“Taliban intelligence must release journalist Sayed Rashed Kashefi immediately and unconditionally,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “The continued detention of journalists like Kashefi is part of a ruthless campaign to silence independent reporting and intimidate the media into submission. This blatant assault on press freedom must end now.”

Taliban intelligence agents detained Kashefi after he was summoned to the GDI’s Directorate of Media and Public Affairs under the pretext of retrieving his mobile phone, video recording camera, and voice recorder, which had been confiscated in mid-March by agents who suspected him of working with Afghan exiled media, according to a journalist who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisal.

Kashefi, who was previously a journalist for the state-owned English-language newspaper, The Kabul Times, has been working as an independent reporter covering current affairs in Kabul.

He has been detained by the Taliban before. In December 2021, a senior official and his bodyguards held Kashefi for six hours during his reporting in Kabul and beat him.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The raid on Arezo TV and expulsion of its women journalists shows the Taliban’s troubling commitment to cracking down on Afghan independent media, as it works to silence free voices and restrict the public’s access to information,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “The Taliban must immediately and unconditionally release the seven detained journalists and media workers and permit the channel to resume broadcasting without further interference.”

The journalist told CPJ that the Taliban accused Arezo TV journalists during the raid of collaborating with and reporting for exiled media outlets operating outside Afghanistan. The current whereabouts of the detained journalists remain unknown.

Saif ul Islam Khyber, a spokesperson for the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, told media in an audio message that the group sealed Arezo TV’s offices to uphold “Islamic values, prevent misuse of media outlets, and strengthen social order.”

Khyber said Arezo TV was involved in dubbing foreign soap operas, purportedly with the backing of exiled media organizations.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The Taliban must immediately cease jamming Afghanistan International’s broadcasts, which marks a new low in their shameful campaign to silence an important source of independent news in Afghanistan,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “The Taliban’s decision to use this sophisticated technology is highly alarming, demonstrating the lengths they are prepared to go to in order to prevent the free flow of information and news to the Afghan people.”

Harun Najafizada, executive editor of Afghanistan International, told CPJ that the television station had been using other satellites to ensure people in Kabul could watch its news after September 5, when the Taliban blocked its usual signal from a ground station in Afghanistan. Any independent media organization committed to providing accurate information faces threats and intimidation from the Taliban, he said.

Video clips reviewed by CPJ showed black screens and a “no signal” message on the TV station’s usual frequency. Kabul residents told CPJ that the signal was intermittent due to the jamming.

On September 4, the Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Stanekzai denounced Afghanistan International as an “enemy” for reporting that aid relief sent to the flooded northern province of Baghlan had been allegedly misused. In May, the Taliban ordered journalists and citizens to boycott Afghanistan International for falsifying information and producing broadcasts that aided the group’s opponents.

It is the country’s most popular international television channel, also available via social media and cable.

CPJ’s text messages to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid requesting comment on the broadcast jamming went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Listen to the Talking China In Eurasia podcast

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | YouTube

Welcome back to the China In Eurasia Briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter tracking China's resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

I'm RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish and here's what I'm following right now.

As Huthi rebels continue their assault on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the deepening crisis is posing a fresh test for China’s ambitions of becoming a power broker in the Middle East – and raising questions about whether Beijing can help bring the group to bay.

Finding Perspective: U.S. officials have been asking China to urge Tehran to rein in Iran-backed Huthis, but according to the Financial Times, American officials say that they have seen no signs of help.

Still, Washington keeps raising the issue. In weekend meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bangkok, U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan again asked Beijing to use its “substantial leverage with Iran” to play a “constructive role” in stopping the attacks.

Reuters, citing Iranian officials, reported on January 26 that Beijing urged Tehran at recent meetings to pressure the Huthis or risk jeopardizing business cooperation with China in the future.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that China would want to bring the attacks to an end. The Huthis have disrupted global shipping, stoking fears of global inflation and even more instability in the Middle East.

This also hurts China’s bottom line. The attacks are raising transport costs and jeopardizing the tens of billions of dollars that China has invested in nearby Egyptian ports.

Why It Matters: The current crisis raises some complex questions for China’s ambitions in the Middle East.

If China decides to pressure Iran, it’s unknown how much influence Tehran actually has over Yemen’s Huthis. Iran backs the group and supplies them with weapons, but it’s unclear if they can actually control and rein them in, as U.S. officials are calling for.

But the bigger question might be whether this calculation looks the same from Beijing.

China might be reluctant to get too involved and squander its political capital with Iran on trying to get the Huthis to stop their attacks, especially after the group has announced that it won’t attack Chinese ships transiting the Red Sea.

Beijing is also unlikely to want to bring an end to something that’s hurting America’s interests arguably more than its own at the moment.

U.S. officials say they’ll continue to talk with China about helping restore trade in the Red Sea, but Beijing might decide that it has more to gain by simply stepping back.

Three More Stories From Eurasia

1. ‘New Historical Heights’ For China And Uzbekistan

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev made a landmark three-day visit to Beijing, where he met with Xi, engaged with Chinese business leaders, and left with an officially upgraded relationship as the Central Asian leader increasingly looks to China for his economic future.

The Details: As I reported here, Mirziyoev left Uzbekistan looking to usher in a new era and returned with upgraded diplomatic ties as an “all-weather” partner with China.

The move to elevate to an “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership” from a “comprehensive strategic partnership” doesn’t come with any formal benefits, but it’s a clear sign from Mirziyoev and Xi on where they want to take the relationship between their two countries.

Before going to China for the January 23-25 trip, Mirziyoev signed a letter praising China’s progress in fighting poverty and saying he wanted to develop a “new long-term agenda” with Beijing that will last for “decades.”

Beyond the diplomatic upgrade, China said it was ready to expand cooperation with Uzbekistan across the new energy vehicle industry chain, as well as in major projects such as photovoltaics, wind power, and hydropower.

Xi and Mirzoyoev also spoke about the long-discussed China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, with the Chinese leader saying that work should begin as soon as possible, athough no specifics were offered and there are reportedly still key disputes over how the megaproject will be financed.

2. The Taliban’s New Man In Beijing

In a move that could lay the groundwork for more diplomatic engagement with China, Xi received diplomatic credentials from the Taliban’s new ambassador in Beijing on January 25.

What You Need To Know: Mawlawi Asadullah Bilal Karimi was accepted as part of a ceremony that also received the credential letters of 42 new envoys. Karimi was named as the new ambassador to Beijing on November 24 but has now formally been received by Xi, which is another installment in the slow boil toward recognition that’s under way.

No country formally recognizes the Taliban administration in Afghanistan, but China – along with other countries such as Pakistan, Russia, and Turkmenistan – have appointed their own envoys to Kabul and have maintained steady diplomatic engagement with the group since it returned to power in August 2021.

Formal diplomatic recognition for the Taliban still looks to be far off, but this move highlights China’s strategy of de-facto recognition that could see other countries following its lead, paving the way for formal ties down the line.

3. China’s Tightrope With Iran and Pakistan

Air strikes and diplomatic sparring between Iran and Pakistan raised difficult questions for China and its influence in the region, as I reported here.

Both Islamabad and Tehran have since moved to mend fences, with their foreign ministers holding talks on January 29. But the incident put the spotlight on what China would do if two of its closest partners entered into conflict against one another.

What It Means: The tit-for-tat strikes hit militant groups operating in each other’s territory. After a tough exchange, both countries quickly cooled their rhetoric – culminating in the recent talks held in Islamabad.

And while Beijing has lots to lose in the event of a wider conflict between two of its allies, it appeared to remain quiet, with only a formal offer to mediate if needed.

Abdul Basit, an associate research fellow at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told me this approach reflects how China “shies away from situations like this,” in part to protect its reputation in case it intervenes and then fails.

Michael Kugelman, the director of the Wilson Center's South Asia Institute, added that, despite Beijing’s cautious approach, China has shown a willingness to mediate when opportunity strikes, pointing to the deal it helped broker between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March.

“It looks like the Pakistanis and the Iranians had enough in their relationship to ease tensions themselves,” he told me. “So [Beijing] might be relieved now, but that doesn't mean they won't step up if needed.”

Across The Supercontinent

China’s Odd Moment: What do the fall of the Soviet Union and China's slowing economy have in common? The answer is more than you might think.

Listen to the latest episode of the Talking China In Eurasia podcast, where we explore how China's complicated relationship with the Soviet Union is shaping the country today.

Invite Sent. Now What? Ukraine has invited Xi to participate in a planned “peace summit” of world leaders in Switzerland, Reuters reported, in a gathering tied to the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

Blocked, But Why? China has suspended issuing visas to Lithuanian citizens. Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis confirmed the news and told Lithuanian journalists that “we have been informed about this. No further information has been provided.”

More Hydro Plans: Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Energy and the China National Electric Engineering Company signed a memorandum of cooperation on January 24 to build a cascade of power plants and a new thermal power plant.

One Thing To Watch

There’s no official word, but it’s looking like veteran diplomat Liu Jianchao is the leading contender to become China’s next foreign minister.

Wang Yi was reassigned to his old post after Qin Gang was abruptly removed as foreign minister last summer, and Wang is currently holding roles as both foreign minister and the more senior position of director of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission Office.

Liu has limited experience engaging with the West but served stints at the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog and currently heads a party agency traditionally tasked with building ties with other communist states.

It also looks like he’s being groomed for the role. He recently completed a U.S. tour, where he met with top officials and business leaders, and has also made visits to the Middle East.

That’s all from me for now. Don’t forget to send me any questions, comments, or tips that you might have.

Until next time,

Reid Standish

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your inbox every other Wednesday.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

• The war in Ukraine will persist until the West realizes that a return to the previous world order is unattainable.
• In Iran, with parliamentary elections scheduled for March, the government is likely to face yet another challenge to its legitimacy.
• In Belarus, setbacks for Russia in Ukraine could prompt the Lukashenka regime to attempt to normalize relations with the West.
• While 2024 will see a rightward shift in the EU, it is unlikely to bring the deluge of populist victories that some are predicting.
• The vicious spiral for women in Afghanistan will only worsen.
• Peace between Armenia and its neighbors could set the stage for a Russian exit from the region.
• Hungary's upcoming leadership of the European Council could prove a stumbling block to the start of EU accession talks with Ukraine.
• Kyrgyzstan is on course to feel the pain of secondary sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine if the West's patience runs out.

Here, then, are our correspondents' predictions for 2024. To find out more about the authors themselves, click on their bylines.

The Ukraine War: A Prolonged Stalemate

By Vitaliy Portnikov

In September 2022, Ukrainian generals Valeriy Zaluzhniy and Mykhaylo Zabrodskiy presciently warned that Russia's aggression against Ukraine would unfold into a protracted conflict. Fast forward 15 months, and the front line is effectively frozen, with neither Ukrainian nor Russian offensives yielding substantial changes.

As 2023 comes to a close, observers find themselves revisiting themes familiar from the previous year: the potential for a major Ukrainian counteroffensive, the extent of Western aid to Kyiv, the possibility of a "frozen conflict,” security assurances for Ukraine, and the prospects for its Euro-Atlantic integration ahead of a NATO summit.

It is conceivable that, by the close of 2024, we will still be grappling with these same issues. A political resolution seems elusive, given the Kremlin's steadfast refusal to entertain discussions on vacating the parts of Ukraine its forces occupy. Conversely, Ukraine’s definition of victory is the full restoration of its territorial integrity.

Even if, in 2024, one side achieves a military victory -- whether through the liberation of part of Ukraine or Russia seizing control of additional regions -- it won't necessarily bring us closer to a political resolution. Acknowledging this impasse is crucial, as Russian President Vladimir Putin's assault on Ukraine is part of a broader agenda: a push to reestablish, if not the Soviet Empire, at least its sphere of influence.

For Ukraine, resistance to Russian aggression is about not just reclaiming occupied territories but also safeguarding statehood, political identity, and national integrity. Western support is crucial for Ukraine's survival and the restoration of its territorial integrity. However, this backing aims to avoid escalation into a direct conflict between Russia and the West on Russia's sovereign territory.

The war's conclusion seems contingent on the depletion of resources on one of the two sides, with Ukraine relying on continued Western support and Russia on oil and gas revenues. Hence, 2024 might echo the patterns of 2023. Even if external factors shift significantly -- such as in the U.S. presidential election in November -- we might not witness tangible changes until 2025.

Another potential variable is the emergence of major conflicts akin to the war in the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, this would likely signify the dissipation of Western resources rather than a shift in approaches to war.

In essence, the war in Ukraine will persist until the West realizes that a return to the previous world order is unattainable. Constructing a new world order demands unconventional measures, such as offering genuine security guarantees to nations victimized by aggression or achieving peace, or at least limiting the zone of military operations to the current contact line, without direct agreements with Russia.

So far, such understanding is lacking, and the expectation that Moscow will eventually grasp the futility of its ambitions only emboldens Putin. Consequently, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine will endure, potentially spawning new, equally perilous local wars worldwide.

Iran: Problems Within And Without

By Hannah Kaviani

Iran has been dealing with complex domestic and international challenges for years and the same issues are likely to plague it in 2024. But officials in Tehran appear to be taking a “wait-and-see” approach to its lengthy list of multilayered problems.

Iran enters 2024 as Israel's war in Gaza continues and the prospects for a peaceful Middle East are bleak, with the situation exacerbated by militia groups firmly supported by Tehran.

Iran’s prominent role in supporting paramilitary forces in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen has also drawn the ire of the international community and will continue to be a thorn in the side of relations with the West.

Tehran has refused to cooperate with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency over its nuclear program, resulting in an impasse in talks with the international community. And with the United States entering an election year that could see the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, the likelihood of Tehran and Washington resuming negotiations -- which could lead to a reduction in sanctions -- is considered very low.

But Iran's problems are not limited to outside its borders.

The country’s clerical regime is still reeling from the massive protests that began in 2022 over the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody after her arrest for not obeying hijab rules. The aftershocks of the Women, Life, Freedom movement that emanated from her death were reflected in acts of civil disobedience that are likely to continue in 2024.

At the same time, a brutal crackdown continues as civil rights activists, students, religious minorities, and artists are being beaten, detained, and/or given harsh prison sentences.

With parliamentary elections scheduled for March, the government is likely to face yet another challenge to its legitimacy as it struggles with low voter turnout and general disinterest in another round of controlled elections.

Another critical issue Iranian officials must continue to deal with in 2024 is the devastated economy resulting from the slew of international sanctions because of its controversial nuclear program. After a crushing year of 47 percent inflation in 2023 (a 20-year high, according to the IMF), costs are expected to continue to rise for many foods and commodities, as well as real estate.

Iran’s widening budget deficit due to reduced oil profits continues to cripple the economy, with the IMF reporting that the current government debt is equal to three annual budgets.

With neither the international community nor the hard-line Tehran regime budging, most analysts see scant chances for significant changes in Iran in the coming year.

Belarus: Wider War Role, Integration With Russia Not In The Cards

By Valer Karbalevich

Belarus has been pulled closer into Moscow’s orbit than ever by Russia’s war in Ukraine -- but in 2024, it’s unlikely to be subsumed into the much larger nation to its east, and chances are it won’t step up its so-far limited involvement in the conflict in the country to its south.

The most probable scenario in Belarus, where the authoritarian Alyaksandr Lukashenka will mark 30 years since he came to power in 1994, is more of the same: No letup in pressure on all forms of dissent at home, no move to send troops to Ukraine. And while Russia’s insistent embrace will not loosen, the Kremlin will abstain from using Belarusian territory for any new ground attacks or bombardments of Ukraine.

But the war in Ukraine is a wild card, the linchpin influencing the trajectory of Belarus in the near term and beyond. For the foreseeable future, what happens in Belarus -- or to it -- will depend in large part on what happens in Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

Should the current equilibrium on the front persist and Western support for Ukraine persist, the likelihood is a continuation of the status quo for Belarus. The country will maintain its allegiance to Russia, marked by diplomatic and political support. Bolstered by Russian loans, Belarus's defense industry will further expand its output.

The Belarusian state will continue to militarize the border with Ukraine, posing a perpetual threat to Kyiv and diverting Ukrainian troops from the eastern and southern fronts. At the same time, however, Russia is unlikely to use Belarusian territory as a launching point for fresh assaults on Ukraine, as it did at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

If Russia wins or scores substantial victories -- if Ukraine is forced into negotiations on Moscow’s terms, for example, or the current front line comes to be considered the international border -- Lukashenka, consolidating his position within the country, will reap "victory dividends." But relations between Belarus and Russia are unlikely to change dramatically.

Potentially, Moscow could take major steps to absorb Belarus, diminishing its sovereignty and transforming its territory into a staging ground for a fresh assault on Kyiv. This would increase tensions with the West and heighten concerns about the tactical nuclear weapons Moscow and Minsk say Russia has transferred to Belarus. However, this seems unlikely due to the absence of military necessity for Moscow and the problems it could create on the global stage.

The loss of Belarusian sovereignty would pose a major risk for Lukashenka and his regime. An overwhelming majority of Belarusians oppose the direct involvement of Belarus in the war against Ukraine. This fundamental distinction sets Belarus apart from Russia, and bringing Belarus into the war could trigger a political crisis in Belarus -- an outcome Moscow would prefer to avoid.

If Russia loses the war or sustains significant defeats that weaken Putin, Lukashenka's regime may suffer economic and political repercussions. This could prompt him to seek alternative global alliances, potentially leading to an attempt to normalize relations with the West.

Russia, Ukraine, And The West: Sliding Toward World War III

By Sergei Medvedev

2024 will be a critical year for the war in Ukraine and for the entire international system, which is quickly unraveling before our eyes. The most crucial of many challenges is a revanchist, resentful, belligerent Russia, bent on destroying and remaking the world order. In his mind, President Vladimir Putin is fighting World War III, and Ukraine is a prelude to a global showdown.

Despite Western sanctions, Russia has consolidated its position militarily, domestically, and internationally in 2023. After setbacks and shocks in 2022, the military has stabilized the front and addressed shortages of arms, supplies, and manpower. Despite latent discontent, the population is not ready to question the war, preferring to stay in the bubble of learned ignorance and the lies of state propaganda.

