, Nov 17, 2014.)
Unconventional Assisted Recovery (UAR) - Nonconventional Assisted Recovery conducted by special operations forces. (JP 3-50)
Unconventional Assisted Recovery Coordination Cell (UARCC) - A compartmented special operations forces facility, established by the joint force special operations component commander, staffed on a continuous basis by supervisory personnel and tactical planners to coordinate, synchronize, and de-conflict nonconventional assisted recovery operations within the operational area assigned to the joint force commander. (JP 3-50)
Unconventional Assisted Recovery Mechanism (UARM) - UARM encompasses SOF activities related to the creation, coordination, supervision, command and control, and use of recovery mechanisms either in support of Combatant Commands, or as directed by the National Command Authorities. UARM’s may involve using an unconventional assisted recovery team (DODI 2310.6)
Unconventional Assisted Recovery Team (UART) - A designated special operations forces unconventional warfare ground or maritime force capable of conducting unconventional assisted recovery with indigenous or surrogate forces. (DODI 2310.6)
That said, everyone needs to do due diligence. I am seeing a lot of reports on social media asking for vetting various organizations that have already been established and are claiming 501(c)(3) status. I am not an expert in this area but some of those who may be in the know say that you cannot get 501(c)(3) status in a matter of days or weeks (or probably not even months). It is possible some existing charitable organizations are repurposing themselves to take on this mission but everyone should do due diligence when presenting with fundraising requests especially if they are advertising tax deductibility due to charitable status.
Former Special Forces Personnel Stay Behind in Afghanistan to Rescue People Biden Left Behind
Even though the Biden administration has stopped its efforts to evacuate people from Afghanistan, private citizens are working around the clock to rescue those who have been left behind.
The group Ark Salus intends to rescue Afghans who helped the U.S. military during nearly two decades of war.
“We are a group of private American citizens and former U.S. Special Operations advisors with unique expertise who are driven by a moral obligation to assist and protect the Afghans who assisted and protected us,” the group’s website says.
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“With our experience and logistical capabilities, Ark Salus is positioned to fulfill our duty and mission to safeguard Afghans, their families and rescue them from Kabul. We will bring them to safety just as they brought safety to U.S. service members for two decades.”
Board member Travis Dale Peterson told The Daily Wire about the initial mission to evacuate the families of commandos.
“Myself and two others developed it about three weeks ago prior to the fall of Kabul,” the Air Force veteran said.
“Our goal was to evacuate the families of the commandos … so the commandos could stay and fight and stand for Kabul.”
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But once Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, the goal shifted to rescuing allies along with their loved ones.
Peterson and his team are former U.S. Special Forces personnel, so they understand how high the stakes are.
Should the U.S. resume its evacuation efforts?
Yes: 99% (938 Votes)
No: 1% (8 Votes)
He highlighted the courage of Afghan troops and said these men are owed protection.
“They’re the most dedicated people I’ve ever seen,” Peterson said.
“Saved my life numerous times, countless times, and I owe them this and I’m talking to them daily, hourly, by the minute, from their command structure all the way down to their lowest guy, trying to come for them.”
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The veteran even called out the Biden administration’s shoddy withdrawal plan.
“For our administration to even think of trusting the Taliban is absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
“There’s still 500 American citizens in Kabul right now. American citizens that cannot get out and our government left them behind. Now, multiply that with all of the Afghans that helped us for the last 20 years that fought side by side with me.”
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“They know that death is coming for them,” Peterson added. “They know it’s the very next day, or the hour. They know their children, their wives are going to be burned alive. They know what’s happening and it’s disgusting.”
Peterson said his team has managed to rescue 200 to 300 people so far.
President Joe Biden’s missteps have led to a life-or-death situation for Afghans and stranded Americans alike.
Ark Salus should be applauded for its heroic efforts to save those who fought alongside American troops and essentially clean up the mess the Biden administration left behind in Afghanistan.
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This is a race against the clock. These courageous men are worthy of everyone’s prayers for safety.
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Cameron Arcand is a political commentator based in Orange County, California. His "Young Not Stupid" column launched at The Western Journal in January 2021, making Cameron one of the youngest columnists for a national news outlet in the United States. He has appeared on One America News, and has been a Young America's Foundation member since 2019.
Cameron Arcand is a political commentator based in Orange County, California. In 2017 as a school project, he founded YoungNotStupid.com, which has grown exponentially since its founding. He has interviewed several notable conservative figures, including Dave Rubin, Peggy Grande and Madison Cawthorn.
In September 2020, Cameron joined The Western Journal as a Commentary Writer, where he has written articles on topics ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic, the "Recall Gavin Newsom" effort and the 2020 election aftermath. The "Young Not Stupid" column launched at The Western Journal in January 2021, making Cameron one of the youngest columnists for a national news outlet in the United States. He has appeared on One America News, and has been a Young America's Foundation member since 2019.
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3. A Dishonorable Exit
The always thought provoking Eliot Cohen.
Excerpts:
Dishonor is its own disgrace, but it has practical effects as well. The consequences of dishonorable behavior can be seen in the commentary among America’s allies, and even more so in unofficial conversations with them. They often remark that if Afghanistan is an indication, the Biden administration’s view of the world—cold, transactional, self-centered if not indeed selfish—is simply that of its predecessor, presented with a tight smile rather than a petulant pout, but with equal amounts of smug belligerence. It’s all about deals, and that means that when the time comes, other allies’ fates too are negotiable.
Churchill was keenly aware of the limits of honor as a guide to action. But as he observed in his remarkably sympathetic eulogy of Neville Chamberlain, the man he had so bitterly opposed over the Munich agreement, we do not know the consequences of the actions of statesmen: “It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.” Which is why, he concluded, honor and prudence must walk hand in hand. If only that had been the case during the dishonorable summer of 2021.
A Dishonorable Exit
Honor demanded America rescue Afghans who served alongside us and assist those who took chances on their country because we asked.
“Honour is often influenced by that element of pride which plays so large a part in its inspiration,” Winston Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm. “An exaggerated code of honour leading to the performance of utterly vain and unreasonable deeds could not be defended, however fine it might look. Here, however, the moment came when Honour pointed the path of Duty, and when also the right judgment of the facts at that time would have reinforced its dictates.”
Churchill was reflecting on the Munich agreement of 1938, a decade after the event. His famous statement to the British government at the time—“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war”—has been invoked of late in the debate about America’s disengagement from Afghanistan. That old-fashioned word, honor, has much to say about our manner of leaving Afghanistan.
There are two separable issues here: the decision to liquidate America’s Afghan commitment, about which reasonable and prudent people could, did, and do disagree; and the manner in which it was conceived, executed, presented, and defended. And in that latter respect, the American exit was profoundly dishonorable.
Honor is not gratitude. It is, as Churchill noted, animated in large part by pride and not simply by a desire to repay favors or clear a debt. It is why so many veterans and serving officers went to extraordinary lengths to extract the Afghans who had fought alongside them. For the military, “No one left behind” is an unconditional code. It is why, for example, the forces retreating from North Korea’s Chosin Reservoir in 1950 lashed the frozen remains of their comrades to their vehicles. They were determined to bring everyone back.
In the current case, honor demanded that we do everything possible to rescue Afghans who served alongside us, not just those who applied for Special Immigrant Visas, which are numerically limited and hedged with qualifications (e.g., being paid by the U.S. government rather than by contractors). By any measure, the United States failed to do all it could. Consider the Afghan contractor who went to rescue then–Senator Joseph Biden in a snowbound helicopter in 2008, and whose life is now in danger.
Honor also demanded that we assist those who took chances on their country—the 200 female Afghan judges, for example—because we encouraged them to step up in dangerous circumstances. Conferring a benefit sometimes incurs moral obligations: It is one thing, after all, to launch extreme measures to save someone on death’s door, another to withdraw such support once it has been extended. Senators of both parties (including the current president) celebrated the opening of Afghan society; it is dishonorable to turn our backs on those we encouraged.
Honor is seen not through a window, but in a mirror. It is the hard question about whether we have lived up to our own moral code, and the code we proclaim for others. In one definition, it is what shapes what we do when no one is looking and no one will know. It is the acceptance of responsibility, not in a meaningless formulation like “The buck stops here,” but in the acceptance of consequences and in an honest reckoning when we fall terribly short.
After the bombing of the Beirut barracks in 1983 in which 241 Marines died, no civilian and no officer took responsibility for a series of calamitous mistakes that led up to the disaster. In an act of moral exasperation, Lieutenant General Al Gray, then commander of Fleet Marine Forces Atlantic, offered his resignation. He was not in the chain of command, but he was appalled that no one had been willing to accept some kind of accountability for a monumental screw up. His offer was declined, and he eventually became the 29th commandant of the Marine Corps, revered not only because of his professional expertise but because of the moral core that informed his leadership.
Honour requires the acceptance of risk. It is not about cost-benefit analysis or trade-offs, which is why the military is routinely willing to put the lives of many in hazard to rescue a few. But it also ennobles military service. That is why so many military people and veterans bristle at pity, as though their sacrifices and those of their families made them into victims and not into people who chose to conduct their lives in accordance with enduring values. It is why they want and deserve respect rather than sympathy.
At some point, Congress will probe the striking incompetence of the final six months of America’s Afghan War, which was only partly redeemed by the determination and improvisation of American troops and civilians on the ground in its last two weeks. Why was the withdrawal date set for the middle of the fighting season? What sort of military advice did the president get and, in particular, why did we cap the number of troops who could be deployed for the mission? Why was there no mobilization of civilian resources over the spring and summer—at State and elsewhere—to notify and prepare to process the Afghans we were exposing to the gravest danger? To what extent did we consult with allies who had troops on the ground, and to what extent did we simply drag them along with us? What did the intelligence really say? Why was the administration so blithely confident that all would go well, confident enough that the president could assure Americans that there would be no Saigon-in-1975 moment? Why did some senior members of the administration think they could head off on their holidays on the very verge of this hazardous withdrawal?
Such questions are appropriate topics for a legislative investigation. But at the same time and in parallel, there should be a moral audit of an administration that repeatedly disparaged Afghans who had suffered far more than had Americans, and who will now pay a much higher price. There should be some soul-searching about the untruths and half truths, like the inflated claim that there were 300,000 Afghan security forces. There should be an acceptance of the responsibility that so many, including the president, share for encouraging Afghans to think that we would stand with them.
Dishonor is its own disgrace, but it has practical effects as well. The consequences of dishonorable behavior can be seen in the commentary among America’s allies, and even more so in unofficial conversations with them. They often remark that if Afghanistan is an indication, the Biden administration’s view of the world—cold, transactional, self-centered if not indeed selfish—is simply that of its predecessor, presented with a tight smile rather than a petulant pout, but with equal amounts of smug belligerence. It’s all about deals, and that means that when the time comes, other allies’ fates too are negotiable.
Churchill was keenly aware of the limits of honor as a guide to action. But as he observed in his remarkably sympathetic eulogy of Neville Chamberlain, the man he had so bitterly opposed over the Munich agreement, we do not know the consequences of the actions of statesmen: “It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events.” Which is why, he concluded, honor and prudence must walk hand in hand. If only that had been the case during the dishonorable summer of 2021.
