Quotes of the Day:
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues….”
- George Orwell
“On the question of the machinery of government, we have seen that a good deal of our trouble seems to have stemmed from the extent to which the executive has felt itself beholden to the short-term trends of public opinion in the country and from what we might call the erratic and subjective nature of public reaction to foreign-policy questions. I would like to emphasize that I do not consider public reaction to foreign-policy questions to be erratic and undependable over the long term; but I think the record indicates that in the short term our public opinion, or what passes for public opinion in the thinking of official Washington, can be easily led astray into areas of emotionalism and subjectivity which make a poor and inadequate guide for national action.”
- George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy
"In a revolution, as in a novel. the most difficult part to invent is the end."
- de Tocqueville
1. The new Lt Col Stuart Scheller, USMC video
2. How Afghanistan Changed a Superpower
3. Opinion | What Trump’s Disgraceful Deal With the Taliban Has Wrought. by Kori Schake
4. Keep the ‘Pineapple Express’ Rolling
5. Opinion | The Road to Recovery From Afghanistan Is a Familiar One
6. Trapped in Afghanistan, Rescued by Volunteers: How a Handful of Americans Freed 5,000 Afghans
7. There's chaos and risk in Afghanistan exit, but Biden critics are getting it mostly wrong
8. Overwhelming bipartisan support for keeping troops in Afghanistan until all Americans, Afghans who aided US out: POLL
9. An Iowa town goes to battle for Afghan immigrant
10. American University of Kabul students and alumni trying to flee were sent home.
11. Americans Back Afghanistan Withdrawal, Lament Chaotic Exit
12. White House: US has capacity to evacuate remaining Americans
13. Ukrainian troops rescue Canada-bound Afghans in daring operation
14. US defense system downed rockets in Kabul attack
15. Before the Taliban took Afghanistan, it took the internet
16. Op-Ed: A U.N. peacekeeping mission could make all the difference in Afghanistan. Here’s why
17. Comprehensive Security Approach in Response to Russian Hybrid Warfare
18. The bell tolls for us in Kabul
19. RT America received more than $100 million in Russian government funding since 2017, filings show
20. An Assessment of Capability Gaps that Contribute to Fighting Below the Threshold of War
21. The UK is considering incorporating Afghan special forces evacuated from Kabul into the British army
22. Abandoned And Alone: Lamenting The US-Australian Alliance – OpEd
23. Opinion | America’s Military Is Too Big for America’s Good
24. US trained Khashoggi's killers. A review of all military training programs is necessary
25. You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity
1. The new Lt Col Stuart Scheller, USMC video
I have no words, except to say I cannot imagine how he thinks he is going to bring the system down. I was also slightly taken aback by his insult of SF (I actually think he meant special mission units from his description because he certainly did not describe real SF operations)
The 10 minute video at the link below.
This is the battalion commander who made the video demanding accountability for senior leaders. He has been relieved of battalion command. This is his follow-up video.
Someone wrote to me and said the way he plans to take down the system is to run for office.
2. How Afghanistan Changed a Superpower
Interesting history.
When Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan in December 1979, the plan was to insert new leadership, strengthen key bases, and leave. By the time the Soviets finally withdrew in February 1989, more than 13,000 of their soldiers had been killed in battle (and 40,000 more wounded), while anywhere from 800,000 to 1.2 million Afghans were dead.
...
Today, as Putin attempts to reassert Russia’s role on the global stage, nationalists have tried to reframe the war, once widely reviled, as a just cause. In 2019, the director Pavel Lungin released Brotherhood, his film about the war’s final months and the Soviet withdrawal. Though sympathetic to Soviet troops—its moral touchstone is a sensitive KGB officer—Brotherhood also shows them killing civilians, making corrupt deals, and drinking despairingly as they prepare to return home to a country that will soon cease to exist. After audience members at an advance screening condemned it as unpatriotic, the film was shown only in limited release. As public memory of the war has aligned with state goals, the conflict’s approval rating has risen: In a 1991 poll, 88 percent of respondents said the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary; in 2019, this number fell to 55 percent. (Revisionism has its limits: A 2018 initiative by the Russian Communist Party to overturn the Soviet government’s condemnation of the war was quietly dropped.)
Russian media have viewed the American withdrawal with a mixture of schadenfreude, commiseration, and concern over its possible destabilizing effect in the region. In the U.S., the notion that the Soviet mission in Afghanistan caused the U.S.S.R. to fall apart (voiced in 2019 by Donald Trump) has fed anxieties about the end of America’s own empire.
Yet the war was a symptom of Soviet decline, not its cause. Questioning the assumptions that drove the invasion opened up the prospect, however fleeting, of a different future.
How Afghanistan Changed a Superpower
Moscow’s failed intervention led Soviets to reassess both the ends and the means of empire.
The parallels, by now, are well known: A global superpower sends troops to Afghanistan, installs a new leader, and plans to depart within months. Instead, it becomes locked in a years-long struggle against a highly motivated insurgency, and the conflict ends only as a consequence of the ignominious withdrawal of its armed forces.
Today, the narrative applies to the United States, but decades prior, this was the story of the Soviet Union. The comparison—like references to the Great Game and to Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires—is ubiquitous in coverage of the American intervention. The lesson, if one exists, is that great powers have sought time and again to change Afghanistan to their liking, and failed.
Yet comparatively little attention is devoted in the opposite direction: to how invading Afghanistan changed these countries back home. In the Soviet case, it led the citizens of a superpower to reassess both the ends and the means of empire.
When Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan in December 1979, the plan was to insert new leadership, strengthen key bases, and leave. By the time the Soviets finally withdrew in February 1989, more than 13,000 of their soldiers had been killed in battle (and 40,000 more wounded), while anywhere from 800,000 to 1.2 million Afghans were dead.
The Soviet war, much like the American one, was a protracted affair fought by a limited number of troops that was out of sight and out of mind for the majority of its citizens. Similar to that in the U.S., domestic media coverage was limited (though in the Soviet case, this was due to press censorship rather than a lack of media interest or resources), and bodies were returned to relatives under cover of night—as they were for a period during the Bush administration.
Of course, the differences are significant. Opposition within the Soviet Union was harshly curtailed, initially appearing only in dissident publications. The nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, was sent into internal exile after he wrote an open letter calling for an end to the invasion and an international boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. As soldiers returned home, however, the extent of the conflict grew difficult to conceal. In Tashkent, the capital of the republic of Uzbekistan and the hub for departing and returning troops, the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich observed how “young soldiers, no more than boys, hop about on crutches.” The Central Committee of the Communist Party received letters from veterans, their relatives, and members of the public about soldiers’ difficulty adjusting to life back home and the apparent futility of their mission.
The war had a major impact within the party, as its leaders sought to balance a desire to remain a global power with an unwillingness to bear the costs of foreign intervention. As the historian Artemy M. Kalinovsky writes in A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan, talk of leaving was overshadowed by confidence in the Soviet Union’s ability to stabilize the country, fear of undermining its status as the leading patron of the global South, and anxiety about losing face before the United States. At the same time, the situation in Afghanistan contributed to a growing reluctance among the Soviet leadership to use force elsewhere. When the question arose of whether to deploy troops to Poland to put down the Solidarity movement in 1980, the KGB head Yuri Andropov said, “The quota of interventions abroad has been exhausted.”
Mikhail Gorbachev came into office in 1985 determined to end the war, calling it a “bleeding wound” the following year. Although previous rulers had sought to present the invasion as a noble humanitarian mission, Gorbachev’s relaxation of censorship allowed the press to reveal the conflict’s sordid sides, and freed a variety of people to voice long-suppressed anger over its consequences. Popular ambivalence turned to revulsion as the public learned about war crimes, drug abuse, and neglect of returning veterans. In the embittered anthem “Soldiers Aren’t Born,” the punk-rock band Civil Defense mourned ordinary people’s sacrifices for hollow ideals (“The coffin was wrapped in a red rag, the heroic march drowned out by angry grief”). Veterans, meanwhile, were outraged by criticism that they saw as unjust denigration of their service. “We’re Leaving,” a song by a KGB special-forces officer that Soviet troops played on repeat during their withdrawal, told “chair-bound critics who stayed at home” not to judge what they couldn’t understand.
This public discussion of the war became part of the Soviet Union’s broader reassessment of its own identity. Images of ailing soldiers coming back from Afghanistan—along with coverage of Stalinist crimes, official corruption, and inadequate health care—fed the rising sense that Soviet society was “sick” and required radical therapy. Withdrawal, to some citizens, offered a chance to reevaluate the country’s history of foreign interventions and create a more democratic state that took care of its people: Sakharov, now freed from exile, framed ending the war as the precondition for other reforms, including arms reduction, freedom of speech, and the end of one-party rule. For others, the splintering of Soviet society into factions over whether Gorbachev’s changes had gone too far (or not far enough) and the country’s deteriorating self-image were disorienting and undesirable. When Alexievich published Zinky Boys, an account of the war’s brutal absurdity based on conversations with veterans, she received furious phone calls and letters. “Who needs your dreadful truth?” one reader complained. “I don’t want to know it!”
Until the very end, the Soviet leadership argued about whether to maintain troops in Afghanistan. The foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze insisted that the U.S.S.R. had a continued responsibility to protect the Afghan government: “We are leaving the country in a pitiable state. The cities and villages are ravaged. The economy is paralyzed. Hundreds of thousands of people have died.” But public opinion and the political calculus had turned too far against remaining. After the final withdrawal, the Congress of People’s Deputies (the Soviet Union’s highest body of authority from 1989 to 1991) launched an investigation into the war’s causes and results. In October 1989, it condemned the invasion on “moral and political” grounds. A doctrine drafted under Gorbachev defined war as “totally outdated, unacceptable and inadmissible as a means of achieving political objectives.”
These societal shifts were significant, but short-lived. Pacifist sentiments competed for attention with other problems, including the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl, food shortages, and interethnic violence in the republics. Elite regiments that had served in Afghanistan were dispatched to put down pro-independence demonstrations in Baku, Tbilisi, Riga, and Vilnius, killing hundreds of protesters. Amid the chaos of the late ’80s, efforts to reinvent the Soviet Union failed, and the country imploded.
The war’s impact was far from over, though. In post-Soviet Russia, some veterans of Afghanistan became involved in private security and organized crime, which had close ties to business and politics. After seeing themselves as victims of official neglect in the ‘90s, under Vladimir Putin, veterans assumed new roles as allies of the state and its growing militaristic-patriotic ideology. In 1999, the leadership of the Russian Alliance of Veterans of Afghanistan helped found the organization that became United Russia, Putin’s party. Some individuals who had served in Afghanistan and Chechnya joined OMON, a special-forces division that serves as riot police at protests. Afghanistan veterans (described in the Russian media as “heroes with baseball bats”) played a key role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Today, as Putin attempts to reassert Russia’s role on the global stage, nationalists have tried to reframe the war, once widely reviled, as a just cause. In 2019, the director Pavel Lungin released Brotherhood, his film about the war’s final months and the Soviet withdrawal. Though sympathetic to Soviet troops—its moral touchstone is a sensitive KGB officer—Brotherhood also shows them killing civilians, making corrupt deals, and drinking despairingly as they prepare to return home to a country that will soon cease to exist. After audience members at an advance screening condemned it as unpatriotic, the film was shown only in limited release. As public memory of the war has aligned with state goals, the conflict’s approval rating has risen: In a 1991 poll, 88 percent of respondents said the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary; in 2019, this number fell to 55 percent. (Revisionism has its limits: A 2018 initiative by the Russian Communist Party to overturn the Soviet government’s condemnation of the war was quietly dropped.)
Russian media have viewed the American withdrawal with a mixture of schadenfreude, commiseration, and concern over its possible destabilizing effect in the region. In the U.S., the notion that the Soviet mission in Afghanistan caused the U.S.S.R. to fall apart (voiced in 2019 by Donald Trump) has fed anxieties about the end of America’s own empire.
Yet the war was a symptom of Soviet decline, not its cause. Questioning the assumptions that drove the invasion opened up the prospect, however fleeting, of a different future.
3. Opinion | What Trump’s Disgraceful Deal With the Taliban Has Wrought. by Kori Schake
Excerpts:
Agreements with foreign powers, whether states, international institutions or organizations like the Taliban, should be submitted to Congress for a vote. The best way to prevent catastrophic foreign policy mistakes is to require the 535 representatives of the American people to put their jobs on the line, become informed, and support, reject or modify a president’s program. Congress tried to slow or block Mr. Trump’s planned drawdown of U.S. forces. Members who supported the Taliban deal should be explaining why they thought the outcome would be different than the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan now. Apathy and unaccountability are the real enemies of good foreign policy. Presidents get around oversight by offering unilateral policy actions or claiming international agreements aren’t formal treaties. Congress shouldn’t let a president from either party get away with that.
Addressing foreign agreements as stand-alone votes would raise the profile and stakes even more. Supporting Mr. Trump’s Taliban agreement would have been — and should have been — a tough vote. There are reasonable arguments on the side of continuing the war and on the side of concluding it. America would be more secure today if Congress exerted its prerogatives more forcefully — both when Mr. Trump agreed to the Taliban deal, and when Mr. Biden continued it.
These are not partisan issues. They get at the heart of the constitutional separation of powers, a division that makes America strong and resilient. Restraining presidential fiat may mean that some foreign policy opportunities are missed, that some deals will remain out of reach. But it also insulates the president, and the American public, against bad deals by allowing for greater public scrutiny and oversight. As the debacle in Afghanistan shows, closer evaluation of Mr. Trump’s Taliban deal and of Mr. Biden’s withdrawal plans would have been preferable to the tragedy now unfolding.
Opinion | What Trump’s Disgraceful Deal With the Taliban Has Wrought
Guest Essay
What Trump’s Disgraceful Deal With the Taliban Has Wrought
Aug. 28, 2021
Credit...Adam McCauley
By
Ms. Schake, a foreign policy expert who worked for the National Security Council and the State Department during George W. Bush’s administration, is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Believing you’re uniquely capable of bending things to your will is practically a requirement for becoming president of the United States. But too often, in pursuit of such influence over foreign policy, presidents overemphasize the importance of personal diplomacy. Relationships among leaders can build trust — or destroy it — but presidents often overrate their ability to steer both allies and adversaries.
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had built such a solid relationship that during the Reykjavik summit most of Reagan’s administration worried he would agree to an unverifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. Bill Clinton believed his personal diplomacy could deliver Palestinian statehood and Russian acceptance of NATO expansion. George W. Bush believed he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his soul, and Barack Obama believed he could persuade Mr. Putin it wasn’t in Russia’s interests to determine the outcome of the war in Syria.
But in both hubris and folly, none come close to matching Donald Trump. For someone who prided himself on his abilities as a deal maker and displayed an “I alone can fix it” arrogance, the agreement he made with the Taliban is one of the most disgraceful diplomatic bargains on record. Coupled with President Biden’s mistakes in continuing the policy and botching its execution, the deal has now led to tragic consequences for Americans and our allies in Kabul.
Mr. Trump’s handling of Afghanistan is an object lesson for why presidents of both parties need to be better constrained by Congress and the public in their conduct of foreign policy.
Mr. Trump never believed Afghanistan was worth fighting for: As early as 2011, he advocated its abandonment. Once in office, his early infatuation with “my generals” gave the Pentagon latitude to dissuade the president from exactly the kind of rush to the exits we’re now seeing in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump wanted to abandon the war in Afghanistan, but he understood atavistically that it would damage him politically to have a terrorist attack or a Saigon comparison attached to his policy choices.
Thus the impetus for a negotiated settlement. The problem with Mr. Trump’s Taliban deal wasn’t that the administration turned to diplomacy. That was a sensible avenue out of the policy constraints. The problem was that the strongest state in the international order let itself be swindled by a terrorist organization. Because we so clearly wanted out of Afghanistan, we agreed to disreputable terms, and then proceeded to pretend that the Taliban were meeting even those.
Mr. Trump agreed to withdraw all coalition forces from Afghanistan in 14 months, end all military and contractor support to Afghan security forces and cease “intervening in its domestic affairs.” He forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters and relax economic sanctions. He agreed that the Taliban could continue to commit violence against the government we were there to support, against innocent people and against those who’d assisted our efforts to keep Americans safe. All the Taliban had to do was say they would stop targeting U.S. or coalition forces, not permit Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to use Afghan territory to threaten U.S. security and subsequently hold negotiations with the Afghan government.
Not only did the agreement have no inspection or enforcement mechanisms, but despite Mr. Trump’s claim that “If bad things happen, we’ll go back with a force like no one’s ever seen,” the administration made no attempt to enforce its terms. Trump’s own former national security adviser called it “a surrender agreement.”
Mr. Trump and his supporters clearly considered the deal a great success — until just days ago, the Republican National Committee had a web page heralding the success of Mr. Trump’s “historic peace agreement.” Really, the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban deserves opprobrium even greater than what it heaped on the Iran nuclear deal struck by the Obama administration.
Mr. Trump wasn’t unique among American presidents in the grandiose belief that he alone could somehow change behaviors of our enemies and adversaries. Ever since Theodore Roosevelt brought an end to the Russo-Japanese war and won the Nobel Peace Prize, most American presidents have found irresistible the siren call of personal diplomacy.
Instead of banking on other countries being charmed or persuaded that American leaders know their interests better than they do, presidents should return to the practice of persuading their fellow Americans of the merits of agreements with foreign powers. Congress can begin by reasserting its role in diplomacy and requiring specific authorizations for the use of military force rather than continuing to acquiesce to claims that existing executive authorizations can be endlessly expanded. It should refuse the shifting of funds previously authorized and appropriated for other purposes (Mr. Trump made such shifts to construct the border wall). It should reject foreign policy changes enacted by executive order rather than congressional approval, and it should force the Supreme Court to clarify the extent of the president’s war powers.