Here are four scenarios for 2024:

Strategic stalemate in Ukraine, chaos in the international system: The West, relaxed by a 30-year “peace dividend,” lacks the vision and resolve of the 1980s, when its leaders helped bring about the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, let alone the courage of those who stood up to Nazi Germany in World War II. Putin’s challenge to the free world is no less significant than Hitler’s was, but there is no Roosevelt or Churchill in sight. Probability: 70 percent

Widening war, collapse or division of Ukraine: Russia could defend and consolidate its gains in Ukraine, waging trench warfare while continuing to destroy civilian infrastructure, and may consider a side strike in Georgia or Moldova -- or against Lithuania or Poland, testing NATO. A frontal invasion is less likely than a hybrid operation by “unidentified” units striking from Belarus, acts of sabotage, or unrest among Russian-speakers in the Baltic states. Other Kremlin operations could occur anywhere in the world. The collapse of Ukraine’s government or the division of the country could not be ruled out. Probability: 15 percent.

Russia loses in Ukraine: A military defeat for Russia, possibly entailing a partial or complete withdrawal from Ukraine. Consistent Western support and expanded supplies of arms, like F-16s or Abrams tanks, or a big move such as closing the skies over Ukraine, could provide for this outcome. It would not necessarily entail Russia’s collapse -- it could further consolidate the nation around Putin’s regime. Russia would develop a resentful identity grounded in loss and defeat -- and harbor the idea of coming back with a vengeance. Probability: 10 percent

Russia’s Collapse: A military defeat in Ukraine could spark social unrest, elite factional battles, and an anti-Putin coup, leading to his demotion or violent death. Putin’s natural death, too, could set off a succession struggle, causing chaos in a country he has rid of reliable institutions. While breakup into many regions is unlikely, the empire could crumble at the edges -- Kaliningrad, Chechnya, the Far East – like in 1917 and 1991. Russia’s nuclear weapons would be a big question mark, leading to external involvement and possible de-nuclearization. For all its perils, this scenario might provide a framework for future statehood in Northern Eurasia. Probability: 5 percent

EU: 'Fortress Europe' And The Ukraine War

By Rikard Jozwiak

2024 will see a rightward shift in the European Union, but it is unlikely to bring the deluge of populist victories that some are predicting since Euroskeptics won national elections in the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia and polled well in Austria and Germany.

The European Parliament elections in June will be the ultimate test for the bloc in that respect. Polls still suggest the two main political groups, the center-right European People's Party and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, will finish on top, albeit with a smaller share of the vote. But right-wing populist parties are likely to fail once again to agree on the creation of a single political group, thus eroding their influence in Brussels.

This, in turn, is likely to prod more pro-European groups into combining forces again to divvy up EU top jobs like the presidencies of the European Commission, the bloc's top executive body, and the European Council, which defines the EU's political direction and priorities. Center-right European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is widely tipped to get a second term, even though she might fancy NATO's top job as secretary-general. Charles Michel, on the other hand, will definitely be out as European Council president after serving the maximum five years.

While right-wing populists may not wield major influence in the horse-trading for those top jobs, they will affect policy going forward. They have already contributed to a hardening of attitudes on migration, and you can expect to hear more of the term "fortress Europe" as barriers go up on the EU's outer border.

The biggest question for 2024, however, is about how much support Brussels can provide Ukraine going forward. Could the "cost-of-living crisis" encourage members to side with Budapest to block financial aid or veto the start of de facto accession talks with that war-torn country? The smart money is still on the EU finding a way to green-light both those decisions in 2024, possibly by unfreezing more EU funds for Budapest.

Although it seems like a remote possibility, patience could also finally wear out with Hungary, and the other 26 members could decide to strip it of voting rights in the Council of the European Union, which amends, approves, and vetoes European Commission proposals -- essentially depriving it of influence. In that respect, Austria and Slovakia, Budapest's two biggest allies right now, are the EU countries to watch.

The one surefire guarantee in Europe isn't about the European Union at all but rather about NATO: After somehow failing to join as predicted for each of the past two years, against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden will become the transatlantic military alliance's 32nd member once the Turkish and Hungarian parliaments vote to ratify its accession protocol.

Caucasus: A Peace Agreement Could Be Transformative

By Josh Kucera

Could 2024 be the year that Armenia and Azerbaijan finally formally resolve decades of conflict?

This year, Azerbaijan effectively decided -- by force -- their most contentious issue: the status of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. With its lightning offensive in September, Azerbaijan placed Karabakh firmly under its control. Both sides now say they've reached agreement on most of their fundamental remaining issues, and diplomatic talks, after an interruption, appear set to resume.

A resolution of the conflict could transform the region. If Armenia and Azerbaijan made peace, a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement could soon follow. Borders between the three countries would reopen as a result, ending Armenia's long geographical isolation and priming the South Caucasus to take full advantage of new transportation projects seeking to ship cargo between Europe and Asia while bypassing Russia.

Peace between Armenia and its neighbors also could set the stage for a Russian exit from the region. Russian-Armenian security cooperation has been predicated on potential threats from Azerbaijan and Turkey. With those threats reduced, what's keeping the Russian soldiers, peacekeepers, and border guards there?

A Russian exit would be a messy process -- Moscow still holds many economic levers in Armenia -- but Yerevan could seek help from the United States and Europe to smooth any transition. Washington and Brussels have seemingly been waiting in the wings, nudging Armenia in their direction.

But none of this is likely to happen without a peace agreement. And while there don't seem to be any unresolvable issues remaining, there are mounting indications that Azerbaijan may not see it in its interests to make peace. Baku has gotten what it wanted most of all -- full control of Karabakh -- without an agreement. And maintaining a simmering conflict with Armenia could arguably serve Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev well, as it would allow him to continue to lean on a reliable source of public support: rallying against an Armenian enemy.

But perhaps the most conspicuous indication of a broader strategy is Aliyev's increasing invocation of "Western Azerbaijan" -- a hazily defined concept alluding to ethnic Azerbaijanis who used to live on the territory of what is now Armenia and their presumed right to return to their homes. It suggests that Azerbaijan might keep furthering its demands in hopes that Armenia finally throws in the towel, and each can accuse the other of intransigence.

Hungary: The Return Of Big Brother?

By Pablo Gorondi

Critics might be tempted to believe that Big Brother will be watching over Hungarians in 2024 like at no point since the fall of communism.

A new law on the Defense of National Sovereignty will allow the Office for the Defense of Sovereignty, which the law created, to investigate and request information from almost any group in Hungary that receives foreign funding. This will apply to civic groups, political parties, private businesses, media companies -- in fact, anyone deemed to be conducting activities (including "information manipulation and disinformation") in the interests of a foreign "body, organization, or person."

The law has been criticized by experts from the United Nations and the Council of Europe over its seemingly vague language, lack of judicial oversight, and fears that it could be used by the government "to silence and stigmatize independent voices and opponents."

The head of the Office for the Defense of Sovereignty should be nominated for a six-year term by right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban and appointed by President Katalin Novak by February 1. This would allow the new authority to carry out investigations and present findings ahead of simultaneous elections to the European Parliament and Hungarian municipal bodies in early June -- possibly influencing their outcomes.

Asked by RFE/RL's Hungarian Service, some experts said fears of the new authority are overblown and that the government is more likely to use it as a threat hanging over opponents than as a direct tool for repression -- at least until it finds it politically necessary or expedient to tighten control.

On the international scene, meanwhile, Hungary will take over the Council of the European Union's six-month rotating presidency in July, a few weeks after voting to determine the composition of a new European Parliament.

MEPs from Orban's Fidesz party exited the center-right European People's Party bloc in 2021 and have not joined another group since then, although some observers expect them to join the more Euroskeptic and nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists.

Orban has for years predicted a breakthrough of more radical right-wing forces in Europe. But while that has happened in Italy, the Netherlands, and Slovakia, experts suggest that's not enough to fuel a significant shift in the European Parliament, where the center-right and center-left should continue to hold a clear majority.

Because of the June elections, the European Parliament's activities will initially be limited -- and its election of a European Commission president could prove complicated. Nevertheless, Orban has said in recent interviews that he wants to "fix the European Union" and that "we need to take over Brussels." So, Hungary's leadership may make progress difficult on issues that Orban opposes, like the start of EU accession talks with Ukraine or a possible reelection bid by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Stability And The 'Serbian World'

By Gjeraqina Tuhina and Milos Teodorovic

Serbia, once again, will be a key player in the region -- and its moves could significantly shape events in the Balkans over the next 12 months.

For over a decade, the dialogue to normalize relations between Serbia and its former province Kosovo has stymied both countries. Then, in February in Brussels and March in Ohrid, North Macedonia, European mediators announced a path forward and its implementation. There was only one problem: There was no signature on either side. Nine months later, little has changed.

Many eyes are looking toward one aspect in particular -- a renewed obligation for Pristina to allow for an "appropriate level of self-management" for the Serb minority in Kosovo. This also entails creating possibilities for financial support from Serbia to Kosovar Serbs and guarantees for direct communication of the Serb minority with the Kosovar government.

In October, EU mediators tried again, and with German, French, and Italian backing presented both parties with a new draft for an association of Serb-majority municipalities. Both sides accepted the draft. EU envoy to the region Miroslav Lajcak suggested in December that the Ohrid agreement could be implemented by the end of January. If that happened, it would mark a decisive step for both sides in a dialogue that began in 2011.

"The Serbian world" is a phrase launched a few years ago by pro-Russian Serbian politician Aleksandar Vulin, a longtime cabinet minister who until recently headed the Serbian Intelligence Service. It is not officially part of the agenda of either Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic or the government, but it underscores the influence that Serbia seeks to wield from Kosovo and Montenegro to Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But how Vucic chooses to exert the implicit ties to Serb leaders and nationalists in those countries could do much to promote stability -- or its antithesis -- in the Balkans in 2024.

Another major challenge for Vucic revolves around EU officials' request that candidate country Serbia harmonize its foreign policy with the bloc. So far, along with Turkey, Serbia is the only EU candidate that has not introduced sanctions on Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is unclear how far the Serbian president is willing to push back to foster ongoing good relations with Moscow.

But first, Serbia will have to confront the fallout from snap elections in December dominated by Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party but rejected by the newly united opposition as fraudulent. The results sparked nightly protests in the capital and hunger strikes by a half-dozen lawmakers and other oppositionists. A new parliament is scheduled to hold a session by the end of January 2024, and the margins are seemingly razor-thin for control of the capital, Belgrade.

Central Asia: Don't Write Russia Off Just Yet

By Chris Rickleton

Will the empire strike back? 2023 has been a galling year for Russia in Central Asia as it watched its traditional partners (and former colonies) widen their diplomatic horizons.

With Russia bogged down in a grueling war in Ukraine, Moscow has less to offer the region than ever before. Central Asia’s five countries have made the most of the breathing space, with their leaders holding landmark talks with U.S. and German leaders as French President Emmanuel Macron also waltzed into Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan with multibillion-dollar investments.

And China has reinforced its dominant position in the region, while Turkey has also increased its influence.

But don’t write Russia off just yet.

One of Moscow’s biggest wins in the neighborhood this year was an agreement to supply Uzbekistan with nearly 3 billion cubic meters of gas every year, a figure that could increase.

Power deficits in Uzbekistan and energy-rich Kazakhstan are the most obvious short-term sources of leverage for Moscow over those important countries.

The coming year will likely bring more in terms of specifics over both governments’ plans for nuclear power production, with Russia fully expected to be involved.

And Moscow’s confidence in a region that it views as its near abroad will only increase if it feels it is making headway on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Tajikistan

Tajikistan’s hereditary succession has been expected for so long that people have stopped expecting it. Does that mean it is back on the cards for 2024? Probably not.

In 2016, Tajikistan passed a raft of constitutional changes aimed at cementing the ruling Rahmon family’s hold on power. Among them was one lowering the age to run for president from 35 to 30.

That amendment had an obvious beneficiary -- veteran incumbent Emomali Rahmon’s upwardly mobile son, Rustam Emomali. But Emomali is now 36 and, despite occupying a political post that makes him next in line, doesn’t look any closer to becoming numero uno.

Perhaps there hasn’t been a good time to do it.

From the coronavirus pandemic to a bloody crackdown on unrest in the Gorno-Badakhshan region and now the shadows cast by the Ukraine war, there have been plenty of excuses to delay the inevitable.

Turkmenistan

But perhaps Rahmon is considering events in Turkmenistan, where Central Asia’s first father-son power transition last year has ended up nothing of the sort. Rather than growing into the role, new President Serdar Berdymukhammedov is shrinking back into the shadow of his all-powerful father, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.

And this seems to be exactly how the older Berdymukhammedov wanted it, subsequently fashioning himself a post-retirement post that makes his son and the rest of the government answerable to him.

But Turkmenistan’s bizarre new setup begs a question: If you’re not ready to let it go, why not hold on a little longer?

Kyrgyzstan/Kazakhstan

Writing on X (formerly Twitter) in November, a former IMF economist argued that Kyrgyzstan would be the "perfect test case" for secondary sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Robin Brooks described the country as "small, not remotely systemically important, and very clearly facilitating trade diversion to Russia."

Official statistics show that countries in the Eurasian Economic Union that Moscow leads have become a “backdoor” around the Western-led sanctions targeting Russia. Exports to Kyrgyzstan from several EU countries this year, for example, are up by at least 1,000 percent compared to 2019.

Data for exports to Kazakhstan shows similar patterns -- with larger volumes but gentler spikes -- while investigations by RFE/RL indicate that companies in both Central Asian countries have forwarded “dual-use” products that benefit the Kremlin’s military machine.

Belarus is the only Russian ally to get fully sanctioned for its support of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine -- but will that change in 2024?

Central Asian governments will argue they have resisted Russian pressure to provide political and military support for the war. They might even whisper that their big friend China is much more helpful to Russia.

But the West’s approach of targeting only Central Asian companies actively flouting the regime is failing.

So, while Western diplomats continue to credit the region’s governments for their anti-evasion efforts, their patience may wear out. And if it does, Kyrgyzstan might be first to find out.

Afghanistan: The Vicious Spiral Will Worsen

By Malali Bashir

With little internal threat to Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and the failure of the international community to affect change in the hard-line Islamist regime’s policies, the Taliban mullahs’ control over the country continues to tighten.

And that regime’s continued restrictions on Afghan women -- their rights, freedom, and role in society -- signals a bleak future for them in 2024 and beyond.

Many observers say the move by the Taliban in December to only allow girls to attend religious madrasahs -- after shutting down formal schooling for them following the sixth grade -- is an effort by the Taliban to radicalize Afghan society.

“Madrasahs are not an alternative to formal schooling because they don’t produce doctors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, etc. The idea of [only] having madrasahs is…about brainwashing [people] to create an extremist society,” says Shukria Barakzai, the former Afghan ambassador to Norway.

The crackdown on women’s rights by the Taliban will also continue the reported uptick in domestic violence in the country, activists say.

Since the Taliban shut down Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission and Women Affairs Ministry, women find themselves with nowhere to turn to and find it extremely difficult to seek justice in Taliban courts.

With no justice for victims of abuse on the horizon, women’s rights activists say violence against women will continue with no repercussions for the perpetrators.

Barakzai argues that Taliban officials have already normalized domestic violence and do not consider it a crime.

“According to [a Taliban] decree, you can [confront] women if they are not listening to [your requests]. Especially a male member of the family is allowed to use all means to punish women if they refuse to follow his orders. That is basically a call for domestic violence,” she said.

The vicious spiral for women will only worsen.

Being banned from education, work, and public life, Afghan women say the resulting psychological impact leads to panic, depression, and acute mental health crises.

Although there are no official figures, Afghan mental health professionals and foreign organizations have noted a disturbing surge in female suicides in the two years since the Taliban came to power.

"If we look at the women who were previously working or studying, 90 percent suffer from mental health issues now," said Mujeeb Khpalwak, a psychiatrist in Kabul. "They face tremendous economic uncertainty after losing their work and are very anxious about their future."

Heather Bar, associate director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch, says, "It's not surprising that we're hearing reports of Afghan girls committing suicide. Because all their rights, including going to school, university, and recreational places have been taken away from them."

Promising young Afghan women who once aspired to contribute to their communities after pursuing higher education now find themselves with no career prospects.

“I do not see any future. When I see boys continuing their education, I lose all hope and wish that I was not born a girl,” a former medical student in Kabul told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.

Despite immense global pressure, the Taliban seems adamant about maintaining its severe limits on women and reducing their role in society. This will result in a tragic future for the women of Afghanistan with no relief in sight.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

• The war in Ukraine will persist until the West realizes that a return to the previous world order is unattainable.
• In Iran, with parliamentary elections scheduled for March, the government is likely to face yet another challenge to its legitimacy.
• In Belarus, setbacks for Russia in Ukraine could prompt the Lukashenka regime to attempt to normalize relations with the West.
• While 2024 will see a rightward shift in the EU, it is unlikely to bring the deluge of populist victories that some are predicting.
• The vicious spiral for women in Afghanistan will only worsen.
• Peace between Armenia and its neighbors could set the stage for a Russian exit from the region.
• Hungary's upcoming leadership of the European Council could prove a stumbling block to the start of EU accession talks with Ukraine.
• Kyrgyzstan is on course to feel the pain of secondary sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine if the West's patience runs out.

Here, then, are our correspondents' predictions for 2024. To find out more about the authors themselves, click on their bylines.

The Ukraine War: A Prolonged Stalemate

By Vitaliy Portnikov

In September 2022, Ukrainian generals Valeriy Zaluzhniy and Mykhaylo Zabrodskiy presciently warned that Russia's aggression against Ukraine would unfold into a protracted conflict. Fast forward 15 months, and the front line is effectively frozen, with neither Ukrainian nor Russian offensives yielding substantial changes.

As 2023 comes to a close, observers find themselves revisiting themes familiar from the previous year: the potential for a major Ukrainian counteroffensive, the extent of Western aid to Kyiv, the possibility of a "frozen conflict,” security assurances for Ukraine, and the prospects for its Euro-Atlantic integration ahead of a NATO summit.

It is conceivable that, by the close of 2024, we will still be grappling with these same issues. A political resolution seems elusive, given the Kremlin's steadfast refusal to entertain discussions on vacating the parts of Ukraine its forces occupy. Conversely, Ukraine’s definition of victory is the full restoration of its territorial integrity.

Even if, in 2024, one side achieves a military victory -- whether through the liberation of part of Ukraine or Russia seizing control of additional regions -- it won't necessarily bring us closer to a political resolution. Acknowledging this impasse is crucial, as Russian President Vladimir Putin's assault on Ukraine is part of a broader agenda: a push to reestablish, if not the Soviet Empire, at least its sphere of influence.

For Ukraine, resistance to Russian aggression is about not just reclaiming occupied territories but also safeguarding statehood, political identity, and national integrity. Western support is crucial for Ukraine's survival and the restoration of its territorial integrity. However, this backing aims to avoid escalation into a direct conflict between Russia and the West on Russia's sovereign territory.