4. US troops lingering in Pakistan ring alarm bells
Pakistan bases would provide a "near or edge of the horizon" capability rather than an "over the horizon" one. But I can't see Pakistan allowing its territory to be a forward operating base for CT operations.
US troops lingering in Pakistan ring alarm bells
Pakistan denies US troops leaving Afghanistan will be allowed access to its bases but hundreds are now inexplicably in-country
PESHAWAR – Although Pakistan officially acknowledged the landing of military planes carrying hundreds of US troops from Afghanistan at Islamabad airport on August 29, it’s still not clear why many are still lingering in the country and not returning to the US or Qatar airbase.
Gul Bukhari, a British-Pakistani journalist, columnist and rights activist, tweeted on Tuesday, “Question for anyone with some insight into this: With huge bases in Qatar & Bahrain, and thousands of five and seven-star hotels in the UAE, why have US military personnel been flown to Pakistan?”
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has denied that the US will be given access to Pakistan military bases after withdrawing from Afghanistan.
An American military presence would be controversial considering US forces violated Pakistan sovereignty in the mission to assassinate al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was living secretly near a Pakistan military base, in May 2011.
In November that year, a skirmish between US-led NATO and Pakistani forces on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border killed 28 Pakistani soldiers and sparked nationwide protests that forced the government to withdraw US access to its Shamsi airbase and suspend NATO supply lines in the country.
With that history in mind, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad on August 30 confirmed the arrival of US troops but ruled out that they would remain in the country. In a press event in Islamabad, Ahmad revealed that the American troops who arrived from Afghanistan had been issued transit visas ranging from 21 to 30 days.
On Tuesday, Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry tried batting on a sticky wicket by tweeting that a total of 10,302 NATO and allied forces landed at Islamabad airport and that 9,032 have already departed. “There were only 155 Americans out of total 10,302 people arrived Sunday and among them, only 42 are still here who would leave today,” he added.
A US Air Force crewman assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron prepares to receive US soldiers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, aboard a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the final noncombatant evacuation operation missions at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan, August 30, 2021. Photo: AFP via EyePress News
That may or may not be true. Some have noted that reservations at major Pakistan hotels are still frozen and that four and five-star hotels in Islamabad, Karachi and even Peshawar are not taking booking requests, regretting politely that rooms are already booked.
That, of course, does not signify the presence of US troops in Pakistan but some have noted authorities should have lifted the three-week moratorium on making reservations if NATO and US troops have truly already departed the country.
Last month, the government put a moratorium on reservations at all major hotels in Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar to arrange the accommodation for what the government said would be thousands of foreigners including diplomats, staff of foreign missions, journalists and others being evacuated from Afghanistan.
Aimal Wali, president Awami National Party (ANP) Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and the son of ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan, said the hotel booking speculation was a smokescreen.
“The US Army is in Islamabad but not at any hotel. All pictures circulating of the US Army are edited. Where are they then? {In} A complex, which can accommodate more than 30,000 soldiers,” Aimal claimed in a tweet Tuesday.
“Mr. Absolutely Not” would you clarify the situation. Was the parliament informed? Even if you claim it is a safe exodus, why wasn’t the parliament taken into confidence? Mind it, they haven’t come to leave, they’ve come to stay,” he tweeted.
As pictures of US Marines in the passenger lounge of Islamabad airport went viral on social media, with an online uproar claiming Prime Minister Imran Khan had reneged on a statement he gave in June to HBO’s documentary news series on Axios.
Khan had categorically said “absolutely not” when asked in the interview if Pakistan would allow the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to use Pakistani bases for cross-border counterterrorism missions after US forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan delivers a speech during the Refugee Summit Islamabad to mark 40 years of hosting Afghan refugees, in Islamabad, February 17, 2020. Photo: AFP / Aamir Qureshi
Shahid Raza, an Islamabad-based security analyst, told Asia Times that there was likely some tacit understanding between Washington and Islamabad on how to combat the apparent growing regional security threat posed by Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K).
US President Joe Biden responded to ISIS-K’s suicide bomb attack that killed 13 US troops and at least 170 others at Kabul Airport on August 26 with “over-the-horizon” drone strikes on IS-K targets, said to be launched from Qatar.
Questions are now swirling if the US will be allowed to launch similar attacks from Pakistan.
“Yes, there seems to be some tacit understanding between the US and Pakistan to counter the growing ISIS-K activities in the region, which is a mutual threat to be met with collective efforts.”
Raza said that ISIS-K is linked with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has recently ramped up its attacks on Pakistan state and associated targets. The Taliban freed many captured TTP fighters including a top leader after seizing control of the country.
“The bulk of IS-K human resources has come from the TTP’s defectives who joined the group when it was launched in 2015 as an offshoot of TTP,” he added.
The organization, he said, not only posed a security threat to the US and Pakistan, but also China, Iran, Russia and even the Taliban.
“Pakistan is in a significant position to leverage the IS-K threat properly on a policy basis because it is going to be on the top of agenda items between the US and Pakistan. In the future, US-Pakistan collaboration on this issue will emerge more tangible,” Raza opined.
Pakistan has a long, if not vexed, history of military cooperation with the US dating back to 1947. In 1959, then-military dictator General Ayub Khan allowed as many as 1,600 US forces to use the Badaber airbase in Peshawar for intelligence-gathering and spying on the erstwhile Soviet Union.
In 1970, the US forces exited and Pakistan Air Force resumed control of the base.
During Operation Enduring Freedom, former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf gave US forces logistical support for their units in Afghanistan to wage the war on terror.
Pakistani soldiers at Shamsi airbase in a file photograph provided by the Pakistani military’s public relations arm. Photo: Agencies
Musharraf also provided basing rights to the US military at Jacobabad airbase (Sindh), Shamsi airbase (Balochistan), Dalbandin base (Balochistan), Pasni base (Balochistan) and Samungli base (Balochistan).
Shamsi airbase was exclusively used to conduct drone operations in northwest Pakistan and housed several US military personnel. Blackwater employees were also involved in these operations. The CIA and US Air Force jointly developed the airfield, which the US was forced to leave in 2011.
US forces also used PAF base Nur Khan (Sindh), Tarbela Ghazi airbase (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and PAF base Peshawar (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) for their operations in Afghanistan and the tribal stretch near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
In late May, the Pentagon claimed that Pakistan would allow the US military to use its airspace and have ground access to support its interests in Afghanistan after the US troop’s withdrawal.
David Helvey, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs, said while briefing the US Senate Armed Services Committee that the US would continue to use these facilities in Pakistan to play a critical role in restoring “peace” to Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials, however, continue to deny this is the case as an unknown number of US troops “transit” from Afghanistan through Pakistan.
5. Tony Blair: Afghanistan withdrawal is ‘imbecilic’
Excerpts:
Blair cautioned against the imposition of “arbitrary deadlines” for the evacuation of Afghans who helped the allied forces. “We have a moral obligation to keep at it until all those who need to be are evacuated,” he said.
Blair also called for a new “contact group” among the G7 group of wealthy nations to hold the new Afghan regime to account. The group should work alongside NATO and Europe, he said, with a list of “incentives, sanctions and actions,” intended to keep Taliban abuses in check.
“This is urgent,” Blair said. “The disarray of the past weeks needs to be replaced by something resembling coherence, and with a plan that is credible and realistic.”
In an article for the Mail on Sunday, U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the U.S. would have the U.K.’s “complete support” if the U.S. were permitted and decided to stay longer in Afghanistan.
Tony Blair: Afghanistan withdrawal is ‘imbecilic’
Politico · by Annabelle Dickson · August 22, 202
‘The world is now uncertain of where the West stands,’ wrote Blair, who was UK prime minister during the 2001 Afghanistan invasion.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair | Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images
By
August 22, 2021 11:12 am
LONDON — The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is “tragic, dangerous, unnecessary,” Tony Blair said Saturday.
The former U.K. prime minister claimed U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to pull troops out of the country had been done “in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars.'”
Biden’s decision has come under scrutiny in recent days as Taliban militants overran the country as western forces withdrew ahead of an end-of-August deadline. The Afghan government has fallen and western allies are scrambling to evacuate their citizens and allied Afghans.
Blair, who was prime minister during the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan alongside the U.S. in 2001, acknowledged “serious” mistakes had been made over the last 20 years. But he warned: “The world is now uncertain of where the West stands because it is so obvious that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in this way was driven not by grand strategy but by politics.”
“Russia, China and Iran will see and take advantage. Anyone given commitments by Western leaders will understandably regard them as unstable currency,” he said.
Blair cautioned against the imposition of “arbitrary deadlines” for the evacuation of Afghans who helped the allied forces. “We have a moral obligation to keep at it until all those who need to be are evacuated,” he said.
Blair also called for a new “contact group” among the G7 group of wealthy nations to hold the new Afghan regime to account. The group should work alongside NATO and Europe, he said, with a list of “incentives, sanctions and actions,” intended to keep Taliban abuses in check.
“This is urgent,” Blair said. “The disarray of the past weeks needs to be replaced by something resembling coherence, and with a plan that is credible and realistic.”
In an article for the Mail on Sunday, U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the U.S. would have the U.K.’s “complete support” if the U.S. were permitted and decided to stay longer in Afghanistan.
6. The UK and US are feuding over the Afghanistan withdrawal, with British ministers calling the president 'doolally' and Biden ignoring Boris Johnson's calls
The special relationship is going through some special testing.
The UK and US are feuding over the Afghanistan withdrawal, with British ministers calling the president 'doolally' and Biden ignoring Boris Johnson's calls
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden.
Getty
- UK and US officials are sniping at each other in the wake of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
- Biden ignored Boris Johnson's call for three days, and Johnson has revived the "Sleepy Joe" nickname, reports say.
- The two countries will survive this damage, but they have to be careful, a former minister said.
10 Things in Politics: The latest in politics & the economy
A furious war of words between the US and UK over the chaotic troop withdrawal from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan has seen a British cabinet minister call President Joe Biden "doolally" and the US president ignore the prime minister's calls.
It exposes serious fault lines in the two countries' "special relationship" at a time when the growing threats of China and radical Islam mean international cooperation is more important than ever.
So-called "briefing wars" — in which officials snipe at each other via comments to the press, often anonymously — between London and Washington were, perhaps, inevitable given the scale of the chaos in Afghanistan after Biden announced in April that he would withdraw remaining US troops from the country.
While Boris Johnson's government initially went along with the decision, there has been fury and indignation in Westminster toward Biden following the chaotic scenes in Kabul, where both countries scrambled to evacuate nationals and allies after the Taliban's lightning-fast takeover of the country.
And according to The Sunday Times, Johnson had started referring to Biden as "Sleepy Joe" — reviving former President Donald Trump's favorite nickname — and sees Biden as "lightweight and inward-looking."
Johnson and Biden at the 2021 G7 summit in England.
Getty
Transatlantic relations would appear, then, to be at a low ebb, and Biden also appears to have damaged US standing within NATO.