Agreements with foreign powers, whether states, international institutions or organizations like the Taliban, should be submitted to Congress for a vote. The best way to prevent catastrophic foreign policy mistakes is to require the 535 representatives of the American people to put their jobs on the line, become informed, and support, reject or modify a president’s program. Congress tried to slow or block Mr. Trump’s planned drawdown of U.S. forces. Members who supported the Taliban deal should be explaining why they thought the outcome would be different than the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan now. Apathy and unaccountability are the real enemies of good foreign policy. Presidents get around oversight by offering unilateral policy actions or claiming international agreements aren’t formal treaties. Congress shouldn’t let a president from either party get away with that.
Addressing foreign agreements as stand-alone votes would raise the profile and stakes even more. Supporting Mr. Trump’s Taliban agreement would have been — and should have been — a tough vote. There are reasonable arguments on the side of continuing the war and on the side of concluding it. America would be more secure today if Congress exerted its prerogatives more forcefully — both when Mr. Trump agreed to the Taliban deal, and when Mr. Biden continued it.
These are not partisan issues. They get at the heart of the constitutional separation of powers, a division that makes America strong and resilient. Restraining presidential fiat may mean that some foreign policy opportunities are missed, that some deals will remain out of reach. But it also insulates the president, and the American public, against bad deals by allowing for greater public scrutiny and oversight. As the debacle in Afghanistan shows, closer evaluation of Mr. Trump’s Taliban deal and of Mr. Biden’s withdrawal plans would have been preferable to the tragedy now unfolding.
Kori Schake worked for the National Security Council and as a deputy director of policy planning at the State Department during George W. Bush’s administration. She is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
4. Keep the ‘Pineapple Express’ Rolling
Keep the ‘Pineapple Express’ Rolling
How to rescue more Afghans after Biden’s deadline expires.
WSJ · by Bing West and Paul Wolfowitz
Afghans walk through the main gate of international airport in Kabul, Aug. 28.
Photo: wakil kohsar/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
An emotional President Biden pledged Thursday to evacuate American citizens from Afghanistan as well as the Afghans who had supported our hastily abandoned mission. “We will not be deterred by terrorists. . . . We will rescue the Americans who are there. We will get our Afghan allies out, and . . . continue to execute this mission with courage and honor.”
Unfortunately the president’s self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline means that many of the people to whom he made that promise will still be trapped in Afghanistan after evacuation flights end. To keep at least part of his promise, the president needs to authorize clandestine exfiltrations by declaring to the relevant congressional committees that continuing the evacuation is in the national interest.
Such a declaration, commonly called a “finding,” is delivered to the congressional committees with oversight of covert operations. It would create and formally authorize a clandestine program, bringing with it resources, manpower, money and congressional buy-in, so that the Central Intelligence Agency and others can achieve the declared objective of evacuating Americans and Afghan allies.
Weeks before the president’s public promise, scores if not hundreds of U.S. veterans volunteered to rescue their countrymen trapped in Afghanistan as well as those Afghans who fought with and for us. Frustrated “that our own government didn’t do this,” one of the volunteers told ABC News, “we did what we should do, as Americans.”
Gripping accounts are emerging of the so-called Pineapple Express, a remarkable testament to the values and courage of the men and women who make up our volunteer military and the civilians who support them. ABC reported that as of Aug. 26, the effort had saved more than 500 at-risk Afghans by getting them inside the Kabul airport.
That required the escapees to make their way at night—sometimes through sewers and often along dangerous streets—to get to their appropriate entry point at the airport. Hundreds of people, many in the U.S., constructed routes in real time using the Global Positioning System and guided those in Kabul with secure communications on Signal. Former Green Beret Capt. Zac Lois, the “engineer” for this clandestine railroad, consciously modeled his tactics for evading the Taliban on those employed by the American heroine Harriet Tubman.
Today’s remarkable volunteers are determined to get out “just one more” right up to the last minute of the last day. A “finding” could help them do that and more. It would also guard against the administration pulling the plug on those left behind once public anger wanes. Despite the heroic volunteer efforts, there are likely to be people who will still need help to escape, weeks and months from now. The president needs to do more to keep his word.
Mr. West, a former assistant defense secretary and combat Marine, has written four books about the Afghanistan war. Mr. Wolfowitz, a former deputy defense secretary (2001-05), is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the advisory board of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit that assists Afghans who used to work for the U.S. military.
WSJ · by Bing West and Paul Wolfowitz
5. Opinion | The Road to Recovery From Afghanistan Is a Familiar One
Yep. This too shall pass.
Excerpt:
It’s easy to despair over the idea that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has forever doomed American credibility. Undeniably, the United States has paid and will likely continue to pay a high price in Afghanistan.
But it can recoup, just as it has before.
Opinion | The Road to Recovery From Afghanistan Is a Familiar One
Guest Essay
The Road to Recovery From Afghanistan Is a Familiar One
Aug. 29, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET
By
Mr. Ross is counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The cascade of crises in Afghanistan has left many Americans wondering if our credibility on the world stage has suffered a mortal blow. Not since the fall of Saigon and the ignominious evacuation of the last Americans in 1975 has the United States been so vulnerable to fundamental questions about America’s reliability, about whether friends and allies will ever again be able to count on U.S. commitments.
Before we draw definitive conclusions, however, a little perspective is in order.
Vietnam, cited so often in recent days, was undoubtedly a debacle. But it did not spell the end of American leadership on the world stage, nor did it lead others to believe they could not depend on the United States. And since then, there have been many other geopolitical challenges and top-level decisions (or lack thereof) that have cast doubt on American credibility. They did not, however, lead to a waning of American influence.
During the Carter administration, the Iran hostage crisis — marked by a failed rescue mission — dragged on for more than a year as the rest of the world witnessed American impotence. Following the loss of 241 Marines in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, President Ronald Reagan vowed to make the perpetrators pay. Within a few months, however, Mr. Reagan withdrew all forces from Lebanon. The United States never retaliated for the bombing.
During the Clinton administration, terrorists bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. airmen. Despite tough talk and access to information that implicated Iran, the United States didn’t retaliate then, either.
President George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq are a story unto themselves. The invasion lacked legitimate justification: There never were any weapons of mass destruction. The United States also failed to sufficiently fill the leadership vacuum following the removal of Saddam Hussein, contributing to a sectarian conflict and the subsequent creation of ISIS. President Barack Obama drew a red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria and failed to react militarily when chemical weapons were, in fact, used against Syrian civilians.
And with President Donald Trump, the examples are almost too numerous to mention. A choice two include frequent threats to pull out of NATO and an impulsive decision to withdraw from Syria (that was partially walked back by his advisers).
Each of these examples damaged American credibility worldwide, although not necessarily to the same extent. But countries continued to ask for — and offer — support.
Despite the messy exit from Kabul and the devastating bombings at the Kabul Airport, Afghanistan will be no different. Partners and allies will publicly decry American decisions for some time, as they continue to rely on the U.S. economy and military. The reality will remain: America is the most powerful country in the world, and its allies will need its help to combat direct threats and an array of new, growing national security dangers, including cyberwar and climate change.
That does not mean that the United States can dismiss the costs of its mistakes in Afghanistan. But it does show that America can recover.
President Biden declared: “America is back.” Going forward, it will be important to show that the United States is not walking away from its responsibilities, that it will not brook challenges. Instead, America needs to reaffirm its commitments.
To begin, the administration must start by completing the evacuation of Afghanistan. It’s important to succeed not only in evacuating all Americans, but in evacuating those Afghans who worked with us and are now at risk. We are morally obligated to them.
As of now, President Biden plans to stick to the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, saying that each day of operations in Afghanistan “brings added risk to our troops.” The deaths of American Marines on Thursday prove he is right.
Still, the administration should consider extending the Aug. 31 deadline, despite the very real risks of staying longer. America’s duty is to oversee a safe withdrawal. An artificial deadline should not take precedence over that or hurry us into mistakes. The United States has the means to pressure the Taliban to accept a limited extension and to permit and safeguard continuing evacuations even after American forces leave. The United States can continue to politically isolate the Taliban, and keep frozen the billions of dollars in Afghan assets that the Taliban want and need. Mr. Biden can make clear that the United States will get out but that it needs more time. It is in the Taliban’s interest to facilitate the U.S. exit.
Second, the administration must discuss a long-term plan for the greater Middle East with European allies and other regional stakeholders. This is not the time to shift forces out of the area, including those in Iraq and Syria. The United States cannot allow ISIS or other armed organizations to regroup. Instead, the United States must clearly explain American aims in the Middle East, what America will be prepared to do to fulfill them and the roles it needs its allies to play.
Third, the administration must respond to enemy attacks or challenges to international norms with strength and conviction. Its message to the world must be clear: U.S. forces and allies cannot be attacked with impunity. Mr. Biden’s retaliatory unmanned airstrike against an ISIS-K planner Friday to avenge the airport bombings was a good first step. More actions against those who attack or threaten the U.S. and its partners will be needed to drive home the point.
It’s easy to despair over the idea that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has forever doomed American credibility. Undeniably, the United States has paid and will likely continue to pay a high price in Afghanistan.
But it can recoup, just as it has before.
Dennis Ross is counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served in numerous senior national security positions in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.
6. Trapped in Afghanistan, Rescued by Volunteers: How a Handful of Americans Freed 5,000 Afghans
Excerpts:
With the U.S. withdrawal facing a deadline Tuesday after 20 years of war, private citizens said they volunteered time and money in the ambitious effort to help patch up an American evacuation they see as inadequate.
Jim Linder, a retired major general, former commander of special-operations units in Afghanistan and part of Mr. Van Meter’s group, said former Afghan comrades who felt abandoned by the U.S. government appealed to him for help. “This is not who we are as a people,” he said. He is president of Tenax Aerospace, a Madison, Miss., company that provides governments with special-mission reconnaissance and other aircraft, and his connections helped the group charter planes for rescue flights.
On a white board in the Washington hotel’s Peacock Lounge, the group listed airport entry points. Toward the end of last week, someone wrote “CLOSED” next to all but one. An Islamic State suicide attack killed 13 U.S. troops Thursday, as well as nearly 200 Afghans crowding around the airport.
Trapped in Afghanistan, Rescued by Volunteers: How a Handful of Americans Freed 5,000 Afghans
From a lounge at the Willard Hotel in Washington, a group of men and women mobilized a global network to conduct a two-week military-style rescue operation
Two days later, on Aug. 25, Somaliland’s acting foreign minister signed a tentative accord with charities working with Mr. Van Meter, agreeing to temporarily house as many as 10,000 Afghan evacuees in Berbera, a port on the Gulf of Aden. It was part of an on-the-fly effort that Mr. Van Meter said has helped about 5,000 Afghans escape their country in the past two weeks, in one of the most successful known private efforts to extract Afghans.
From the Peacock Lounge, a conference room at the Willard InterContinental hotel in Washington, Mr. Van Meter and an ad hoc collection of war veterans, Afghan diplomats, wealthy donors, defense contractors, nonprofit workers and off-duty U.S. officials conducted a global military-style rescue operation.
Volunteers working at the Willard Hotel in Washington take a break to hear remarks Thursday on Afghanistan by President Biden.
The self-named Commercial Task Force dispatched former commandos to Kabul to retrieve evacuees, said Mr. Van Meter, president of New Standard Holdings, a private-equity company, and others affiliated with the group. It made a deal with the United Arab Emirates that allowed an airlift to carry Afghans from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to temporary shelter in Abu Dhabi where many of the 5,000 evacuees await permission to travel to countries willing to give them permanent refuge.
The group is talking with officials from Albania, Ukraine and other countries, hoping to find them places to settle.
With the U.S. withdrawal facing a deadline Tuesday after 20 years of war, private citizens said they volunteered time and money in the ambitious effort to help patch up an American evacuation they see as inadequate.
Jim Linder, a retired major general, former commander of special-operations units in Afghanistan and part of Mr. Van Meter’s group, said former Afghan comrades who felt abandoned by the U.S. government appealed to him for help. “This is not who we are as a people,” he said. He is president of Tenax Aerospace, a Madison, Miss., company that provides governments with special-mission reconnaissance and other aircraft, and his connections helped the group charter planes for rescue flights.
On a white board in the Washington hotel’s Peacock Lounge, the group listed airport entry points. Toward the end of last week, someone wrote “CLOSED” next to all but one. An Islamic State suicide attack killed 13 U.S. troops Thursday, as well as nearly 200 Afghans crowding around the airport.
A white board in the Peacock Lounge of the Willard Hotel in Washington shows the status of various gates at the airport in Kabul.
Early Sunday, the group focused on evacuating people via land routes or helicopter, and finding places to resettle the Afghans already out of the country, Mr. Van Meter said.
The Defense Department declined to comment on the Commercial Task Force and other private rescue operations.
The U.S. government said that since Aug. 14 it has airlifted or helped in evacuating some 114,400 people from Afghanistan. That includes American citizens, green cardholders and Afghans whose service to the fallen Kabul government or the U.S.-led war effort leaves them vulnerable to Taliban retribution.
A satellite image shows crowds at the northern gate of Kabuls Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan on Aug, 23.
Photo: MAXAR/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Against the clock
Mr. Van Meter was in Washington staying at the Willard Hotel for business and decided on Aug. 22 to rent the hotel’s Peacock Lounge, a small carpeted conference room with a few tables and TVs. “I put it on my American Express and told my wife it’s what we needed to do,” he said.
He said he was spurred to action by a business associate, who was a former U.S. Army commando.
Sean, the commando, contacted Mr. Van Meter two weeks ago and said he knew of 3,500 children, many of them orphans, stranded in Kabul. He needed help getting them out. Mr. Van Meter knew next to nothing about military operations, he said, but he had business and personal ties to the United Arab Emirates.
He reached a senior Emirati diplomat and introduced him to Sean.
“Time is absolutely of the essence,” Sean wrote the diplomat in an Aug. 14 email viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We are working against the clock and a closing window of opportunity.”
The diplomat passed on his government’s tentative approval “to begin accepting some of the evacuees” and referred Sean to an Emirati general, according to email communications between the men. Sean flew to Abu Dhabi to meet with the general.
The general agreed to provide a C-17 military transport plane, an aircrew and a platoon of soldiers for a trial run into Kabul. The Emirati general couldn't be reached for comment.
The U.A.E. agreed to give the evacuees temporary shelter, but they had to first reach the Kabul airport and board the transport plane. Sean was banking on a small network of former commandos in Kabul to help the operation run smoothly—including picking up evacuees and escorting them to the airport.
A family crouching at a gate to the airport in Kabul last week.
Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
On Aug. 20, Sean changed out of a blue blazer into military-style gear for the flight to Kabul. He and another special operations veteran carried body armor, bottles of Excedrin and a sack of 5-Hour Energy drinks. They went for a briefing at the Emirati Armed Forces Officers Club & Hotel, a military-only facility near the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
A sign in the room read “Fars al-Sham,” which translates to “Knights of the Levant,” the U.A.E.’s code name for the rescue operation. Emirati officers told Sean and his companion that the promised C-17, which could hold around 180 people, had been fitted with separate toilets and medical teams for men and women returning on the three-hour flight from Kabul.
“We want to use minimum force, no bullets.” one of the Emirati officers said.
Once the plane arrived in Kabul, Sean and his colleague had 45 minutes to find and board the evacuees, a group of Afghans they had previously identified as being in danger from the Taliban. Sean had contacted the evacuees about the plan through Afghan sources outside the airport and U.S. military contacts inside.
When the plane landed, the Afghans were waiting at the airport. The plane lifted off with nearly two dozen evacuees, far short of the plane’s capacity. But the trip proved the system worked.
The Emirati general authorized more rescue flights, said Sean, who remained in Kabul for about a week to coordinate operations. He said the U.S. military gave him access to a hanger and a ramp that became known as the Commercial Task Force ramp. He was given a call sign to use for arriving flights so military air-traffic controllers could distinguish the group’s planes.
The group has since pulled its team from Kabul.
The U.A.E. government wouldn’t comment on the operation. It said that as of Thursday, the country had played a role in evacuating 36,500 people from Afghanistan. By Friday, it said it was hosting 8,500 evacuees but didn’t specify if the tally included those from Mr. Van Meter’s group.
Brian Kinsella, a former Army captain who worked in relief operations after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, oversaw the collection of names of people seeking rescue from Afghanistan from among hundreds of pleas and referrals.
Escape route
Last week, volunteers took shifts at the hotel’s Peacock Lounge, fielding requests for help and working their contacts to get Afghans and Americans into the Kabul airport and out of Afghanistan.
One volunteer, Barakat Rahmati, was the No. 2 official at the Afghan embassy in Qatar. He was on a trip to Washington when Kabul fell and his government ceased to exist.
Mr. Rahmati was trying to help 322 Afghan commandos, elite troops trained by U.S. Special Forces, who had managed to escape to Abu Dhabi, he said. The soldiers had tossed their identification papers to elude Taliban militants. The former official was trying to issue them new documents so they could travel to countries that would let them settle.
Alex Cornell du Houx, who served in the Marine Corps in Iraq, was trying to maneuver a convoy of female judges past the Taliban checkpoints surrounding the airport. As of Sunday morning in Kabul, he hadn’t gotten any word.
After Thursday’s suicide bombing, the volunteers watched the grisly videos, while trying to figure out how to get their last evacuees out of the country.
“Do we know where the orphans are yet?” Mr. Van Meter shouted to the volunteers. They didn’t.
The children and their chaperones—some 300 in total—had managed to get onto the grounds of the Kabul airport earlier in the week but were turned back. As far as Mr. Van Meter knew, they had last been seen 400 yards from the gate where the suicide attacks later took place.
The volunteers later learned the children were back at a safe house. As of Saturday, they still hadn’t made it back into the airport, Mr. Van Meter said.