The war's conclusion seems contingent on the depletion of resources on one of the two sides, with Ukraine relying on continued Western support and Russia on oil and gas revenues. Hence, 2024 might echo the patterns of 2023. Even if external factors shift significantly -- such as in the U.S. presidential election in November -- we might not witness tangible changes until 2025.

Another potential variable is the emergence of major conflicts akin to the war in the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, this would likely signify the dissipation of Western resources rather than a shift in approaches to war.

In essence, the war in Ukraine will persist until the West realizes that a return to the previous world order is unattainable. Constructing a new world order demands unconventional measures, such as offering genuine security guarantees to nations victimized by aggression or achieving peace, or at least limiting the zone of military operations to the current contact line, without direct agreements with Russia.

So far, such understanding is lacking, and the expectation that Moscow will eventually grasp the futility of its ambitions only emboldens Putin. Consequently, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine will endure, potentially spawning new, equally perilous local wars worldwide.

Iran: Problems Within And Without

By Hannah Kaviani

Iran has been dealing with complex domestic and international challenges for years and the same issues are likely to plague it in 2024. But officials in Tehran appear to be taking a “wait-and-see” approach to its lengthy list of multilayered problems.

Iran enters 2024 as Israel's war in Gaza continues and the prospects for a peaceful Middle East are bleak, with the situation exacerbated by militia groups firmly supported by Tehran.

Iran’s prominent role in supporting paramilitary forces in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen has also drawn the ire of the international community and will continue to be a thorn in the side of relations with the West.

Tehran has refused to cooperate with the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency over its nuclear program, resulting in an impasse in talks with the international community. And with the United States entering an election year that could see the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, the likelihood of Tehran and Washington resuming negotiations -- which could lead to a reduction in sanctions -- is considered very low.

But Iran's problems are not limited to outside its borders.

The country’s clerical regime is still reeling from the massive protests that began in 2022 over the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody after her arrest for not obeying hijab rules. The aftershocks of the Women, Life, Freedom movement that emanated from her death were reflected in acts of civil disobedience that are likely to continue in 2024.

At the same time, a brutal crackdown continues as civil rights activists, students, religious minorities, and artists are being beaten, detained, and/or given harsh prison sentences.

With parliamentary elections scheduled for March, the government is likely to face yet another challenge to its legitimacy as it struggles with low voter turnout and general disinterest in another round of controlled elections.

Another critical issue Iranian officials must continue to deal with in 2024 is the devastated economy resulting from the slew of international sanctions because of its controversial nuclear program. After a crushing year of 47 percent inflation in 2023 (a 20-year high, according to the IMF), costs are expected to continue to rise for many foods and commodities, as well as real estate.

Iran’s widening budget deficit due to reduced oil profits continues to cripple the economy, with the IMF reporting that the current government debt is equal to three annual budgets.

With neither the international community nor the hard-line Tehran regime budging, most analysts see scant chances for significant changes in Iran in the coming year.

Belarus: Wider War Role, Integration With Russia Not In The Cards

By Valer Karbalevich

Belarus has been pulled closer into Moscow’s orbit than ever by Russia’s war in Ukraine -- but in 2024, it’s unlikely to be subsumed into the much larger nation to its east, and chances are it won’t step up its so-far limited involvement in the conflict in the country to its south.

The most probable scenario in Belarus, where the authoritarian Alyaksandr Lukashenka will mark 30 years since he came to power in 1994, is more of the same: No letup in pressure on all forms of dissent at home, no move to send troops to Ukraine. And while Russia’s insistent embrace will not loosen, the Kremlin will abstain from using Belarusian territory for any new ground attacks or bombardments of Ukraine.

But the war in Ukraine is a wild card, the linchpin influencing the trajectory of Belarus in the near term and beyond. For the foreseeable future, what happens in Belarus -- or to it -- will depend in large part on what happens in Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

Should the current equilibrium on the front persist and Western support for Ukraine persist, the likelihood is a continuation of the status quo for Belarus. The country will maintain its allegiance to Russia, marked by diplomatic and political support. Bolstered by Russian loans, Belarus's defense industry will further expand its output.

The Belarusian state will continue to militarize the border with Ukraine, posing a perpetual threat to Kyiv and diverting Ukrainian troops from the eastern and southern fronts. At the same time, however, Russia is unlikely to use Belarusian territory as a launching point for fresh assaults on Ukraine, as it did at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

If Russia wins or scores substantial victories -- if Ukraine is forced into negotiations on Moscow’s terms, for example, or the current front line comes to be considered the international border -- Lukashenka, consolidating his position within the country, will reap "victory dividends." But relations between Belarus and Russia are unlikely to change dramatically.

Potentially, Moscow could take major steps to absorb Belarus, diminishing its sovereignty and transforming its territory into a staging ground for a fresh assault on Kyiv. This would increase tensions with the West and heighten concerns about the tactical nuclear weapons Moscow and Minsk say Russia has transferred to Belarus. However, this seems unlikely due to the absence of military necessity for Moscow and the problems it could create on the global stage.

The loss of Belarusian sovereignty would pose a major risk for Lukashenka and his regime. An overwhelming majority of Belarusians oppose the direct involvement of Belarus in the war against Ukraine. This fundamental distinction sets Belarus apart from Russia, and bringing Belarus into the war could trigger a political crisis in Belarus -- an outcome Moscow would prefer to avoid.

If Russia loses the war or sustains significant defeats that weaken Putin, Lukashenka's regime may suffer economic and political repercussions. This could prompt him to seek alternative global alliances, potentially leading to an attempt to normalize relations with the West.

Russia, Ukraine, And The West: Sliding Toward World War III

By Sergei Medvedev

2024 will be a critical year for the war in Ukraine and for the entire international system, which is quickly unraveling before our eyes. The most crucial of many challenges is a revanchist, resentful, belligerent Russia, bent on destroying and remaking the world order. In his mind, President Vladimir Putin is fighting World War III, and Ukraine is a prelude to a global showdown.

Despite Western sanctions, Russia has consolidated its position militarily, domestically, and internationally in 2023. After setbacks and shocks in 2022, the military has stabilized the front and addressed shortages of arms, supplies, and manpower. Despite latent discontent, the population is not ready to question the war, preferring to stay in the bubble of learned ignorance and the lies of state propaganda.

Here are four scenarios for 2024:

Strategic stalemate in Ukraine, chaos in the international system: The West, relaxed by a 30-year “peace dividend,” lacks the vision and resolve of the 1980s, when its leaders helped bring about the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, let alone the courage of those who stood up to Nazi Germany in World War II. Putin’s challenge to the free world is no less significant than Hitler’s was, but there is no Roosevelt or Churchill in sight. Probability: 70 percent

Widening war, collapse or division of Ukraine: Russia could defend and consolidate its gains in Ukraine, waging trench warfare while continuing to destroy civilian infrastructure, and may consider a side strike in Georgia or Moldova -- or against Lithuania or Poland, testing NATO. A frontal invasion is less likely than a hybrid operation by “unidentified” units striking from Belarus, acts of sabotage, or unrest among Russian-speakers in the Baltic states. Other Kremlin operations could occur anywhere in the world. The collapse of Ukraine’s government or the division of the country could not be ruled out. Probability: 15 percent.

Russia loses in Ukraine: A military defeat for Russia, possibly entailing a partial or complete withdrawal from Ukraine. Consistent Western support and expanded supplies of arms, like F-16s or Abrams tanks, or a big move such as closing the skies over Ukraine, could provide for this outcome. It would not necessarily entail Russia’s collapse -- it could further consolidate the nation around Putin’s regime. Russia would develop a resentful identity grounded in loss and defeat -- and harbor the idea of coming back with a vengeance. Probability: 10 percent

Russia’s Collapse: A military defeat in Ukraine could spark social unrest, elite factional battles, and an anti-Putin coup, leading to his demotion or violent death. Putin’s natural death, too, could set off a succession struggle, causing chaos in a country he has rid of reliable institutions. While breakup into many regions is unlikely, the empire could crumble at the edges -- Kaliningrad, Chechnya, the Far East – like in 1917 and 1991. Russia’s nuclear weapons would be a big question mark, leading to external involvement and possible de-nuclearization. For all its perils, this scenario might provide a framework for future statehood in Northern Eurasia. Probability: 5 percent

EU: 'Fortress Europe' And The Ukraine War

By Rikard Jozwiak

2024 will see a rightward shift in the European Union, but it is unlikely to bring the deluge of populist victories that some are predicting since Euroskeptics won national elections in the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia and polled well in Austria and Germany.

The European Parliament elections in June will be the ultimate test for the bloc in that respect. Polls still suggest the two main political groups, the center-right European People's Party and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, will finish on top, albeit with a smaller share of the vote. But right-wing populist parties are likely to fail once again to agree on the creation of a single political group, thus eroding their influence in Brussels.

This, in turn, is likely to prod more pro-European groups into combining forces again to divvy up EU top jobs like the presidencies of the European Commission, the bloc's top executive body, and the European Council, which defines the EU's political direction and priorities. Center-right European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is widely tipped to get a second term, even though she might fancy NATO's top job as secretary-general. Charles Michel, on the other hand, will definitely be out as European Council president after serving the maximum five years.

While right-wing populists may not wield major influence in the horse-trading for those top jobs, they will affect policy going forward. They have already contributed to a hardening of attitudes on migration, and you can expect to hear more of the term "fortress Europe" as barriers go up on the EU's outer border.

The biggest question for 2024, however, is about how much support Brussels can provide Ukraine going forward. Could the "cost-of-living crisis" encourage members to side with Budapest to block financial aid or veto the start of de facto accession talks with that war-torn country? The smart money is still on the EU finding a way to green-light both those decisions in 2024, possibly by unfreezing more EU funds for Budapest.

Although it seems like a remote possibility, patience could also finally wear out with Hungary, and the other 26 members could decide to strip it of voting rights in the Council of the European Union, which amends, approves, and vetoes European Commission proposals -- essentially depriving it of influence. In that respect, Austria and Slovakia, Budapest's two biggest allies right now, are the EU countries to watch.

The one surefire guarantee in Europe isn't about the European Union at all but rather about NATO: After somehow failing to join as predicted for each of the past two years, against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden will become the transatlantic military alliance's 32nd member once the Turkish and Hungarian parliaments vote to ratify its accession protocol.

Caucasus: A Peace Agreement Could Be Transformative

By Josh Kucera

Could 2024 be the year that Armenia and Azerbaijan finally formally resolve decades of conflict?

This year, Azerbaijan effectively decided -- by force -- their most contentious issue: the status of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. With its lightning offensive in September, Azerbaijan placed Karabakh firmly under its control. Both sides now say they've reached agreement on most of their fundamental remaining issues, and diplomatic talks, after an interruption, appear set to resume.

A resolution of the conflict could transform the region. If Armenia and Azerbaijan made peace, a Turkish-Armenian rapprochement could soon follow. Borders between the three countries would reopen as a result, ending Armenia's long geographical isolation and priming the South Caucasus to take full advantage of new transportation projects seeking to ship cargo between Europe and Asia while bypassing Russia.

Peace between Armenia and its neighbors also could set the stage for a Russian exit from the region. Russian-Armenian security cooperation has been predicated on potential threats from Azerbaijan and Turkey. With those threats reduced, what's keeping the Russian soldiers, peacekeepers, and border guards there?

A Russian exit would be a messy process -- Moscow still holds many economic levers in Armenia -- but Yerevan could seek help from the United States and Europe to smooth any transition. Washington and Brussels have seemingly been waiting in the wings, nudging Armenia in their direction.

But none of this is likely to happen without a peace agreement. And while there don't seem to be any unresolvable issues remaining, there are mounting indications that Azerbaijan may not see it in its interests to make peace. Baku has gotten what it wanted most of all -- full control of Karabakh -- without an agreement. And maintaining a simmering conflict with Armenia could arguably serve Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev well, as it would allow him to continue to lean on a reliable source of public support: rallying against an Armenian enemy.

But perhaps the most conspicuous indication of a broader strategy is Aliyev's increasing invocation of "Western Azerbaijan" -- a hazily defined concept alluding to ethnic Azerbaijanis who used to live on the territory of what is now Armenia and their presumed right to return to their homes. It suggests that Azerbaijan might keep furthering its demands in hopes that Armenia finally throws in the towel, and each can accuse the other of intransigence.

Hungary: The Return Of Big Brother?

By Pablo Gorondi

Critics might be tempted to believe that Big Brother will be watching over Hungarians in 2024 like at no point since the fall of communism.

A new law on the Defense of National Sovereignty will allow the Office for the Defense of Sovereignty, which the law created, to investigate and request information from almost any group in Hungary that receives foreign funding. This will apply to civic groups, political parties, private businesses, media companies -- in fact, anyone deemed to be conducting activities (including "information manipulation and disinformation") in the interests of a foreign "body, organization, or person."

The law has been criticized by experts from the United Nations and the Council of Europe over its seemingly vague language, lack of judicial oversight, and fears that it could be used by the government "to silence and stigmatize independent voices and opponents."

The head of the Office for the Defense of Sovereignty should be nominated for a six-year term by right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban and appointed by President Katalin Novak by February 1. This would allow the new authority to carry out investigations and present findings ahead of simultaneous elections to the European Parliament and Hungarian municipal bodies in early June -- possibly influencing their outcomes.

Asked by RFE/RL's Hungarian Service, some experts said fears of the new authority are overblown and that the government is more likely to use it as a threat hanging over opponents than as a direct tool for repression -- at least until it finds it politically necessary or expedient to tighten control.

On the international scene, meanwhile, Hungary will take over the Council of the European Union's six-month rotating presidency in July, a few weeks after voting to determine the composition of a new European Parliament.

MEPs from Orban's Fidesz party exited the center-right European People's Party bloc in 2021 and have not joined another group since then, although some observers expect them to join the more Euroskeptic and nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists.

Orban has for years predicted a breakthrough of more radical right-wing forces in Europe. But while that has happened in Italy, the Netherlands, and Slovakia, experts suggest that's not enough to fuel a significant shift in the European Parliament, where the center-right and center-left should continue to hold a clear majority.

Because of the June elections, the European Parliament's activities will initially be limited -- and its election of a European Commission president could prove complicated. Nevertheless, Orban has said in recent interviews that he wants to "fix the European Union" and that "we need to take over Brussels." So, Hungary's leadership may make progress difficult on issues that Orban opposes, like the start of EU accession talks with Ukraine or a possible reelection bid by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Stability And The 'Serbian World'

By Gjeraqina Tuhina and Milos Teodorovic

Serbia, once again, will be a key player in the region -- and its moves could significantly shape events in the Balkans over the next 12 months.

For over a decade, the dialogue to normalize relations between Serbia and its former province Kosovo has stymied both countries. Then, in February in Brussels and March in Ohrid, North Macedonia, European mediators announced a path forward and its implementation. There was only one problem: There was no signature on either side. Nine months later, little has changed.

Many eyes are looking toward one aspect in particular -- a renewed obligation for Pristina to allow for an "appropriate level of self-management" for the Serb minority in Kosovo. This also entails creating possibilities for financial support from Serbia to Kosovar Serbs and guarantees for direct communication of the Serb minority with the Kosovar government.

In October, EU mediators tried again, and with German, French, and Italian backing presented both parties with a new draft for an association of Serb-majority municipalities. Both sides accepted the draft. EU envoy to the region Miroslav Lajcak suggested in December that the Ohrid agreement could be implemented by the end of January. If that happened, it would mark a decisive step for both sides in a dialogue that began in 2011.

"The Serbian world" is a phrase launched a few years ago by pro-Russian Serbian politician Aleksandar Vulin, a longtime cabinet minister who until recently headed the Serbian Intelligence Service. It is not officially part of the agenda of either Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic or the government, but it underscores the influence that Serbia seeks to wield from Kosovo and Montenegro to Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But how Vucic chooses to exert the implicit ties to Serb leaders and nationalists in those countries could do much to promote stability -- or its antithesis -- in the Balkans in 2024.

Another major challenge for Vucic revolves around EU officials' request that candidate country Serbia harmonize its foreign policy with the bloc. So far, along with Turkey, Serbia is the only EU candidate that has not introduced sanctions on Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is unclear how far the Serbian president is willing to push back to foster ongoing good relations with Moscow.

But first, Serbia will have to confront the fallout from snap elections in December dominated by Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party but rejected by the newly united opposition as fraudulent. The results sparked nightly protests in the capital and hunger strikes by a half-dozen lawmakers and other oppositionists. A new parliament is scheduled to hold a session by the end of January 2024, and the margins are seemingly razor-thin for control of the capital, Belgrade.

Central Asia: Don't Write Russia Off Just Yet

By Chris Rickleton

Will the empire strike back? 2023 has been a galling year for Russia in Central Asia as it watched its traditional partners (and former colonies) widen their diplomatic horizons.

With Russia bogged down in a grueling war in Ukraine, Moscow has less to offer the region than ever before. Central Asia’s five countries have made the most of the breathing space, with their leaders holding landmark talks with U.S. and German leaders as French President Emmanuel Macron also waltzed into Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan with multibillion-dollar investments.

And China has reinforced its dominant position in the region, while Turkey has also increased its influence.

But don’t write Russia off just yet.

One of Moscow’s biggest wins in the neighborhood this year was an agreement to supply Uzbekistan with nearly 3 billion cubic meters of gas every year, a figure that could increase.

Power deficits in Uzbekistan and energy-rich Kazakhstan are the most obvious short-term sources of leverage for Moscow over those important countries.

The coming year will likely bring more in terms of specifics over both governments’ plans for nuclear power production, with Russia fully expected to be involved.

And Moscow’s confidence in a region that it views as its near abroad will only increase if it feels it is making headway on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Tajikistan

Tajikistan’s hereditary succession has been expected for so long that people have stopped expecting it. Does that mean it is back on the cards for 2024? Probably not.

In 2016, Tajikistan passed a raft of constitutional changes aimed at cementing the ruling Rahmon family’s hold on power. Among them was one lowering the age to run for president from 35 to 30.

That amendment had an obvious beneficiary -- veteran incumbent Emomali Rahmon’s upwardly mobile son, Rustam Emomali. But Emomali is now 36 and, despite occupying a political post that makes him next in line, doesn’t look any closer to becoming numero uno.

Perhaps there hasn’t been a good time to do it.

From the coronavirus pandemic to a bloody crackdown on unrest in the Gorno-Badakhshan region and now the shadows cast by the Ukraine war, there have been plenty of excuses to delay the inevitable.

Turkmenistan

But perhaps Rahmon is considering events in Turkmenistan, where Central Asia’s first father-son power transition last year has ended up nothing of the sort. Rather than growing into the role, new President Serdar Berdymukhammedov is shrinking back into the shadow of his all-powerful father, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.