Lord Robertson, who was secretary general of NATO when its member forces entered Afghanistan in 2001, described the withdrawal in a Thursday Policy Exchange event as a "hasty, crassly handled surrender to the very people that we fought and defeated 20 years ago."
"NATO and the West, whatever we like to think, have been weakened, that remarkable solidarity of 20 years ago has been damaged, and the mighty United States of America has been humiliated," he added.
Members of the UK Armed Forces taking part in the evacuation of entitled personnel from Kabul airport, in Afghanistan in August 2021.
LPhot Ben Shread/UK MOD Crown copyright 2021/Handout via REUTERS
But there are compelling reasons to believe that the transatlantic relationship will survive this damage.
It appears abundantly clear that the UK government prefers working with Biden, and his commitment to multilateral institutions like NATO and the UN, than they did working with a mercurial and unpredictable Trump — even as Johnson reportedly said offhand last week that "we would be better off with Trump."
This transatlantic relationship has also survived plenty of low ebbs before and has frequently demonstrated an ability to survive personal antipathy between its leaders.
"I've always worked broadly on the basis that the depth of the relationship between the US and UK is so strong that individuals can't affect it," Alistair Burt, a former UK Foreign Office minister for South Asia — which includes Afghanistan — told Insider.
"It's too strong to be affected by individuals and it's too strong to have been affected by something like this."
But if the briefing war doesn't end soon, that damage in the coming years may become more severe.
"The public briefing war has got to come to an end as quickly as possible," Burt said.
"There is nothing to be gained from widening a rift between the US and the UK in relation to this. All it can do is please the enemies of both."
Those "enemies" range from ISIS-K to Russia and China, whose geostrategic positions are only strengthened by division among NATO powers.
"Understandably in the heat of the circumstances and the misery of Kabul, sharp comments can be expected," Burt said.
"But now that has come to an end, everyone must realize that going forward the relationship between the US and the UK — on defense, security, and intelligence — remains as close as possible."
7. Not clear yet if US is withdrawing or regearing
Key points:
That can be fixed. If Biden wants to boost US credibility (or stop the bleeding), there are several steps to take. First, he must honor the pledges that he made during the withdrawal.
That means tracking down the ISIS-K terrorists that planned and executed the attacks on Kabul airport. More broadly, while the national security environment has evolved and the US must now focus on great power competition, the US national security apparatus must remain alert to terrorist threats and act to thwart and destroy them.
The other promise to be kept is the pledge to compete with China across the various domains of 21st-century great power competition. That demands a real strategy, one that goes beyond the articulation of threats and fuzzy, ill-defined ways to counter them. Empty platitudes and hand-waving cannot substitute for hard choices.
The second step, therefore, is concrete action to strengthen the US capacity to compete across those domains. It means funding the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to boost the US military’s ability to fight. It means redoubled efforts to strengthen alliances, and promoting deeper integration not only between the US and its allies, but among those allies themselves.
Efforts to thicken the weave of security relations must be whole of government projects. The new great power competition is as much diplomatic and economic as it is military. Washington must consult with allies and partners across a range of initiatives, ensuring that all views are heard and all parties are contributing.
A deeply integrated partnership between the US and its allies, one in which dependence runs both ways, is the best way to ensure the all sides live up to their commitments. If this evolution follows the withdrawal from Afghanistan, then the optimists will have been right after all.
Not clear yet if US is withdrawing or regearing
While many see Afghan retreat as faltering resolve for global leadership, it's just as likely a major generational policy reset is under way
Caution isn’t fashionable, but it is too early to know the implications of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. That hasn’t stopped debates from getting louder and more energetic, with emotion substituting for evidence, clarity for reality and projection for facts.
On one end of the spectrum, developments herald the end of US global leadership. On the other, Biden’s decision is part of a strategic vision that prepares the United States for the most pressing geopolitical challenges.
Typical of the pessimists is commentary by a group of Canadian luminaries, former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy among them, who argue that events in Afghanistan are more proof that “the US has lost the primacy it once enjoyed in international affairs,” and are another demonstration of “faltering resolve for global leadership” that challenges “America’s commitment to work with allies in upholding the international order.”
David Rothkopf, a Washington insider and shrewd geopolitical analyst, counters that withdrawal is “part of a major, generational, foreign policy reset,” that if carried out “consistent with the president’s vision … will be seen as a watershed in a return to American global leadership.”
If it’s too early to know which is right, we can better understand the factors that will determine the outcome, rather than merely accepting any judgment as gospel.
First, sadly, foreign policy messes are not unprecedented. A brief list includes the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, the subsequent failed Desert 1 rescue mission that resulted in the deaths of eight US service members, and the 1975 withdrawal from Saigon that will forever be remembered by the photograph of a US military helicopter atop a building with a long line of evacuees snaking across the roof.
Three unidentified US hostages speak to the press while their Iranian captors, left and right, watch closely at the besieged US embassy in Tehran in November 1979. Photo: AFP / IRNA-files
There have been violent attacks on US military and civilian personnel: the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 307 soldiers and wounded 150 more; the 1996 Khobar Towers attack that left 19 dead and 498 wounded; and of course, the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that claimed nearly 3,000 lives and left more than 6,000 others injured.
All are dwarfed by the more than 58,000 US soldiers who lost their lives in Vietnam. For comparison, fewer than 2,500 US military personnel died in Afghanistan.
That record should encourage caution. Neither the size of the embarrassment nor the death toll tells us anything about US commitment or credibility. US governments survived worse debacles than Afghanistan and the country’s image rebounded. Grim photographs and foreign policy losses are not determinative.
The real damage to US leadership stems from two sources. The first is the readiness of successive administrations to end the assertiveness that characterized US foreign policy since the 1980s and reached its apogee in the George W Bush years.
While their motives differed (and results varied), both Obama and Trump sought to withdraw the US presence from various corners of the globe. In conversations with Asian and European allies, both feared that Trump’s defeat did not remove the “America First” impulse that animated his foreign policy and worried that it could return, even if Trump himself did not.
They saw in Biden’s pledge to “Build Back Better” a muted, but no less pernicious, version of this same sentiment.
Those like Rothkopf and Harvard professor Steven Walt counter that withdrawal from Afghanistan is not a broader retreat, but is instead an effort to marshal forces and focus on vital geopolitical challenges, most notably China.
Joe Biden speaks at a Build Back Better event last year. Photo: AFP / Olivier Douliery
President Biden has repeated that rationale whenever he has explained his decision-making about Afghanistan – and again this week to mark the end of the withdrawal – and framed “Build Back Better” as a way to rebuild a domestic consensus that would support an activist foreign policy.
US leadership is also affected by the expectations of other countries, both allies and adversaries. Critics warn that US withdrawal is proof that Washington cannot be trusted, whatever its stated intention.
Media in China have encouraged that perception. In this argument, Biden’s refusal to stay in Afghanistan anticipates the fate of US allies elsewhere in the world. Informal surveys of allies (in Asia at least) reveal that they think otherwise.
Allies distinguish themselves from the Afghan government and military and are even offended by the comparison. They continue to believe that they can count on the United States, as long as they are ready to do their part.
Substantial scholarship concludes that past actions don’t weigh heavily on immediate political calculations of credibility by either allies or adversaries. Dartmouth’s Jennifer Lind has looked hard at this problem and “this just isn’t how leaders reason in the midst of crises,” she said.
The second challenge to US credibility focuses on competence. The ugly withdrawal – and no matter how successful it may prove to be, it will likely be remembered for the chaotic first 24 hours – has tarred the US military’s image and sowed doubts about its ability to deliver on promises, regardless of the political readiness to honor those commitments.
Here, the skeptics are on firmer ground. In Calculating Credibility, Daryl Press argues that a country’s credibility is a product of the military power it has to honor its commitments and the interest in doing so, and those calculations reflect the circumstances of the immediate crisis rather than a historical accounting.
Chinese President Xi Jinping reviews a military display by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy in the South China Sea on April 12, 2018. Photo: Xinhua
That analysis distinguishes this moment from debacles of the past. Today, China appears to have both the military capability and the interest that would allow it to check the US if Washington sought to honor its defense commitments. US credibility is threatened by capacity, not intent.
That can be fixed. If Biden wants to boost US credibility (or stop the bleeding), there are several steps to take. First, he must honor the pledges that he made during the withdrawal.
That means tracking down the ISIS-K terrorists that planned and executed the attacks on Kabul airport. More broadly, while the national security environment has evolved and the US must now focus on great power competition, the US national security apparatus must remain alert to terrorist threats and act to thwart and destroy them.
The other promise to be kept is the pledge to compete with China across the various domains of 21st-century great power competition. That demands a real strategy, one that goes beyond the articulation of threats and fuzzy, ill-defined ways to counter them. Empty platitudes and hand-waving cannot substitute for hard choices.
The second step, therefore, is concrete action to strengthen the US capacity to compete across those domains. It means funding the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to boost the US military’s ability to fight. It means redoubled efforts to strengthen alliances, and promoting deeper integration not only between the US and its allies, but among those allies themselves.
Efforts to thicken the weave of security relations must be whole of government projects. The new great power competition is as much diplomatic and economic as it is military. Washington must consult with allies and partners across a range of initiatives, ensuring that all views are heard and all parties are contributing.
A deeply integrated partnership between the US and its allies, one in which dependence runs both ways, is the best way to ensure the all sides live up to their commitments. If this evolution follows the withdrawal from Afghanistan, then the optimists will have been right after all.
Brad Glosserman is deputy director of and visiting professor at the Center for Rule-Making Strategies at Tama University as well as senior adviser (nonresident) at Pacific Forum. He is the author of Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions (Georgetown University Press, 2019).
8. Defense Sec Lloyd Austin ordered by House committee to submit Afghanistan plan on evacuations
As others have proposed I hope a non-partisan commission will be established to examine the withdrawal.
Defense Sec Lloyd Austin ordered by House committee to submit Afghanistan plan on evacuations
'The Five' reacts to reports alleging the Taliban is carrying out mass killings and weighs in on the U.S. response to the Afghanistan crisis
The House Armed Services Committee adopted an amendment Friday requiring Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to detail various elements of the Pentagon’s activities in Afghanistan, including how military officials plan to facilitate the evacuation of American citizens who were left behind.
Proposed by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., the committee’s ranking Republican member, the amendment also directs Austin to brief Congress on the Pentagon’s plan to maintain air superiority in Afghanistan, its ongoing intelligence and surveillance operations, as well as counterterrorism operations.
Rogers’ amendment was one of dozens of measures adopted during the committee’s deliberations this week on the National Defense Authorization Act. The Alabama lawmaker and other GOP lawmakers have pressured the Biden administration to be transparent about their policies on Afghanistan following a chaotic U.S. withdrawal.
Representatives for Rogers and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
A separate amendment introduced by Rogers that proposed increasing the defense budget topline by $24 billion for a total of $740 billion drew bipartisan support from committee lawmakers. The vote was seen as a rebuke to President Biden, who proposed defense spending of $715 billion in fiscal 2022.
The House Armed Services Committee passed its version of the NDAA by a vote of 57-2.