James Linder, a retired major general and former commander of special-operations units in Afghanistan, helped in the rescue operation conducted from the Willard Hotel in Washington.
Brian Kinsella, a former Army captain who worked in relief operations after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, was in charge of condensing hundreds of pleas and referrals into lists topped by U.S. citizens, green cardholders and high-risk Afghans. His phone filled with photos of families and passports and Google maps showing where people were hiding.
On Friday, Mr. Kinsella talked to an American citizen who was booked on a plane with her 11-year-old, but she decided not to go without other family members who didn’t have U.S. paperwork. During one call with the woman this week, Mr. Kinsella could hear gunfire.
“We’re trying to help,” he said. “We can’t in some cases.”
With the last routes out of Afghanistan closing, the volunteers are looking at land routes and possible airlifts from smaller cities, as well as countries willing to host those Afghans who have already escaped. One group is working on the plan to set up and manage a shelter for the Afghans in Somaliland.
“We’re not giving up,” said Emily King, a former Pentagon adviser who has been using her Albanian contacts to secure a haven. “We’ll keep pivoting to find a way.”
At 3 a.m. Sunday, the last of the group left the Peacock Lounge for good and moved their work elsewhere.
—Justin Scheck contributed to this article.
7. There's chaos and risk in Afghanistan exit, but Biden critics are getting it mostly wrong
The author lists 14 arguments that he claims are indefensible.
Conclusion:
Bottom line: The airlift is a major logistical achievement. Tragically, in exiting a war like this, some chaos and deaths were inevitable. But getting out was right – and long overdue.
There's chaos and risk in Afghanistan exit, but Biden critics are getting it mostly wrong
USA Today · by David Rothkopf | Opinion columnist
We have no ongoing security interest in Afghanistan, and we don't send troops everywhere to protect women and human rights. We do that in other ways.
The intellectual dishonesty in critiques of how President Joe Biden is handling the U.S. departure from Afghanistan has been off the charts. That's not to say some of them are not warranted. They certainly are. The swift fall of Kabul to the Taliban was predictable and there is a case that we should have been better prepared for it. And there is no doubt that the risks we faced were great, as shown by the Kabul airport attack last week that claimed the lives of at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops.
But some of the arguments we are hearing are indefensible. Among the worst:
1. Biden owns this. (No. The authors of 20 years of war own this. The corrupt Afghan government and the Afghan military who stood down own this. The Trump administration that set the deadlines, drew down the troops, left behind the materiel and released 5,000 Taliban prisoners owns this.)
2. Well, at least he owns the chaos surrounding our exit. (No. There's no way that the Taliban regaining control would not have led to chaos with many thousands of Afghans seeking to escape the rule of a thug regime. Whenever we began to airlift folks out, it would have started.)
3. Well, at least he should have been better prepared for the chaos. (I'm going to give you this one, but it should be noted that efforts to prepare were rebuffed. The Afghan government did not want the U.S. beginning mass evacuations for the reasons cited in No. 2.)
We did not abandon our friends
5. The U.S. abandoned our allies. (No. Some of those allies left before we did. Canada left in 2014 but has returned in recent days to help with the evacuation. All knew for years of U.S. discussions regarding departure and the Trump deal and announced departure early last year. And there has been close coordination during the evacuation process: Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has convened meetings every other day with nearly 30 allied and other nations.)
6. The evacuation was bungled. (No. It started off badly but turned out to be masterful. The administration and the military adapted quickly. The airlift is currently one of the biggest in U.S. military history and could fly out as many as 150,000 people by the Aug. 31 deadline.)
7. The U.S. departure from Afghanistan will make it a potential breeding ground for terror again. (Afghanistan has been a dangerous place all 20 years America has been there. The swift and inevitable Taliban return to power and the airport attack by ISIS-K, the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate, show that won't change. Meanwhile, there has been a massive increase in terror threats worldwide.. Afghanistan is no longer the epicenter of the threat and we must adapt. We have many tools to respond, as the drone strikes against ISIS-K illustrate.)
8. People will be left behind. (It is wildly unrealistic to think the U.S. could remove everyone at risk from Afghanistan. What's being done is above and beyond expectations. Other forms of political, diplomatic and economic pressure must be used to promote human rights in Afghanistan.)
9. We could easily have left troops there indefinitely. (No. There was a cost to that and a risk. The risk grew as the Taliban grew in strength. Trump accelerated that with the release of prisoners held by the Afghan government and his announced May 1 departure date. Staying would have required a bigger investment.)
10. But we have left troops in Germany and Korea. (Not comparable. Those are allied nations facing real imminent threats from major enemies who pose a strategic risk to the United States. We have no similar ongoing interest in Afghanistan.)
Troops are not always the answer
11. But the troops could have protected women and girls. (First, as noted, the Taliban was gaining strength for years – despite the presence of the troops. Second, troops are not the means we advance such interests anywhere else. It is not a sustainable or effective approach.)
12. But Biden and his team say human rights are at the center of our foreign policy. (That can be true without deploying troops to confront all threats to rights. It must be. Because we'll never do that. Are critics suggesting deployments now to Ethiopia? Myanmar? To protect women elsewhere?)
13. The current debate about Biden’s performance is not about getting out of Afghanistan. Trying to make it about that is an effort to deflect and distract. (No. Getting out of Afghanistan is the central issue, marking a major shift in U.S. policy. It is about ending a 20-year war. It is about acknowledging a massive U.S. foreign policy failure and shifting to new priorities. That's the point.)
14. Biden was part of the problem, he's known about this all along. (No. Biden has been arguing to wind this down for 12 years. When he was vice president, his view was overruled by President Barack Obama. And after 9/11 almost everyone supported going in after al-Qaida. For good reason.)
15. But … but … it's messy and painful. (Right. As Carnegie Endowment Senior Fellow Stephen Wertheim has noted, “You don’t get to lose a war and expect the result to look like you won it.”)
Bottom line: The airlift is a major logistical achievement. Tragically, in exiting a war like this, some chaos and deaths were inevitable. But getting out was right – and long overdue.
David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) is a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, host of "Deep State Radio," and CEO of the Rothkopf Group media and podcasting company specializing in international issues. This column was adapted from a Twitter thread.
USA Today · by David Rothkopf | Opinion columnist
8. Overwhelming bipartisan support for keeping troops in Afghanistan until all Americans, Afghans who aided US out: POLL
Leave no one behind.
Overwhelming bipartisan support for keeping troops in Afghanistan until all Americans, Afghans who aided US out: POLL
Although President Joe Biden has held firm that all U.S. troops must be out of the country by Tuesday, regardless of whether the evacuation mission at hand is complete, Americans broadly disagree, according to the poll.
The poll was conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel and all interviews were completed after the terrorist attack at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport that left at least 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans dead. Hundreds more were wounded in the attack, which an affiliate of the Islamic State, ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for.
More than 8 in 10 (84%) Americans think U.S. troops should remain in the country until all Americans are evacuated, and just over 7 in 10 (71%) think they should stay until all Afghans who helped the United States are evacuated as well.
Breaking from the typical polarization that characterizes public attitudes, support for U.S. troops staying is strikingly consistent across party lines. Among Republicans, Democrats and independents, overwhelming majorities -- 87%, 86% and 86%, respectively -- believe U.S. troops should not leave until all Americans are out of Afghanistan. The partisan gap is also negligible for keeping troops in Afghanistan until all Afghans who aided the United States are evacuated, with 77% of Republicans, 72% of Democrats and 70% of independents saying troops should stay until that happens.
Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla / U.S. Marine Corps via Getty Images
U.S. Soldiers and Marines assist with security at an Evacuation Control Checkpoint during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 19, 2021.
Speaking about the attack Thursday, Biden said the mission's danger is why he's "been so determined to limit the duration" of it.
"The sooner we can finish the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops," the president said Tuesday, two days before the suicide bombing. "Every day we're on the ground, is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians."
In a statement Saturday afternoon following a meeting with his national security team, Biden said U.S. troops are continuing to evacuate civilians amid "extremely dangerous conditions," warning that another attack is "highly likely in the next 24-36 hours." Earlier Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued an alert similar to the one issued roughly 14 hours before Thursday's terrorist attack warning of security threats at the airport, telling all U.S. citizens to avoid the area or "leave immediately" if at the gates. In the evening, the U.S. embassy issued an updated warning of a "specific, credible threat" at the airport.
Fewer than 4 in 10 (38%) Americans approve of the president's handling of Afghanistan -- 17 points lower than the share who said they approved of Biden's handling of the U.S. troop withdrawal in a July 23-24 ABC News/Ipsos poll.
Senior Airman Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via AP
U.S. Air Force, a U.S. Marine provides security for evacuees boarding a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 24, 2021.
While Sunday's ABC News/Ipsos did not measure Biden's overall approval, FiveThirtyEight's tracker averaging presidential approval polls showed his approve-disapprove ratings were even for the first time during his term, converging at 47%-47% as of Friday.
But the public's disapproval of his handling of Afghanistan has not influenced their views on other issues, according to the new ABC News/Ipsos poll. A strong majority (64%) approve of how Biden is responding to the coronavirus pandemic, which is virtually identical to the findings in July's ABC News/Ipsos poll. Biden also enjoys high approval (62%) for his handling of rebuilding U.S. infrastructure.
A majority (55%) of the American public also approves of his handling of the economic recovery; 53% approved in July's poll. About 4 in 10 (41%) approve of his handling of immigration and the situation at the southern border, compared to 37% last month.
On his handling of gun violence and crime, issues that track closely with one another, about half of Americans disapprove -- 52% and 50%, respectively. But this actually represents an improvement since July, when 61% of Americans disapproved of Biden's handling of gun violence and 58% disapproved of his handling of crime, according to the July ABC News/Ipsos poll.
For each issue, at least two-thirds of Democrats approve of how Biden is handling them. His highest approval ratings among his own party are for his handling of COVID-19 (91%), infrastructure (91%) and the economic recovery (89%), and his lowest approval ratings -- each at 67% -- are for his handling of the border, gun violence and Afghanistan.
Among the key group of independents, approval ratings track closely with the results among the public overall for each issue.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
President Joe Biden speaks about the situation in Afghanistan in the East Room of the White House on Aug. 26, 2021.
Fewer than a third of Republicans approve of Biden's handling of each issue, but he gets the highest marks for his handling of the pandemic response (32%). On his handling of Afghanistan, only 1 in 10 (11%) Republicans approve, his lowest mark of the issues polled.
While two-thirds (67%) of Americans are at least somewhat worried about a major terrorist attack in the United States, Republicans are more likely to be concerned than Democrats and independents, 80% compared to 59% and 65%, respectively.
But even after the deadly terrorist attack in Kabul, the public has a lower level of concern for a major terrorist attack at home than during other times in recent years when it was measured by ABC News/Washington Post polls. In October 2014, about 7 in 10 (71%) of Americans were worried about an attack in the United States; in January 2015, about three-quarters were worried; and in September 2016, the last time this question was asked in ABC News polling, nearly 8 in 10 (78%) were worried.
A majority (56%) of Americans also feel that the end of the United States' military presence in Afghanistan makes no difference in how safe the nation is from terrorism. Over a third (36%) feel this makes the United States less safe from terrorism, but again, Republicans are more likely than Democrats and independents to think it makes America less safe, 59% compared to 21% and 36%.
METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs' KnowledgePanel® Aug. 27-28, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 513 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.9 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 31%-24%-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll's topline results and details on the methodology here.
ABC News' Dan Merkle and Ken Goldstein contributed to this report.
9. An Iowa town goes to battle for Afghan immigrant
.
The people of Iowa show us what makes America great.
However, the bureaucracy almost thwarted Zalmay Niazy's chance at freedom.
An Iowa town goes to battle for Afghan immigrant
At first glance, Iowa Falls might be an uncomfortable place for a devout Muslim. Pork, forbidden in Islam, is big business here, and there isn't a mosque for miles. And yet, for Zalmay Niazy – an Afghan who goes simply by "Zee" – Iowa Falls has been the answer to his prayers.
"Iowa Falls is home," he told correspondent Lee Cowan.
Niazy came to the U.S. after serving as an interpreter for both American and Allied forces in eastern Afghanistan. Every mission made him a target of the Taliban.
"I have seen a lot of my very good friends have been killed," Niazy said, "and we've been given body bags to just pick something for the family."
"Did your Humvee ever get hit?" Cowan asked.
"Plenty times."
He had a bullet taken out of his arm; he nearly lost an eye to shrapnel; and when the bus he was riding in drove over a roadside bomb, he nearly lost a leg.
Zalmay Niazy served as an interpreter for U.S. and Allied forces in Afghanistan. Targeted by the Taliban, he settled in Iowa. But his application for asylum was not guaranteed. CBS News
When folks in Iowa Falls heard of his service, people like Duane and Emily Kruckenberg didn't just welcome him, they practically saluted him.
"It's not just his personality, it's his character," said Emily. "He would do anything for anybody, and he showed that with the service he did for us."
Duane said, "He's probably more of an American than some people that are born here."
What few people knew, however, was just how Niazy got here in the first place.
In 2014 the U.S. contractor Zee had been working for in Kabul flew him to Washington, D.C., for business. Niazy was thrilled, but he had no intention of leaving Afghanistan for good. "If everybody leaves that country, who's going to fix it?" he said.
Hours after he landed, his parents found a warning – one of several they'd received from the Taliban – nailed to their front door. In short it said if Niazy went home, he'd be dead – and so would his family.
The Taliban has already made good on past threats. Niazy said they murdered his uncle and forced his parents into hiding. "It was the hardest decision of my life, that, 'What am I going to do?'" he said. "I just didn't want any more pain, just didn't want my family to live like immigrants in their own country anymore."
Niazy had no choice but to apply for political asylum.
He had nothing but the clothes on his back when he arrived in Iowa Falls. One of the first to help him was a giant of a man, both in stature and in spirit: Mike Ingebritson. "I don't let him speak his foreign language around me because then I think he's talking about me!" he laughed.
Ingebritson never served in the armed forces (at 6 foot 10 he was too tall), but offering kindness, he said, doesn't have a height restriction.
Cowan asked Ingebritson, "Why did you give him a chance?"
"Oh, you get a kid that's, let's say, 10,000 miles away from home, three-time wounded veteran, and he says, 'Can you help me?' You don't turn him down; you do the right thing."
Ingebritson loaned Niazy money to buy an old house that was practically falling down ("I told him that I am buying this house, he looked at me and said, 'Are you stupid?'"), and helped him turn it into a home. Niazy's pretty handy that way, so much so he started his own business, Zee Handyman Services.
Zalmay Niazy started a contracting service in Iowa Falls. CBS News
He quickly got a reputation as the contractor the town could count on. Just ask those working at the local optometry shop where he was installing a new ceiling.
Cowan asked, "How important is he to the community as a whole, you think?"
Jill said, "Everybody here knows him. Everybody knows that he would do anything he can for anybody here."
Deb added, "Always willing to help, plus he's a lot of fun!"
Everyone in town pretty much assumed Niazy would be granted asylum, but when his interview with U.S. Immigration finally came around, something didn't seem quite right. "My interview was almost seven hours," he said. He had to account for everything, including his childhood, and one day in particular when, Niazy said, he was forced to give the Taliban a piece of bread at gunpoint, or, they warned: "'We will kill your parents, or we will burn your house.' And as a nine-years-old kid, not even nine yet, I was scared. I didn't 't know what else to do to protect my family. That's what they wanted."
Three months ago, Niazy got a letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that suggested that that morsel of bread he gave the Taliban all those years ago could be viewed as aiding an enemy – an allegation which could get him deported.
Cowan read from the letter: "'You have engaged in terrorist activity.' Did you feel betrayed?"
"I did; I got stabbed in the back," Niazy replied.
Zalmay Niazy. CBS News
As Afghanistan fell to the Taliban the past few weeks, the question on everyone's mind was, if the U.S. was risking life and limb to evacuate people fearing for their lives, why on Earth would they send someone like Zee back?
Mike Ingebritson said, "We're supposed to be reasonable people, and to me we're better than this."
The residents of Iowa Falls quickly went into action, including Mike's wife, Linda. "I won't let it happen," she said. "I mean, everybody in Iowa Falls would go to jail for him, I think."
In a matter of weeks, the town raised more than $40,000 to hire Niazy the best immigration lawyers they could find.
But as the scenes outside Kabul airport became more and more desperate, Niazy was getting more and more anxious, not only for himself, but for his family.
But then, a bit of potential good news: U.S. immigration officials won't comment on why, or what (if anything) has changed pertaining to Niazy's case, but his attorney was notified two weeks ago that the U.S. has now agreed to re-examine his application for asylum.
In Iowa Falls, it doesn't really matter the why. All that matters is that Niazy just might have a chance to stay where they think he belongs.
At a get-together, Duane Kruckenberg raised a glass: "I want to propose a toast to our friend, Zee, that he forever stays in Iowa Falls. Here, here!"
"I promise I will!" Niazy laughed.
For Niazy, it's bitter-sweet; his family is stuck back in Afghanistan, a country he nearly died to re-build. And, he vows, the fight isn't over yet.
"It takes a lot to make a community, to make a country great," he said. "And I did it. I will do it again. And I will stand for what's right."
Story produced by Amol Mhatre. Editor: Remington Korper.
10. American University of Kabul students and alumni trying to flee were sent home.
If this is true this is what they call an epic failure.
Excerpts:
The group was then alarmed to learn that the university had shared a list of names and passport information of hundreds of students and alumni with the Taliban guarding the airport checkpoints, said four students who were on the buses on Sunday.
“They told us: we have given your names to the Taliban,” said Hosay, a 24-year-old sophomore studying business administration who was on the bus on Sunday. “We are all terrified, there is no evacuation, there is no getting out.”