And this seems to be exactly how the older Berdymukhammedov wanted it, subsequently fashioning himself a post-retirement post that makes his son and the rest of the government answerable to him.

But Turkmenistan’s bizarre new setup begs a question: If you’re not ready to let it go, why not hold on a little longer?

Kyrgyzstan/Kazakhstan

Writing on X (formerly Twitter) in November, a former IMF economist argued that Kyrgyzstan would be the "perfect test case" for secondary sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Robin Brooks described the country as "small, not remotely systemically important, and very clearly facilitating trade diversion to Russia."

Official statistics show that countries in the Eurasian Economic Union that Moscow leads have become a “backdoor” around the Western-led sanctions targeting Russia. Exports to Kyrgyzstan from several EU countries this year, for example, are up by at least 1,000 percent compared to 2019.

Data for exports to Kazakhstan shows similar patterns -- with larger volumes but gentler spikes -- while investigations by RFE/RL indicate that companies in both Central Asian countries have forwarded “dual-use” products that benefit the Kremlin’s military machine.

Belarus is the only Russian ally to get fully sanctioned for its support of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine -- but will that change in 2024?

Central Asian governments will argue they have resisted Russian pressure to provide political and military support for the war. They might even whisper that their big friend China is much more helpful to Russia.

But the West’s approach of targeting only Central Asian companies actively flouting the regime is failing.

So, while Western diplomats continue to credit the region’s governments for their anti-evasion efforts, their patience may wear out. And if it does, Kyrgyzstan might be first to find out.

Afghanistan: The Vicious Spiral Will Worsen

By Malali Bashir

With little internal threat to Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and the failure of the international community to affect change in the hard-line Islamist regime’s policies, the Taliban mullahs’ control over the country continues to tighten.

And that regime’s continued restrictions on Afghan women -- their rights, freedom, and role in society -- signals a bleak future for them in 2024 and beyond.

Many observers say the move by the Taliban in December to only allow girls to attend religious madrasahs -- after shutting down formal schooling for them following the sixth grade -- is an effort by the Taliban to radicalize Afghan society.

“Madrasahs are not an alternative to formal schooling because they don’t produce doctors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, etc. The idea of [only] having madrasahs is…about brainwashing [people] to create an extremist society,” says Shukria Barakzai, the former Afghan ambassador to Norway.

The crackdown on women’s rights by the Taliban will also continue the reported uptick in domestic violence in the country, activists say.

Since the Taliban shut down Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission and Women Affairs Ministry, women find themselves with nowhere to turn to and find it extremely difficult to seek justice in Taliban courts.

With no justice for victims of abuse on the horizon, women’s rights activists say violence against women will continue with no repercussions for the perpetrators.

Barakzai argues that Taliban officials have already normalized domestic violence and do not consider it a crime.

“According to [a Taliban] decree, you can [confront] women if they are not listening to [your requests]. Especially a male member of the family is allowed to use all means to punish women if they refuse to follow his orders. That is basically a call for domestic violence,” she said.

The vicious spiral for women will only worsen.

Being banned from education, work, and public life, Afghan women say the resulting psychological impact leads to panic, depression, and acute mental health crises.

Although there are no official figures, Afghan mental health professionals and foreign organizations have noted a disturbing surge in female suicides in the two years since the Taliban came to power.

"If we look at the women who were previously working or studying, 90 percent suffer from mental health issues now," said Mujeeb Khpalwak, a psychiatrist in Kabul. "They face tremendous economic uncertainty after losing their work and are very anxious about their future."

Heather Bar, associate director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch, says, "It's not surprising that we're hearing reports of Afghan girls committing suicide. Because all their rights, including going to school, university, and recreational places have been taken away from them."

Promising young Afghan women who once aspired to contribute to their communities after pursuing higher education now find themselves with no career prospects.

“I do not see any future. When I see boys continuing their education, I lose all hope and wish that I was not born a girl,” a former medical student in Kabul told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.

Despite immense global pressure, the Taliban seems adamant about maintaining its severe limits on women and reducing their role in society. This will result in a tragic future for the women of Afghanistan with no relief in sight.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

We go to Kabul to speak with Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, where at least five people died Wednesday in a suicide bombing near the Foreign Ministry. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, pressure is growing on the ruling Taliban to reverse bans on women attending university or working with nongovernmental organizations. In recent weeks a number of major international aid agencies, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, have suspended operations in Afghanistan due to the ban, potentially worsening the humanitarian crisis in the country, where the United Nations estimates more than 28 million Afghans, or over 70% of the population, require humanitarian assistance. “We need to help the same 28 million people in need that the NATO countries left behind,” says Egeland, who recently met with Taliban leaders to urge them to lift restrictions on women’s rights.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Early on the morning of August 15, 2021, Shershah Ahmadi was struggling to find a ride home. In Foroshgah, one of the busiest open-air bazaars in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, crowds swarmed around money-changers and lined up at banks as people scrambled to lay their hands on the cash they would need to escape the coming Taliban onslaught. Every taxi and bus looked packed. Suddenly, Ahmadi’s phone buzzed as the WhatsApp group he shared with several dozen other pilots in the Afghan Air Force’s Special Mission Wing lit up.

Ahmadi’s boss, Special Mission Wing Cmdr. Gen. Hamidullah Ziarmal, was ordering him and the other pilots to get to Hamid Karzai International Airport immediately. On any other day, Ahmadi wouldn’t have thought twice. After eight years in the Afghan Air Force, responding to a direct order from a superior officer was as natural as breathing.

But on that day — the day the Taliban streamed into the heart of Kabul and plunged the city into chaos — every move Ahmadi made seemed like a fateful choice between his family and his country.

He understood well what was being asked of him. If he followed the order, there was a good chance that he might never see his wife and 3-year-old daughter again. If he disobeyed, he could be considered absent without leave and insubordinate for failing to heed a direct command. Flouting the order to muster at the airport could also mean that millions of dollars’ worth of helicopters and airplanes paid for by U.S. taxpayers would fall into the hands of the Taliban. Either way, Ahmadi’s life might soon be at risk.

Shershah Ahmadi is not his real name. In exchange for speaking frankly to The Intercept, the former Afghan Air Force pilot asked to be identified by a pseudonym because he fears retaliation and potential complications to his visa status, and that of his family, in the United States.

Chief of Army Staff Maj. Gen. Yasin Zia, center right, and other commanding officers visit the 777 Special Mission Wing in Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 28, 2021.

Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Afghan Air Force pilots wear Black Hawk pendants signifying their completion of Black Hawk training, at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, on Nov. 20, 2017.

Photo: Tech. Sgt. Veronica Pierce/U.S. Air Force

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

Afghan Mi-17 helicopters land at an outpost in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, on May 9, 2021.

Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

“The system wouldn’t have collapsed if the logistical support that was promised by the U.S. military continued.”

An Afghan pilot stands next to a Super Tucano aircraft during a handover ceremony of those planes from the U.S. to Afghan forces, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 17, 2020.

Photo: Omar Sobhani/Reuters

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

Members of the Taliban walk out of an Afghan Air Force plane at the airport in Kabul on August 31, 2021.

Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

A satellite image of Bokhtar International Airport in Tajikistan in May 2022 shows at least 16 fixed-wing aircraft on the tarmac. These aircraft appeared at Bokhtar after mid-August 2021, according to images analyzed by The Intercept, and match the description of Afghan Air Force planes flown there by Ahmadi and other pilots after the Taliban took Kabul.

Screenshot: The Intercept/Google Earth

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Humaira Rahbin.

India Today aired the image in its live show as visuals from the recent explosion at a mosque in Kabul. (Archived link)

Blast in #Kabul Mosque kills 20, leaves 40 injured. @ashraf_wani with more details #ITVideo pic.twitter.com/PGjLwNhQQl

— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) August 18, 2022

News agency ANI also tweeted the image in connection with the Kabul mosque explosion. It was also featured on the agency’s website as part of its coverage of the blast. (Archived link)

Hindustan Times also covered the explosion, attributing the same image to ANI. (Archived link)

Several media outlets such as the web portal of British newspaper The Guardian, India.com, The Quint, India TV, The Times of India, News18 Assam, TV9 Bangla, NewsClick, Northeast Now, News Mobile, India Today Group’s news and opinions platform DailyO, and RSS mouthpiece Organiser Weekly among others carried the image with the same claim. 

Fact-check

Alt News performed a reverse image search of the viral picture. We found the source image in an article by the American news portal Vox. It was shared in connection with the Taliban’s attack on the Afghan capital on July 1, 2019. According to the caption, this picture shows the aftermath of the bomb blast in Kabul, Afghanistan on July 1, 2019. This image is attributed to photojournalist Haroon Sabawoon and stock photo website Getty Images.

Using this as a clue, we looked for the viral image on Getty Images. Along with the image, It is mentioned that at least 10 people were killed and more than 65 were injured in this suicide bombing which occurred in July 2021. The photo is attributed to Anadolu Agency, Turkey’s state news agency, with Haroon Sabawoon listed as a contributor as well.

To sum it up, media outlets falsely shared a three-year-old picture of a bomb blast in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul as recent.

The post Media outlets ran a three year old photo as visuals of an explosion in a mosque in Kabul appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

On August 17, Shearer and Faizbakhsh were filming in the Sherpur area of District 10 in Kabul–where a U.S. drone strike killed Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri earlier in August–when several security guards stopped them, according to a report by U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America-Dari and two journalists familiar with the case, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of the Taliban’s reprisal. The guards questioned them about their activities and checked their work permits, ID cards, and passports; they then confiscated the journalists’ cellphones, detained them for a couple of hours, and repeatedly called them “American spies,” according to the journalists familiar with the case.

The security officers then called Taliban intelligence; around 50 armed intelligence operatives arrived, who blindfolded Shearer and Faizbakhsh and transferred them to an unknown location, the journalists familiar with the case said. 

CPJ was not able to verify the reason for the detention of Shearer and Faizbakhsh or where they were being held.

“The Taliban’s increasing pressure and escalating numbers of detentions of journalists and media workers, including the detention of American filmmaker Ivor Shearer and his Afghan colleague Faizullah Faizbakhsh, show the group’s utter lack of commitment to the principle of freedom of the press in Afghanistan,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Taliban officials must immediately release Shearer and Faizbakhsh and stop their intimidation and pressure on the press in Afghanistan.”

In February 2022, Shearer arrived in Afghanistan on a one-month visa after receiving a work permit from the Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs to produce a documentary about the last 40 years of Afghanistan’s history, according to the journalists familiar with the case. Shearer’s film and video work has been shown across the U.S. and internationally in museums and film festivals.

Faizbakhsh works as a producer supporting international journalists in Afghanistan and was contracted by Shearer, according to the journalists familiar with the case.

On March 3, Shearer was issued a one-year work permit by the Taliban’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and was able to extend his visa to stay until September. 

In mid-June, Shearer was summoned to the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where ministry spokesperson Abdul Qahar Balkhi questioned and asked him to present his past work, one of the journalists familiar with the case told CPJ. According to that source, Shearer was told that he was summoned because Taliban intelligence was suspicious of his presence in Kabul. 

In mid-July, several Taliban intelligence agents visited a guest house where Shearer was staying in Kabul and questioned him about his work and stay, according to a journalist familiar with the case, who added that Shearer didn’t know if the visit was routine or if he was targeted because of his presence. 

On August 16, Balkhi again summoned Shearer, a journalist familiar with the case told CPJ. Shearer told the source that he was concerned about the summons and didn’t know if the Taliban would extend his visa beyond September or expel him from the country. CPJ was unable to confirm further details about the August 16 meeting. 

CPJ contacted Balkhi and Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid for comment via messaging app but did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

In November 2020, I decided to create an Afghan news agency run by and for women—an online news service that would counter the prevailing patriarchal norms of Afghanistan. The news agency was named after a young woman, Rukhshana, who in 2015 was stoned to death by the Taliban in Ghor province for fleeing a forced marriage. 

At the time we started, I was also working as deputy director of media and public awareness for the Kabul municipality, and I was spending much of my salary—the equivalent of about $1,000 a month—to employ three other female journalists. Some of my friends worked voluntarily, bringing our full staff to six.

In Afghanistan, particularly in remote areas, many teenage girls are unaware of menstruation before it happens to them, and when suddenly experiencing it, they feel stressed and sometimes go into nervous shock. Menstruation was like a taboo, and we wanted to help normalize it. 

We also interviewed girls and women who had been raped, including the particularly upsetting case of a nine-year-old child. Other media reported that the rape had occurred in March last year, but we searched out the family and reported the details of what happened. The child lost a lot of blood in the assault and had to be taken to a hospital to undergo surgery. An aunt of the young girl, who was raising her at the request of the child’s father, told us that after the assault, neighbors and others looked on her family with contempt. The aunt said they did not know where to “take refuge.”

 Gender apartheid

That kind of reporting is now at risk. Like so many other Afghans, I never imagined that the Taliban would retake Afghanistan so quickly, and that my family and Rukhshana Media’s team of journalists would be forced into hiding or exile. Yet on August 15, 2021, we all faced an excruciating dilemma. Under the Taliban, we believed women would have only two choices: You either accept their oppressive laws and live by them, totally changing your identity, or you live as you did and risk getting killed. As someone who struggled hard to get where I am, both options were unacceptable. I couldn’t accept having to see the world through the prison bars of a burqa, nor did I want to die. So when I received a call from the British embassy on August 24 giving me a chance to board a flight out, I took it.

According to our reporting, the Taliban have banned the broadcast of women’s voices in some areas, as well as the broadcast of movies with female actors. Media outlets have been instructed to separate the offices of men and women, to prevent them from working together directly. In March this year, the Taliban banned private news channels in Afghanistan from rebroadcasting programs of the BBC, VOA, and Deutsche Welle, reportedly because of the way their news presenters dressed. In May, the Taliban ordered all female TV presenters to cover their faces. In some places, it has also banned female journalists from attending its press conferences.

When the Taliban forced female presenters to wear the hijab, I edited the news with a heavy heart. To me, it meant that a form of social imprisonment was being reimposed. At about six o’clock that evening, I turned off the computer in my room here in London, far from Afghanistan, and for a moment I thought about the efforts and struggles of two decades—especially the struggles of Afghan women—and cried.

Despite all these restrictions, however, female journalists continue to work. A female presenter for a private television station told me she finds it challenging to wear a mask while working on-air—she can’t breathe properly and has difficulty pronouncing her words clearly—but added that she won’t give up doing on-air work. Some female reporters, meanwhile, have taken on male aliases, to better hide their identity and protect themselves.

Our first male reporter

After the Taliban takeover, Rukhshana remained committed to providing opportunities to female journalists. But fear prevailed, and we had difficulty recruiting—particularly in the provinces and outside the main cities. So almost two months after the Taliban took power, we hired our first male reporter. Since then, we’ve enlisted others who share our commitment to telling the stories of women.

Together, our female and male reporters, often working covertly, aim to report for their fellow Afghans but also for audiences around the world, so they too can know what the people of Afghanistan are going through in the current crisis. We publish in both Dari and English, and use social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram to disseminate our news reports and video. 

All of our reporters in Afghanistan write under pseudonyms and have very little access to official information. Still, they try. In February this year, a reporter who goes by the name Nasiba Arefi called a Taliban spokesman for the police in western Herat to ask about two dead bodies that had been hung from the shovel of a giant backhoe. Instead of answering her questions, the spokesman made demands: First, he said the media outlet where she worked had to pledge to operate according to Taliban policies. Second, she should send any reporting to him for review before publication, and she should never use the term “Taliban group” (which is regarded as a term used by the Taliban’s enemies to delegitimize its rule). 

Rukhshana published the story with the information we had. The Taliban official later texted Arefi, asking her to provide him with the address and details of the media outlet where she worked. She declined, fearful that she could be arrested or harassed. 

We always have to tread carefully. In order to ensure the safety of our interviewees and reporters, we sometimes decline to publish sensitive stories. Once, we deleted a story from our website and social media accounts because I’d received a call from a man saying that if we didn’t delete it, “we will find your reporter.” 

‘I will never give up’

The remaining female journalists in Afghanistan have one thing in common: They love their work, and feel it is more vital than ever.  “I love journalism and I will never give up,” one Rukhshana journalist told me. Still, there are times when female reporters question themselves. A woman journalist for a television station in Kabul recently told Rukhshana that she can spend days trying to get comment or information from Taliban officials—without result. “This situation makes me more discouraged from working as a journalist every day,” she says.

Journalists also face financial stress. I started Rukhshana with the hope that when other media outlets realized the importance of our work, they might support us financially. But we did not receive that sort of backing, at least initially. Now that so many Afghan media organizations are shrinking or collapsing, such support is more important than ever, and even harder to get. 

Still, we’ve been very fortunate. Last year, a friend conducted a fundraising drive in Canada that brought in enough money to cover our operations for nearly a year, and more recently we received funding from Internews. We now have four full-time editors, seven staff reporters, and several freelancers who work for us regularly. We’re not exactly booming, but we’re far from folding. Too many women are rooting for us.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Zahra Joya.

The extreme distress that has gripped Afghanistan’s independent media since the Taliban seized power in Kabul on August 15 last year lands in my inbox—and the inboxes of many of my colleagues at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)—almost every day. 

The messages come from journalists who just a year ago worked for Afghanistan’s then-thriving, free-wheeling newspaper or broadcast outlets. Some journalists write with stories of detention and beatings by the Taliban. Some detail their own destitution. Many, desperate to leave Afghanistan, appeal for help. Still other journalists write to say they made it out of the country, but are stuck on temporary visas in places like Pakistan or Turkey. Running short of money and often unable to get onward visas—the U.S. government is rejecting more than 90% of Afghans seeking to enter the country on humanitarian grounds—they’re fearful of being sent home to an uncertain fate. 

Such pleas are just one measure of the crisis that has hit Afghanistan’s diverse independent media since the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan amid the withdrawal of U.S. forces last year. They also document, however, the perseverance and determination of journalists who understand the importance of reporting fact-based stories. Many of the country’s journalists remain determined to carry on—from both inside and outside of the country—in the hope that Afghanistan’s independent media will continue to play a vital role.

As detailed in this series of articles CPJ is publishing on the one-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover, the challenges Afghan journalists face are severe, ranging from physical abuse and censorship to particular constraints placed on women. But some journalists also see glints of opportunity. The war that for so long devastated the country—and made so many regions no-go zones—is over, at least for now. There are fresh stories to tell, and a new regime that needs to be held accountable.