"I am pleased that the Armed Services Committee once again passed a National Defense Authorization Act out of the Committee this morning," Rogers said in a statement earlier this week. "We did so in a bipartisan manner, including voting together to address the shortfall in the Biden budget."
"I thank Chairman Smith and our Republican and Democrat colleagues for their hard work on this year’s NDAA markup. I look forward to this bill moving to the floor and being signed into law," he added.
9. Failure in Afghanistan Has Roots in the All-Volunteer Military
I am not sure about the cause and effect of this thesis. Surely we can see a disconnect between the public and the military but I am not sure that is the primary or main cause of our failure in Afghanistan. Or asked another way would a conscript military have been successful in Afghanistan?
That said, I would like to see two things happen in the future. Any sustained intervention overseas must require a specific authorization for the use of military force or a declaration of war. In conjunction with the president's request for an AUMF or declaration of war he must include a proposal for how to pay for the operation, either a rise in taxes or a public war bond plan and Congress must pass legislation to do either or both. And failure by Congress to enact legislation to fund the intervention should lead to culmination of the operation with a set prior (say 30 days). Naive I know and it will never happen. But one can dream.
Sun Tzu: He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue… In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns
Failure in Afghanistan Has Roots in the All-Volunteer Military
For the past three decades, careerism among senior officers coupled with the disconnect between the American public and the All-Volunteer Force have led to failed and unnecessary overseas military interventions.
By Paul Cavallo
September 2021 Proceedings Vol. 147/9/1423
The tragedy that unfolded over the past several weeks in Afghanistan began with the creation of the “all-volunteer” military in 1973 and the self-promoting careerism that has stalked the Pentagon ever since. Too few leaders have been willing to speak truth to power and say no to overseas military adventurism that had little bearing on the safety and security of this nation. And it goes without saying that those in charge when the war begins are never those who have to finish it.
We saw this most clearly when, in 1990-91, America sent its young warriors into the deserts of the Middle East. We called it "The Gulf War” and “Desert Storm,” but it was, in reality, America’s first mercenary war. The Bush administration cut a deal with the Saudis and Kuwaitis: our men, their money. Kuwaiti “princes” lived large in hotels from Saudi Arabia to Paris while our young soldiers and Marines dug fighting holes in the desert under a searing sun.
U.S. Marines in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. (Naval Institute archives)
The peacetime, all-volunteer military, after all, was a good job with benefits and perks. And that “war” went relatively well and quickly with few American servicemembers killed or injured, to the high praise of the U.S. public who were entranced, awed, and seduced by the lethality, performance, and accuracy of our high-tech weapons, while forgetting that the troops on the ground, in the desert, held it all together and made the irrefutable success of the war possible. Yet it was also the start of the forever wars. Saddam Hussein remained in power after the war and the U.S. military remained in the Middle East—enforcing no-fly zones and oil embargoes on Iraq with naval forces in the Persian Gulf and air and land forces based in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
While it might be a “chicken or the egg” argument, it is hard not to see that the permanent increase of U.S. military presence in the Middle East went hand in hand with the rise of militant Islam and anti-American terrorism. How many Americans remember the 1996 terrorist bombing of a U.S. Air Force barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia? Nineteen U.S. servicemembers were killed and 498 wounded. Two years later, the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya killed 12 Americans and hundreds of civilians and wounded 4,500 people. Then came the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole (DDG-67) in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and injuring dozens of others. Less than a year later came the 9/11 attacks, answered shortly by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. A little over a year later, under the false pretense that non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would be used against the United States, came the invasion of Iraq.
The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 U.S. servicemembers and injured
nearly 500 more.
By the end of 2003, U.S. special operations forces had completed much of their mission in Afghanistan to capture or kill senior leaders and high-value targets within both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pentagon, however, rather than putting their "swords" away somehow decided to "nation build" a medieval land of warring tribes into a Western-style democracy, ignoring the fact that our democracy took centuries and many great wars to achieve.
For the past 31 years, the brunt of the cost has been borne by the all-volunteer force. The majority of American citizens have not served (none were required to), and most know few who have. A few dozen—or even a few hundred—servicemembers killed per year was the cost of doing business. But where were the generals and admirals who should have stood up to the civilian leaders, without compromise, to say “enough,”—that foreign wars too often leave our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines dead and forgotten, and for what? Were the military’s senior leaders just following along in-line, waiting for their moment, their chance for another star, or a richly coveted post-retirement job with a "vendor." Were they just inured to the burdens of the profession? Unable to see the giant machine in which they were cogs—the failed foreign policy that resulted in the spilling of blood and national treasure for questionable (if any) gain.
It is no surprise that the "war" in Afghanistan eventually became a bottomless money pit. More than a trillion dollars was spent; did it make our nation safer, or did it just make Washington-connected corporations rich? Some of that money was funneled back to Congress through campaign donations and favors, all the while young Americans were being killed and wounded. Walk into any Veterans Administration hospital and see first-hand the reality that was brought home.
So, with the most recent deaths and injuries at Kabul International airport—clearly caused by a lack of planning, foresight, and courage at the top—we witness more evidence of the ongoing tragedy and travesty that is American "foreign policy" and the willingness of senior military leaders to go along with it. Will we ever learn? History suggests, no.
10. The U.S. ground war in Afghanistan is over. Now it’s the Navy’s turn.
Go Navy, beat ..... no, as a former soldier, I cannot finish that sentence. :-) But I do agree we need investment in our naval capabilities. And air power as well. We need a holistic defense capability, air land, sea, cyber, space, and special operations. I support that.
The U.S. ground war in Afghanistan is over. Now it’s the Navy’s turn.
09/03/2021 05:53 PM EDT
Expect aircraft carriers to stay in the Middle East, U.S. officials say, even as the military tries to pivot to China.
Sailors are on board an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter on the flight deck of aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in July. | Quinton A. Lee/U.S. Navy, via AP
09/03/2021 05:53 PM EDT
The American military’s involvement in Afghanistan could soon become largely the Navy’s responsibility, an ironic twist for a counterterrorism mission in a landlocked country.
Although the Navy has long privately bristled at the requirement to deploy one or even two aircraft carriers at a time to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf to support the ground fights in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the lack of U.S.-controlled airfields near Afghanistan could mean more planes taking off from decks at sea.
And that could set off a fresh round of requests for more funding — and more hand-wringing among those who want the U.S. military to focus more on China.
“I think a lot of that mission is going to fall on the Navy,” said a Navy official who requested to speak on the condition of anonymity because the Pentagon’s plans have yet to be finalized. “This is a great example of why we need more money to operate forward — things like this are what we’re built to do, but we need the funding and support to keep doing it, and that hasn’t always been there.”
Worried about the reemergence of ISIS-K, or an emboldened al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Biden administration has pledged to continue to launch “over the horizon” airstrikes from drones and manned aircraft. But it has yet to detail a plan for how those aircraft will collect intelligence on targets, or conduct sustained missions from such great distances.
Air Force pilots flying from the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar or Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates have for years hit targets in Afghanistan, but they first have to wind their way through the Gulf around Iran, and back up through Pakistan, refueling at least once and often spending hours in the air before circling over a target.
“Land-based fighters in Qatar or Kuwait may not have the time on station to do close-air support missions for special operations forces,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer now at the Hudson Institute. He said that could lead to the use of more long-loitering drones, and Navy aircraft flown from the North Arabian Sea.
Parking a carrier in the North Arabian Sea cuts some of that flight time, and allows pilots to fly over Pakistan before entering Afghanistan’s air space.
But those deployments mean wear and tear on crews and ships, and also require pulling assets from the Pacific, where the Biden administration says Washington’s true strategic interests lie.
That tension is on full display now. The Japan-based aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan flew F/A-18 Hornets over Kabul during the evacuation operation last month, and remains in the North Arabian Sea alongside the USS Iwo Jima, which launched the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit into Kabul at the same time.
For decades, the U.S. has based an aircraft carrier in Japan to project U.S. power in the Pacific on a consistent basis. The call to send the Reagan to the Middle East this spring raised hackles among China hawks as it left the entire Pacific region without a fully operational aircraft carrier for the entire summer.
Reagan's absence was perhaps felt most acutely in June, when a large Russian naval task force — the biggest since the end of the Cold War, according to Moscow — edged uncomfortably close to Hawaii, leading the U.S. to scramble F-22s from Pearl Harbor to intercept bombers accompanying the flotilla.
At the time, the Reagan was in the Indian Ocean heading for its Afghanistan mission, and the USS Carl Vinson was still undergoing predeployment drills near Hawaii, practicing launching F-35s for the first time.
The Reagan took over the Middle East mission from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, allowing the ship to finally head home to Virginia after back-to-back deployments that kept it at sea for over 300 of the previous 500 days.
“They were supposed to remain in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, but they ended up spending most of their deployment in the Middle East,” 2nd Fleet commander Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis told reporters when Eisenhower finally made it home in July.
“The Navy needs to get out from under that weight” of grinding deployments to the Middle East, Bryan Clark said. The Reagan will “likely remain there until relieved since the U.S. is now mounting counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and [drones] may not work for all situations.”
It won’t just be manned aircraft pulled into whatever continuing surveillance and strike missions deemed necessary by the Biden administration, however. Drones will undoubtedly play a significant role, and the relatively limited number of advanced, long-loitering aircraft available at any given time could also pull from the Indo-Pacific Command.
"Most of the airpower that we'll employ in Afghanistan is going to be unmanned, and my guess is that demand on these assets will go through the roof,” said Bryan McGrath, a former destroyer captain and managing director of the FerryBridge Group consulting firm. That increased demand is unlikely to “make things any easier for the [intelligence and surveillance] tasks necessary for keeping track of the Chinese navy."
Whatever form the continuing air war in Afghanistan looks like, it will set off rounds of new budgetary requests for the Air Force and Navy, most likely.
“You're going to hear the Air Force say they’re tied down and they don't have enough tankers” to refuel planes on long missions, said Brent Sadler, a retired Navy officer at the Heritage Foundation. “So give it to the Navy and let us build more fighters, because we need more fighters.”
On the other hand, “the Navy's gonna say, ‘we'll do it, but you’ve got to buy more aircraft carriers.’ So they're both going to look at it as a chance to buy more stuff.”
In the end, there are only so many carriers available, and these extended deployments have led to longer maintenance periods, which have impacted carrier deployments across the globe.
That material cost “is unlikely to stop [U.S. Central Command] from requesting to have a carrier in the region for over-the-horizon capabilities,” said Becca Wasser at the Center for a New American Security.
For decades, commanders across the Pentagon’s geographic commands have asked for, and received, aircraft carriers to shadow their coastlines, and DoD leadership and the Navy have rarely said no. If the Biden administration stays focused on hunting down ISIS-K and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, that’s unlikely to change in Central Command, even without U.S. troops to support in Afghanistan.
The Navy is getting some help, however. The new British carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is on her maiden cruise through the Pacific, stacked with F-35s flown by British and U.S. Marine pilots. This fall, Navy F-35 pilots will also start flying from a Japanese helicopter carrier, and in 2022 the new $13 billion aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford will deploy for the first time.