American University of Kabul students and alumni trying to flee were sent home.
The campus of the American University in Kabul.Credit...Hosay
By
- Aug. 29, 2021Updated 6:50 p.m. ET
Hundreds of students and alumni of American University of Kabul gathered at a safe house on Sunday and boarded buses in what was supposed to be a final attempt at evacuation on U.S. military flights, students and alumni said.
But after seven hours of waiting for clearance to enter the airport gates and driving around the city, the group met a dead end: Evacuations were permanently called off. The airport gates remained a security threat, and civilian evacuations were ending Monday.
“I regret to inform you that the high command at HKIA in the airport has announced there will be no more rescue flights,” said an email sent to students from the university administration on Sunday afternoon, which was shared with The New York Times.
The email asked the 600 or so students and alumni to return home. The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be completed by a Tuesday deadline, so the U.S. military is turning from evacuating civilians to bringing its own personnel home.
The group was then alarmed to learn that the university had shared a list of names and passport information of hundreds of students and alumni with the Taliban guarding the airport checkpoints, said four students who were on the buses on Sunday.
“They told us: we have given your names to the Taliban,” said Hosay, a 24-year-old sophomore studying business administration who was on the bus on Sunday. “We are all terrified, there is no evacuation, there is no getting out.”
Hosay earned a scholarship that covered half of her tuition. She wanted to get an MBA and launch an all-woman engineering firm.
When the Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15, one of the first sites the group captured was the sprawling, modern American University campus. Men in traditional Afghan outfits and swinging AK-47 rifles raised the flag of the Taliban and brought down the university flag, according to student and social media photos.
The Taliban posted a picture of themselves on social media standing at the entrance of a university building with an ominous message, saying they were where America trained infidel “wolves” to corrupt the minds of Muslims.
The photograph was widely shared among Afghans and sent students and alumni into hiding. They had reason to be scared. In 2016, the Taliban attacked the campus with explosives and guns in a terrorist assault that lasted 10 hours and killed 15 people, including seven students.
The university shut down its campus on Aug. 14 as word reached that the Taliban were on the outskirts of Kabul. The American University president, Ian Bickford, and foreign staff left Kabul for Doha that night.
Mr. Bickford said in an interview last week that he was working with the State Department to evacuate about 1,200 students and alumni. But on Friday after the deadly attack on the airport, Mr. Bickford said that effort had become much more complicated.
Mr. Bickford said the university was committed to ensuring all enrolled students would finish their degrees remotely.
The American University of Kabul opened in 2006 with most of its funding from the United States Agency for International Development, which gave $160 million. It was one of the U.S.A.I.D.’s largest civilian projects in Afghanistan.
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.
What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.
For over two weeks, students and alumni said they struggled emotionally as their status changed from college students to fugitives overnight.
Several students interviewed repeated a poetic saying in Dari, “Our hopes and dreams have turned into dust.”
Mohammad, a 31-year-old father of three and part-time government ministry worker, had three more courses left to finish his degree in business administration.
His job and salary are now gone. His degree is in jeopardy.
“It’s as if you throw a glass on a cement floor and your life shatters in a split second,” he said Sunday from a safe house.
Yasser, a 27-year-old political science student, said he was told in an email from the university on Saturday to report to a safe location for evacuation. But after President Biden said there were security threats to the airport the plan was scratched and everyone was sent home.
Early Sunday morning Yasser received another email from the university asking him to go to a safe house at 7:45 a.m. The students were told to only bring a backpack with two outfits. Videos shared with The New York Times of the evacuation show hundreds of students, carrying backpacks waiting on the roadside. Dozens of buses are lined up.
The chitchat among students abruptly ends and someone gasps. Someone cries. The students have just been told that evacuations have been called off.
“It was a frightening day,” said Yasser. “We went there anticipating to be rescued and returned home defeated.”
11. Americans Back Afghanistan Withdrawal, Lament Chaotic Exit
Americans Back Afghanistan Withdrawal, Lament Chaotic Exit
Many are grappling with how much to hold President Biden responsible for the bloodshed as U.S. troops end a 20-year occupation
WSJ · by Catherine Lucey in Philadelphia and Joshua Jamerson in St. Marys, Ga.
Their comments reflect the mixed feelings of many Americans as they follow what has quickly become the greatest foreign-policy challenge of Mr. Biden’s presidency. Interviews conducted both before and after Thursday’s deadly bombing with more than two dozen Americans in Georgia and Pennsylvania, two states pivotal to Mr. Biden’s election victory, captured broad support for leaving Afghanistan, but more mixed views on the exit itself. Many of the responses fell along party lines.
A CBS News/YouGov survey taken Aug. 18-20 found that while 63% of adults backed the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, 70% thought the removal should have been handled better. (No results have been released from any national surveys conducted after Thursday’s bombing.) The unruly Afghanistan exit comes as Mr. Biden’s administration is already battling with rising Covid-19 cases and has drawn criticism of his judgment and leadership from Republicans and some fellow Democrats.
Some people said they weren’t following the situation closely, and others made clear that Afghanistan wasn’t their top priority. “I’m not worried about it. I’m trying to get the U.S. going—and out of Covid,” said Jackie Strong of St. Marys, Ga. A retired teacher’s aide, Ms. Strong said Mr. Biden, whom she supports, was “doing the best he can do” in Afghanistan.
President Biden praised the fallen soldiers as heroes at the White House on Thursday.
Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press
Since his 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden has pitched himself as an experienced and empathetic leader, seeking to present a steady contrast to the unpredictable policy-making of former President Donald Trump. The deadly Afghanistan exit poses a threat to that image, political operatives in both parties say, and could distract from his priorities: battling a new wave of Covid-19 infections and advancing new spending proposals to address infrastructure and poverty.
The president’s advisers argue that leaving Afghanistan is broadly popular, and Democrats maintain that the economy and Covid-19 will be the leading issues in next year’s midterm elections. Democrats hold a narrow majority in the House and control the evenly divided Senate, putting Mr. Biden’s party at risk of losing legislative power in next year’s elections.
Mr. Biden spoke from the White House on Thursday to address the attack, which U.S. officials attributed to Islamic State’s regional affiliate. He praised the fallen soldiers as heroes, said the evacuation mission would continue and promised to retaliate. He also again defended his decision to exit, saying it was “time to end a 20-year war.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the public agrees “with the president’s decision that it would have been unjust and not in our interest to commit American troops to more intense fighting.”
Some Americans interviewed said the president’s handling of Afghanistan hadn’t changed their views on his leadership abilities.
“He’s still just an empathetic person,” said Serena Sunflowers, a server and gig-economy worker in St. Marys, who added that she thought Mr. Biden was showing that he identified with families of troops who hopefully would get to come home. “If my husband was there right now, and just got pulled out, I’d be so happy about it,” she said.
Ms. Sunflowers, a Democrat, said she didn’t blame Mr. Biden for the carnage in Afghanistan. “We know who started it and who didn’t,” she said of the war, noting that the effort had occupied four American presidents.
Marvin McKinney, a retired truck driver from Kingsland, Ga., who supported Mr. Trump in 2020, agreed that the failure to leave Afghanistan in an orderly fashion was likely a result of decades of botched American foreign policy. “The American people are to blame because we elected the people who made these decisions,” Mr. McKinney said.
Advisers to President Biden argue that leaving Afghanistan is broadly popular. A military aircraft took off from the airport in Kabul on Friday.
Photo: -/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Joseph Ferrell, 32, a real-estate agent from Springfield, Pa., who voted for Mr. Trump, said the situation in Afghanistan was “horrible.”
“There should be an exit, but you have to come up with a plan,” he said. He also argued that Mr. Biden shouldn’t be talking about issues like infrastructure right now, asking, “Why are you worried about the roads?”
An NBC News poll conducted Aug. 14-17 showed Mr. Biden’s approval ratings falling to 49% among adults, down from 53% in April. Pollster Jeff Horwitt, a Democrat, attributed that decline to the re-emergence of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations around the country, as Mr. Biden’s approval for handing the pandemic dropped substantially since the spring. He also noted that most survey respondents, when asked an open-ended question about their top concerns, mentioned the pandemic or the economic recovery.
Strategists and lawmakers from both parties agreed that Afghanistan’s impact on the 2022 midterms was difficult to assess more than 14 months from Election Day.
“At the end of the day, the experts would tell you that domestic issues are the primary thing that voters will be looking at, but there’s no way to tell that when you’re this far out,” said Rep. Tom Emmer (R., Minn.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm. However, Mr. Emmer added that Mr. Biden’s handling of Afghanistan could become a bigger factor in Americans’ day-to-day concerns if they start to feel unsafe at home. “President Biden and the Democrats’ incompetence has actually put Americans in harm’s way and made us all less safe,” he said.
The NRCC’s counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, declined to comment.
Democrat Dan Sena, who served as the executive director of the DCCC in 2018, said voters will be most focused on jobs, the economy and health, describing Afghanistan as a “stumbling block to a larger narrative that they want to tell.” He cited the White House efforts on issues like infrastructure, saying, “They’ve got a lot to talk about.”
In Kingsland, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) met Friday with military families and service members such as Sergio Rodriguez, who served in Iraq. “I don’t think he had a choice,” Mr. Rodriguez said of Mr. Biden, noting that Mr. Trump had pledged to the Taliban that the U.S. would withdraw this year. He said he blamed the never-ending nature of the war for the deadly exit, which he said was heartbreaking for him as a veteran.
Said Mr. Rodriguez: “We need to just stand back and protect ourselves.”
WSJ · by Catherine Lucey in Philadelphia and Joshua Jamerson in St. Marys, Ga.
12. White House: US has capacity to evacuate remaining Americans
Excerpts:
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday that for those U.S. citizens seeking immediately to leave Afghanistan by the looming deadline, “we have the capacity to have 300 Americans, which is roughly the number we think are remaining, come to the airport and get on planes in the time that is remaining.”
Sullivan said the U.S. does not currently plan to have an ongoing embassy presence after the final U.S. troop withdrawal. But he pledged the U.S. “will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident” after Tuesday, as well as for “those Afghans who helped us.” But untold numbers of vulnerable Afghans, fearful of a return to the brutality of pre-2001 Taliban rule, are likely to be left behind.
White House: US has capacity to evacuate remaining Americans
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has the capacity to evacuate the approximately 300 U.S. citizens remaining in Afghanistan who want to leave before President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline, senior administration officials said, as rocket fire in Kabul and another U.S. drone strike against suspected Islamic State militants underscored the grave threat in the war’s final days.
“This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission these last couple of days,” America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said Sunday not long before confirmation of the drone strike in Kabul.
The steady stream of U.S. military jets taking off and landing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan’s capital continued Monday even after rocket fire apparently targeted the airport. No one claimed responsibility for the rockets, which hit a nearby neighborhood, and it wasn’t immediately clear if anyone was hurt. The U.S. military did not respond to requests for comment, although the White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the rocket launch.
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday that for those U.S. citizens seeking immediately to leave Afghanistan by the looming deadline, “we have the capacity to have 300 Americans, which is roughly the number we think are remaining, come to the airport and get on planes in the time that is remaining.”
Sullivan said the U.S. does not currently plan to have an ongoing embassy presence after the final U.S. troop withdrawal. But he pledged the U.S. “will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident” after Tuesday, as well as for “those Afghans who helped us.” But untold numbers of vulnerable Afghans, fearful of a return to the brutality of pre-2001 Taliban rule, are likely to be left behind.
Blinken said the U.S. was working with other countries in the region to either keep the Kabul airport open after Tuesday or to reopen it “in a timely fashion.”
He also said that while the airport is critical, “there are other ways to leave Afghanistan, including by road and many countries border Afghanistan.” The U.S., he said, is “making sure that we have in place all of the necessary tools and means to facilitate the travel for those who seek to leave Afghanistan” after Tuesday.
There also are roughly 280 others who have said they are Americans but who have told the State Department they plan to remain in the country or are still undecided. According to the latest totals, about 114,000 people have been evacuated since the Taliban takeover Aug. 14, including approximately 2,900 on military and coalition flights during the 24 hours ending at 3 a.m. Sunday.
RELATED
Thirteen U.S. service members died Thursday in Kabul, Afghanistan, supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.
Members of Congress criticized the chaotic and violent evacuation.
“We didn’t have to be in this rush-rush circumstance with terrorists breathing down our neck,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. “But it’s really the responsibility of the prior administration and this administration that has caused this crisis to be upon us and has led to what is without question a humanitarian and foreign policy tragedy.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, with 2,500 troops on the ground, had been working. “We were, in effect, keeping the lid on, keeping terrorists from reconstituting, and having a light footprint in the country,” he said.
U.S. officials said Sunday’s American drone strike hit a vehicle carrying multiple Islamic State suicide bombers, causing secondary explosions indicating the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. A senior U.S. official said the military drone fired a Hellfire missile at a vehicle in a compound between two buildings after individuals were seen loading explosives into the trunk.
The official said there was an initial explosion caused by the missile, followed by a much larger fireball, believed to be the result of the substantial amount of explosives inside the vehicle. The U.S. believes that two Islamic State group individuals who were targeted were killed.
In a statement, U.S. Central Command said it is looking into the reports of civilian casualties that may have been caused by the secondary explosions. An Afghan official said three children were killed in the strike. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
It was the second airstrike in recent days the U.S. has conducted against the militant group, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing Thursday at the Kabul airport gate that killed 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans struggling to get out of the country and escape the new Taliban rule. The Pentagon said a U.S. drone mission in eastern Afghanistan killed two members of IS’ Afghanistan affiliate early Saturday local time in retaliation for the airport bombing.
In Delaware, Biden met privately with the families of the American troops killed in the suicide attack, and solemnly watched as the remains of the fallen returned to U.S. soil from Afghanistan. First lady Jill Biden and many of the top U.S. defense and military leaders joined him on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base to grieve with loved ones as the “dignified transfer” of remains unfolded, a military ritual for those killed in foreign combat.
The 13 service members were the first U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan since February 2020, the month the Trump administration struck an agreement with the Taliban in which the militant group halted attacks on Americans in exchange for a U.S. agreement to remove all troops and contractors by May 2021. Biden announced in April that the 2,500 to 3,000 troops who remained would be out by September, ending what he has called America’s forever war.
The White House has rescheduled Biden’s meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from Monday to Wednesday as the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan enters its tense final hours.
Sullivan appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Fox News Sunday.” Blinken was interviewed on ABC’s “This Week” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” McConnell was on Fox and Romney was on CNN.
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Hope Yen in Washington, Aamer Madhani at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, and Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
13. Ukrainian troops rescue Canada-bound Afghans in daring operation
Excerpts:
Two previous efforts, planned by the Canadian military before its departure from Kabul airport, failed to get Mr. Sharaf’s group into the airport, as did another attempt organized by the U.S. State Department. Those operations had relied on the Afghans and their families being able to reach designated meeting points near the airport gates, which proved impossible amid the chaos outside the facility, where thousands of Afghans have congregated in hopes of being airlifted out of Kabul, which fell to the extremist Taliban on Aug. 15.
The Ukrainian operation succeeded where others had collapsed because the Ukrainian military deployed special forces troops into the city on foot to conduct the rescue.
The evacuees said they were stunned that Ukrainian troops had taken risks to save them that Canadian and U.S. forces had not.
“Everybody was surprised. I tried for the last month to have someone get us. We asked the Americans, the Canadians, the Qataris, everybody – and no solution. They were scared to come out,” said Jawed Haqmal, a 33-year-old father of four who worked two years with Canadian special forces in Kandahar. “The Ukrainian soldiers were angels for us. They did an exceptional job. They have big hearts.”
Ukrainian troops rescue Canada-bound Afghans in daring operation
About 360 people evacuated from Kabul, 80 of whom are Ukrainian citizens, arrive in Kyiv on Aug. 28.
Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A plane carrying Afghan translators, including one who worked for The Globe and Mail and another who served the Canadian military, as well as their families, has arrived in Kyiv following a daring operation by Ukrainian soldiers stationed at Kabul airport.
The rescue, which was co-ordinated by the Ukrainian military, the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky and The Globe, may pave the way for other Afghans fleeing the Taliban to make their way to Canada. Ottawa has promised to resettle vulnerable Afghans provided they can make their way to third countries, and The Globe has learned that the Canadian government has asked the Ukrainian government whether it would be willing to transport other Canada-bound refugees to Kyiv, where they would be processed before resettlement.
The rescue of the translators was carried out early Friday morning in Kabul, a day after the last Canadian evacuation plane left Afghanistan, and hours after the deadly suicide attack at one of the gates to Hamid Karzai International Airport, which resulted in the deaths of at least 170 Afghans trying to flee the country, as well as 13 U.S. soldiers. Following the attack, which was claimed by the local affiliate of the so-called Islamic State, the U.S. said that only foreign nationals – and no more visa-clutching Afghans – would be allowed to enter the airport.
Despite that restriction, as well as the growing risks to coalition forces ahead of the scheduled withdrawal of the last U.S. forces on Aug. 31, Ukrainian troops went out into the city of Kabul on foot to escort two minibuses – carrying the Canada-bound translators and their families, 19 people in all – onto the airfield.
The soldiers had photographs of the licence plates of the minibuses, and they surrounded and escorted the vehicles for the last 600 metres into the airport.
“The convoy entered [the airport] because the Ukrainians came out. We just sent them the plate numbers of our vehicles … and they came to the local bazaar to find us. They said ‘Ukraine?’ we said ‘Yes!’ and they took us inside,” said Mohammed Sharif Sharaf, a 49-year-old father of five who spent 10 years as a fixer and translator assisting The Globe’s coverage of Canada’s role in the war for Afghanistan.