Perilous work

Afghanistan’s free media was a rare success story of the former regime, but even then, journalism was perilous work. Rival parties—including government intelligence agents, the Taliban, and the Islamic State—often targeted reporters. “In the year or year-and-a-half before the Taliban takeover, it was especially dangerous for journalists,” says Kathy Gannon, who reported on Afghanistan for more than three decades for The Associated Press.“You didn’t know who was targeting who, and they would blame each other.”

From 2001 until today, some 53 journalists have been killed in Afghanistan in connection with their work; of those, 27 were murdered, meaning intentionally targeted, according to CPJ data. And of the 27 murdered, prosecutors obtained convictions in the cases of just four journalists killed in 2001. 

Because of that dismal record, Afghanistan ranked 5^th in CPJ’s most recent impunity index, which gauges the worst countries for seeking justice when journalists are murdered. Since the Taliban mid-August takeover, CPJ, thankfully, has not documented any further assassinations of journalists by Taliban, at least so far. But dangers still abound. A recent UN report found that six journalists had died between August 15, 2021, and June 15, 2022. According to the report, five were killed by self-identified members of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province; one by unknown perpetrators. (CPJ has not found evidence that their deaths were related to their work as journalists.)

Disturbing trends

Surveys conducted under difficult circumstances and published during the past year differ in specifics, but show very disturbing trends: Huge declines in the numbers of newspapers, radio stations, and other news sources, as well as a collapse in the number of women journalists.

Prior to the Taliban takeover, foreign assistance amounted to about 45% of the economy, according to the World Bank, and roughly 75% of government expenditures. Those foreign inflows came to an abrupt halt last August. At the same time, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order to take $7 billion of frozen Afghan funds from the country’s central bank and designate half for humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, while airlifting some 130,000 often well-educated Afghans out of the country in just two weeks. 

While the outright killing of journalists by the Taliban may have stopped, CPJ has documented a steady stream of Taliban-perpetrated incidents aimed at intimidating and punishing reporters and editors, including arbitrary detention and beatings, sometimes severe. Although the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture initially seemed to take the lead in managing the media, CPJ has documented that the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) has increasingly come to play a leading role.

Other trendlines are also moving in a worrisome direction. In April, a Taliban military court in Herat sentenced journalist Khalid Qaderi to a year in prison for allegedly spreading anti-regime propaganda and “committing espionage for foreign media outlets.” It was the first incident that CPJ has documented of a journalist being tried, convicted, and sentenced for their work since the Taliban takeover.  According to the recent UN report, 163 of 173 human rights violations affecting journalists and media workers in the first 10 months of the Taliban’s return to power were attributed to “the de facto authorities.” These included 122 instances of arbitrary arrest and detention, 58 instances of ill-treatment, 33 instances of threats and intimidation, and 12 instances of incommunicado detention.

Gauging limits

Journalists who keep working have to do so with great caution. For better and worse, however, that isn’t completely new to them. Ali Latifi, an experienced reporter and dual U.S.-Afghan citizen who contributes to international media, says there’s always been an element of caution in reporting on Afghanistan. Reporters routinely had to weigh the risks of retaliation, particularly when reporting on sensitive subjects. Those pressures are just more severe today. 

“How much are you going to say online?” says Latifi. “Is a statement you make online valuable enough to take the risk of getting you in trouble?”  

Taliban have stopped and questioned Latifi, but he cooperated and says he didn’t face trouble. Some stories, however—such as covering protests by women—provoke an immediate backlash. “People are trying to figure out the lines—what you can do [and what you can’t do],” he says. Out of a general sense of caution, Latifi has started taking more care to protect sources.

Gannon says that for her, reporting in Afghanistan didn’t change significantly from what she faced under the previous government—although she recognizes that local journalists come under more scrutiny, and can be subject to harsher repercussions. There’s one positive difference, she says: It’s safer to travel the roads of Afghanistan since the fighting has stopped.

Still, the road ahead for foreign journalists is far from open. “They are pretty thin-skinned about the image of them that is presented to the world,” says Lynne O’Donnell, an Australian journalist and columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, speaking of the Taliban. On July 19, O’Donnell, a veteran of Afghanistan reporting who had arrived in Kabul just days earlier, was detained by agents from the GDI and forced, under threat of imprisonment, to tweet an apology for earlier stories she had written about forced marriage to Taliban fighters. After posting a short text dictated by the Taliban, she was allowed to leave the country, and later vowed never to return. “It’s fear that is the basis of their power,” O’Donnell said of Taliban rule in an interview with CPJ. “They are becoming much more efficient in ensuring that people are afraid.” 

Less provocative

Mohseni, an Afghan Australian based in Dubai, says that TOLO still broadcasts on controversial subjects. “Every single issue that we need to cover, we cover,” he says. “So whether it’s about extrajudicial killings, or the fighting in Panjshir; certainly girls’ education, targeting of minorities – every single thing that we need to cover, we’ve covered.” Mohseni adds, however, that TOLO’s broadcasts are intentionally less provocative than what the station produced under the previous government. 

“Less provocative” may be coded language for “self-censorship,” an approach that allows many journalists around the world to continue reporting in environments that are hostile to press freedom by avoiding language and ideas that authorities find offensive. TOLO and other Afghan news outlets have had to make their own decisions about where the boundaries are, and how far to push them. That hasn’t always protected them. 

Journalists and managers at the independently owned Ariana News network, for example, told CPJ of working under dire conditions in the year since the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan. Staff say the beatings, interrogations, harassment, censorship, and dismissal of female employees are emblematic of the difficulties faced by other Afghan media organizations—and that they have squeezed the formerly robust outlet to what they fear might be the brink of closure.

At TOLO, agents from the GDI arrived at the station on March 17 and took news presenter Bahram Aman, news manager Khapalwak Sapai, and the channel’s legal advisor into custody. “I said, why me?” Aman later told CPJ. “They told me that I am a spy and so on.”  

Aman was held in isolation for a day in a dark room and released. The immediate issue, it turned out, was that the GDI objected to a news report saying the agency was behind a directive banning the broadcasting of foreign soap operas. According to Aman, the GDI had previously warned the station not to mention the agency in the news, but Aman just read the script handed to him that night. He also talked about the story of his detention on air after he was released, which led to further threats, he told CPJ. Aman added that the Taliban were angry at him because of previous shows where he’d aggressively questioned their representatives on air. He has since fled the country.

Still, TOLO appears to have faced relatively fewer issues, compared to Ariana. That may be because Mohseni is more amenable to working with the Taliban than his public statements suggest. “Tolo has tried to adjust to the new environment,” says Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.  “They have not been going out of their way to criticize the Taliban.” 

An experienced Afghan journalist, who requested anonymity so he could speak freely about Mohseni, said: “He’s doing whatever it takes to keep his channel going. He’s not a journalist. I think Saad [Mosheni] wants to be a player and he uses his media outlet to be that. Still, added the journalist, “I think their journalists are amazing and they want to tell the truth.”

Despite pressures to reduce the profile and role of women, TOLO has made a point of hiring more women, with 21 women journalists on the staff today compared to eight in August last year. When the Taliban in May forced women on-air to cover their faces below the eyes, male journalists at the station staged a protest by masking up for four days. While the move attracted conservative attacks on social media, the Taliban did not otherwise react to it, says Mohseni. In fact, while many TOLO staff fled the country in the immediate aftermath of the Taliban takeover, TOLO has continued to hire replacements, keeping staff levels at around 80. 

“In many parts of the south, and districts and provinces where we could not go because of the violence, now we can go and we can report on local issues,” he says. “We’ve gone from 17 local stories to 22 to 25 a day. So we have a much bigger coverage in terms of the news than we did before.” 

Mohseni says the station has stayed afloat because of a corporate decision to support the operations, not because it’s making money. Moby operates news and entertainment services in South and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He’s searching for other forms of financial backing to keep TOLO going. 

Mohseni believes that news coverage of controversial issues, such as girls’ education, has played a key role in shaping public opinion, which he says the Taliban are sensitive to and which could, over time, strengthen moderate voices within the leadership. “There’s perhaps a narrow path to something positive emerging from all of this,” he says, while also recognizing that whatever limited freedoms are left could be shut down at any time. 

For the journalists who flood my inbox with messages like “Please help me Mr. Butler,” or— referring to the Taliban—“They will assassinate me or a member of my family,” the future seems impossibly bleak. Yet many hundreds of journalists remain on the job in Afghanistan, navigating a dangerous new political landscape, while others try to report from exile. They believe their work can still make a difference in the future of their country and the lives of their fellow Afghans.

Steven Butler is a senior program consultant for CPJ. He previously served as CPJ’s Asia program coordinator and has worked as a journalist throughout Asia.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Steven Butler.

On August 4, armed Taliban members attacked and detained a team with the independent Indian broadcaster WION News, including reporter Anas Mallick, producer Zakaria (who uses one name), and driver Mayel Kharoti, according to WION News and Mallick, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

The team was filming the aftermath of a U.S. drone strike that killed Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in Kabul, from inside their vehicle when Taliban members stopped them, confiscated Mallick’s phones, and pulled the team out of their vehicle, where they punched them in the head and back, according to those sources.

The men took the team to a nearby Taliban post in the Wazir Akbar Khan area of Kabul, where they were questioned about their work and religion; the three were later transferred to the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence, according to Mallick and that report.

Authorities accused Mallick, who is a Pakistani national, of being a spy, and held him overnight before releasing him without charge, he said, adding that his colleagues were released, also without charge, on August 7.

“The Taliban’s harassment of a team with the Indian broadcaster WION News, including Pakistani reporter Anas Mallick and his Afghan colleagues Zakaria and Mayel Kharoti, demonstrates yet again that they have no respect for the profession of journalism,” said CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg. “Taliban members and the General Directorate of Intelligence must permit local and international journalists to work freely.”

While in custody at the Taliban facility in Wazir Akbar Khan, officers examined Mallick’s phone and asked why he filmed the scene of the drone strike, he said. The officers also accused him of being a Christian or a Hindu, and when he said he was a Muslim, they called him a spy, the journalist told CPJ.

Mallick said he insisted he was a journalist, and when he told the Taliban members to check that he had recently interviewed Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, they replied that they did not know who Muttaqi was.

After about 90 minutes in custody, General Directorate of Intelligence officers blindfolded and handcuffed Mallick, Zakaria, and Kharoti, and brought them separately to a GDI office in Kabul, Mallick told CPJ.

There, a GDI officer questioned Mallick about his personal and professional life, the contents of his cellphone, and his travel history in Afghanistan, he said.

GDI agents variously interrogated Mallick in Pashto and English, Mallick told CPJ. He said agents first accused him of being a member of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency; when they learned he worked for an Indian broadcaster, they accused him of being a member of India’s RAW intelligence agency; and when they saw a picture on Mallick’s phone showing him in front of the U.S. Capitol, they accused him of working for the CIA.

At one point during his detention, two Taliban agents came into Mallick’s interrogation room and attached a battery with wires to his left ear, the journalist told CPJ; he said they were laughing, and set up the battery to pretend as if they would electrocute him.

Mallick said the GDI officers later brought him to a cell that had one Afghan prisoner and several surveillance cameras. He was held in that room for about eight hours, and then on the morning of August 5 he was released without any explanation or charge filed against him, he told CPJ. He said he had spent a total of about 21 hours in detention, during which his family and employer had no information about his status. He added that he did not know exactly where he was held while in GDI custody.

He said that Zakaria and Kharoti were both released on August 7.

Mallick told CPJ that he experienced medical issues after the August 4 beating, saying that he had a fluid imbalance where he was hit in the ribs, and had bruises on his neck, back, and ear. Zakaria sustained bruising on his left side and across his back, and Kharoti also had back injuries, as seen in images of their wounds shared with CPJ.

CPJ contacted Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, for comment via messaging app but did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

A year on from the fall of Kabul, Australian reporter Lynne O’Donnell returned to Afghanistan — and now says she’ll never go back.

O’Donnell returned for three days last month, only to be detained, forced to retract articles, and coerced into making a public apology for accusing the Taliban of sex slavery.

During this harrowing time, she was in close contact with Massoud Hossain, a Kabul-born photojournalist.

• READ MORE: Lynne O’Donnell: Taliban detained, abused and threatened me
• Afghanistan, the Taliban and the liberation narrative: Why it is so vital to be telling our own stories — Pacific Journalism Review
• LISTEN TO RNZ SATURDAY MORNINGS: Lynne O’Donnell and Massoud Hossain describe their ordeal
• See a gallery of Massoud Hossain’s images

The pair have worked together in Afghanistan for years, and both are on a Taliban death list.

Hossain is currently based in New Zealand, where he has been given asylum.

O’Donnell is a Foreign Policy columnist and was Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Associated Press (AP) between 2009-2017.

Hossaini is a Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist who joined AFP in 2007. In 2021 he won the William Randolph Hearst Award for Excellence in Professional Journalism.

They talk to RNZ broadcaster Kim Hill on their experiences and how they see the future for Afghanistan.

O’Donnell’s introduction to her Foreign Policy report on July 20:

“I returned to Afghanistan this week, almost one year after the withdrawal of the US military cleared the way for the Taliban’s victory. I wanted to see for myself what had become of the country since I flew out of Kabul on August 15, 2021, hours before the Islamists began what many residents now refer to as a ‘reign of terror’…

“I left Afghanistan today after three days of cat-and-mouse with Taliban intelligence agents, who detained, abused, and threatened me and forced me to issue a barely literate retraction of reports they said had broken their laws and offended Afghan culture. If I did not, they said, they’d send me to jail.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

On July 20, several men armed with rifles approached Ehsas, a sports presenter with the independent broadcaster Radio Dost, while she was walking home in the Bala Bagh area of Surkh Rod district, in eastern Nangarhar province, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

The men fired a gun into the air and identified themselves as “Mujahedin,” or members of the Taliban, Ehsas said, adding that the gunshot startled her and made her drop her phone. When she went to pick up the phone, one of the men hit her on the back of the head with a heavy object that she believed was a gun, she said. Before she fell unconscious, she heard one of the men saying the attack was because she did not “sit at home despite their warnings,” according to the journalist and that report.

Locals took Ehsas, unconscious, to a clinic and later to the Fetame Zahra Public Hospital, where she received treatment for a bruised back, head pain, and dizziness, she told CPJ. She said that no items were stolen from her, and she believed the attack was reprisal for her work as a female journalist.

After the attack, Ehsas recorded an audio message describing the incident and questioning whether the Taliban supported attacks on women; she told CPJ that she shared that recording with a friend, and that it was subsequently shared on social media. Ehsas said she did not know who shared the clip online.

On July 23, after that recording was published online, Taliban members detained Ehsas’ father and uncle, and appeared at the journalist’s home, asking why she had insulted the group and questioned their authority. Under pressure from the Taliban members and her relatives, who said they feared Ehsas’ journalism put them in danger, Ehsas recorded a video message, reading from a script written by the Taliban members, that denied the group was involved in attacking her. The Taliban members then released her father and uncle, she said.

After that video message was published online, Ehsas and her family received threats from Taliban members, prompting them to go into hiding, the journalist told CPJ, saying that she feared for her life.

“Almost one year since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the cycle of threats, beatings, and intimidation of journalists continues at an alarming pace,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program manager, from Madrid. “The brutal attack on Afghan journalist Selgay Ehsas, followed by Taliban members forcing her to record a video allegedly absolving the group, shows that members of the press face giant hurdles working under Taliban rule.”

On July 24, the Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency said the July 20 attack on Ehsas stemmed from a personal conflict, and also published her video message, according to media reports.

In 2020 and 2021, Ehsas said she received many death threats while working as a presenter for the Nangarhar-based broadcaster Enikass Radio and TV, and in 2021, an improvised explosive device was attached to Ehsas’ family vehicle and injured several of her relatives. Ehsas was not in the car and believed the attack was retaliation for her journalism because it came shortly after the deaths of four female employees at Enikass.

The Taliban targeted Enikass because the outlet promoted freedom of speech and employed female journalists, according to an interview with the broadcaster’s owner and director, Engineer Zalmai Latifi, published by the local Subhe Kabul newspaper.

Ehsas said she received so many threats that she left Enikass in early 2021 and worked as a reporter for the independent broadcaster Shamshad TV in Kabul for five months, where she continued to receive threats, before taking a job at Radio Dost.

CPJ contacted Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, for comment via messaging app but did not receive any response. 

Ehsas’ assault is the first physical attack on a female journalist that CPJ has documented since the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

CPJ is also investigating the detention and release of journalist Aluddin Erkin in northern Faryab province.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

President Biden claimed Monday a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan. Trained as a surgeon in Egypt, where he was born into a prominent family, al-Zawahiri was a key figure in the jihadist movement since the 1980s. The U.S. has long accused al-Zawahiri of being a key 9/11 plotter along with Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan in 2011. The Taliban has since criticized the attack, saying the drone strike was a “violation of international principles.” For more, we’re joined by Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary and national security expert Karen Greenberg, who say the Taliban’s apparent sheltering of al-Zawahiri in a prominent Kabul neighborhood was shocking. “This is a strike inside the heart of Kabul in an area that is very, very well known to the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies,” says Sarwary, whose sources report at least 12 Arab nationals were killed in the strike despite Biden announcing there were no civilian casualties.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“The Taliban must take immediate measures to halt repeated arbitrary detentions and abuse of journalists in Afghanistan,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “The Taliban must immediately release journalists Abdul Hannan Mohammadi and Khan Mohammad Sial and investigate the assault of Mohammad Ikram Esmati.”

On May 10, Taliban police in the provincial capital Trinkot in southern Uruzgan province detained Sial, a broadcast manager for independent Paiwaston TV station, and have held him in Uruzgan’s central prison since then, according to a journalist familiar with the case who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, and tweets by veteran Afghanistan journalist Bilal Sarwary.

The journalist told CPJ that Taliban members beat Sial and told him to confess that his outlet was funded by foreigners and was both morally and financially corrupt. The Taliban members also told Sial that he would be released if he confessed, according to the journalist familiar with the case.

Separately, on June 14, Taliban intelligence agents detained Mohammadi, a reporter for Pajhwok news agency in northern Kapisa province, while he was on his way to an assignment and transferred him to an undisclosed location, according to a journalist familiar with the case who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation and independent news website Etilaatroz. CPJ was unable to confirm the reason for Mohammadi’s detention.

In a separate incident on June 14, Esmati, a former journalist for the independent Kabul News TV station, was stopped in District 5 of the capital Kabul and searched at a Taliban checkpoint by a Taliban member, who found his press identification cards and began questioning him about his journalism, according to Esmati, who spoke to CPJ by phone, and a BBC Persian report. Esmati was dismissed by the outlet one day before the assault for an unknown reason, according to those sources.