With more platforms will undoubtedly come more missions, and more requests. And if the past is prologue, those requests will get the green light.
11. Afghans With Ties to U.S. Who Could Not Get Out Now Live in Fear
It would be useful to see an accounting of the SIV process - how many applied, how many were rejected. how many were in process and got out, how many were in process and did not get out, and how many were properly processed completed and approved and did not get out and how many were properly processed completed approved and did not get out. And after determining those numbers we should examine the reasons why those numbers exist and what we could have done better. Were there process problems? Were there political problems? Were we really committed to getting those who work with the US out?
But before we complete that the question must be asked: How are we going to help these at-risk Afghans we left behind?
Afghans With Ties to U.S. Who Could Not Get Out Now Live in Fear
Thousands did not make it onto U.S. military evacuation flights. Many of them are now in hiding, worried for their safety and their future.
Afghans waving documents at U.S. Marines outside the wall of the airport in Kabul last month.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
By
Sept. 3, 2021, 1:14 p.m. ET
Armed Taliban militants were looking for Shah. They knew he worked as an interpreter for the United States government, and came to his provincial home at night. “Someone inside worked for the U.S. Army!” they shouted, threatening to shoot down the door.
Shah had already left for Kabul, where he is now in hiding. But he believes he is a hunted man. “I’m not feeling safe here anymore,” said Shah, whose application for a special immigrant visa to the United States is still in the works.
“The Taliban say they are not taking revenge, and they are forgiving everybody,” he said. “But I can’t believe them. Why did they come to my house looking for me?”
There are thousands like Shah, stuck in Afghanistan under a capricious and unpredictable Taliban rule, who did not make it onto U.S. military evacuation flights — those who worked for the U.S. Army or the government, and their families, and who were eligible for U.S. humanitarian visas. They know they are potential targets as the Taliban tighten their grip since taking over Kabul fully this week.
Taliban leaders have pledged to allow those with visas to leave once they reopen the main airport, which remained closed to commercial flights on Friday.
But those like Shah doubt the pledges of a group that they feel they cannot trust and that has ruled Afghanistan ruthlessly before. Trying to leave — or showing a special immigrant visa — could itself expose them to danger if the Taliban renege on their promises.
Taliban fighters at the airport in Kabul on Tuesday.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
So with the Taliban firmly in control on the street, they have gone into hiding. One U.S. government contractor and humanitarian visa applicant said he had gone underground — literally — with his pregnant wife and 1-year-old daughter in a system of tunnels. He said he didn’t believe Taliban promises and didn’t plan to risk leaving his hiding place.
There are also potentially hundreds of thousands of other Afghans — aid agency workers, officials from the defunct government, media employees, prominent women — who are fearful and laying low.
They are also eager to leave. This week, after evacuation flights from Kabul ended, there were reports of hundreds of people massing at border crossings with Iran and Pakistan.
“It’s because the country is collapsing,” said Astrid Sletten, a foreign aid worker who has remained in Kabul. “And everybody has a sister or daughter, and wondering what it is going to be like to be living under a Taliban regime.”
She added: “I think some people are literally saying I’d rather die than live in a Taliban regime.”
Despite Taliban pledges that no punishment would be exacted on anyone, many Afghans question the ability of the Taliban leadership to control their battle-hardened fighters.
Former government officials, aid workers and diplomats say Taliban leaders have barely managed to keep their well-armed rank-and-file in check. And there is deep uncertainty about when even that relative restraint will end.
On Friday, an uneasy calm settled on Kabul, four days after the Taliban took over and the last American forces left. Afghans waited for the Taliban to announce its new government.
In Kabul, the few women venturing out have been able to wear head scarves, rather than the face-covering burqa the Taliban imposed during its previous rule, and several dozen protested outside the palace, demanding the inclusion of women in a new government.
The Taliban’s leaders are still talking about showing inclusiveness. But they have made clear in filling lower-ranking positions so far that they are choosing from among their own.
Kabul residents interviewed by phone described a pervasive fear as Taliban rule steadily changed life around them.
Afghans arriving in Pakistan through the border crossing point in Chaman last month.
And as the economy spiraled deeper into crisis — with sharply rising prices and dwindling hard currency — many say they are eager to leave, particularly those eligible for the U.S. Special Immigration Visa, an emergency humanitarian visa that has been granted to interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. Army.
Their numbers remain unclear. Nobody — neither the U.S. government nor human rights groups — has an exact figure for these Afghans who have a direct connection with official America, but who did not make it out.
The Association of Wartime Allies, an advocacy group, estimates that there are 118,000 Afghans, including their families, who are still in Afghanistan and eligible for the visa.
The group wrote in a report at the end of August that “it is reasonable that nearly 1 percent of the Afghan population has in some way worked for, or are family members of those who worked for, the United States.” Afghanistan’s population is estimated at about 40 million.
“There are hundreds of thousands who remain trapped,” Adam Bates, a lawyer with the International Refugee Assistance Project, said Tuesday during a video news conference in the United States. “The majority of our clients were not able to leave Afghanistan on the evacuation flights.”
Taliban fighters guarding the money exchange in Kabul last month.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
How real their danger is remains unclear. There have been scattered reports of the Taliban carrying out executions as they swept the country, particularly at Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border — where 40 people associated with the government were killed, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Since taking Kabul on Aug. 15, the Taliban have conducted house-to-house searches and made arrests. Their methods rely heavily on intimidation. They have announced to family members of media workers, for instance, that they are looking for them, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The fact that they are looking for them is also a threat,’’ said Patricia Gossman of Human Rights Watch. “It’s the way a police state functions,” she added.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be. One spokesman told The Times that the group wanted to forget its past, but that there would be some restrictions.
“They have unleashed a lot of people who are interested in revenge,” she said. “People are eager to flee because it is not going to be survivable.”
For working Afghans attempting to adapt to Taliban rule, preliminary contacts have been dismaying. The new order means exclusion or segregation of women, a brutality of manner, and, always, the presence of weapons.
In the provinces, where new administrative appointments have been made, the Taliban appear to have relied only on themselves.
A market in Kabul last week.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
“Caretaker appointments at various levels — provincial, district, department and ministerial — have so far been drawn (almost) exclusively from the Taliban’s own ranks, with no sign of non-Taliban appointments,” the Afghanistan Analysts Network wrote on Wednesday.
An aide to a high-ranking official of the former government, who had been meeting with the Taliban, said by telephone from Kabul that his boss’s meetings with the new authorities had stopped.
Meanwhile, Afghans like Shah, the former interpreter, said that in some places the situation was terrifying. “One Talib will kill 10 people, and there is no court,” Shah said. “This is not a prepared government.”
An aid worker still in Kabul was similarly fearful.
“I get the sense that those they are putting in charge are trying to stop” random acts of brutality, the aid worker said. “But I also get the sense that they have little control.”
A line of people waiting outside Azizi Bank in Kabul on Aug. 29, the first day banks reopened in the capital.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Some aid agency employees who have continued to work were disturbed by their encounters with the new authorities, and plan to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.
The Taliban have encouraged them to continue working, these officials said, but there is always an air of menace.
“They always come to our compound with their guns and armed guards,’’ an aid worker in a northern province said by phone.
They were pressuring his agency to hire Taliban members, and to concentrate their aid work on long-held Taliban areas, he said, and would not allow women staff members to work.
“There are many women who don’t have hope,” said a female aid worker in Kabul who is attempting to leave. “If you want to live, you have to work. We don’t have bread at home to feed our children.”
“How are we going to survive in this country?” she asked.
Men and burqa-clad women riding on motorbikes in Kabul.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
12. Inside the Afghan Evacuation: Rogue Flights, Crowded Tents, Hope and Chaos
Let's face facts. A NEO executed under duress and in-extremis is always going to be chaotic and as we know even the best constructed plans do not survive contact. That said we must thoroughly (and as objectively as possible) examine the operation and examine the military as well as the interagency efforts.
Inside the Afghan Evacuation: Rogue Flights, Crowded Tents, Hope and Chaos
President Biden has insisted that the evacuation of Kabul was done as efficiently as possible. But key documents obtained by The New York Times suggest otherwise.
Crowds gathered daily outside of the international airport in Kabul after the Taliban took control of the government.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Sept. 3, 2021
WASHINGTON — On the last day of August, when President Biden called the airlift of refugees from Kabul an “extraordinary success,” senior diplomats and military officers in Doha, Qatar, emailed out a daily situation report marked “sensitive but unclassified.”
The conditions in Doha, according to their description, were getting worse. Almost 15,000 Afghan refugees were packed into airplane hangars and wedding-style tents at Al Udeid Air Base, home to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and nearby Camp As Sayliyah, a U.S. Army base in the Persian Gulf nation.
Two hundred and twenty-nine unaccompanied children were being held near the base, including many teenage boys who repeatedly bullied younger children. There were a “large number of pregnant women,” some of whom needed medical attention, and increasing reports of “gastrointestinal issues” among the refugees.
Tensions in the temporary shelters had “flared,” the report said, “due to prolonged stays and unpredictable exit dates.” At the Army base, “single males, including former Afghan military” had become unruly “and contraband weapons have been confiscated.” Overwhelmed, neither base was testing Afghan evacuees for the coronavirus.
The reports were daily distillations of the complexity, chaos and humanity behind the largest air evacuation in U.S. history, as scores of diplomats, troops, health workers, security officials and others scattered across the globe sought to rescue tens of thousands of refugees. Whatever plans the Biden administration had for an orderly evacuation unraveled when Kabul fell in a matter of days, setting off a frenzied, last-minute global mobilization.
Refugees pushed their way onto airplanes. Hundreds of children were separated from their parents. Rogue flights landed without manifests. Security vetting of refugees was done in hours or days, rather than months or years.
Mr. Biden and his aides have insisted that the evacuation of Kabul after the Taliban seized the city on Aug. 15 was done as efficiently as possible. But State Department emails and documents from the Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Defense Departments, as well as interviews with officials and refugee advocates, suggest otherwise.
The conditions at Doha were chronicled each morning after Kabul fell in a daily situation report emailed broadly to State Department and military officials on behalf of Brig. Gen. Gerald A. Donohue, the commander of the air base; Greta C. Holtz, a veteran ambassador who oversaw evacuation efforts in the city; and John Desrocher, the top diplomat in Qatar.
Within hours of Mr. Biden’s speech on Aug. 31 at the White House marking the end of America’s two-decade war, a private charter plane from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth-largest city, arrived at the air base in Doha — one of 10 way stations in eight countries — with no notice, carrying no American citizens but hundreds of Afghans. The manifest for the plane, apparently chartered by an ex-Marine’s law firm, offered “no clarity” about whether its passengers deserved special visas for helping American troops.
“There are multiple other ‘rogue’ flights that are seeking the same permissions” to land, emails from State Department officials sent that day said. “We have 300 people in Doha now who are basically stateless. Most have no papers.”
President Biden called the evacuation from Kabul an “extraordinary success.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Two days later, officials in Doha reported even more grim news: A 19-month-old child, who arrived from Kabul with “pre-existing conditions,” died at the air base amid ongoing concerns about dehydration, norovirus and cholera among the refugees.