After making it into the airport, the 19 Afghans were put onto a military cargo aircraft – which was stationed in Kabul as part of Ukraine’s little-known contribution to the NATO-led effort in the country – and flown to Islamabad along with a group of other Afghans the Ukrainians had rescued previously. In the Pakistani capital, they were transferred onto a chartered commercial plane that carried the group to Ukraine, with a brief stop in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
In a tweet, Mr. Zelensky said “360 more Ukrainians and citizens of other countries” had arrived in Kyiv on Saturday. “Our military, intelligence and diplomats have done a brilliant job. Ukraine does not leave its citizens in trouble in difficult times and helps others!”
Two previous efforts, planned by the Canadian military before its departure from Kabul airport, failed to get Mr. Sharaf’s group into the airport, as did another attempt organized by the U.S. State Department. Those operations had relied on the Afghans and their families being able to reach designated meeting points near the airport gates, which proved impossible amid the chaos outside the facility, where thousands of Afghans have congregated in hopes of being airlifted out of Kabul, which fell to the extremist Taliban on Aug. 15.
The Ukrainian operation succeeded where others had collapsed because the Ukrainian military deployed special forces troops into the city on foot to conduct the rescue.
The evacuees said they were stunned that Ukrainian troops had taken risks to save them that Canadian and U.S. forces had not.
“Everybody was surprised. I tried for the last month to have someone get us. We asked the Americans, the Canadians, the Qataris, everybody – and no solution. They were scared to come out,” said Jawed Haqmal, a 33-year-old father of four who worked two years with Canadian special forces in Kandahar. “The Ukrainian soldiers were angels for us. They did an exceptional job. They have big hearts.”
Retired captain Jérémie Verville of the Royal 22nd Regiment said his former translator’s escape was “a story that really showed his will to live, to save his family.” He called Mr. Haqmal “a smart man who put all his effort to seek help.”
From left: Globe reporter Mark MacKinnon, longtime Globe fixer Mohammed Sharif Sharaf and former Canadian military translator Jawed Haqmal in Kyiv on Aug. 29.
Evgeny Maloletka /Evgeny Maloletka
Mr. Sharaf, Mr. Haqmal and their families arrived in Kyiv carrying laissez-passer documents that were issued to them a day before the Ukrainian operation by the office of Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino. The documents state that the bearers are to be treated as Canadian citizens, and that they had visas to travel to Canada.
The documents were enough to get them out of Kabul, but created hours of bureaucracy at Kyiv’s Boryspil Airport on Saturday, where border guards had no idea how to treat the evacuees, many of whom had expired passports or only identification cards issued by the previous Afghan government. The Sharaf and Haqmal families, as well as others on the plane, were eventually granted 15-day humanitarian visas to enter Ukraine, in part because of promises from the Canadian embassy that they would swiftly be resettled.
“What this extraordinary effort demonstrates is that we can and will continue to be very agile in providing Afghan refugees whatever visas or paperwork they need to signal clearly that they are Canada-bound and should be allowed to get here,” Mr. Mendicino said in a telephone interview.
While the dramatic Kabul operation likely won’t be repeated because of the deteriorating security situation in the country, the Islamabad-Kyiv trail that was blazed may be used to help move other Canada-bound Afghans who have made it as far as Pakistan, so they can get to Ukraine where they could be screened and processed for resettlement to Canada.
“Canada has additionally requested our further support and we will be happy to help,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in reply to e-mailed questions from The Globe. He said that the Kabul rescue had demonstrated the capabilities of his country’s military, and why it should finally be accepted into the NATO alliance, a long-time goal of the Ukrainian government. “In these horrific circumstances, our military officers demonstrated bravery, high class and exemplary professionalism.”
Roman Waschuk, a former Canadian ambassador to Kyiv who aided the operation by putting The Globe in contact with a senior official in Mr. Zelensky’s office, said the Ukrainians had agreed to the rescue mission in large part because of the support their country had received from Canada during its own seven-year war with Russian-backed forces in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass. Canada has provided some $700-million in financial assistance to Ukraine since the outbreak of the conflict, and has deployed 200 troops on a rotational basis since 2015 on a mission to train the Ukrainian troops for battle.
“This is, in part, a return on the investment of successive Canadian governments in training Ukraine’s military. There’s a lot of respect and appreciation for what Canada’s done over the past seven years,” Mr. Waschuk said.
Rachel Pulfer, executive director of the Toronto-based group Journalists for Human Rights, said the Ukrainian rescue was one of several that had occurred since Canada ended its evacuation on Thursday. She said that her organization – collaborating with other groups, as well as individual Canadian journalists – had made of list of 275 Afghan media and human-rights workers and their families who wanted to leave, but who had been left behind by the Western airlift. Twenty-nine of those had since made it out of the country, including Mr. Sharaf and his family, who count for seven of that figure.
“Every one of those 29 people represents a miracle of human ingenuity and resilience in the face of the longest odds imaginable,” Ms. Pulfer said. “The bleak reality is we’ve got hundreds more to go – the numbers are climbing daily – and much, much more to do to get those most at risk to safety.”
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14. US defense system downed rockets in Kabul attack
Excerpts:
Meanwhile, Ross Wilson, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul now working out of the airport, insisted that evacuations remain ongoing Monday. He dismissed as false claims that American citizens have been turned away or were denied access to the Kabul airport by U.S. Embassy staff or American troops.
“This is a high-risk operation. Claims that American citizens have been turned away or denied access to HKIA by Embassy staff or US Forces are false,” he said in a message on Twitter, using eh acronym for the Kabul airport. He did not elaborate.
US defense system downed rockets in Kabul attack
Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for the U.S. military’s Central Command, said there were no U.S. casualties. He said U.S. forces used a defensive weapon known by the acronym C-RAM — a Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar System — in response to the attack.
It targeted the rockets in a whirling hail of ammunition, Urban said. The system has a distinct, drill-like sound that echoed through the city at the time of the attack.
He said the Kabul airfield remains operational as the evacuation continued on Monday. Other details were not immediately available.
RELATED
The strike came just two days before the U.S. is set to conclude a massive two-week-long airlift.
Meanwhile, Ross Wilson, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul now working out of the airport, insisted that evacuations remain ongoing Monday. He dismissed as false claims that American citizens have been turned away or were denied access to the Kabul airport by U.S. Embassy staff or American troops.
“This is a high-risk operation. Claims that American citizens have been turned away or denied access to HKIA by Embassy staff or US Forces are false,” he said in a message on Twitter, using eh acronym for the Kabul airport. He did not elaborate.
15. Before the Taliban took Afghanistan, it took the internet
The "mature Taliban" seems to have learned to lead with influence and control the information environment. Useful analysis below on the evolution of Taliban information operations.
Before the Taliban took Afghanistan, it took the internet
Thu, Aug 26, 2021
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen leaves after a news conference in Moscow, Russia July 9, 2021. Photo via REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva.
The Taliban insurgents who conquered nearly all of Afghanistan in just two weeks counted social media among their weapons. They deployed Facebook and WhatsApp to help prevail over their opponents on the battlefield. They issued hundreds of premature declarations of victory via Twitter—using spam to amplify their messages and create a sense of inevitability. Their smartphones proved just as handy as their rifles when they entered Kabul on August 15, enabling them to film the first propaganda footage of their occupation.
Many Western observers have expressed surprise at the sophistication of these Taliban information operations. Some have suggested that this new media savvy signals the birth of a fundamentally different movement: a “Taliban 2.0.”
Yet this is an oversimplification. A closer review of the group’s history and the conflict in Afghanistan reveals that the Taliban has waged—and now won—a singular, focused, twenty-year information war. While the platforms and methods of this conflict have evolved, the Taliban’s Islamic fundamentalist goals have not.
This article examines the evolution of the Taliban’s information operations, focusing especially on the group’s aggressive exploitation of the internet. It charts three periods: the origins of the Taliban’s propaganda and early digital strategy (2002-2009), its adoption of modern social media platforms and distribution techniques (2009-2017), and its rapid ascent and diplomatic legitimization (2017-2021), which vastly expanded its access to online tools and services.
For a generation, the Taliban clearly articulated the purpose of its propaganda regime. This information strategy helped the Taliban seize power in Afghanistan. It will likely continue to guide Taliban actions in the months ahead.
A 1993 photograph of Jadayi Maiwand, a major Kabul thoroughfare, already decimated by years of infighting. In the span of three years, the Taliban would consolidate control over an exhausted Afghan people. Photo via the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan/Wikimedia.
Going digital (2002-2009)
The Taliban rose to prominence in 1993 amid the decade-long civil war that followed the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many of these militants hailed from Afghan refugee camps in western Pakistan, where they had been educated in schools devoted to a deeply fundamentalist sect of Islam (talib means “student” in Arabic).
By 1996, the Taliban had consolidated control over enough of the country to declare the creation of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Although strict Sharia law had never been especially popular in Afghanistan, it came to govern every aspect of daily life under the group’s rule. Women and girls were treated as property. Religious minorities were persecuted. Those who didn’t belong to the ethnic Pashtun majority were targeted for mass killing.
Despite the Taliban’s Islamic fundamentalism, it had little in common—at first—with the anti-Western, pan-Islamic jihadism preached by groups such as al-Qaeda. The Taliban did not want to remake the world; it wanted to rule Afghanistan. Indeed, it tried for several years to win representation in the United Nations. Even as it banned photography, television, and the internet at home, the Taliban sought to be portrayed positively in Western media, going so far as to launch its first primitive website (www.taliban.com) in 1998. Yet the group could not obscure evidence of its obvious atrocities. The Taliban’s decision to give refuge to the virulently anti-Western Osama bin Laden in 1996, and to support his anti-US fatwa two years later, was an acknowledgement that its engagement strategy had failed.
After the 9/11 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban was temporarily shattered. Rebuilding its forces in the relative safety of Pakistan’s western tribal regions, it prepared for a decades-long insurgency. The group’s success would largely be decided by its ability to shape the information environment and rapidly disseminate narratives promoting its own benevolence and casting the United States and US-backed Afghan forces in a negative light.
In 2002, the Taliban founded a revitalized media arm that focused on winning legitimacy, both among the local populace and in the eyes of the international community, and undermining the US-backed Afghan government. That same year, the Taliban also suspended its ban on “living images.” The propaganda value of photographs and videos of dead Afghan civilians, allegedly killed at the hands of the US occupation, was too great to ignore.
Initially, the group did not invest heavily in a formal web presence. Instead, it focused on propaganda materials that could be spread in the predominantly rural areas where Taliban fighters operated. These often took the form of shabnamah (“night letters”), delivered surreptitiously under the cover of darkness, which exaggerated the Taliban’s power and threatened violent retaliation against anyone who aided US forces or the Afghan government. The Taliban also distributed audio cassettes—well-suited for a population in which adult literacy was still a relative rarity.
Even in these early stages, the Taliban demonstrated an interest in studying and emulating the propaganda of other terrorist and insurgent groups. When al-Qaeda in Iraq made international headlines by beheading hostages and circulating the footage on DVDs, the Taliban tried the same thing. But as public backlash grew, the Taliban determined that the beheadings were alienating the Afghan people. It reverted to shooting its prisoners instead.
The official website of the Taliban insurgency, Al Emarah (The Emirate), came online in 2005. It published in five languages: English, Arabic, Pashto, Dari, and Urdu. Much of its content came in the form of short, rapid-fire press releases either claiming various victories over the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) or disputing casualty figures. Later, this constellation of websites would grow to include downloadable audio and video propaganda. Curiously—and perhaps because of its single-minded focus on capturing Afghan territory—the Taliban did not seek to cultivate the same web-forum and chatroom culture that characterized global Islamic terror movements of the period.
Yet even as it sought to influence and manipulate it, the group exhibited deep anger toward media. In a 2006 Pashto-language statement, the Taliban complained about widespread bias in news reports, threatening violence if the situation did not improve. “Many news sources cruelly treat the Taliban,” the statement read. “They do not air our reports… We will kill anyone who mistreats us like this.” At the same time, the group was becoming adept at quickly spreading its preferred narratives. In a 2008 interview, the Taliban’s then-information minister bragged that it took twenty-four hours for the Afghan government to put out a press release to journalists, “while we can give the information through satellite phones in record time.”
The group’s information operations, however, were far from seamless. The “Taliban” label had long been claimed by a shifting coalition of other Islamic militant groups, led by warlords with different backgrounds and aspirations. This organizational confusion extended to the Taliban’s propaganda apparatus: For years, Taliban officials alternated between fury and frustration as they dealt with a flood of fake or unauthorized spokespeople.
By 2008, however, Taliban communications had been consolidated under the control of a few individuals. One of these men (or a group of men, according to media speculation), referred to publicly as “Zabihullah Mujahid,” would become the online voice of the Taliban for the next thirteen years. In August 2021, a man claiming to be Mujahid gave the Taliban’s first press conference in the conquered city of Kabul.
He sat in the chair of the former Afghan information minister assassinated by the Taliban only several weeks earlier.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid attends a press conference on August 17, 2021, the first press conference held by the Islamic militant group since it seized power in Afghanistan. Photo via Kyodo/Reuters.
Harnessing social media (2009-2017)
In 2009, the Taliban posted an English-language message on its website regarding the stakes and objectives of its information war. In short, it accused the West of a concerted disinformation campaign:
“[T]he biased media constantly publish the official story and the people under the influence of the partial reports are confused and some time [sic], misjudge the events because they do not know to tell facts from lies. On the other hand, the mainstream media do not publish the stand of Mujahideen regarding every event, fearing the invading Americans will accuse them of helping the so-called terrorists. In fact, the world has now been taken hostage by the media suffocation unleashed by the colonialism.
“Pentagon [sic] has a psychological war department. This department is charged with spreading lies against Mujahideen. They spend millions of dollars to try to make it possible that the lies fabricated in the Pentagon reach every ear in the world.”
The Taliban also offered a solution: “Those journalists who are committed to human dignity, liberation, and justice should form Mujahideen Support Groups,” the message continued. “[They must] wage an unwavering and constant campaign against the black propaganda launched by the colonialists.”
It was no longer enough to simply bombard Western journalists with press releases—the militants needed an online network of advocates and supporters. The answer lay in social media.
Seeking to expand the reach of its propaganda videos, the Taliban joined YouTube in 2009. It also added a Facebook “share” button to its website. By 2011, the Taliban was posting regular updates to Facebook and Twitter. Whereas it had once been largely insular, the group was now cultivating a network of friendly bloggers. In turn, these digital voices worked to associate the Taliban more directly with pan-Islamic and pan-Arab causes, seeking to tie its mission to popular movements such as the Arab Spring.
The Taliban joined Twitter in 2011. For a time, it argued directly with ISAF spokespeople regarding the outcome of battles and the number of war dead, as in this May 2012 exchange. Tweets via Sajjad Haider/Dawn.
As the Taliban’s propaganda apparatus expanded, it was also enjoying a reversal of fortune on the ground. The insurgents had re-established effective shadow governments in several Afghan provinces and become more militarily aggressive, often engaging US and NATO soldiers directly. The group’s Twitter presence seemed especially designed to capitalize on this, sharing details about various battles—even providing comments to Western journalists—hours before ISAF or the Afghan government could muster a formal announcement. A survey of the Taliban’s 2012 Twitter activity found surprisingly little evidence that it was inflating the number of ISAF or Afghan troops that it killed. But the Taliban never acknowledged the thousands of civilian deaths that it caused.
When the horror of the Syrian civil war gave rise to the Islamic State beginning in 2013, the Taliban watched carefully. Although it had no love for the group—the Taliban would ultimately battle the ISIS franchise in Afghanistan—it appreciated the Islamic State’s highly effective viral propaganda. It also appreciated how US coalition forces had exploited ISIS fighters’ incessant social media use to trace and kill them. In 2015, the Taliban announced the launch of Telegram and WhatsApp channels. Not only did this move improve the group’s outreach efforts, but it also pulled communications onto encrypted platforms—and beyond the reach of US military intelligence.
As time passed, Taliban propaganda increasingly resembled the content flowing out of ISIS-controlled Syria and Iraq. Video quality notably increased, and there was a new emphasis on action—typically firefights or suicide attacks—set to Islamic nasheeds (chants) and sometimes filmed by drones.
During a series of assaults on the city of Kunduz throughout 2015 and 2016, a surprising number of Taliban fighters carried smartphones. In one case, militants shared triumphant selfies as Afghan civilians tweeted for help just a few blocks away. In another, they captured a major downtown intersection and hoisted the Taliban’s white flag, holding the spot for several hours. As Taliban propagandists and Kunduz residents flooded Twitter with video evidence, the ISAF spokesperson’s account was still insisting that a major attack had not taken place.
Screenshots of tweets published during the Tablian’s blitz on Kunduz in October 2016, showing how the Taliban and Afghan citizens flooded Twitter with video evidence that contradicted reassurances by the ISAF and the Afghan government that the city was not under major attack. At left, the initial ISAF announcement and a witness video stand in sharp contradiction. In the center, a series of battle updates was provided by Zabihullah Mujahid. At right are more announcements and imagery of the Taliban’s successful incursion. The Taliban withdrew soon after. Screenshots via @ResoluteSupport/archive, upper left; @Ahmdyarr/archive, lower left; Thomas Joscelyn/Long War Journal, middle; @Ahmdyarr, upper right; @Ahmdyarr/archive, lower right.
For years, the Taliban’s digital operations flourished amid relative inaction by social media companies. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter only sporadically deleted Taliban content when it got too graphic or attracted the anger of US policymakers. But after 2014, as those platforms acceded to public pressure to stop hosting Islamic State propaganda, the Taliban was swept up in the resulting crackdown.
When the Taliban launched a Pashto-language Android app in late 2016, for instance, the app was almost immediately yanked from the Google Play store. Although the Taliban never disappeared from these services, it became harder for the group to maintain persistent accounts and distribution networks. Instead of spamming Facebook with loud propaganda, Taliban militants were more likely to use the service to locate possible targets for reprisal, in part by identifying and tracking them through their public profiles.