Three Taliban members then put Esmati in a vehicle, drove him to a remote area, and beat him with their guns and fists for approximately five minutes until he received a hard blow to the head and lost consciousness, according to those sources. Esmati said he believed he was unconscious for about 10 minutes and was alone when he woke up. Esmati was later treated at a hospital and said he was not seriously injured.

CPJ has documented the increasingly prominent role of the General Directorate of Intelligence in controlling news media and intimidating Afghanistan journalists.

CPJ contacted Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, for comment via messaging app but did not receive any response. CPJ was unable to determine contact information for Kabul News TV. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Sunday, May 29, Karimi and Samiullah were in the Haji Yaqub roundabout of Kabul District 10 to cover a protest by Afghan women for the local Salam Watander radio station when a Taliban intelligence agent approached Karimi, grabbed his hands, took his phone and voice recorder, and pushed him inside a traffic booth, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via phone, and a report on Salam Watandar’s website. In the booth, the officer demanded to know who he worked for, questioned him about his coverage of the protest, and slapped his face while other agents reviewed the contents of Karimi’s phone, he said. 

“The Taliban must immediately release Jamaluddin Dildar and Mirza Hasani and investigate the detention and attack of Roman Karimi and the detention of his driver Samiullah,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler. “The recent increase in arbitrary detentions of media workers and journalists mark a disturbing deterioration of press freedom and the ability of the Afghan people to access accurate, timely information.” 

Karimi told CPJ that intelligence agents then took him by military vehicle to the 10^th directorate of the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) in Kabul. While en route, the agents detained Samiullah, who was sent to pick up Karimi. The two were detained for seven hours, questioned about their work, and released on condition that they would not cover protests or similar events in the future, Karimi said. 

In another incident, on Tuesday, May 24, Taliban intelligence agents detained Dildar, owner and executive editor of local radio station Radio Saday-e-Gardez, at his office in Gardez city of Paktia province and transferred him to an undisclosed location, according to Dildar’s brother Parwiz Ahmad Dildar, who spoke to CPJ via phone, and news reports. The journalist’s brother said that the radio station has ceased operations since the arrest. 

Separately on the same day, Taliban intelligence agents detained Hasani, the former owner and editor of Radio Aftab, a local radio station in Daikundi province that stopped operations amid the Taliban takeover last August, at a checkpoint in District 12 of Herat city, according to a local journalist who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, news reports, and a tweet by Afghan journalist Alisher Shahir. The agents searched Hasani’s phone and, after seeing journalistic posts on his social media accounts, transferred him to the 12^th Directorate of Taliban’s GDI in Herat, the journalist said. The journalist told CPJ that Hasani was being held on accusations of working as a journalist for anti-Taliban militant group National Resistance Front (NRF), but has not been officially charged. 

CPJ contacted Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, for comment via messaging app but did not receive any response. 

CPJ has documented the increasingly prominent role of the General Directorate of Intelligence in controlling news media and intimidating journalists in Afghanistan.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Tuesday, May 24, Khairkhah, a photojournalist and reporter with the local Subhe Kabul newspaper, disappeared from the Kote Sangi area of District 5 in the capital of Kabul, according to his nephew Mohammad Abbasi, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview, and media reports. Khairkhah told his family that he was going to the area to report and would attend his evening university classes, his nephew said, adding that his uncle did not attend the classes and they could not find any information about him in the hospitals, police districts, or the Kabul police command.

In a separate incident, on May 19, Naimulhaq Haqqani, the Taliban’s director of information and culture in western Herat province, told his personal assistant to expel Marjan Wafa, a reporter with the independent local Radio Killid station, from his press conference, according to a journalist with knowledge of the incident who talked to CPJ on condition of anonymity, fearing the Taliban’s reprisal, and media reports. Wafa, the only female journalist at the press conference, reportedly was complying with the Taliban’s dress code by wearing a face covering that exposed only her eyes. Haqqani’s personal assistant did not give her any reason for the order to leave.

Wafa’s expulsion came amid a broader crackdown on women reporters, with Taliban ministries ordering female TV journalists to wear masks while on air.

“The disappearance of journalist Ali Abar Kharikhah in Kabul and the expulsion of female reporter Marjan Wafa from a press conference in Herat add to growing concerns about the dangers and abuse journalists face in Afghanistan under Taliban rule,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler. “It’s beyond time for the Taliban to take responsibility for the safety of reporters and to allow all members of the press—men and women—to report the news without interference, including abolishing the decree that women TV journalists cannot appear with uncovered faces.”

Khairkhah works as a journalist and is also an undergraduate journalism student in Kabul. He has recently conducted interviews with Afghan politicians for Subhe Kabul, which covers Afghan news and current affairs.

CPJ contacted Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, for comment via messaging app but did not receive any response. CPJ was unable to find contact information for Herat province’s director of information and culture.

CPJ has documented the increasingly prominent role of the General Directorate of Intelligence in controlling news media and intimidating journalists in Afghanistan.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

On April 25, Lawrand, a political programs manager and presenter at the independent Kabul News TV station, was summoned to the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), where he was detained, cursed at, and questioned for over two hours, according to the journalist, who posted about the incident on Facebook and talked to CPJ by phone, two activists with knowledge of the case who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity for fear of Taliban reprisal, news reports, and tweets by a former government official.

The activists told CPJ that the Taliban intelligence agents warned Lawrand that his TV shows shouldn’t criticize the Taliban and that he must not invite critical analysts to appear. The agents also reportedly warned that no one should know about the journalist’s detention and questioning or he would face graver consequences and called him an infidel, evil, atheist, and pig before releasing him.

“Taliban authorities must tell its General Directorate of Intelligence to stop detaining and using intimidation tactics against journalists like Jebran Lawrand,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “The Taliban needs to return to their original commitment to tolerate an independent media and must learn to accept criticism without taking retaliatory action.”   

Lawrand was summoned and detained a day after a Facebook post about his April 24, 2022 show, during which he disagreed with a Taliban supporter.

The journalist and the activists told CPJ that on April 25, while Lawrand was on his way home, several Taliban intelligence operatives from the counter-terrorism directorate told him that he wouldn’t face any further detention because of the April 24 show but could face future arrest or imprisonment if he continued to report the way he did.  

On April 27, Lawrand resigned from his job after 15 years as a journalist and has been in hiding since his detention, according to the activists. The activists said he continues to receive anonymous threats from unknown telephone numbers.

CPJ contacted Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, for comment via messaging app but did not receive any response. CPJ has documented the increasingly prominent role of the GDI in controlling news media and intimidating journalists in Afghanistan.

CPJ is also investigating the alleged expulsion of Marjan Wafa, the only female journalist in Herat city, from a press conference by local Taliban officials on May 20, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

A pair of bomb blasts at a boys’ school in Kabul left at least six people dead on Tuesday, the latest in a series of attacks on the minority Shiite Hazara community in Afghanistan. While no group has claimed responsibility, it follows a pattern of aggression by ISIS-K, the Islamic State affiliate, against Shiites in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan. “Governments, not only the Taliban, have failed to come up with a strategy where they could provide security to the Hazaras and Shias,” says Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary. “I call it a great betrayal towards people who are extremely committed to a bright future of Afghanistan.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On Tuesday, April 19, armed Taliban members stopped Shahir, a reporter for the independent TV station Rahe Farda, while he was covering a suicide attack at a school in western Kabul, and proceeded to beat and detain him, according to news reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

Shahir told CPJ that he reached the scene of the explosion before authorities, and when Taliban forces arrived at the scene, two members confiscated his camera and cellphone, punched him in the head and arms, beat him on the feet with their guns, and blindfolded him and took him away from the attack site.

They held Shahir for about three hours and accused him of being connected to the attack, and then released him without charge. After his release, Shahir asked Taliban officials at the Kabul police headquarters to return his equipment and said they refused, saying they would assess the content recorded at scene of the explosion.

“The Taliban must cease its routine arbitrary detention, abuse, and harassment of Afghan journalists,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “A lack of safety and growing unpredictability for journalists has become a sad trademark of Afghanistan under Taliban rule. If authorities want to show that they care about the media, they must investigate the recent harassment of journalist Reza Shahir, return his equipment, and hold those responsible to account.”

Shahir sustained light injuries to his feet during the beating, he told CPJ, adding that he did not know the location where he was held and questioned.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On Saturday, April 16, more than seven armed men from the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) arrested Jalili, who was on his way home and works as a presenter with the independent 1TV station, in District 15 of the capital Kabul, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ by phone, a tweet by a local press freedom advocate, and the Afghanistan Journalists Center, a media watchdog group.

While Jalili was detained at a GDI office, Taliban intelligence agents beat him with a gun, resulting in a large welt on his left arm; called him names, such as the “devil journalist who ruins the Taliban’s reputation”; and held him for about three hours before releasing him without any charges, the journalist said. Upon release, an agent threatened Jalili and told him not to talk about the detention to any journalist or media outlets.

“The Taliban must stop the arbitrary detention, abuse, and beatings of Afghan journalists like Mohib Jalili and hold the group’s intelligence agents responsible for such actions,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Repeated attacks on the media are only depriving the people of Afghanistan with access to essential information, which is a basic right.”

On April 16, the DGI armed agents stopped Jalili, pulled him out of his vehicle, beat him with their guns, handcuffed him, threw the journalist in the back of his car, and drove him to a remote GDI station in District 15 of the capital, Jalili told CPJ.

While in GDI custody, agents repeatedly questioned Jalili, slapped him, and accused him of spying for foreign countries, the journalist said. The agents also checked the contents of his phone for three hours, he said. Jalili said he does not know what they were looking for and was not able to tell if they tampered with his phone.

Jalili, who covers news and current affairs as a presenter at 1TV station, suffered minor injuries to his head, as well as the welt on his left arm, he told CPJ. Previously, he was a producer, newscaster, and a current affairs presenter for the independent Ariana News station, according to news reports.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson in Afghanistan, did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

On Aug. 26, 2021, a suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with explosives and ball bearings in the packed crowd outside Kabul’s international airport. Shrapnel sliced through the air, killing 13 American service members and an estimated 160 Afghan civilians.

In the hours after the attack, officials reported that a second assailant had sprayed the crowd with automatic weapons fire, increasing the casualty toll in what was one of the deadliest attacks on American forces in the 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

Never miss the most important reporting from ProPublica’s newsroom. Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.

As so often happens in such cases, the U.S. military’s initial account raised more questions than it answered. The Marines scrambling to evacuate civilians as Taliban forces swept into Kabul had been explicitly warned of a possible suicide attack that very day. Yet they seemed to have failed to take basic security precautions. Republicans seized on the bombing as evidence that the Biden administration had bungled its first foreign policy challenge, failing to forsee how quickly the Taliban would overwhelm the American-backed Afghan government.

The story cried out for the sort of investigative reporting we have done previously on the U.S. military, looking into subjects like the spate of fatal accidents involving the Navy’s 7th Fleet. Pursuing such stories can be challenging. They often take longer than expected and the military’s propensity for classifying the details of its missteps inevitably complicates the reporting. The relentless pace of the news cycle can mean that public attention will move on to The Next Big Thing by the time we can explain what really happened in the last one.

So it was with Abbey Gate. The fall of Kabul was followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We published our grippingly told story on the same day as Western news outlets began reporting that Russian soldiers had committed atrocities in the Kiev suburb of Bucha.

Still, I hope readers will make time to read this unforgettable investigation.

The piece we published is unusual in that it was done in collaboration with Alive in Afghanistan, a nonprofit news agency launched in the days after the fall of Kabul that employs local reporters to give greater voice to Afghans caught up in a struggle of global and regional powers.

Our partnership meant that the story of Abbey Gate was told from the perspectives of both the Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban and the ill-prepared Americans at the airport scrambling to facilitate their escape. Such reporting is unusual in war zones. Typically, correspondents are lucky if they can find and interview a handful of witnesses to a traumatic event like a suicide bombing.

In fact, the idea of taking a hard look at the bombing was initiated by editors at Alive in Afghanistan. Their Kabul-based reporters had heard multiple reports that some of the deaths outside the airport were the result of friendly fire as Western soldiers shot at what they thought were Islamic State gunmen in the crowd. Some of the medical personnel who treated casualties from Abbey Gate said they believed they saw injuries that could only have been caused by bullets.

Alive in Afghanistan pushed to find further evidence in Kabul, a tricky task in a city newly under Taliban control. Two ProPublica reporters, Josh Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien, began the painstaking work of finding and interviewing U.S. service members who were guarding the Abbey Gate checkpoint on Aug. 26.

Corroboration for the friendly fire theory proved elusive. Forensic experts differed on whether it was possible for a doctor, even one experienced in wartime injuries, to distinguish between damage caused by a ball bearing and that caused by a military-grade bullet. U.S. officials acknowledged that a small number of rounds had been fired but insisted they had been aimed over the heads of the civilians.

ProPublica and Alive in Afghanistan tracked down six doctors in three hospitals who believed they had seen bullet wounds. None were interviewed for the Pentagon report that concluded all of the deaths were due to the explosion. In an earlier story on the attack, we interviewed Dr. Hares Aref, a senior surgeon at Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, who said he had operated on three civilians from Abbey Gate whose legs were wounded by bullets. “We had patients with bullet injury in this attack, it’s clear,” he said. Aref based his conclusion on what he had seen treating victims of countless Kabul bombings. “My proof is my experience.”

While the issue of whether civilians were hit by U.S. fire remains contested, our recounting of the events made clear the extent to which the forces overseeing the evacuation were put in an untenable position.

U.S. officials acknowledged that they did not launch a large-scale evacuation until days before the fall of Kabul. Units that became central to the operation had not been included in the planning process and had not specifically trained for it. And while military officials knew the airport was difficult to defend and susceptible to attack, by the time Marines arrived, it was too late to adequately fortify the airfield.

In the final hours before the attack, U.S. commanders decided to leave open unguarded pathways to Abbey Gate. It is believed the bomber took advantage of such a route to make his way to the site of the explosion.

Our interviews documented the chaos at the airport on the day of the attack. U.S. Marines acted as de facto immigration officers and were left to interpret vague policies with little guidance, struggling to decide who to let into the airport and who to leave behind. They told our reporters that communication breakdowns and a lack of food, water and shelter led to preventable civilian deaths. Afghans perished from heat exhaustion. Some were crushed to death while waiting in line.

In the end, the scene at the airport was a microcosm of America’s experience in Afghanistan. The military’s hasty planning, rooted in optimistic assumptions, proved no match for the reality of a society in collapse.

As you follow the war in the Ukraine, it’s worth taking some time with this grunts’- and civilians’-eye view of how wrong a military operation can go.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Stephen Engelberg.

Women in Afghanistan are protesting a number of gender-based restrictions from the Taliban, including an order in March to shut down public high schools for girls. In response, U.S. officials canceled talks with Taliban leaders in Doha, continuing to freeze billions in Afghan assets while Afghanistan spirals into economic catastrophe. We speak with Masuda Sultan and Medea Benjamin, two co-founders of Unfreeze Afghanistan, a coalition advocating for the release of funding for Afghan civilians. They recently visited Afghanistan as part of a U.S. women’s delegation and say the U.S. has a responsibility to alleviate the suffering there, which it had a major role in causing over two decades of war. “It seems that every time there is a showdown between the Taliban and the international community, it’s the Afghan people that suffer,” says Sultan. “We are now having a kind of economic warfare against the Afghan people,” adds Benjamin.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On Thursday, March 17, Taliban agents from the General Directorate of Intelligence detained Aman as well as TOLOnews news manager Khapalwak Sapai and the channel’s legal adviser at its headquarters in District 10 of Kabul, the capital, according to BBC Persian and tweets by former TOLOnews journalists.

The former news director Lotfullah Najafizada said in a tweet that Aman remained in custody while the others were released. None of the sources named the legal adviser who was detained.

The Taliban has not confirmed detention of the three. Jawad Sargar, deputy director of the GDI’s directorate of media and publication, denied the detentions in response to a request for comment sent via messaging app.

“The Taliban must immediately release TOLOnews journalist Bahram Aman, and stop its intelligence agency from arbitrarily arresting and intimidating media personnel,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Afghanistan’s once thriving independent media community cannot operate effectively under constant Taliban threats and harassment.”

TOLOnews, a 24/7 news channel based in Afghanistan and owned by the United Arab Emirates-headquartered Moby Media Group, has continued to air news and current affairs since the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban on August 15, 2021. On Thursday, the Taliban’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in an official letter banned the airing of foreign soap operas by Moby Media Group’s TV stations, according to the Instagram page of independent Afghan news site Hasht-e Subh Daily and a Moby Media Group executive who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

CPJ has documented the increasingly prominent role of the intelligence agency in controlling news media and intimidating journalists in Afghanistan.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Against this backdrop, a video of a group of men lynching a burqa-clad woman has gone viral on social media platforms. As the woman tries to reason with the men, more of them join to brutality thrash her.

Dr Omendra Ratnoo who is followed by BJP leader Kapil Mishra tweeted the clip. (Archive link)

इसे कहते हैं मर्दानगी ।

समाज हो तो ऐसा हो । pic.twitter.com/VNaNMBFDJ1

— Dr Omendra Ratnu (@satyanveshan) February 14, 2022

The visuals are also being shared on Facebook.

Alt News found that the video has been circulating on the internet since 2015 with a caption in Urdu.

Old video of a street play in Afghanistan

We searched for the text that appears on certain stills in the video, which led us to an instance of the video posted in 2016 on Facebook. We noticed that a user shared a link to a YouTube video in the comments.

A YouTube channel named ‘Storyful News & Weather’ had uploaded this clip on April 27, 2015. It says that activists in Kabul dramatized the killing of Farkhunda Malikzada. The video has been attributed to ‘Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’ in the caption.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty stated that Afghan activists in Kabul reenacted the killing of Farkhunda on April 27, 2015. They performed the play in protest against the brutality, demanding that the assailants be brought to justice immediately. Islamic law student Farkhunda Malikzada, 27, was lynched by a mob of men who believed that she had burnt a copy of the Quran. More than 40 people were arrested in connection with the violence.

According to a media report, the allegation that Farkhunda had set ablaze a copy of the Quran was later proven to be false.

To sum it up, the viral video of a burqa-clad woman being beaten by a group of men is six years old and was taken from a dramatised play on the killing of Afghan student Farkhunda Malikzada at the hands of a mob.

The post Video of Kabul activists reeacting Farkhunda Malikzada’s killing shared with misleading claim appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Kinjal.

President Joe Biden promised swift retribution. “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive.  We will not forget.  We will hunt you down and make you pay.” American “interests and our people” would be defended “with every measure at my command.”