“The child’s father is with her at the hospital,” officials wrote in an email with the subject line “Operation Allies Refuge SITREP No. 19.” “DOD and State are working to ensure the child’s remains will be processed and able to be returned to the family.”
Administration officials have acknowledged the rough conditions at Doha, but say they are working to improve them. White House officials declined to comment on the record for this article.
The total number of evacuees, and where they are currently waiting, is still not clear, though Mr. Biden said Tuesday that more than 120,000 had been evacuated. As of Friday, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said about 40,000 people had arrived in the United States at airports near Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Officials expect about 17,000 more to arrive by next Friday, and thousands more may ultimately end up living in a dozen other countries.
American officials have said the refugees are being thoroughly vetted, with the authorities feeding fingerprints, portraits and biographical information into federal databases to weed out potential risks. Mr. Mayorkas said the Defense Department had sent hundreds of biometric screening machines to 30 countries.
But unclassified briefing documents titled “2021 Afghanistan Repatriation Mission” reveal that in some cases, spotty information is being collected: Flight manifests have been at times incomplete or missing, visa or citizenship status is unknown, and there is a lack of basic demographic data.
The documents show that the flights into the United States started as a trickle. On Aug. 19, four days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, 226 people on two separate flights arrived at Dulles International Airport. Jordan Air JAV 4825 included 44 dogs — but no information about its 58 passengers.
Ten days later, on Aug. 29, 13 flights landed at Dulles carrying 3,842 people, including six refugees who tested positive for the coronavirus and six unaccompanied boys: four teenagers, one younger school-age boy and one toddler. Flight CMB 581, which landed that day at 6:38 p.m., carried 240 passengers. But government records provide few details: “about 3” American citizens, including two people over 65 and one passenger who tested positive for the virus.
The rest of the details are listed as unknown.
Mr. Mayorkas said of the about 40,000 people who had reached the United States from Afghanistan, about 22 percent were United States citizens and legal permanent residents and the rest were Afghans, including many who were at risk of retribution at the hands of the Taliban.
Refugees arrived at the U.S. Naval Station Rota in Spain on Tuesday.
Desperation at the gates of Kabul’s airport.
The confusion about the refugees began before they left Kabul, as overwhelmed consular officials struggled to identify and verify those who had valid claims to be evacuated.
A senior State Department official who was in Kabul described a desperate situation at the gates around the city’s airport and crowds that were so frenzied that officials worried they could slip “into a mob at any given moment.”
The Taliban changed its criteria at checkpoints “on a day-to-day, sometimes hour-by-hour basis,” the official said. At first, diplomats sent an electronic badge, or code, to Afghans who had been cleared for evacuation to show to guards at the gates. But it was shared so widely that officials no longer knew who should be let in.
“Within an hour everyone in the crowd had that new pass on their phones,” the official said.
“Every day was a constant improvisational effort to figure out what was going to work that day,” he said. “And I would say, everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make.”
Another official — a 25-year veteran of the State Department — arrived in Kabul on Aug. 17, two days after the Taliban took over and was immediately told to “work the gate.”
She described being sandwiched between security forces at all times while Afghan security forces swung sticks studded with nails at the crowd. Afghan guards frequently deployed flash-bang grenades and tear gas to try to disperse the crush of people. Both State Department officials described the events in Kabul in separate briefings to journalists but were not allowed to be identified under ground rules set by press officers.
As many as 30 unaccompanied children showed up at her gate each day, and were taken to a secure compound as officials sought to find their parents, before they were flown to Qatar, often alone.
“You couldn’t leave them there,” she said, recalling one boy, around 13 years old, who had blood all over his clothes. Someone in the crowd had been killed right in front of him, he told the American official.
“It was horrible, what people had to go through to get in,” she said.
Afghan refugees played soccer in a residential compound in Doha, Qatar, last week.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
A flight arrives in Doha without a manifest.
The first stop for many refugees has been the military bases at Doha, the first country to agree to temporarily host them.
Zainullah Zaki fought alongside U.S. Marines in the 2010 battle for Sangin, one of the deadliest campaigns of the 20-year Afghan war, and later worked in Kabul advising the U.S. Army. He has tried for years to get a visa to emigrate to America, but has been held up by his inability to get employment verification from a contractor that has long since folded.
He and his family arrived in Qatar on Aug. 18, where they remain at the military base. There is one small bed where his daughter sleeps, but the rest of his family — he and his wife and three other children — sleep on the floor without blankets or pillows.
“Conditions are not good,” he said in a WhatsApp message, though he added that there was now water and M.R.E.s, the packaged instant meals the military feeds to troops in the field. “It’s hot here and there is not a good place for sleeping.”
Not all refugees made their way to Doha by military transport.
The arrival of a private charter plane in Doha on Tuesday was a surprise to Ambassador Holtz, the veteran ambassador in Qatar who oversaw the evacuation efforts in the city.
In an email, she wrote: “Apparently the flight has landed with 300 people of unknown nationalities,” adding that the U.S. Central Command “didn’t want the Wing Commander to land the plane because it didn’t have ‘status.’ It had already landed.”
She added: “That is of concern.”
The unannounced arrival of the flight prompted a flurry of diplomatic communications between Doha and Washington as Ambassador Holtz and others rushed to find a place to put the refugees. Erin M. Barclay, a deputy assistant secretary of state, wrote that the plane was chartered by a Washington law firm known as the Federal Practice Group, “which we have not facilitated landing rights for nor have we received a final manifest for.”
Ambassador Holtz, reached in Doha, declined to comment, referring questions to the State Department press office. Ms. Barclay could not be reached for comment.
A spokesman for the law firm, who declined to be quoted by name, said he believed the flight was arranged by the firm’s founder, Eric S. Montalvo, a former U.S. Marine.
A biography of Mr. Montalvo on his website says that he “undertakes work in Afghanistan and abroad, navigating language and cultural barriers, interpreting complex international law and unprecedented issues, working directly with members of Congress, foreign embassies, foreign governmental ministries.”
A senior administration official said this week that the incident underscored the State Department’s concerns about what he called well-meaning but uncoordinated rescue flights being orchestrated by private individuals. The official said refugees on the flight from Mazar-i-Sharif were taken to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to determine whether they should be allowed to come to the United States.
Air Force members conducted a medical check on refugees arriving from Afghanistan at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Tuesday.Credit...Gordon Welters for The New York Times
A scramble to find places for refugees to land.
As they raced to evacuate refugees from Kabul, the most critical question facing the Biden administration was: where to put them?
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the administration had anticipated needing transit centers for an eventual evacuation. But within days of the collapse of the Afghan government, the Pentagon and the State Department rushed to secure more agreements with countries in Europe and the Middle East to allow refugees to be housed temporarily at 10 U.S. bases — officially known as lily pads because the refugees were intended to stay there only a short time.
At the same time, military officials began “Project Allies Welcome,” setting up temporary housing at eight military bases in the United States.
Dulles Airport became the primary entry point. Health officials scrambled to set up space to process and test evacuees for the coronavirus as well as to quarantine for 14 days those who tested positive.
But the process bogged down quickly as the numbers of refugees swelled. By Aug. 27, more than 15,000 refugees had arrived at Dulles and many of them waited for hours as customs officers struggled to process them for entry.
“Once flights have landed, the time to deplane has improved to under 12 hours, but there is still a significant amount of wait time,” the “2021 Afghanistan Repatriation Mission” document said. “The majority of flights have waited in excess of 12 hours.”
More than 100 Afghan children have also arrived in the country without a parent or legal guardian, according to the State Department. They are being held in state-licensed shelters in Illinois and Virginia that are overseen by the Health and Human Services Department — the same agency that has been overwhelmed this year with a record number of migrant children arriving alone at the country’s border with Mexico.
Dulles Airport in Virginia became the primary entry point for Afghan refugees coming to the United States.Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times
Most refugees receive ‘humanitarian parole.’
The question of what will happen over the long term to refugees who arrive in the United States is a moving target.
Some have arrived with completed visa applications in recognition of their service alongside the U.S. military. Those people, and their families, will become permanent residents and could earn citizenship.
But the vast majority of the refugees are being granted what is known as “humanitarian parole,” which allows them to live in the United States for a fixed period, in most cases two years. They may be required to apply for asylum and will get help to find a home in the United States while they wait for their cases to be processed.
Officials said they were considering asking Congress to pass legislation that would provide all of the refugees with legal status, much the way lawmakers did for Cubans in the 1960s and Vietnamese refugees in 1975.
As of Thursday, more than 26,100 Afghans fresh off planes had been shuttled to a cavernous room near Dulles, including 3,800 on Wednesday alone. Officials said the arriving evacuees were usually there for less than a day for processing — and in some cases out in an hour or two — surrounded by the sound of crying babies and exhausted-looking people.
During a tour on Thursday evening of the hangar-size facility, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was told that many people arrived dehydrated and in need of medical care; several women have given birth since they arrived in the United States, including one who had triplets on Wednesday. Additional interpreters have been sent to the center to make up for a shortage of staff who spoke Dari or Pashto when it first opened on Aug. 22.
Children ran throughout the maze of hallways between curtained-off rooms where people slept, covered with blue blankets. Seeing three children standing off to one side, Mr. Blinken stopped, crouched down, and introduced himself.
“Welcome to America, my name is Tony,” he said, tapping his chest. “Nice to meet you.”
Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.
13. This May Be First Step In Curing PTSD With A Pill
Only in America. We can find a pill for everything. But on a very serious note I do hope this is effective. We need effective treatment for this.
This May Be First Step In Curing PTSD With A Pill
A start-up, funded in part by the U.S. Army, could be on track to revolutionizing what we know about PTSD
A new company, with funding from the U.S. Army, may have found the secret to treating PTSD with a pill or some other direct form of medicine.
Right now, treatments for PTSD range from virtual reality to electronic brain stimulation to hallucinogens and ecstasy. But while these can lessen symptoms, they don’t offer a direct cure.
Dr. Jennifer Perusini, founder of Neurovation Labs, says PTSD has a unique biomarker called GluA1. It's a protein that is part of a glutamate receptor system, which helps memory formation. But trauma can also spur the creation of GluA1.
In 2014, during experiments for her doctoral thesis, she found that rats subjected to traumatic experiences had more GluA1. They also experienced anxiety and symptoms associated with PTSD, even when they weren’t experiencing threatening noises and lights.
Blocking the protein removed the anxiety, but the rats still displayed a healthy reaction to new frightening stimuli. That’s key, because it’s important to retain the ability to be scared by actual threats.
Perusini is currently in pre-clinical trial mode for a medicine that can block GluA1, and the clinical trial process could take years. But she already has financial support from the Air Force and from the Army through the Army’s xTech program, which awarded her $145,000 to develop her model that targets the protein.
Neurovation Labs was one of five companies xTech featured this week as part of a showcase of finalists that had passed through the program.
Zeke Topolosky, chief of the strategic partnerships office at the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory, told Defense One that the competition to get into the xTech program is strong.