After years of embarrassment at the hands of the Taliban’s increasingly adroit internet presence, the Afghan government was also determined to destroy this propaganda apparatus. As ISAF combat missions ended and many US troops left the country, Kabul inherited more power over matters of public transparency, public relations, and information policy. But it would not use this power well.
Winning the information war (2017-present)
By 2017, the US-backed Afghan government was becoming less forthcoming about combat operations and more willing to engage in censorship. For years, the US military had periodically disclosed figures related to the strength, performance, and attrition of Afghan forces, as well as estimated US and Afghan military and civilian casualties. By late 2017, at the request of the Afghan government, these figures were withheld from the Afghan and US public.
At the same time, Kabul ordered a twenty-day shutdown of WhatsApp and Telegram inside the country, citing unspecified “security reasons.” Afghan journalists erupted with fury, arguing that the ban was incompatible with the constitutional guarantee of free speech. Facing mounting public outrage, the Afghan government reversed course. But the damage to its credibility had been done.
Naturally, the Taliban reveled in claiming that it was more accessible and transparent than Afghan government spokespeople. Indeed, it did all it could to handicap officials even further. As part of their battle preparations, Taliban fighters began sabotaging nearby cellphone towers, limiting the Afghan government’s ability to communicate with local citizens and issue timely updates. As Zabihullah Mujahid explained to The New York Times in a 2016 interview, the purpose was to create an information vacuum—one that the Taliban could fill itself.
In 2018, then-President Ashraf Ghani announced a three-day, unconditional ceasefire with the Taliban, leading to the first (brief) truce in the country since 2001. Crucially, news of the ceasefire came first via Ghani’s Facebook page, an indication of how drastically Afghanistan’s information environment had changed. At the time of the US invasion, the internet and cellphones were virtually nonexistent. By 2018, roughly 40 percent of Afghan households had access to the internet—and 90 percent to a mobile device. Social media, no longer merely a novelty or plaything of the rich, had become a pillar of Afghan civic life.
By 2019, the Taliban’s digital propaganda had fully matured. It issued rapid-fire English-language news alerts about ongoing battles, often accompanied by ready-to-share infographics and short video clips. Zabihullah Mujahid’s Twitter account—which had enjoyed a stable presence on the platform since 2017, with the first hint of informal Afghan-Taliban peace talks—was now regularly amplified by a network of spam accounts intended to boost his reach.
According to a 2020 study of Twitter use during the conflict, Mujahid’s account tweeted more frequently—that is, more than fifteen times daily—than the rival Afghan Ministry of Defense account. It also enjoyed roughly twice as many followers.
The Taliban also appeared to moderate its tone, at least when addressing the international community. In an English-language press release following the 2019 anti-Muslim terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Taliban called for investigation—not jihad. “We ask the government of New Zealand to prevent the repeat of such occurrences [and to] carry out a comprehensive investigation to find root of cause [sic] of such terrorism,” the Taliban said. Its words contrasted sharply with statements from al-Qaeda and ISIS leaders, who called for bloody vengeance against the West.
In 2019, the United States entered formal peace talks with the Taliban. A year later, US and Taliban representatives reached a formal settlement, agreeing to the withdrawal of all US and international forces by May 2021 in return for a Taliban guarantee that Islamic terror groups would not operate from Afghan soil. The Taliban also ceased attacks on US personnel following the February 2020 settlement, marking the end of US combat deaths in Afghanistan.
This agreement vastly increased the Taliban’s apparent power and international legitimacy. One Taliban official even published an op-ed in The New York Times, pledging a “lasting peace” through which to “lay the foundation of a new Afghanistan.” At the same time, the Taliban intensified its attacks on Afghan military positions. A separate intra-Afghanistan peace process proved fruitless.
By late 2020, it was clear that the Afghan government was losing the information war, thanks to faltering institutions and relentless Taliban pressure. In October 2020, local officials reported that an errant Afghan air strike on a rural religious school had killed eleven children and their prayer leader. But the Afghan government contradicted the reports, insisting that no civilians had died. When a local spokesperson who had visited the surviving children in the hospital refused to echo the central government’s position, he was arrested and imprisoned. The spokesman felt “amid two stones,” as he later explained to The New York Times: caught between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
The spread of this attitude would mark the death knell for the Afghan government. For two decades, the Taliban had cast itself as the legitimate claimant to Afghanistan—no more corrupt or violent than the US-backed administration in Kabul. A growing number of Afghans came around to this view of the US-backed government, and by the time the Taliban began its blitzkrieg offensive in August 2021, many defenders had run out of reasons to fight.
These sorts of incidents only served to further erode the Afghan people’s loyalty to–and contribute to a significant loss of trust in–the US-backed government.
Taliban fighters drive unchallenged through the streets of Kabul on August 17. Photo via Voice of America/Wikimedia.
Not “Taliban 2.0”
The beliefs and objectives of the Taliban militants who streamed into Kabul this August are little changed from those held by the members of the group who fled the city twenty years earlier. Instead, what has changed is their willingness to use modern technology to realize their medieval ends.
Today’s Taliban understands how to disseminate its propaganda at scale and speed. It has come to appreciate how its English-language propaganda can be used to disarm and distract the international community—projecting a “moderate” face that helps obscure the massacres and violent retribution that have already begun under its reign.
This information conflict will not end with the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan. Already, anti-Taliban fighters are appealing to the West for military aid. Using pseudonyms, Afghan citizens have begun the first rumblings of an online resistance movement, intent on puncturing the Taliban’s claims of moderation and clemency and revealing the increasingly savage reality of its rule. The months ahead will bring a flurry of competing online narratives around Afghanistan, spanning numerous social media platforms and drawing in actors from around the world.
In 2021, this is a war that the Taliban is prepared to fight.
Further reading
Sun, Aug 15, 2021
The Taliban of 2021 is not the same as the Taliban of the 1990s. This Taliban is now adept at integrating military and non-military instruments of power in pursuit of its political objectives.
Tue, Aug 17, 2021
The reality of a strengthened Taliban running the Afghan government creates substantial and imminent economic policy challenges for the United States and the international community.
New Atlanticist by Alex Zerden
Tue, Aug 24, 2021
Beijing is eyeing major investments in Afghanistan—but it’s up to the Taliban to ease its concerns about security.
16. Op-Ed: A U.N. peacekeeping mission could make all the difference in Afghanistan. Here’s why
An interesting proposal: "a large, multinational U.N. peace observation mission that is not led by the West."
I would ask the UN Security Council and contributing states to the Peacekeeping (or Peace enforcement) mission if they will authorize combat operations (to include offensive combat operations) after the Taliban strikes the "observer"force? What if the Taliban decide to go to war against UN force?
And if only an observer mission is authorized and conducted how will the UN ensure the force protection of the observers?
But what makes anyone think the Taliban would invite UN observers? Why would the Taliban authorize such a presence?
Excerpts:
Peacekeeping works according to a different logic from war-fighting. Because peacekeepers do not take sides, and do not try to fight their way to an ending, they must rely on other means of power: diplomatic persuasion, financial inducements, and coercive tactics short of offensive military operations, such as surveilling armed actors, reporting and defending civilians against attack.
Op-Ed: A U.N. peacekeeping mission could make all the difference in Afghanistan. Here’s why
On Monday, the United Nations Security Council is scheduled to consider options for how to respond to the failed Western-led counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. At the top of the list should be negotiating a large, multinational U.N. peace observation mission that is not led by the West.
The Taliban also wants all Western troops to leave the territory. Non-Western, multinational U.N. peace observers could verify to the world that the Taliban is keeping its promises. Such verification could, in turn, pave the way for normalizing relations.
The Taliban leadership is having trouble consolidating control over its own ranks. Moreover, an anti-Taliban civil war is brewing on many fronts. Multinational observers and mediators — primarily from China and Muslim-majority countries — can help the Taliban consolidate less radical control.
Peacekeeping observers could also help prevent civil war by shining a spotlight on actions that violate peace and security and by mediating to de-escalate tension in the region.
Since China shares a border with Afghanistan, and has direct national security interests in preserving peace there, it could serve in a leadership role. China already has an 8,000-strong peacekeeping standby brigade. Pakistan, which also borders Afghanistan, has served in leadership roles in U.N. peace operations for decades, and has thousands of well-trained observers.
As in most U.N. peace missions, troops should hail from dozens of countries, with no nation dominating, and patrol in mixed-nation units, in order to remain impartial.
The international community must learn from its past mistakes in Libya and Iraq, when the options presented were either large military interventions or doing nothing besides sending a few diplomats. Doing nothing sparked and fueled civil wars not only in Libya and Iraq, but also in neighboring countries.
The implosion of Libya sent weapons and extremists across the region, fueling conflict in many countries, with devastating effects in Mali, Nigeria and Syria. The absence of a peace operation after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011 led to the surprise surge of the Islamic State group and massive bloodshed in both Iraq and Syria.
U.N. peace operations present a middle ground for action between the extremes of military intervention and diplomacy. Peacekeeping also has a remarkably successful track record.
U.N. peace operations are arguably the most effective form of intervention. Dozens of studies have demonstrated that when U.N. peacekeepers are present, belligerents are less likely to attack civilians and more likely to put down their weapons. Peace agreements are also more likely to hold.
The U.N. has succeeded in implementing complex, state-building mandates in 11 out of 16 cases since the end of the Cold War — a 68% success rate. A monitoring mission in Afghanistan, however, would not include an ambitious, state-building mandate because the Taliban would never agree to it. Most current missions are more traditional, monitoring missions and have been in operation for decades. Since 1991, such missions have helped bring about peace and stability in Macedonia and in neighboring Tajikistan, for example.
Peacekeeping works according to a different logic from war-fighting. Because peacekeepers do not take sides, and do not try to fight their way to an ending, they must rely on other means of power: diplomatic persuasion, financial inducements, and coercive tactics short of offensive military operations, such as surveilling armed actors, reporting and defending civilians against attack.
Asking China to take the lead in a U.N. peace operation can be viewed in some American foreign policy circles as a painful symbolic and geostrategic turn of events. But in weighing the likelihood of tremendous bloodshed on the horizon versus supporting China acting through the U.N. to prevent violent conflict, the choice is clear. If China is willing to step up, it must be supported.
History shows that peacekeeping missions are effective at preventing conflict, protecting civilians, and maintaining peace and security. Afghanistan, and the world, need such a mission right now.
Lise M. Howard is professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University and president of the Academic Council on the United Nations System.
17. Comprehensive Security Approach in Response to Russian Hybrid Warfare
STRATEGIC STUDIES QUARTERLY - PAR AVION
Comprehensive Security Approach in Response to Russian Hybrid Warfare
Lt Col Tuukka Elonheimo, Finnish Air Force
Abstract This article assesses why open, digitalized Western democracies are prone to hybrid warfare and analyzes versatile overt and covert mixed warfare methods in the modern information-dependent and interconnected environment. It also draws on various hybrid warfare influence methods and explains the broader concept and essence of Russian hybrid warfare. Besides analyzing structural hybrid warfare challenges, the article assesses and proposes means and practices to mitigate, act against, and deter overt or covert hybrid offensives. The article argues that Russian mixed warfare methods in tandem create a potential threat to Western democracies’ unity and decision-making. However, these Western states could mitigate and prevent the implications of hybrid warfare by increasing comprehensive security, cooperation, situational awareness, preparedness, and resilience. The article identifies that the combined use of proper coordination, cooperation, information sharing, education, and readiness among authorities, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and citizens could diminish these multifaceted, ambiguous hybrid aggressions.
18. The bell tolls for us in Kabul
Will we support the resistance"
Excerpt:
Human beings, who make history, are never barred from a sudden moment of lucidity that will foil what had seemed a certain and terrible fate.
In the Panjshir Valley, another Massoud, defying Marx’s remark that history repeats itself as farce, is at this very moment taking up the torch of his father, the hero assassinated on the eve of September 11, 2001.
And I believe that if the West comes to his aid, if we heed his call for assistance and grasp that it is through that valley of hope and freedom that the front line is drawn between the five revisionist powers and those who continue to seek to resist them, if we are bold enough to consider that the Taliban takeover is illegal and that the only Afghan legitimacy is, today, in Panjshir, then the outcome may be altogether different from what appears likely today.
But for the time being, after the evacuation of Afghanistan and the carnage at the Kabul airport, this is where we are.
The bell tolls for us in Kabul
The image of the liberal democracies, epitomised by the US, is tragically tarnished
29 August 2021, 4:22amPhoto by Wakil Kohsar / AFP)
Some events are like this.
They creep up like a stalking wolf.
Or, as Nietzsche put it, on doves’ feet.
We don’t hear them coming and need a third ear to make out, behind the ‘still, small voice’, the echo of the explosion.
It happened at Leuctra, in Boeotia, on that day in the 4th century BC when the sacred band of Thebes cut 400 Spartiate equals to pieces, tolling the end of Lacedaemonian hegemony, though no one knew it at the time.
Or at the battle of Chaeronea, 30 years later, which marked the start of the waning of Athenian power.
Or the seemingly minor battle of Pydna, in Thessaloniki, which set in motion the crumbling of Alexander’s dream and was the first real victory of the nascent Roman empire.
Or the battle of Adrianople, which began as a policing operation by a legion sent to rein in bands of Ostrogoth raiders; no one saw it, at the time, as Act I of the fall of Rome.
I described this mechanism in The Empire and the Five Kings (2019).
A new order of things is unfolding piece by piece in a region that everyone knows was the site of the greatest Great Game
It was at work in the little known but decisive battle of Kirkuk, where Donald Trump abandoned America’s Kurdish allies in Iraq.
The same scenario is unfolding before our eyes as Joe Biden leaves Afghanistan high and dry.
Why is this not the right course?
Because a great power owes a debt to its allies.
Because, as far away as Afghanistan and its war may seem, the image of the crowds of women, children and men clutching at the wings of American planes leaving Afghanistan is devastating.
Because the wrong is even worse than the one committed in Saigon in 1975, which is recognized as a dark day in the history of American decline, but where Lyndon Johnson at least had the dignity to pull out not before — but after — he had organized an orderly departure of 135,000 Vietnamese civilians who had loyally served the United States.
Because there is, in Washington, the shameful spectacle of the commander in chief of what had been the world’s greatest power coming back from vacation to tick off on television, like a certified public accountant of disaster, the brilliant achievements of his botched and pathetic evacuation operation — and then the pathetic image of his disarray after the assassination of 13 brave US soldiers.
Because a shock wave surged from there to Taiwan and the Baltic nations, passing through the Arab world and sweeping away confidence in the solidity, reliability and honor of America’s word.
And because five other powers jump on the occasion and prepare now to fill the void created by this debacle.
There is Turkey, whose president recommended, in a telephone call with Putin, a ‘gradual’ approach with respect to the Taliban.
There is Putin, who, in a press conference with Angela Merkel where he permitted himself the luxury of offering the ‘irresponsible’ Americans a lesson in governance, praised the ‘positive signals’ sent by the Taliban, as well as their ‘civilized’ behavior.
There is the about-face of Iran, which, in July, despite its historical differences with Sunni peoples, had its minister of foreign affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif, salute the ‘defeat’ of the ‘Great Satan’ in the presence of Taliban leader Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai.
There is China, whose minister of foreign affairs, Wang Yi, met on July 28 with Taliban strongman Abdul Ghani Baradar, now number two in the regime.
And, of course, there is the radical Islamic international which, following Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, knows that it now has available a full-fledged Islamist state, much better than what was available in Mosul or Raqqa, from which to prepare its ideological — and, God forbid, terrorist — attacks against the despised democracies.
Is ISIS so different from the Taliban? Should we really ally with ‘moderate Jihad’ against the radical one? This is a real, and terrible, misconception…
Current events, of course, are not yet history.
Human beings, who make history, are never barred from a sudden moment of lucidity that will foil what had seemed a certain and terrible fate.
In the Panjshir Valley, another Massoud, defying Marx’s remark that history repeats itself as farce, is at this very moment taking up the torch of his father, the hero assassinated on the eve of September 11, 2001.
And I believe that if the West comes to his aid, if we heed his call for assistance and grasp that it is through that valley of hope and freedom that the front line is drawn between the five revisionist powers and those who continue to seek to resist them, if we are bold enough to consider that the Taliban takeover is illegal and that the only Afghan legitimacy is, today, in Panjshir, then the outcome may be altogether different from what appears likely today.
But for the time being, after the evacuation of Afghanistan and the carnage at the Kabul airport, this is where we are.
The image of the liberal democracies, epitomised by the greatest among them, is tragically tarnished.
A new order of things is unfolding piece by piece in a region that everyone knows was the site of the greatest Great Game.
And in the fracas of rotors, the cacophony of calls for help and, now, the thunderstorm of human bombs, a paradigm is being replicated — but with a change of roles, influence and discredit.
If this holds true, and if the map of powers, influence and alliances gels in that pattern, Kabul will be our Pydna, our Chaeronea, our Kirkuk: Today our torment; soon enough, our regret; and then, quickly, our grave.
Translated from the French by Steven B. Kennedy.
19. RT America received more than $100 million in Russian government funding since 2017, filings show
The Russian counter to this is what about US paid media VOA and RFE/RL/RFA around the world?
But will making RT and other foreign media register as foreign agents temper their reporting?
RT America received more than $100 million in Russian government funding since 2017, filings show
This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
The U.S. production company that runs RT’s American operations has received more than $100 million in Russian government funding since 2016, according to public filings, the largest subsidy of any recipient in the United States of so-called “foreign agent” funding from any country over that period.
The Washington-based transparency organization Open Secrets compiled the figures from periodic filings made by the companies themselves under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, a decades-old law known as FARA that is enforced by the U.S. Justice Department.