In his sights was ISIS-K.  “I’ve also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities.”  A response “with force and precision” would take place “at our time, at the place we choose and a moment of our choosing.”

On August 28, an announcement by the Pentagon was made that two “high-profile” members of the group had been killed in a drone strike in Khorasan Province.  That same day, the President warned that the group was likely to conduct another attack.  The US military was readying itself.

The following day, to demonstrate such precision and choice, a vehicle supposedly carrying an unspecified number of suicide bombers linked to ISIS-K and speeding towards Kabul airport was struck in a second drone attack.  The site of the attack, being a residential neighbourhood in the city, should have given room for pause to those precisionists in the military.

The strike was meant to leave a lasting impression upon ISIS-K fighters.  Initially, US officials were pleased to inform the Associated Press that “multiple suicide bombers” had perished in the attack.  “US military forces conducted a self-defence unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Harmid Karzai International Airport,” stated US Central Command spokesperson Capt. Bill Urban.

The outcome of the strike was apparently something to be proud of.  “Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.”  But this came with a rounding caveat. “We’re assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, although we have no indications at this time.”

The story started to congeal over interviews, discussions and threads.  A dribble of information suggested loss of civilian life.  A number quickly emerged in the flood that followed: ten family members had lost their lives.  From the New York Times, there was Matthieu Aikins patching things together.  Bodies were named: Somaya, daughter of Zemari.  Farzard, Zemari’s son, also killed.  The narrative twists, inverts and disturbs more: Zemari’s nephew, Naser, was an Afghan army officer, former guard of the US military.  He had applied for an SIV (Special Immigrant Visa), hoping to flee Afghanistan for the United States.

To the BBC, Ramin Yousufi, a relative of the victims, could only tearfully despair. “It’s wrong, it’s a brutal attack, and it’s happened based on wrong information.”  Questions followed.  “Why have they killed our family?  Our children?  They are so burned out we cannot identify their bodies, their faces.”

At a press briefing on August 30, Army Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor of the Joint Staff tried to make something of yet another messy bungle in the annals of the US military.  “We are aware of reports of civilian casualties. We take these reports extremely seriously.”  John F. Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, was “not going to get ahead of it.  But if we have significant – verifiable information that we did take innocent life here, then we will be transparent about that, too.  Nobody wants to see that happen.”  Urban also stated that the Pentagon was aware of civilian casualties “following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul today.”

The attack had that sheen of atrocious incompetence (Kirby preferred the term “dynamic”), but that would be a misreading.  Killing remotely is, by its nature, inaccurate, though it has a disturbing fan club deluded into thinking otherwise.  The death of civilians, subsumed under the euphemism of collateral damage, is often put down to shonky intelligence rather than the machinery itself.  As Rachel Stohl of the Stimson Centre is a case in point.  “These are precise weapons,” she erroneously observed in 2016.  “The failure is in the intelligence about who it is that we are killing”.

Drone strikes have demonstrated, time and again, to lack the mythical precision with which they are billed.  Those in proximity to the target will be slain.  Whole families have been, and will continue, to be pulverised.  “Gradually,” the New York Times observed with stunning obviousness in 2015, “it has become clear that when operators in Nevada fire missiles into remote tribal territories on the other side of the world, they often do not know who they are killing, but are making an imperfect best guess.”

In 2016, research conducted by the Bureau of Investigative journalism found that the lethal returns from the US-UAV program proved to be overwhelmingly civilian.  A mere 3.5% could be said, with any certainty, to be terrorists.

The use of drones in combat is also politically baffling, self-defeating and contradictory.  As Michael Boyle has explained, referring to the use of UAV warfare in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, such a counterterrorism strategy was distinctly at odds in providing, on the one hand, a flow of arms and financial resource to the very governments whose legitimacy they undermined through the use of such strikes.  By all means, we supply you, but have no trust in your competence.

A mere month after the conviction of whistleblower Daniel Hale, who did more than any other to reveal the grotesque illusion of reliability behind the US drone program, UAV warfare was again shown to be a butchering enterprise praised by the precisionists and found politically wanting.  Those attending the funerals of the slain family members, an event taking place in the shadow of US power in retreat, needed little convincing who their enemy was.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

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.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Could an atrocity have been arranged by some of Baradar’s men at the request of the CIA?

Three days before the bloody carnage at Kabul airport, CIA director William Burns held a secret meeting with a top Taliban commander in the Afghan capital. That is only one of several suspicious events this week in the countdown to the dramatic U.S. evacuation.

At least 13 U.S. troops guarding an entrance to Kabul airport were killed in an apparent suicide bomb attack. Dozens of Afghans waiting in line for evacuation by military cargo planes were also killed. A second blast hit a nearby hotel used by British officials to process immigration documents.

It was not the main ranks of the Taliban who carried out the atrocities. The militant group which swept into power on August 15 after taking over Kabul has ring-fenced the capital with checkpoints. The explosions occurred in airport districts under the control of the U.S. and British military.

A little-known terror group, Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K), claimed responsibility for the bombings. IS-K was barely reported before until this week when the U.S. and British intelligence services issued high-profile warnings of imminent terror attacks by this group at Kabul airport. Those warnings came only hours before the actual attacks. President Joe Biden even mentioned this new terror organization earlier this week and pointedly claimed they were “sworn enemies” of the Taliban.

How is an obscure terror outfit supposed to infiltrate a highly secure area – past “sworn enemy” Taliban checkpoints – and then breach U.S. and British military cordons?

How is it that U.S. and British intelligence had such precise information on imminent threats when these same intelligence agencies were caught completely flat-footed by the historic takeover of Kabul by the Taliban on August 15? When the Taliban swept into the capital it marked the collapse of a regime that the Americans and British had propped for nearly 20 years during their military occupation of Afghanistan. Could their intelligence agencies miss foreseeing such a momentous event and yet less than two weeks later we are expected to believe these same agencies were able to pinpoint an imminent atrocity requiring complex planning?

What is the political fallout from the airport bombings? President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are adamant that the evacuation from Kabul will be completed by the deadline on August 31. Biden said the atrocity underscores the urgency to get out of Afghanistan, although he threw in the token vow that “we will hunt down” the perpetrators.

To be sure, the president is coming under intense political fire for capitulating against the Taliban and terrorists and for betraying Afghan allies. Some Republicans are demanding his resignation due to his overseeing a disaster and national disgrace. It is estimated that up to 250,000 Afghans who worked with the U.S. military occupation will be left behind and in danger of reprisal attacks.

There seems a negligible chance that the deaths of 13 U.S. troops – the largest single-day killing of Americans in Afghanistan since a Chinook helicopter was shot down in August 2011 with 38 onboard – will provoke an extension of the Pentagon’s mission in the country. Even after the bombings this week, the Pentagon advised Biden to stick to the August 31 deadline. The Taliban have also stated that all U.S. and NATO troops must be out of the country by that date.

Polls were showing that most Americans agreed with Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan – the longest war by the U.S. was seen as futile and unwinnable. The sickening bomb attacks this week will only underscore the public sense of war-weariness. Hawkish calls for returning large-scale forces to Afghanistan have little political resonance.

This brings us back to the secret meeting earlier this week between the CIA’s William Burns and Taliban commander Abdul Ghani Baradar. The Washington Post reported that Biden sent Burns to meet with Baradar in Kabul. It was the most senior contact between the Biden administration and the Taliban since the latter’s takeover of Afghanistan on August 15. The details of the discussion were not disclosed and some reports indicated other Taliban figures were not aware of the meeting.

Baradar is one of the founding members of the Taliban. He was captured by Pakistan intelligence and the CIA in 2010. But at the request of the United States, Baradar was released from prison in 2018. Thereafter he led the Taliban in negotiations with the U.S. on finding an end to the conflict. Those talks culminated in a deal in February 2020 with the Trump administration agreeing to troop withdrawal this year. Biden has stuck to the pullout plan.

From his career path, there is good reason to believe that Baradar is the CIA’s man inside the Taliban. Let’s say at least that he has the agency’s ear.

Why else would CIA chief Burns meet Baradar at such a crucial time in the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan? To get Taliban assurances of security measures safeguarding American troops as they exit? That obviously didn’t happen.

What else, then? Could an atrocity have been arranged by some of Baradar’s men at the request of the CIA? The objective being to shift focus from a shambolic, shameful retreat to one of necessity due to terror threats. It seems uncanny that U.S. and British intelligence services were warning of an event only hours before it happened in a way that was precisely predicted. The other consequence of benefit is that the droves of desperate Afghans queueing near Kabul airport are dispersed out of fear of more bloodshed. The beneficial optic is that U.S. and British military planes will take off on August 31 without the harrowing, pitiful scenes of Afghans running down the runway after them. Hence, the empire wraps up its bloody criminal war, with a little less shame than otherwise.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Finian Cunningham.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the final New Zealand Defence Force evacuation flight from Afghanistan landed back in the United Arab Emirates last night, before the bomb attacks killing at least 12 US soldiers and 60 Afghans at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

One hundred people, including New Zealanders and Australians, were on the flight. It is not yet clear how many of those people are destined for New Zealand.

So far, 276 New Zealand nationals and permanent residents, their families, and other visa holders have been evacuated.

• READ MORE: 12 US military personnel killed in bomb attacks at Kabul airport
• Fijians stranded in Afghanistan evacuated to Kazakhstan – Govt
• More Afghanistan crisis reports

There were no New Zealand Defence Force personnel in Kabul and no New Zealand evacuees at the airport at the time of the explosions.

Ardern described the attacks as “appalling” and said the country’s thoughts were with all of those in Afghanistan who had been killed or injured.

“We strongly condemn what is a despicable attack on many innocent families and individuals who were simply seeking safety from the incredibly difficult and fragile situation in Afghanistan,” she said in a statement.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade remained in close contact with New Zealand citizens and permanent residents in Afghanistan who had previously registered on SafeTravel or otherwise made contact.

‘High threat of terrorist attack’
Yesterday, all those known to have been in Afghanistan were advised by MFAT of the “ongoing and very high threat of terrorist attack” and warned not to go to Hamid Karzai International Airport and to leave the airport if they were nearby.

At this stage, there have been no requests for assistance from New Zealanders or other visa holders in Afghanistan related to the explosion. MFAT are trying to contact all those known to be in the region.

Ardern said the situation at Kabul’s airport had been so difficult for both people trying to get out, and those undertaking the evacuations that there would be no more flights into the city.

Over the course of the mission, the NZDF aircraft was able to undertake three flights out of Kabul and had successfully brought out hundreds of evacuees who are destined for both New Zealand and Australia.

Australia also brought out a number of those destined for New Zealand.

Defence Minister Peeni Henare said as well as those who have already arrived in the country, more people eligible for relocation are in transit. Some are being processed at bases outside Afghanistan, so it is still too early to know the total numbers of people who will be returned to Aotearoa, he said.

Ardern said those who remained were in an incredibly difficult position.

Afghanistan situation “complex, fragile”
“The situation in Afghanistan is incredibly complex and fragile and continues to change rapidly. Our next job is to consider what can be done for those who remain in Afghanistan still. That will not be a quick or easy task,” she said.

She also praised those Defence Force personnel who undertook the mission.

“I want to thank our Defence Force personnel who have worked hard to bring those in need home, by establishing a presence on the ground both at the airport in Kabul, and in the United Arab Emirates alongside other government agencies.”

She also thanked New Zealand’s partners, especially Australia, the US and the United Arab Emirates.

It has not yet been confirmed when NZDF personnel and the C-130 aircraft will arrive back in New Zealand.

Fiji evacuations
ABC’s Pacific Beat reports that five Fijian workers have been evacuated from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the country, three being flown to Kazhakstan.

One Fiji security contractor said a humanitarian crisis is looming with major challenges ahead for the country.

It is believed about five others had chosen to stay in Afghanistan for the time being.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Canada’s biggest military deployment since World War II, more than 40,000 Canadian troops fought in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. Canada spent $20 billion on the military operations and related aid mission and over 200,000 Afghan civilians and combatants were killed in two decades of fighting. As I detailed yesterday, Canada engaged in significant violence and war crimes in the central Asian country. Canadian special forces participated in highly unpopular night-time assassination raids and a JTF2 member said he felt his commanders “encouraged” them to commit war crimes in Afghanistan.

The reasons presented for Canada’s war in Afghanistan were to fight fundamentalists, build democracy and support women’s rights. These rationales never added out.

Just before Canada ramped up its fighting in Kandahar in 2006 Canadian troops invaded Haiti to overthrow the elected government there. Five hundred Canadian soldiers backed violent rebels — Haiti’s Taliban, if you like — who employed rape as a means of political control. A study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal revealed there were 35,000 rapes in the Port-au-Prince area in the 22 months after the overthrow of the elected government. So much for advancing women’s rights.

The other supposed motivation for the invasion and occupation was to weaken Al Qaeda and Jihadist forces. As Canadian troops wound down their occupation of Afghanistan a half dozen Canadian fighter jets bombed Libya. With a Canadian general overseeing the war and Canadian naval vessels helping out, NATO helped rebels in the east of the country opposed to Muammar Gadhafi’s secular government. A year and a half before the war a Canadian intelligence report described eastern Libya as an “epicentre of Islamist extremism” and said “extremist cells” operated in the anti-Gadhafi stronghold. In fact, during the bombing, noted Ottawa Citizen military reporter David Pugliese, Canadian air force members privately joked they were part of “al-Qaida’s air force”. Lo and behold hardline Jihadists were the major beneficiaries of the war, taking control of significant portions of the country.

If fighting Jihadists, building democracy and defending women’s rights were not Canada’s main objectives in Afghanistan what was?

Supporting the US was the main reason Canada was fighting. “Washington’s reactions tended to be the exclusive consideration in almost all of the discussions about Afghanistan,” explains The Unexpected War: Canada In Kandahar. “The political problem, of course, was how to support Washington in its war on terror without supporting the war in Iraq. The answer to the problem was the so-called ‘Afghan solution’.” Former Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham explained “there was no question, every time we talked about the Afghan mission, it gave us cover for not going to Iraq.”

But there’s more to it than that. The military saw the conflict in Afghanistan as a way to increase its profile. There was a surge of martial patriotism in Canada with initiatives such as Highway of Heroes and Project Hero. In the mid-2000s every province adopted a special licence plate to signify the driver is a veteran.

The military saw Afghanistan as a way to assert its warfighting bona fides. As Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier infamously proclaimed: “We are going to Afghanistan to actually take down the folks that are trying to blow up men and women … we’re not the public service of Canada, we’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.”

The Canadian Forces have a predilection for war. As basically all but Canadian special forces had been withdrawn from Afghanistan, the Chief of the Defence Staff publicly demanded a new war. “We have some men and women who have had two, three and four tours and what they’re telling me is ‘Sir, we’ve got that bumper sticker. Can we go somewhere else now?’” General Walter Natynczyk told Canadian Press in 2012. “You also have the young sailors, soldiers, airmen and women who have just finished basic training and they want to go somewhere and in their minds it was going to be Afghanistan. So, if not Afghanistan, where’s it going to be? They all want to serve.”

Various think tanks and militarist organization such as the Conference of Defense Associations as well as academics writing on military issues benefited from millions of dollars in public funds. The war justified an increase in the size of the military and a major spike in military spending.

Private security firms did well in Afghanistan. Conflict in that country helped propel Montréal’s Garda’s to become the biggest privately held security firm in the world with some 80,000 employees today.

Military service contractors such as SNC Lavalin and ATCO also expanded their involvement with the Canadian Forces. During the war in Afghanistan Canadian Commercial Corporation president Marc Whittingham wrote in the Hill Times, “there is no better trade show for defence equipment than a military mission.” The crown corporation has expanded its role in the international weapons trade.

On Monday The Intercept reported that the stock price of the top five US arms firms rose 97% since US President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force on September 18, 2001. In “$10,000 Invested in Defense Stocks When Afghanistan War Began Now Worth Almost $100,000” Jon Schwarz notes that these companies’ stock prices increase was 58% greater than the gains of the overall New York Stock Exchange.

Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics all have Canadian subsidiaries. The US-based firms are not simply branch plants. They do research in Canada, have offices near Parliament Hill and hire former top Canadian military officials. A number of them do international business through their Canadian divisions. General Dynamics Canada, for instance, has the largest ever Canadian export contract selling Light Armoured Vehicles to Saudi Arabia. Tracing its Canadian history to 1948, General Dynamics has ties to Canadian educational institutions, politicians and the CF. It has over 2,000 employees and does research and development work.

The stock price of the biggest Canadian-based arms firm, CAE, has also risen sharply since 2001. It trains US pilots as well as the operators of Predator and Reaper drones. The Montréal-based company openly talks about profiting from increased US military spending. “Le patron de CAE veut profiter de la hausse des budgets de l’armée américaine” (CAE boss wants to take advantage of rising US military spending), read a 2018 La Presse headline.

The war in Afghanistan was good for the arms industry. It also bolstered the Canadian military. But the quick unraveling of 20-years of war and occupation ought to sap some of the power of Canada’s military, arms companies and associated ideological institutions. The quick collapse of the US- and Canadian-backed Afghan military and government proves they should not be trusted. Their primary goal is, and always has been, to benefit the military-industrial complex, not to improve the lives of people in other countries. Or to tell the truth to Canadians.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

In departing and leaving stranded colleagues to their fate, the bookish Ghani, preferring pen to gun, had time to leave a message on Facebook.  One could never accuse the man of having wells of courage. He reflected on either facing armed Taliban fighters or leaving his beloved country.  In order to avoid immolating Kabul, which “would have been a big human disaster”, he chose a hasty exit.

Only a few days prior, on August 11, Ghani had flown to Mazar-i-Sharif, in the company of the blood lusty Uzbek Dostum, supposedly to hold the fort against the Taliban with another warlord, the ethnic Tajik Atta Muhammad Noor.  Noor had pledged in June to mobilise the citizenry of Balkh province to fight the Taliban.  “God forbid, the fall of Balkh,” he declared at the time, “means the fall of the north and the fall of the north means the fall of Afghanistan.”

This was not a move greeted with universal joy.  Habib-ur-Rahman of the leadership council of the political and paramilitary group Hizb-e-Islami saw a bit of self-aggrandizing at work, hardly remarkable for a warlord keen to oversee his bit of real estate.  “The mobilisation of the people by politicians under the pretext of supporting security forces – with the use of public uprising forces – fuels the war from one side and from the other it affects Afghanistan’s stance in foreign policy.”