“We get about 300 to 400 proposals. We select about 50 to do a live pitch… That’s when we do really technical vetting: ‘OK, this solution is really viable. It works. It solves a problem the Army needs solving.’ Those are the companies that make it out of the pitch round,” he said.
In addition to funding, the program also helps companies navigate the Army’s acquisition process to speed new technology development and deployment.
14. China’s Type 003 aircraft carrier will be advanced, but not a game-changer for US, experts say
China’s Type 003 aircraft carrier will be advanced, but not a game-changer for US, experts say
When complete, China’s first modern aircraft carrier will be a great leap forward, but still not a game-changer as far as the U.S. Navy is concerned, experts tell Military Times.
The Type 003, China’s first modern aircraft carrier, will enable the People’s Liberation Army Navy to project power past the “first island chain,” says a report recently published by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. The “first island chain” refers to the major archipelagos out from the East Asian mainland coast stretching from the Kamchatka Peninsula in the northeast to the Malay Peninsula in the southwest, including U.S. interests and allies such as Taiwan and the Philippines.
China’s new carrier is expected to be fully operational by 2025 and will feature advanced electronic warfare devices and a modern catapult system. While these advancements represent a significant technological leap for Beijing, experts who spoke with Military Times did not believe its development would detract from U.S. operations in the Pacific theater.
“This carrier will certainly impact the PLANs maritime capabilities vis a vis its East and South Asian neighbors by the end of this decade, but it will not significantly impact U.S. warfighting capabilities in the Western Pacific,” Mark Montgomery, a Senior Fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
According to multiple experts who spoke to Military Times, a significant capability included in the Type 003, which is not present in Beijing’s other two carriers, is the Catapult Assisted Takeoff But Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) system used to launch and recover aircraft.
“There are currently only two countries, the U.S. and France, that utilize CATOBAR launch systems, so the Type 003 will put China in an elite group,” Matthew P. Funaiole, Senior Fellow, China Power Project and Senior Fellow for Data Analysis, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Military Times.
Currently, China operates two carriers who use STOBAR, or Short Takeoff But Arrested Recovery. This system utilizes a deck that utilizes a “ski jump” to assist aircraft during takeoff rather than a catapult. While STOBAR is a cheaper system to both build and operate, there are significant drawbacks to STOBAR. These include weight limitations that impact the payload size of aircraft and restrictions on what kinds of aircraft can launch VIA STOBAR.
“The increased size of the 003, paired with a greatly improved launch system when compared to its predecessors, also opens the door to a larger and more diverse carrier airwing down the road,” Craig Singleton, an adjunct fellow at Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told Military Times.
While it is known that the Type 003 is incorporating a state-of-the-art launch and recovery system, it is anticipated that Beijing will equip the carrier with advanced Electronic Warfare (EW) capabilities. However, due to the speed at which technology advances, this suite’s full scope and effectiveness will probably not be evident until the ship sets sail.
While the Type 003 “boasts” significant new EW technology, according to Funaiole, much of it remains untested. As such, it isn’t easy to ascertain how effective it may be. However, according to Taiwan News, China is emphasizing expanded “hard kill” and “soft kill” EW inventories for the new carrier.
According to Singleton, EW “hard kill” weapons usually involve a blast or fragmentation that destroys an incoming warhead. Conversely, “soft kill” EW relies on jamming and potentially microwaves to disrupt incoming missiles.
“What makes [soft kill] EW capabilities like these really interesting is that they allow for the destruction, interception, and/or jamming of approaching enemy missiles, drones, etc., at a much lower cost than firing an interceptor missile,” Singleton said.
Singleton also added that since the Type 003 is not anticipated to be fully operational until 2025, it’s challenging to ascertain precisely what, and how effective, these kinds of systems will be.
While the Type 003 represents a significant technological development for the PLA and anticipates it increasing Beijing’s ability to project power, they do not view it as significantly shifting the balance of power in the Pacific.
“It is critical to remember that China is still new to carrier operations, and the Type 003 will be its first modern carrier,” Funaiole said. Adding that, China still needs time to train pilots and integrate carrier operations into its fleet fully.
Additionally, China’s entrance into carrier operations is recent. At the same time, the U.S. has decades of experience in developing carrier doctrine during peacetime and considerable experience conducting carrier operations during wartime.
“US pilots, operators, and engineers are the best in the world. The human element cannot be understated. An aircraft carrier is a tool, and its effectiveness depends on those that wield it. China is still finding its way in terms of carrier operations. The US has the advantage of leaning on generations of acquired and institutional knowledge,” Funaiole concluded.
James R. Webb is a rapid response reporter for Military Times. He served as a US Marine infantryman in Iraq. Additionally, he has worked as a Legislative Assistant in the US Senate and as an embedded photographer in Afghanistan.
15. Beijing is having trouble selling its citizens on a partnership with the Taliban
Perhaps something for the influence professionals to exploit.
Beijing is having trouble selling its citizens on a partnership with the Taliban
As Beijing gets ready to embrace the Taliban, China’s propaganda machinery has been working in overdrive to convince Chinese people that partnering with the militant group isn’t as problematic as it seems.
In official speeches and state media, authorities have tried to sell the Taliban as a reformed, “more sober and rational” group capable of working with Beijing to secure Chinese interests. The state’s narrative has portrayed the Taliban’s swift takeover as the “will and choice of the Afghan people” and a development that is economically advantageous for China.
The response to such rhetoric has been mixed. For many, Beijing’s friendly stance towards the Taliban is both unexpected and confusing, considering how China has played up threats of alleged Islamic extremism at home in recent years to justify a crackdown on ethnic minority Uyghur Muslims in the border region of Xinjiang.
“There’s a view among the Chinese public that (Afghanistan) is a neighbourhood of militancy, terrorism and Islamism,” said Andrew Small, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “It’s not clear why China should have anything to do with it, let alone why China should be having friendly relations with a government that behaved and continues to behave in the manner that the Taliban does.”
Pushing back on state-run media’s Afghanistan narrative
As Chinese social media became flooded with news of desperate Afghans attempting to flee and women expressing fears over the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, discussions over whether Beijing should support the Taliban flourished.
When the Taliban seized Kabul two weeks back, a video post about the group’s history published by the state-run outlet People’s Daily drew immediate backlash for failing to mention the Taliban’s connections to terrorism. The post, titled “What Kind of Organization is the Taliban” (塔利班是什么组织) became the fifth trending post on Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) and was sharply criticized for glossing over the Taliban’s violent past, and desecration of its Buddhist heritage, before it was taken down.
Many netizens expressed sympathy for civilians, comparing the situation Afghans are facing to that of dystopian films, and commenting on the Taliban’s terrorist links as well as human rights abuses. Some made fun of the Taliban’s clumsy efforts to position itself as peaceful and forgiving, making comparisons to the Chinese Communist Party’s own past propaganda drives.
On a video post appearing to show a Taliban fighter asking questions of a civilian that was shared under the hashtag “Taliban playing the part of a reporter,” one user made a comment linking the Talilban’s rhetoric to that of the CCP’s when it took power in 1949 after a long civil war and promised to forgive critics, including those who supported the rival Nationalists.
“There’s no way this is the end of it. Just take a look at what happened after our state was established, how opponents were exposed and punished in waves,” the user said.
But such critical voices were quickly censored, said an overseas Chinese blogger who goes by the nickname Jingwen. Censors took down her recent Weibo post about the impact of the Taliban’s takeover on women, in which she translated an Instagram post with quotes from female activists in Afghanistan.
“Now, many comments that are left are from a nationalistic point of view, about how we need to respect the government’s stance and hate the west,” Jingwen said, adding that anti-western sentiment in China has grown dramatically in recent years following the rapid deterioration of US-China relations. “The censorship is worse now.”
Paving the way for future ties
Although the swiftness of the Taliban’s takeover took China by surprise, the country has been preparing itself for normalizing relations with the group. In July, the Chinese foreign minister held a highly-publicized meeting with the Taliban’s political chief, and the two sides have reportedly conducted dozens of secret meetings over the years.
Despite having supported sanctions and other moves that essentially treated the Taliban as terrorist actors, Beijing has always approached them with nuance as a political group, according to Small.
“They’ve had to tread quite carefully,” Small said. “There has been the odd slip in some portrayals…but when it has been intentional, the approach has been to accord them a political status.”
On top of influencing domestic opinion, Beijing has used these narratives to signal to the Taliban that a partnership is both possible and worth building—that China will offer economic and diplomatic incentives in exchange for peace and security, analysts say.
So far, the Taliban has suggested it is receptive to such a partnership. In an interview last month with state broadcaster CGTN television, Taliban spokesman Suhaill Shaheen said “China is a big country with a huge economy and capacity” that could “play a big role” in reconstructing Afghanistan.
In this way, the state narrative to some extent has mirrored that of some Western commentary, which has warned that China will gain in financial and political influence by investing in Afghanistan, even though such an outcome is by no means clear.
“All of that is part of the propaganda battle designed to gloss over concerns that the US is leaving China with an arc of instability,” Small said. “The immediate pivot that this will be incredibly advantageous is part of the narrative of Western failure, and the success China can have—that China will do better.”
Following two bomb attacks at Kabul airport last week that killed dozens of Afghans and 13 US service members, state media ran stories portraying Afghanistan as a region that will become a land of opportunities for Chinese investors once the country stabilizes. Such narratives about the potential of future development have already sparked an investment hype among some Chinese entrepreneurs, who are reportedly exploring ways of making money in the war-torn country.
Yet Small says Beijing is overstating the potential for investment. “I don’t think anyone serious on the Chinese side really believes it, who are actually involved in investment plans,” he said.
A conflict for the Taliban?
Niva Yau, a researcher at Kyrgyzstan’s OSCE Academy, an education center and forum for security research, says China will also be looking to see how the Taliban will be recognized globally, and whether it can genuinely meet China’s demands, such as preventing the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (a group that once advocated for independence in Xinjiang), or its remnants, from gaining a foothold in the region.
In recent years, China has carried out a massive security crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang, whom authorities blame for harboring separatist sentiments that have previously flared into violence. In 2009, clashes in Xinjiang in the wake of the killing of a Uyghur factory worker in southern China caused about 200 deaths, and were used to justify an escalating clampdown on Uyghur extremism that transformed the region into a surveillance state. Since 2017, researchers and Uyghurs who have left China have documented a wide campaign of forced detentions and other rights abuses.
Some say there is no concrete evidence that the separatist group is responsible for violence in China or even exists in a meaningful way, and that the threat of Uyghur militancy has been exaggerated so that Beijing could tighten its grip on the traditionally restive region. Last year, the US removed the “terrorist” label from the ETIM after deeming the group defunct, drawing sharp condemnation from Beijing.
According to a United Nations Security Council report last May, about 500 ETIM fighters operate in Afghanistan, and the group is among those who have previously been reported to have merged with the Taliban.
“Will the Taliban really abandon their brothers that they’ve been fighting alongside?” Yau said. “One way or another, they need someone to fund them in order to hold onto power. This is for sure.”
16. China exerts growing power right on America's doorstep
We do not want to imitate Chinese methods. But we have to help our friends, partners, and allies to defend themselves against the effects of Chinese influence. But of course money is hard to resist in the short term.