In 2017, Russia Today, now rebranded as RT, was ordered to register under FARA by the Justice Department. The order was made in the wake of the findings by U.S. intelligence agencies that the channel was part of a broader campaign of Russian propaganda and interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The amount reported by Open Secrets is the bulk, but not the entire amount of spending on foreign lobbying and media in the United States from Russian government sources during that period.
Other U.S. entities that have received Russian government money classified as “foreign agent” funding include two radio stations — one in the Washington D.C. suburbs, one in Kansas City — that carry programming from Radio Sputnik, which is separate from RT but related. Additionally, RIA Global, which runs Sputnik, and a Washington lobbying firm, have also reported Russian government funding.
The company that runs RT’s operations in the United States is called T&R Productions, which was first registered in Washington, D.C. in 2014.
The data from Open Secrets does not include years prior to 2017, since T&R Productions and other media and lobbying entities receiving Russian government funding had not registered under FARA and were not required to make filings with the Justice Department.
Largest Recipient
Since registering, T&R Productions has reported receiving $104,721,146 from its parent company, known as ANO TV-Novosti, according to Open Secrets, a figure that includes payments for the six-month period ending May 31, 2021. About half of that amount came in 2020.
That makes T&R the largest recipient of “foreign agent” designated funding in the United States during the period 2016-21, according to Open Secrets, which tracks political spending and lobbying in U.S. politics.
In second place was the government of the Marshall Islands.
The other U.S. entities receiving Russian government funding have received nearly $15 million between 2018 and 2021, with the funding channeled via an entity called Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.
One of those companies, RM Broadcasting, bought airtime on an AM radio station not far from Washington, D.C. to broadcast Sputnik radio reports. The company, based in Florida, sued in federal court after it was ordered to make FARA filings by the Justice Department, saying its operations did meet the definition of FARA’s requirements. But a U.S. judge later rejected that argument.
RT America is one of several divisions the company operates around the world. The main English-language channel, produced in Moscow, is RT International, but it also includes RT UK, which has an office in London, and Spanish- and Arabic-language operations, run from Moscow.
RT’s overall budget has fluctuated over the years.
In 2017, the company was budgeted for around $300 million under the funding plan approved by the State Duma. This past June, the business newspaper Vedomosti reported that ANO TV-Novosti received about 27.4 billion rubles ($371 million) in government funding for 2020, and that the Finance Ministry planned to cut that amount slightly, to 27.3 billion rubles, for 2021.
RT has not disclosed data on the total number of employees, Vedomosti said.
In an e-mail to RFE/RL, RT’s Deputy Editor In Chief Anna Belkina confirmed the Vedomosti figures were correct.
An e-mail sent to the principal behind T&R Productions, a man named Mikhail Solodovnikov, was not immediately answered.
Regulatory Scrutiny
RT’s British operation has fallen afoul of the country’s media regulator, Ofcom, in the past. In 2019, the channel was fined 200,000 pounds ($274,295) for what the regulator said was flawed reporting on the 2018 near-fatal poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
RT’s German-language operations have also come under close scrutiny in Berlin. The channel, which is produced online from Moscow, has sought a license from German regulators for a regular broadcast channel, but some lawmakers and government agencies have blocked the effort.
RT also has a video agency based in Germany called Ruptly, which in turn has invested in a California media company called Maffick, which produces catchy digital content for social media, like short explainer videos, as well as podcasts.
The Open Secrets figures come as Russia itself has stepped up enforcement of its own “foreign agent” law, targeting a growing number of media outlets and nongovernmental organizations.
The law is set up to target media, NGOs, and individuals that receive funding from outside of Russia.
On August 20, TV Dozhd, an independent news channel, and Vazhniye Istoriye, an investigative news site, were added to the list.
However, Dozhd, which says its advertisers are wholly Russian, not foreign, was targeted because it printed, or broadcast, material from other designated foreign agents, according to Meduza, a Latvian-based news site that has also been designated a foreign agent.
To date, 43 entities and individuals have been designated as foreign agents in Russia, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and several of its Russian-language news sites, including its flagship Russian-language channel, Current Time.
Intrusive Disclaimer
The Russian law, first passed in 2012, now requires designated media to label their all content with an intrusive disclaimer. Some media have complied, even amid fears that the labels would scare off advertisers. At least one designated Russian news outlet has closed. Meduza has resorted to crowdfunding to continue operating.
RFE/RL has not labeled its content, resulting in the Justice Ministry imposing tens of millions of dollars in fines. RFE/RL has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, and has also moved to shift some of its employees and operations out of Moscow to Kyiv and elsewhere.
In defending the law, Russian officials have frequently drawn a parallel to the American foreign agent law, which dates back to the 1930s.
Speaking during a news conference in Moscow on August 25, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again tried to defend Russia’s actions, particularly against RFE/RL. He asserted, falsely, that RT and Sputnik had been forced to label their content in the United States.
“We have never been the first to start such kind of activities,” Lavrov said. “However, if such discriminatory actions are being taken against our media and our citizens, if they are being labeled as foreign agents and persecuted, then of course we will respond. But we will not respond in order to take revenge, simply to bring our relations in a given area to parity.”
U.S. officials, however, counter that the U.S. law does not obligate foreign agent media organizations to label or publish or broadcast anything.
Some social media networks, like Google-owned YouTube, where RT has a huge following, began in 2018 to label videos produced by RT and other Russian government-funded media. RFE/RL’s YouTube channel carries a similar label.
Other foreign-funded media that have been required to register under the U.S. FARA law include China Global Television Network, the Xinhua News Agency, and a unit of Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based satellite news channel.
20. An Assessment of Capability Gaps that Contribute to Fighting Below the Threshold of War
A view from India.
As an aside and not meant as a criticism of the author or his article, I find it interesting that many people like to cite this Sun Tzu quote: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” I would argue that if you want to win without fighting it is important to follow this Sun Tzu dictum: “Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.” Attacking (first identifying and then exposing the enemy's strategy offers the best course of action to possibly win without fighting. Winning without fighting is a nice saying and sentiment but attacking the enemy's strategy provides the way to potentially do that. Even if you are not able to win without fighting, attacking the enemy's strategy is necessary in all forms of war. This applies not only to major conventional war but also irregular warfare, hybrid conflict, and political warfare.
An Assessment of Capability Gaps that Contribute to Fighting Below the Threshold of War
Shri is from India. The views expressed and suggestions made in the article are solely of the author in his personal capacity and do not have any official endorsement. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
Title: An Assessment of Capability Gaps that Contribute to Fighting Below the Threshold of War
Date Originally Written: August 9, 2021.
Date Originally Published: August 30, 2021.
Author and / or Article Point of View: The article analyses a current situation playing out in a very important part of the world which is a nuclear flashpoint as well. While the reader can likely guess which countries the author is referring to, indirect references are used to appeal to the audiences living this situation day-to-day.
Summary: Fighting below the threshold of war happens only due to inadequacies of the stronger power. These inadequacies may be based in law, policy, doctrine, political preferences, and corruption. Unless these inadequacies are addressed, stronger powers will dilute their true combat capability by acting as police forces either locally, regionally, or globally.
Text: The countries of IN and PK have over seven decades of animosity between them. In the 1970s, PK was comprehensively defeated during a war with IN and in the process, lost almost half of its territory. Thereafter, based on experience PK gained as Country UA’s proxy in the fight against Country RU in Country AF, PK realised in its fight against IN, direct war is not the way ahead. This realisation started something different in which PK waged a conflict below the threshold of war against Country IN by simply harboring, arming, and supporting terrorists. PK, where the military is the de-facto ruler, acts as a client state of Country CN, another adversary of IN, and all three possess nuclear weapons.
It is now three decades since PK began to carry out nefarious activities against IN. In other words, PK prevails over IN below the threshold of war and keeps IN tied down through a low cost and low risk method. This success is despite the fact that IN is larger than PK in every possible metric – economy, territory, armed forces, population etc. PK is taking advantage of some inherent weaknesses and capability gaps of IN and is prevailing.
IN’s capability gaps begin with it still believing in outdated definitions of war, and therefore believing that only armed forces fight wars, and is waiting for PK’s Armed Forces to start one. PK is not obliging IN, knowing well that PK cannot win. IN, not wanting to be labeled as an aggressor, is not waging war on PK, little realizing that IN has been under attack for many decades. A doctrinal change by IN could perhaps settle matters regarding what constitutes aggression and what will be IN’s response. This doctrinal change would amply warn PK and, if PK did not change its behavior, the change would give IN the required casus belli. Threshold of war is not something that has been defined by nature as each country decides according to each unique circumstance. In 1914, assassination of a sovereign led to the First World War[1]. Without an adjustment to current below threshold realities, IN will not get the better of PK.
IN’s armed forces have been engaged in counterinsurgency operations against PK sponsored terrorists for several decades. This fight without end continues due to an undefined military end-state. The armed forces of a country is it’s last resort and therefore it should not be distracted from it’s main role of war-fighting. PK understands this well and therefore does everything possible to tie down IN’s armed forces in operations below the threshold of war, which are essentially policing duties. Establishing an end state allowing the military to exit counterinsurgency operations and return to preparing for war is perhaps the only thing that will deter PK from continuing what it does below the threshold of war. Many in IN’s armed forces talk about the United States’ two decade long engagement in Afghanistan to justify IN’s continued presence in counterinsurgency operations. It is worth noting that the United States sent in its armed forces to Afghanistan because its police, perhaps as potent as some armies, have no global mandate. Moreover, while the US always had the luxury of pulling out, as it subsequently did[2], IN doesn’t.
IN is also ineffective below the threshold of war because fighting below the threshold is a comfortable place to be in- no national mobilization, limited death and destruction, life and fighting goes on hand in hand. There would always be many interest groups apart from the IN Armed Forces that have a stake in the fight. While the IN Armed Forces get brass, budget allocations, and a disproportionate say in matters otherwise in the realm of governance, others who benefit include the Military Industrial Complex (about whom U.S. President Eisenhower had warned five decades ago[3]), war contractors and also politicians, most of whom thrive on divisive agendas. History illustrates that whenever a country has resolved to finish a fight, it happened – Sri Lanka being the best example[4]. So next time when any country thinks of finishing the fight, it is good to know who are directly and indirectly benefiting from the fight continuing.
Sun Tzu has said that, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Present day militaries have wrapped this very thought in many definitions and names to include grey zone warfare, hybrid warfare etc. However, war is war. PK added its own touch by trying to subdue IN, taking advantage of IN’s inhibitions, and some weaknesses, by fighting, albeit below the threshold of war. Until IN wakes up to PK, and demonstrates that IN is ready for a major war with PK, IN will continue to be stuck in the quagmire of fighting below the threshold of war.
Endnotes:
21. The UK is considering incorporating Afghan special forces evacuated from Kabul into the British army
An interesting potential development. But I would offer that these Afghan commandos and special forces might be better employed support the nascent Afghan resistance (or perhaps they are intnding to do so eventually)
The UK is considering incorporating Afghan special forces evacuated from Kabul into the British army
British troops boarding one of the final flights out of Kabul on August 28.
Jonathan Gifford/Ministry of Defence via AP
- Afghan troops evacuated from Kabul could be incorporated into the British Armed Forces.
-
UK ministers are currently considering the proposal, according to the Telegraph.
- Seven Afghan officer cadets are already enrolled at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
10 Things in Politics: The latest in politics & the economy
Afghan special forces could join the British Army as part of a new regiment being considered by UK MPs, according to the Telegraph.
Hundreds of the Afghan commandos who've arrived in the UK over the past few weeks have been trained by UK troops in Afghanistan.
Ministers are currently considering the proposal to employ the soldiers. The arrangement would be similar to the Ghurkas — soldiers from Nepal who are recruited into the British Army — the Telegraph reported.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson published a video message about the Afghanistan evacuation on Sunday August 29, in which he said that the government would help Afghans arriving in the UK "contribute in any way possible to the life and economy of the country."
—Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) August 29, 2021
Afghan troops are 'very good by international standards'
The final UK troops left Afghanistan on August 28, along with the Afghan security personnel who worked with them evacuating refugees to Britain.
Afghan troops played a "crucial role" in Operation Pitting, the British military's operation to evacuate 15,000 people from Kabul, and the largest British evacuation since World War Two, according to Metro.
General Sir Richard Barrons, former head of Joint Forces Command, describing the Afghan special forces as "very good by international standards," according to the Telegraph.
Defence sources told the newspaper that the Afghan troops could be incorporated into British forces, or kept as a separate unit.
Four Afghan officer cadets who were due to join the Afghan National Army are already enrolled at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, with three more set to start next weekend, the newspaper reported.
Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said: "We trained and fought alongside many Afghans who are now in the UK. They've proved their loyalty a thousand times.
"If they want to serve, we should welcome them. I would love to see a regiment of Afghan scouts."
22. Abandoned And Alone: Lamenting The US-Australian Alliance – OpEd
Plenty of criticism for all.
Excerpts:
This state of affairs has prompted the glum lament from the veteran strategist Hugh White that Australia’s politicians lack imagination in the face of the most significant change in its foreign relations since British settlement. They refuse to accept that China is there, not to be contained but to be accommodated in some form. The Pacific pond will have to accept two hegemons rather than one, a point the Washington-hugging types in Canberra find, not only impermissible but terrifying.
The fall of Kabul offered further stimulus for panic. The Western war adventurers had been defeated and instead of asking why Australians were ever in Afghanistan, the focus shifted to the umbilical cord with Washington. In conducting interviews with four former Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Kelly of The Australian, being more woolly-headed than usual, saw Biden’s withdrawal as “so devoid of judgment and courage that it raises a fog of doubt about Biden himself and about America’s democratic sustenance as a reliable great power.”
Of the former prime ministers interviewed, the undying pugilist Tony Abbott wondered what “fight” was left in “Biden’s America”. There might well be some in the reserves, he speculated, but US allies had to adjust. Australia had to show “more spine” in the alliance.
Abandoned And Alone: Lamenting The US-Australian Alliance – OpEd
Listening to Australian pundits talk about the relationship of their country with the US – at least from a strategic perspective – can be a trying exercise. It is filled with angst, Freudian fears of abandonment, the strident megalomania of Australian self-importance. Critics of this complex are shouted down as Sinophiles or in the pay of some foreign power.
This unequal and distinctly unhealthy relationship has been marked by a certain outsourcing tendency. Australian foreign policy is a model example of expectation: that other powers will carry its weight: processing refugees; aiding Australians stranded or persecuted overseas; reliance on that fiction known as the extended nuclear deterrent. Self-reliance is discouraged in favour of what Barry Posen calls a “cheap ride”.
In recent years, the Australian security-military apparatus has been more than ingratiating regarding its alliance with Washington, despite such sombre warnings as those from the late Malcom Fraser. In 2014, the former prime minister argued that Australia, at the end of the Cold War, was presented with an opportunity to pursue a policy of “peace, cooperation, and trust” in the region. Instead, Canberra opted to cling on to a foreign war machine that found itself bloodied and bruised in the Middle East. Now, Australia risked needlessly going to war against China on the side of the US. Best to, he suggested, shut down US training bases in the Northern Territory and close the Pine Gap signals centre as soon as feasible.
During the Trump administration, a more than usually cringe worthy effort was made to be Washington’s stalking horse in the Asia-Pacific region. Poking China on such matters as COVID-19 was seen as very sensible fare, as it might invite a more solid commitment of the United States to the region. But the momentum for an easing of some US global commitments was impossible to reverse. The country was looking inward (the ravages of the COVID contagion, a country riven by protest and the toxic and intoxicating drug of identity politics). Those in Canberra were left worried.
This state of affairs has prompted the glum lament from the veteran strategist Hugh White that Australia’s politicians lack imagination in the face of the most significant change in its foreign relations since British settlement. They refuse to accept that China is there, not to be contained but to be accommodated in some form. The Pacific pond will have to accept two hegemons rather than one, a point the Washington-hugging types in Canberra find, not only impermissible but terrifying.
The fall of Kabul offered further stimulus for panic. The Western war adventurers had been defeated and instead of asking why Australians were ever in Afghanistan, the focus shifted to the umbilical cord with Washington. In conducting interviews with four former Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Kelly of The Australian, being more woolly-headed than usual, saw Biden’s withdrawal as “so devoid of judgment and courage that it raises a fog of doubt about Biden himself and about America’s democratic sustenance as a reliable great power.”
Of the former prime ministers interviewed, the undying pugilist Tony Abbott wondered what “fight” was left in “Biden’s America”. There might well be some in the reserves, he speculated, but US allies had to adjust. Australia had to show “more spine” in the alliance.
Kevin Rudd, himself an old China hand, wanted to impress upon the Australian public and body politic that “we are in the midst of a profound paradigm shift in global and regional geopolitics.” The US continued to question itself about what strategic role it would play in the Asia-Pacific region in the face of China’s inexorable rise. Australia had to plan for the “best” and the “worst”: the former entailing “a robust regionally and globally engaged America”; the latter, “an America that begins to retreat.” On August 14, Rudd had urged the Biden administration to “reverse the course of its final military withdrawal”.
Malcolm Turnbull opted for the small troop thesis: “America should have retained a garrison force in Afghanistan.” Doing so might have provided sufficient assurance for Afghan national forces and prevented a Taliban victory. “It was not palatable to have kept forces there, but what we have seen now is even less palatable.” The US, he noted, had retained forces across European states, Japan and South Korea “for decades”. (Turnbull misses a beat here on such shaky comparisons, given that the Taliban would have never tolerated the presence of such a garrison.)
Trump comes in for a lecturing: “The [US-Taliban] talks should never have occurred in the absence of the Afghan government and their effect was to delegitimise that government.” In all fairness to the Trump administration, there was little by way of legitimacy in the Afghan national government to begin with. Negotiating with the Taliban was simply an admission as to where the bullets and bombs were actually coming from, not to mention how untenable the existence of the Kabul regime had become.
As for John Howard, the man who sent Australian forces to Afghanistan to begin with, the garrison thesis held even greater merit. Again, the false analogy of other US imperial footprints was drawn: if Washington can station 30,000 troops in South Korea for seven decades after the end of hostilities, why not Afghanistan? Hopefully, this “bungle” would remain confined to the handling of Afghanistan and not affect the US-Australian alliance. “I believe if it were put to the test, the Americans would honour the ANZUS treaty.”
Such reflections, part moaning, part regret, should provide brickwork for a more independent foreign policy. Alison Broinowski, former diplomat and Vice-President of Australians for War Powers Reform, offers some level-headed advice. “If Australians ignore the change in the global power balance that is happening before our eyes,” she writes, “we will suffer the consequences. If we can’t defeat the Taliban, how will we prevail in a war against China?” Such a question, given the terrifying answer that follows, is not even worth asking.
23. Opinion | America’s Military Is Too Big for America’s Good
Excerpts:
The war in Afghanistan is much more than a failed intervention. It is stark evidence of how counterproductive global military dominance is to American interests. This military hegemony has brought more defeats than victories and undermined democratic values at home and abroad.
History is clear: We would be better off with more modest, restrained military and strategic goals. U.S. public opinion seems to have moved in this direction, too. Our country needs to re-examine the value of military dominance.
The reliance on military force has repeatedly entangled the United States in distant, costly, long conflicts with self-defeating consequences — in Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. American leaders have consistently assumed that military superiority will compensate for diplomatic and political limitations. Time and again, despite battlefield successes, our military has come up short in achieving stated goals.
Opinion | America’s Military Is Too Big for America’s Good
Guest Essay
America’s Military Is Too Big for America’s Good
Aug. 30, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
American soldiers on their way to Afghanistan in 2010.Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times
By
Mr. Suri teaches history at the University of Texas, Austin, and has written extensively about modern politics and foreign policy.
For much of its history, the United States was a big country with a small peacetime military. World War II changed that permanently: American leaders decided that a country with new global obligations needed a very large peacetime military, including a nuclear arsenal and a worldwide network of bases. They hoped overwhelming military capacity would avert another world war, deter adversaries and encourage foreign countries to follow our wishes.
Yet this military dominance has hardly yielded the promised benefits. The collapse of the American-supported government in Afghanistan, after 20 years of effort and billions of dollars, is just the latest setback in a long narrative of failure.
The war in Afghanistan is much more than a failed intervention. It is stark evidence of how counterproductive global military dominance is to American interests. This military hegemony has brought more defeats than victories and undermined democratic values at home and abroad.
History is clear: We would be better off with more modest, restrained military and strategic goals. U.S. public opinion seems to have moved in this direction, too. Our country needs to re-examine the value of military dominance.
The reliance on military force has repeatedly entangled the United States in distant, costly, long conflicts with self-defeating consequences — in Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. American leaders have consistently assumed that military superiority will compensate for diplomatic and political limitations. Time and again, despite battlefield successes, our military has come up short in achieving stated goals.
In the Korean War, the overestimation of American military power convinced President Harry Truman to authorize the Army to cross into North Korea and approach the border of China. He hoped American soldiers could reunite the divided Korean Peninsula, but instead the incursion set off a wider war with China and a stalemated conflict. Now, after seven decades of American military deployments on the peninsula, the Communist regime in North Korea is as strong as ever, with a growing nuclear arsenal.
In Vietnam, the “best and brightest” experts around President Lyndon Johnson advised him that America’s overwhelming power would crush the insurgency and bolster anti-Communist defenses. The opposite was true. American military escalation increased the popularity of the insurgency while also creating greater South Vietnamese dependence on the United States. Following an offensive by North Vietnam in 1975, American-trained allies collapsed, much as they did in Afghanistan this week.
The fault lies not with the soldiers, but with the mission. Military forces are not a substitute for the hard work of building representative and effective institutions of governance. Stable societies need to have a foundation of peaceful forms of trade, education and citizen participation.
If anything, the record shows that a large military presence distorts political development, directing it toward combat and policing, not social development. American military occupations have worked best where the governing institutions preceded the arrival of foreign soldiers, as in Germany and Japan after World War II.
American leaders have depended on our armed forces so much because they are so vast and easy to deploy. This is the peril of creating such a large force: The annual budget for the U.S. military has grown to more than a gargantuan $700 billion, and we are more likely to use it, and less likely to build better substitutes.
This means that when nonmilitary overseas jobs like training local government administrators are required, the U.S. military steps in. Other agencies do not have the same capacity. We send soldiers where we need civilians because the soldiers get the resources. And that problem grows worse as the military uses its heft to lobby for yet more money from Congress.
At home, the growth of the armed forces means that American society has become more militarized. Police departments are now equipped with battlefield gear and military equipment, some of it surplus from the Army. Former soldiers have joined the violent extremist groups that have multiplied over the last decade. Less than 10 percent of Americans have served in the military, but 12 percent of those charged in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 had military experience.
Of course, the U.S. military is one of the most professional and patriotic parts of our society. Our uniformed leaders have consistently defended the rule of law, including against a president trying to undermine an election. The trouble stems from how bloated their organizations have become, and how often they are misused.
We must be honest about what the military cannot do. We should allocate our resources to other organizations and agencies that will actually make our country more resilient, prosperous and secure. We will benefit by returning to our history as a big country with a small peacetime military.
Jeremi Suri, a history professor at the University of Texas, Austin, and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, is the author, most recently, of “The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office” and the host of the podcast “This Is Democracy.”
24. US trained Khashoggi's killers. A review of all military training programs is necessary
Yes it is good to review all military training programs. And it should reveal an important conclusion. These types of incidents are "one-offs" and international military education and training provides great benefits to the US and its friends, partners, and allies.
But instead these one-offs are the ones that make the news and could lead to rash decisions about such programs.
US trained Khashoggi's killers. A review of all military training programs is necessary
CNN · by Opinion by William D. Hartung and Elias Yousif
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy. Elias Yousif is the deputy director of the Center's Security Assistance Monitor. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion on CNN.
William Hartung
Elias Yousif
(CNN)Recent revelations have exposed the United States' role in providing military and paramilitary training to at least some of the alleged hitmen behind two of the most high-profile assassinations of the past decade -- the murder of Saudi journalist and political dissident Jamal Khashoggi, and the recent killing of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. These revelations, reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post, cast a harsh light on US security cooperation programs and the private firms operating with the approval of the State Department that train thousands of foreign military personnel every year.
Without stronger safeguards on America's foreign military training enterprise, it seems inevitable that the United States will continue to hone the skills of those who go on to become foreign assassins, coup leaders and human rights abusers.
In the 2018 fiscal year, which ended just two days before Khashoggi's brutal assassination, the US State Department, along with the Department of Defense, provided military training to approximately 62,700 foreign security personnel from 155 countries. That number excludes many more who received military training in deals commercially licensed by the Department of State but negotiated directly between foreign clients and US defense contractors.
Whatever the mechanism, US foreign military training remains plagued by a range of flaws that have clearly implicated the US government in the behavior of powerful -- and in many cases, brutal -- foreign security services. The scale of these programs and the risks that they will be used for nefarious ends should prompt a new and more comprehensive review of all US military training programs worldwide, with reforms that more effectively bar members of military units that have a record of human rights abuses.
The United States has long seen foreign military training as a critical instrument of American statecraft, helping to provide foreign partners with the expertise to address shared security threats, and also as a means of deepening and expanding America's network of alliances. Training in particular, as opposed to arms sales or other security cooperation programs, is seen as especially effective in enhancing US influence among the security elite of foreign partners, aiding in the cultivation of personal and cultural ties as well as a shared military ethos that are meant to provide enduring returns for US security interests. Others have touted the importance of US military training in improving the professionalism, human rights compliance and civil-military affairs of foreign partners.
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Despite these good intentions, these programs too often go awry, as in the case of the alleged role of US-trained operatives in the assassinations of Khashoggi and Moise. The recent collapse of Afghan security forces in the face of a concerted Taliban offensive despite more than $88 billion in intensive US training, equipping and defense institution building over the past 20 years also raises serious questions about the efficacy of US military training programs.
While various US government agencies are supposed to weigh in on decisions regarding foreign military training, the current vetting procedures are far from perfect. Background checks for foreign students have missed red flags, as was the case for a Saudi military trainee who opened fire at a Pensacola naval base in 2019, killing three US sailors. A subsequent review and more rigorous screening led to the expulsion of an additional 21 Saudi military students.
While applicants are first cleared by their home countries before they undergo a US-led screening process, it's unclear just how thoroughly the US government reviews the histories, backgrounds and political roles of the applicants before they are approved for training programs. US and Saudi sources who spoke to the Washington Post allege some of the operatives behind Khashoggi's killing who had received training in the United States were part of the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, a key instrument in a campaign of surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi dissidents.
While there is no evidence that either the American officials who approved the training or the company that provided it knew of the trainees' involvement in the crackdown in Saudi Arabia, it is important to ask two questions: If US officials didn't know, did they conduct a thorough enough background check on the trainees? And if US intelligence did know about this group, did it share any information with the State Department?
Additionally, guardrails to ensure that training is not provided to human rights abusers are all too easily circumvented. Officials responsible for protecting human rights are frequently cut out of security assistance decision-making processes. The Leahy Law, a key safety measure meant to prevent the provision of US assistance to military units that engage in human rights abuses, is not applied to a variety of activities -- including training purchased on a commercial basis -- in deals with private companies that are licensed by the State Department, as was the case with the four alleged Saudi assassins.
Moreover, the State Department processes thousands of licenses for the transfer of weapons and services, including training, every year, which creates bureaucratic challenges in ensuring thorough assessments.
And while Congress is meant to play a key oversight role when it comes to foreign military training, such activities often fall under the radar. In our conversations with congressional staffers, we learned that lawmakers are often unaware of the scale of the training enterprise or of many of the programs through which trainings are administered. Worse still, members of Congress are not notified when the executive branch authorizes sales of training that fall below multimillion-dollar thresholds, meaning these programs often proceed without any meaningful opportunity for lawmakers to intercede. The system lacks transparency and reforms are urgently needed to keep lawmakers and regulators in the executive branch engaged, enforce accountability measures and condition assistance on human rights criteria more broadly.
The most recent revelations are just some of the most conspicuous examples in a long and troubling history of US forces providing assistance, training and the means of violence to actors who are then in a position to make use of their newfound resources to prey on civilians or expand their power in fragile political environments. In Mali, for example, the leaders of two separate military coups in the past decade received US military training.
In Colombia, US-trained commandos are prized recruits for the shadowy world of international private military contracting, where they have been deployed as mercenaries in theaters as far-flung as Yemen and Iraq. Across Latin America, the United States has provided critical combat training to individuals who have gone on over many decades to be involved in coups, paramilitary activities and hit squads, most notably through the now rebranded School of the Americas.
How well has the United States either tracked the activities or assessed in advance the risks of training thousands of Colombian security personnel -- many of whom have since transitioned to private military contracting? Why have successive US administrations allowed this to go on in the first place, given the unintended consequences that can in some cases, hamper US interests?
In the past few years alone, the United States has financed or sold training to numerous countries that have been alleged to engage in serious human rights abuses, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cameroon and Azerbaijan, among many others.
These trainings impart sophisticated combat skills to foreign security services.
They also create relationships between the top brass in the United States and international partners that are intended to foster kinship through shared experiences, expertise and benefaction. But these partnerships between Washington and the security forces of recipient countries also bind the United States to the use or abuse of imparted combat skills and the elevation of particular military elites in deeply unsettled political environments. And with tens of thousands of foreign security personnel granted visas to the United States each year, the question must be asked: How many future assassins, coup leaders or human rights abusers are benefitting from these training programs?
President Joe Biden has pledged to place human rights at the center of US foreign policy. Without urgent reform to America's foreign military training enterprise, that promise will remain only rhetorical in nature. In the Saudi case, a State Department spokesperson declined to confirm whether it awarded the license that provided the Saudis training and stated, "This administration insists on responsible use of U.S. origin defense equipment by our allies and partners, and considers appropriate responses if violations occur. Saudi Arabia faces significant threats to its territory, and we are committed to working together to help Riyadh strengthen its defenses."
And despite the alleged role of US-trained Colombian personnel in the assassination of the Haitian President, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby denied there was anything from the training they received that could be tied to the assassination. He went on to say, "I know of no plans right now as a result of what happened in Haiti for us to reconsider or change this very valuable, ethical leadership training that we continue to provide."
US Army Col. John Dee Suggs also told Voice of America in April, "We will only train people who have the same human rights values that we have, who have the same democratic values that we have."
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If President Biden wishes to match his promises with deeds, he should start by improving vetting procedures, embracing restraint, applying Leahy Law procedures to arms sales, and committing to public transparency on the military training the United States is sharing with its international partners.
Until then, the risk that the United States will train more individuals like the four Saudi operatives who are accused of playing a role in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, or the handful of Colombians allegedly involved in gunning down a sitting head of state, will remain high.
CNN · by Opinion by William D. Hartung and Elias Yousif
25. You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity
Obviously a very provocative essay (just based on the title alone).
Excerpt:
I’ve been working on a Unified Field Theory of Stupidity. My hypothesis: Stupidity dominates in our time because of the convergence of many seemingly unrelated elements that—mixed together at one moment, in one cultural beaker—have produced a fatal explosion of brainlessness. What are those ingredients? You will have your own list, of course.
You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity
The convergence of many seemingly unrelated elements has produced an explosion of brainlessness
The slow-motion zombies’ assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was a fittingly stupid finale to the Trump years, which offered dueling stupidities: Buy one, get one free. The political parties became locked in a four-year drama of hysteria and mutually demeaning abuse. Every buffoonery of the president and his people was answered by an idiocy from the other side, which in its own style was just as sinister and just as clownish.
Cable news provided the Greek chorus. American government and politics became cartoons. The Democrats, all unknowing, played Wile E. Coyote to Mr. Trump’s Road Runner. Twice, the Democrats’ Acme Impeachment Committee rigged up the big bomb (heh heh), lit the fuse and held its ears. Both times, the Road Runner sped away. Beep beep!
“Trump is crazy!” “Trump is Hitler!” “Trump is a Russian agent!” “ Bob Mueller has the goods!” Beep beep!
Stupidity has been in the air for quite some time. And alas, Mr. Trump isn’t going away soon; neither are Jerrold Nadler, Adam Schiff or Mazie Hirono —each a paragon of the phenomenon.
Stupidity is one of life’s big mysteries, like evil, like love, an ineffable thing. You cannot exactly define it, but you know it when you see it, as Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography. It takes many forms. Stupidity is entitled to no moral standing whatever, and yet it sits in a place of honor at the tables of the mighty; it blows in their ears and whispers promises.
Stupidity reappears as a perennial theme of literature and history: King Lear breaking up his kingdom in the first act, or the entirety of World War I, from Sarajevo to Versailles. In her 1984 book, “The March of Folly,” Barbara Tuchman examined four grand stupidities: the Trojans’ decision to accept the Greeks’ big wooden horse and move it inside the walls of the city (an illustrative myth), the Renaissance popes’ failure to deal with the complaints of Martin Luther and others that led to the Reformation, England’s boneheaded policies under George III that lost it the American colonies, and the Americans’ mishandled intervention in Vietnam.
I have always thought that the 1960s, besides being the gaudiest and noisiest and most entertaining decade, was one of the stupidest, with its stupid war and stupid ideas (morons smoking banana peels about summed it up). The grown-ups had made a stupid mess in Vietnam; the young swarmed onstage, too numerous for their own good, and, being on the whole vastly inexperienced in the business of life, made stupid messes of their own. The counterculture became the culture. A lot of the music was great. Today many baby boomers are starry-eyed about the days of their youth. The ’60s set forth a paradox: It’s possible for a decade to be filled with tragedy and ideals, and at the same time to be essentially stupid.
In that thought, one approaches the core of the mystery. Most of the tragedies of that time, in fact, were stupid: the war, the murders of John and Robert Kennedy, to name three essentially meaningless phenomena that have, in time, passed over into what Thucydides called “the country of myth.” Is it possible that stupidity—far from being a shallow, comic thing—is at the heart of historic tragedy?
I’ve been working on a Unified Field Theory of Stupidity. My hypothesis: Stupidity dominates in our time because of the convergence of many seemingly unrelated elements that—mixed together at one moment, in one cultural beaker—have produced a fatal explosion of brainlessness. What are those ingredients? You will have your own list, of course.
My nominees will seem eccentric at first. The subversion of manners and authority (two great casualties of the 1960s) prepared the way for the death of privacy, which would eventually be ensured by the stupendously intrusive capabilities of Big Tech in the 21st century. Manners (and in a different way, authority) depend on respect for the privacy of others, as well as one’s own. Manners depend on reticence, even mystery. When those ingrained regulations, those protections of the individual mind, are gone, then you may open the floodgates to (among many other things) pornography, which is a massively lucrative assault on individual dignity and collective decorum—an assault on the manners of a society and, if you will forgive my saying so, on the divinity of the individual.
The death of manners and privacy, I argue, are profoundly political facts that, combined with other facts, lead, eventually, to an entire civilization of stupidity. It’s a short ride from stupidity to madness. Soon people aren’t quite people anymore; they are cartoons and categories. And “identities.” The media grow feral. Genitals became weirdly public issues; the sexes subdivide into 100 genders. Ideologues extract sunbeams from cucumbers. They engage in what amounts to an Oedipal rebellion against reality itself.
At the Tower of Babel, the Lord—whatever his reasons—confounded the languages of the peoples of the world. I suspect he has found he can achieve the same effect by making everyone stupid.
Mr. Morrow is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His latest book is “God and Mammon: Chronicles of American Money.”
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.