China exerts growing power right on America's doorstep
China is making its influence felt in Latin America and the Caribbean in a way officials say is harmful to the U.S. and via methods the U.S. can't employ.
NBC News · by Ken Dilanian, Joel Seidman and Gabriel Sanchez · September 4, 2021
WASHINGTON — Two years ago, the U.S. government began loudly questioning a Chinese push to purchase an island off El Salvador's coast, where a Chinese company was proposing to build a deep water port and manufacturing zone.
The American objections seemed to have had an impact, as a political backlash in El Salvadorstalled the project. But the Chinese were not deterred. After what U.S. officials publicly asserted was a successful Chinese effort to bribe El Salvadoran politicians, the project is now moving forward. NBC News has obtained a power point presentation by a state-owned Chinese firm called "Shared Opportunities, Shared Future," that sketches out one version of the proposal.
"Chinese influence is global, and it is everywhere in this hemisphere, and moving forward in alarming ways," said Adm. Craig Faller, the head of U.S. Southern Command, in an exclusive interview with NBC News.
"China is pursuing multiple portals in this hemisphere," he continued, referring to seaports, airports and other transit hubs. "Depending on the day, count them as 40 or so. And as I look at where they're focused strategically — West Coast, East Coast, South Panama, Caribbean — I absolutely can see a future where these ports will become a hub for their growing blue water Navy that far exceeds their…need for homeland defense."
But it's not only the military implications that concern American officials. Faller said China is rapidly advancing toward a goal of economic dominance in Central and South America within the next decade. In 2019, he said, the PRC surpassed the U.S. as the leading trade partner with Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay and is now the region's second-largest trading partner behind the U.S.
From 2002 to 2019, Chinese trade with Latin America soared from $17 billion to over $315 billion, he said.
With economic influence comes political influence, said Evan Ellis, a research professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.
"If you bring the projects in and you have the political relationships and all of the influence that comes with the politicians and leading families," he said, "then other types of influence just come naturally."
At issue in El Salvador is a proposal to expand and develop a Japanese-built deep water port called La Unión, located in the Gulf of Fonseca at the intersection of Salvadoran, Honduran, and Nicaraguan territory.
China is proposing to expand the port and establish trade zones that would exclude U.S. and European companies, allowing Chinese port operators, Chinese shipping companies, and likely Chinese service providers, to dominate the zones, Ellis said.
China aims to use the port and the zones to import Chinese products and distribute them to other Central American markets without involving local businesses, Ellis said, adding that Chinese investors have expressed interest in constructing an airport in La Unión, which would further bolster the zone as a multimodal hub.
A Chinese-Salvadoran investor, Bo Yang, has quietly purchased land for expansion of the port, including half of Perico Island, according to the State Department. He offered residents of the island up to $7,000 each to relocate, Ellis said, and the purchase went forward at the end of 2019. U.S. officials say Yang is China's agent in El Salvador and has been promoting deals there for 30 years.
In 2018, Yang told Salvadoran media he was dealing directly with property owners on the island and wasn't working with a government. "These are just business things, like when you go to buy a house you see it with the owners," he said.
The 46-page presentation NBC News obtained said the economic zone would be a $3 billion project encompassing 1,700 square miles.
Earlier this year, the State Department released a Congressionally mandated list of officials in El Salvador "who have knowingly engaged in acts that undermine democratic processes or institutions, engaged in significant corruption, or obstructed investigations into such acts of corruption in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador." On the list was Ezequiel Milla Guerra, former mayor of La Unión, who "engaged in significant corruption by abusing his authority as mayor in the sale of Perico Island to agents of the People's Republic of China in exchange for personal benefit," the document says, in an extraordinarily blunt public assessment from the U.S. government.
State Department officials say China is increasingly adept at using bribes and other corrupt methods to advance its commercial interests, something that is illegal for American corporations to do.
The list also named associates of El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, including a close aide and a former security minister.
Bukele has expanded his cooperation with China since his predecessor moved the country's embassy from Taipei to Beijing three years ago. In response to the State Department's "corrupt" list, he doubled down.
Bukele on Twitter praised what he said was China's $500 million investment in El Salvador "without conditions," which was interpreted as a jab at the good governance strings that Washington and U.S.-backed lenders often attach to aid.
Dipomatic representatives of China and El Salvador did not respond to requests for comment.
"You have a new generation of governments, that if they wish to engage in corruption and protect themselves from the consequences, they are able to turn away from Western investors in the U.S. and turn to China as an alternative," Ellis said. "China has become effectively an incubator of populist governments."
U.S. Southern Command covers Central America, South America and the Caribbean, including a responsibility to defend the Panama Canal. Faller, who ends his three-year tour of duty as Southcom commander in October, said he has observed China steadily encroaching on his area of operations.
"China seeks to leverage their vision for the future, their vision of the global world order and they don't seek partnerships built on mutual respect and trust. They seek and build on dependency."
In addition to strategic investments, Faller said, China provides technology to authoritarian governments, including Venezuela and Cuba, that allows them to more efficiently clamp down on dissent.
Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro is "using Chinese technology, Chinese training, to control socially, that population," he said, adding that the Chinese are "working alongside Cuba, Russia, and increasingly so Iran to ensure that Maduro stays in power, and that form of government, which is favorable to Chinese economic interest remains."
The Cuban government was able to quickly quell civil unrest, he said, because it uses Chinese providers Huawei and ZTE to run its cell phone and information technology networks. "There's a growing Chinese influence in Cuba," he said.
The Biden administration's response to China's aggressive outreach has been measured.
"It's not the policy of the United States to force our partners to choose between the U.S. and China," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to be named. "But what we offer is a partnership that works in the interests of those of our partners, focused on our shared values, democratic governance respect for human rights, transparency…inclusive economic growth, entrepreneurship."
The official acknowledged, though, that China has a much more strategic approach than the U.S. to leveraging its economic might.
"They use a geostrategic approach where if they deem that they need something necessary for their investment purposes, the government orders it to happen," the official said.
"We don't have a state-directed approach," the official added. "Obviously we work to encourage U.S. investment, including significant projects in Latin America and Central America, whether it be in the Panama Canal or other major investment projects."
Yet many experts say that China is winning, and that the U.S. needs to put aside its rigid adherence to pure free market principles when it comes to foreign investment.
"It's probably counterproductive and unfeasible to try to block our partners from engaging commercially with China," Ellis told NBC News. "However, the United States can shape the way in which that occurs in a way that's less incompatible with principles of democracy and human rights and the rule of law and free markets, and less threatening to both the region and the United States."
The U.S. government can do that, he said, by "insisting, using our commercial leverage and other tools of transparency, because transparent interactions prevents your Chinese companies and local elites from doing win-win deals in which they essentially deliver the goods of the country to the Chinese without benefiting the people of those countries."
NBC News · by Ken Dilanian, Joel Seidman and Gabriel Sanchez · September 4, 2021
17. Opinion | I helped design the SIV program. It needs an urgent update if we want to help Afghan refugees.
Too little too late or better late than never?
Opinion | I helped design the SIV program. It needs an urgent update if we want to help Afghan refugees.
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Thomas Warrick September 2, 2021 at 2:15 p.m. EDT · September 2, 2021
Thomas Warrick was a senior official in the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security from 1997-2019. He is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and director of the Future of DHS Project.
The air bridge out of Kabul ended with more than 123,000 people flown to safety, away from Taliban vengeance, including more than 6,000 Americans. Tens of thousands of Afghans who wish to end up in the United States, however, now face an uncertain fate. The Biden administration needs to decide quickly what to do. Fortunately, there is a solution that could resolve the status of most of these Afghans, securely and fairly, if both Congress and the Biden administration will take a few long-overdue steps.
More than a decade ago, Congress set up the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program to take in, as a matter of national honor, Iraqis and Afghans who risked their lives working for the United States or the programs we sponsored. The threat was real: several Iraqis who supported my section in Embassy Baghdad were killed; others left Iraq. I helped design the SIV program when I was the State Department’s acting director for Iraq Political Affairs in 2006-2007. In 2007, I moved over to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where one of my first jobs was to slow the program down to find any security holes. Over the next 10 years I was one of the officials who watched over the program as a senior career counterterrorism policy official at DHS headquarters. When we found problems with the security protocols, we fixed them.
But the SIV program never achieved its potential. Repeated program reviews found that SIV applications — along with refugee and asylum claims — faced thorough security vetting that was chronically starved for people and basic technology.
Screening and vetting SIV, refugee and asylum applicants is a quintessential “back office” function. The work involves checking computer databases and talking quietly to applicants’ references, who are almost always former U.S. military and civilian officials. Some applicants have totally clean records and are easy to approve. At the same time, a few can be rejected immediately because they were fired for spying for the Taliban (for example).
Yet many applications raise questions that can be answered by unglamorous but effective basic police and security work, such as reviewing government records and running down leads. For example, phone call records may show that a translator called numbers used by Taliban fighters. It takes effort to determine whether the translator was doing his job as directed by a U.S. military commander, or whether he was providing information to the Taliban.
Two weeks after Kabul fell, President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan designated DHS as the lead federal agency for coordinating the resettlement of Afghans evacuated after the Taliban takeover. This was an overdue step.
While the United States has unity of command on the military side — the Defense Department had the lead in trying to keep the Kabul airport open to evacuation flights — no one agency was similarly in charge on the civilian side of the evacuation process until Aug. 29. The State Department issues visas. An alphabet soup of intelligence and security agencies screen SIV applicants and refugees. DHS is responsible for admitting those who pass through the gauntlet of reviews. Finally, the Department of Health and Human Services has programs to help SIVs and refugees — but not everyone.
This civilian effort was quietly ramped up in mid-July, but that should have happened in February 2020, when former president Donald Trump agreed with the Taliban to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan in 14 months. Instead, the Trump administration deliberately slowed down SIV processing. Security vetting could have been sped up in April 2021, when Biden set the deadline for withdrawal at the end of August. This need not have been announced publicly, but it would have cleared up the backlog and resolved the status of thousands of applicants in the queue.
The U.S. government needs now, at last, to commit the people and resources necessary to clear the number of SIV and refugee cases by a reasonable but ambitious target — say, 95 percent of the cases by the end of the year. Most of the work involves tracking down current or former military personnel and understanding the military situation in Afghanistan over time. The executive branch, particularly the Defense Department, needs urgently to assemble as many people as it will take to do the necessary security reviews quickly but thoroughly.
Neither security nor American values need to be compromised. Those in Congress who criticized the Biden administration for slowness to respond need to step up immediately to vote money for overtime and for bringing back retired homeland security, intelligence, and military personnel to clear this backlog. (Cleaning up the backlog of refugee and asylum applications from Central America should also be on the list of priorities — security and American values are on the line there, too.)
But most urgently, the United States needs to honor its debt to those Afghans who risked their lives by marshaling the resources that it will take to review their claims, thoroughly and fairly, before the end of this year.
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Thomas Warrick September 2, 2021 at 2:15 p.m. EDT · September 2, 2021
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.