The shoring up mission led by Ghani would do little to conceal the historical differences between Noor and Dostum.  The former had done battle with Dostum’s troops during the latter’s time as a regional commander in the ailing Soviet-backed Afghan government.  Dostum’s defection from the government (one spots the common theme) in 1992 to form the Junbish-e-Milli party presented Noor with a chance to join forces.  But the Tajik left Dostum in 1993 citing irreconcilable ideological differences.  With the initial defeat of the Taliban, Noor triumphed in several military encounters with the frustrated Uzbek, seizing the Balkh province in its entirety.

The accord reached between the parties on this occasion certainly did not involve agreeing to fight the Taliban.  Both had come to the conclusion that scurrying to Uzbekistan was a sounder proposition.  Noor subsequently justified the measure by claiming enigmatically that, “They had orchestrated the plot to trap Marshal Dostum and myself too, but they didn’t succeed.”  Ghani would soon follow.

Members of Ghani’s imploding government have not taken kindly to the flight of their leader.  “Curse Ghani and his gang,” wrote acting defence minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi.  “They tied our hands from behind and sold the country.”

The head of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah also released a video withering in announcing that, “The former president of Afghanistan” had “left the country in this difficult situation.”  God, he suggested, “should hold him accountable.”  Abdullah, along with former President Harmid Karzai and Hizb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, are currently in negotiations with the Taliban over the formal transfer of power.

The US and UK have deployed personnel in a hurried panic.  Over the weekend, President Joe Biden, in announcing the deployment of 5,000 troops, told the press that they would ensure “we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel, and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance.”  Another thousand have also been added to the complement.

There was much embarrassment in all of this.  The US and its allies made the fundamental error that training, money and expertise would somehow miraculously guarantee the stability, continuity and reliability of a ramshackle regime.  Biden, in coming up with his own phraseology, had stated that a Taliban victory was “not inevitable”.  In July, we were given a nugget of Bidenese that, while he had little trust for the Taliban, he did “trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- – more competent in terms of conducting war.”

As the Taliban was securing the capital, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken parried evident parallels with the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975.  “This is manifestly not Saigon,” he said with little conviction.

Now, the scene was one of grave, turbaned and bearded men, armed to the teeth, overseeing the desk which Ghani previously occupied in the presidential palace.  They had survived and outwitted an army better armed and supposedly better trained. They had survived airstrikes launched from within the country and from bases in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, via heavy bombers and lethal drones.  They had survived the forces of the US, NATO and rival militias.

They now find themselves in control of an entity they wish to be recognised as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.  History has come in its full violent circle.  A group of insurgents dismissed as fundamentalist mountain savages who would be vanquished before the modernising incentives of the West have shown up, as previous Afghan fighters have, the futility and sheer folly of meddling in their country’s affairs.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On July 2, fleeing questions from reporters about U.S. plans in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden sought refuge behind the July 4th Independence Day holiday, yet obliquely acknowledged that the U.S. will use some level of “over the horizon” air attacks to prevent the Taliban from taking power, attacks that will include drones and manned aircraft, possibly even B-52s.

Here is a portion of President Biden’s remarkable exchange with the press, which occurred at the close of his comments on the June, 2021 jobs report:

Q    Are you worried that the Afghan government might fall?  I mean, we are hearing about how the Taliban is taking more and more districts.

The President:  Look, we were in that war for 20 years.  Twenty years.  And I think — I met with the Afghan government here in the White House, in the Oval.  I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government.  There are going to have to be, down the road, more negotiations, I suspect.  But I am — I am concerned that they deal with the internal issues that they have to be able to generate the kind of support they need nationwide to maintain the government.

Q    A follow on that thought on Afghanistan —

The President:  I want to talk about happy things, man.

Q    If there is evidence that Kabul is threatened, which some of the intelligence reports have suggested, it could be in six months or thereabout, do you think you’ve got the capability to help provide any kind of air support, military support to them to keep the capital safe, even if the U.S. troops are obviously fully out by that time?

The President:  We have worked out an over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added, but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have, which we’re helping them maintain.

Q    Sir, on Afghanistan —

The President:  I’m not going to answer any more quick question on Afghanistan.

Q    Are you concerned —

The President:  Look, it’s Fourth of July.

 *****

When the President refers to “over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added” he is referring to a plan, that appears might cost $10 billion, to fly drones and manned attack aircraft from bases as far away as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to assist the current Afghan central government in defending itself against the Taliban.

His statement is the first acknowledgement that  the “over-the-horizon” air operations, that reportedly may rely very heavily on drone assassination and drone targeting for manned aircraft, will be directed at the Taliban.  In Congressional testimony in June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that “over-the-horizon” operations would focus on “elements that can possibly conduct attacks against our homeland”, suggesting Al Qaeda and ISIS as targets but not foreclosing attacks against the Taliban.

The President’s remarks about “over the horizon” as “value added” flowing into “but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have”, is reminiscent of former President Richard Nixon’s attempt to argue that the puppet government of Viet Nam was developing the power to defend itself, attempting to cover U.S. tracks out of the horribly disastrous U.S. colonization project in Viet Nam.

“Our air strikes have been essential in protecting our own remaining forces and in assisting the South Vietnamese in their efforts to protect their homes and their country from a Communist takeover”, Nixon said in a 1972 speech to the nation.

The apparent U.S. decision to continue to assist the Afghan central government from the air comes in company with a New York Times report saying that President Biden has placed “temporary limits on counterterrorism drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional battlefield zones like Afghanistan and Syria, and it has begun a broad review of whether to tighten Trump-era rules for such operations, according to officials.”

A similar report in Foreign Affairs, says that there has been an apparent reduction in U.S. drone attacks, and details elements of a “bigger rethink” process that the Biden Administration is said to be going through to limit civilian deaths and reevaluate how the U.S. should respond to “the overseas terrorist threat.”  A goal of the Administration, the report says, is to end the U.S. “forever” wars.

It must also be said, however, that these reports indicate that President Biden fully intends to continue the U.S. drone assassination/pre-emptive killing policy of Bush, Obama and Trump, possibly with more care for civilians casualties but in defiance of international principles of war, as outlined on BanKillerDrones.org, that would rule out the use of weaponized drones and military drone surveillance altogether whether inside or outside a recognized combat zone.

It appears that the reformist talk from Biden officials, much of it unattributed and therefore having no accountability, is intended to divert and placate those of us citizens who are revulsed by continuing drone atrocities, such as those leading 113 peace, justice and humanitarian organizations who signed a letter demanding “an end to the unlawful program of lethal strikes outside any recognized battlefield, including through the use of drones.”  Apart from the view, noted above, that drone attacks and surveillance are illegal anywhere, we have the question of the U.S. having turned the entire world into a potential “recognized battlefield.”

Even though U.S. ground forces have largely left Afghanistan, it is clear that the Biden administration considers Afghanistan a legitimate battlefield for U.S. air forces.

In President Biden’s “value added” remark, one can see a clear message: regardless of talk of a more humanitarian policy of drone killing and ending “forever” wars, the president has decided that prolonged civil war in Afghanistan is in the interest of the U.S.  Possibly this is because continued turmoil in Afghanistan will be unsettling and preoccupying to her neighbors, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China.  Possibly it is because a civil war will make it easier for corporations and banks to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral, fossil fuel and opium wealth.

Certainly, continued U.S. air assaults in Afghanistan will generate money for U.S. military contractors.

With continuing U.S. air and commando attacks, Afghanistan can turn into a Libya, a divided, stalemated, suffering, bleeding country, where Turkey, Russia and China test their weapons and seek advantage.

Indeed, the U.S. is negotiating with Turkey, over the objection of the Taliban, to maintain “security” at the Kabul International Airport.  Undoubtedly, the Turkish political/military/corporate elite, who have their own expansionary ambitions, will use its drones, among them the semi-autonomous Kargu 2, to try to hold the airport and surrounding territory.

The Black Alliance for Peace released a statement on June 25, opposing “any effort to prolong the U.S. war on the Afghan people, including efforts to keep the United States engaged in any form in Afghanistan.”   The statement expressed concern for “the continued operation of U.S. special forces and mercenaries (or contractors) in Afghanistan, as well as U.S.-pledged support for Turkish military defense of Kabul International Airport, a site that has continued to be a major U.S. military stronghold to support its imperial presence.”

President Biden would do well to heed this statement, along with a petition to him, circulated by BanKillerDrones.org, urging no further U.S. air attacks against the Afghan people.

Now that Independence Day has passed, perhaps the President will be more willing to answer questions about the real goals of “over the horizon.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nick Mottern.

COVID-19 is clarifying a significant source of global anger and angst: inequality.

At the start of the COVID-19 crisis, Afghanistan had 300 ventilators, only one ventilator for every 110,000 Afghans.

As a medical physician, I gasped, my heart racing at the dilemma of who gets the ventilator. What if I was near death with serious COVID-19?

The head of a global vaccine alliance advised that “nobody is safe unless everybody is safe”, saying, “This is a global problem that needs a global solution and we have to all work together.”

But in many countries, the pandemic has stripped naked our systems, revealing how our economic and political elite value profit and power over human lives.

Though the Afghan government has been reporting higher GDPs over the past years, COVID-19 has exposed how GDPs don’t reflect the sort of economy all citizens need to survive with dignity.

GDPs say nothing about how governments and corporations treat their people and workers. COVID-19 has.

During Afghanistan’s lockdown, angry and hungry folk in Ghor province protested that corrupt government officials had redirected foreign food aid to themselves. They clashed with the police. Seven persons were killed.

During Minneapolis’ lockdown, George Floyd was stopped, and under the forceful knee of a policeman, he was suffocated and killed. Like the people of Ghor, the people of the U.S. are braving the virus to protest.

These incidents shock us into grieving at our outrageously meaningless systems. Yes, Hans Anderson, even the children can see that the emperors have no clothes! We all wish to echo Floyd’s “I can’t breathe!”

Our inter-connected human spirit responds. Some of us sigh heavily. Some cry. Some scream. Others slow down to take deep breaths. All of us wish for close friends who understand.

It helps to be present with one another, listening until our rage begins to transform into systemic change.

Rising Inequality, Anger and Angst Everywhere

Likewise, in people protests across the world over recent years, citizens have shouted, “Enough!” People have had enough of their political elite taking their money, then giving excuses, lying, berating the people, threatening them and imprisoning them.

People are demanding an end to the outdated premise that the “kings and rulers” are superior and all-knowing. They no longer wish to submit to the obsolete narrative that governments are always good, and the people are always bad.

We’ve seen through the illogical math of one President or Prime Minister behaving as if he or she is more intelligent or more moral than 34 or 340 million or 7.7 billion other human beings.

I think this unequal disparity is one reason why in 2018, Afghans reported the lowest positive experiences in the world, and why that year, anger seemed ‘contagious’, with more than one fifth of adults across the planet admitting to feeling angry, the highest percentage recorded by the Gallup Emotions Report since 2005.

And now, COVID-19 has given us the unique opportunity to share this anger as a human family.

Afghan Peace Volunteers distributing COVID food relief in May 2020 to 96 of the APVs’ “Borderfree Street Kids School” students (Credit: Dr. Hakim)

We Can Heal Together By Insisting On Equal Treatment For All

Primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall said, “One of the lessons learnt from this crisis is that we must change our ways. If we do not do things differently, we are finished. We can’t go on very much longer like this.” She was referring to how we treat the environment and animals with absolute disrespect.

So, learning from COVID-19, we can each resolutely insist on equal policies for all members of our human family, whether in our personal lives, through protests, writing, art, music or other creative ways.

When the late Stephane Hessel was 93 years old, he called us to “Indignez-vous! Cry Out! Time for Outrage!”

To help Afghans, Americans and every human at the wrong end of the police or militaries, global citizens can insist on de-militarization, disarmament and the diversion of annual war trillions to take care of the climate, food, water, shelter, healthcare and education.

When a recent UN report showed that the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government forces had killed Afghan civilians in record numbers, we can respond by insisting on the same for Afghans as for George Floyd: arrest the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government, rather than allowing them to negotiate “peace deals” for power.

A banner in an alley as a memorial to the APVs’ Sajaad and two other youth killed in the explosion (Credit:  Dr. Hakim)

On the evening of 27th of February in a residential area where I live in Kabul, explosive devices attached to two bicycles exploded in a small alley, killing Sajad, one of our street kid students who was selling vegetables. Ironically, Sajaad’s death was just two days before the U.S. and Taliban signed their touted “peace deal”, not in Afghanistan, but in Qatar, with no Afghans involved, not even their acquiescent President Ghani.

I heard waves of wailing from my neighborhood, which were cries from the relatives and family members of Sajaad and other children who were killed.

That night, COVID-19 was already moving rapidly across the world, as I journaled my feelings below:

Death is my neighbour in Afghanistan,

a living hell for mourners nearby,
screaming,
unable to separate themselves away from love.
They raged with torrents of regret
over words said and unsaid,
deeds done and not done,
struck by unacceptable grief.
On this life-draining evening,
I was heating up leftovers for dinner
when I heard two blasts.
They were ‘small’ compared to others I’ve heard before,
so I dismissed them
as “gas cylinder incidents”??
This is the 5th night
of a 7-day ‘reduction in violence’ agreed upon
by the Orwellian¹ US/Taliban ‘peace-makers’.
But, such deals have never created a people’s economy
where teenagers like 16-year-old Sajaad,
one of our Borderfree street kid students,
needn’t sell vegetables
along the alley where he was killed tonight.
The Mother of All Bombs² and her bomblets
are provoking revenge,
everywhere.
In furious retaliation,
across deforested and climate-changed swathes of dust,
multi-national opponents buy, improvise, plant and trigger
all warps of explosive devices.
No ‘bomb’ is small,
because every weapon is manufactured
and paid for by us the human species,
Every munition is a pre-designed coffin
sold at a handsome, psychotic³ price,
fuelling wails.
While we heal from our grief,
we can daily dismantle
our ‘normal’ ways of making money,
protecting ourselves,
and obeying our status quo or symbols.
In our being and feeling,
thinking and doing,
studying and working,
quietly or out in the streets,
we can decisively choose
to recover meaning.

1. Stars and Stripes had reported, “Talks between the two sides continued for most of 2019 as American bombs (a record 7423) were dropped.” [↩]
2. In 2017, Trump threw the “Mother of All Bombs” over some caves and tunnels of Achin, a bomb that experts said would “vaporize anyone within 300 meters, while those in a one kilometer radius would be left deaf.” [↩]
3. When Trump met Pakistan’s Prime Minister, he thought he sounded merciful when he taunted, “I could win that (Afghan) war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.” [↩]

This article was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2020 at 4:45am and is filed under Afghanistan, COVID-19 (coronavirus), Kabul, Lockdown, Militarism, Taliban, War.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its website.

Militants from IS have declared war on Afghanistan’s Shiites, and many of those at the ceremony were from the minority Shiite sect. The ceremony commemorated the 1995 slaying of Abdul Ali Mazari, the leader of Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite Muslims.

The Taliban said they were not involved in the attack, which came less than a week after the U.S. and the group signed an ambitious peace deal that lays out a path for the withdrawal of American forces from the country.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said 32 people were killed and 81 wounded in the attack in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul. The Health Ministry gave the same death toll but said 58 were wounded. All of the casualties were civilians, Rahimi said.

Opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah, who is the country’s chief executive and was a top contender in last year’s presidential election, was among several prominent political officials who attended the ceremony but left before the attack and were unhurt.

Several TV journalists were covering the ceremony inside a walled compound when the gunmen began shooting, and a reporter and a cameraman for a local broadcaster were among the wounded.

Karim Khalili, the chief of Afghanistan’s high peace council, was delivering a speech when the gunfire interrupted him. He was not hurt and later went on TV to denounce the violence.

Several witnesses said that, amid the panic, members of the security forces at the event had fired on civilians in the crowd.

“Individuals with military uniforms who were there targeted people, there were casualties, dead and wounded,” said witness Ghulam Mohammad, according to Associated Press video.

Another survivor, Noor Mohammad, said: “Everyone was running. Three casualties were on the ground in front of me. I ran out of there to save my life.”

After opening fire, the two gunmen holed up in a half-finished apartment building, leading to a five-hour standoff with security forces. They were eventually killed and security forces cleared the building, Rahimi said. The area was cordoned off by dozens of security forces.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the violence and reiterated “that attacks against civilians are unacceptable and those who carry out such crimes must be held accountable,” according to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“The United Nations stands with all Afghans in solidarity and remains committed to an Afghan-led peace process that will end the conflict,” Dujarric said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack in Kabul last year, when a suicide bomber killed 63 people and wounded 182 at a wedding. All were from the Shiite Hazara community.

Any U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan would be tied in part to promises by the Taliban to fight terrorism and IS. During the withdrawal, the U.S. would retain the right to continue its counter-terrorism operations in the country.

The Taliban have been fighting Islamic State militants in its headquarters in eastern Afghanistan. U.S. military officials have said IS has been degraded because of U.S. and Afghan operations but also by Taliban assaults. A U.S. Defense Department official told the AP that they worried IS was expanding its footprint into Kunar province, where the Taliban knows the terrain and could be an asset in tracking down IS.

___

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

In normal times, Saturday would have been a red-letter day. The deal signed by the Taliban and the U.S. in Doha, Qatar, promised peace to a land torn by war for over four decades.

But these are not normal times — at least not in South Asia — and the euphoria that usually accompanies a deal signed to end war was missing.

In Pakistan, feelings were mixed. Words like “historic,” “landmark,” “welcome” and “immediately important” were interspersed with such terms as “cautious,” “responsible” and “careful.”

That’s because peace in the true sense of the word has been elusive in the region. Although the deal has been concluded, peace is conditional on so many ifs and buts that one can only hope for the best. While welcoming the Doha accord, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan described it as the start of the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan. But he also warned all stakeholders “to ensure that spoilers are kept at bay.”

Who could be the spoilers? Potentially there are many. The most likely are Afghanistan’s own leaders, who are squabbling among themselves over the recent presidential election results. That is not a trivial matter, because the immediate measure needed to start the peace process is the intra-Afghan dialogue scheduled for March 10. Ashraf Ghani, the incumbent president, who is accused of gaining an electoral victory through fraudulent means, is now prioritizing his political success over peace in the region. Even before the ink on the Doha accord was dry, he rejected the provision for the exchange of prisoners that requires 5,000 Taliban captives to be released as a price for the freedom of 1,000 Afghan troops.

We will have to keep our fingers crossed as we wait to see how the wind blows. There are too many Afghan contenders for power, and it is natural to expect them to seek a seat at the negotiating table and have a say in the future of the country. Who will call the shots? Ghani, America’s key ally in Kabul, has a fragile hold on power and faces a tough challenge from his numerous rivals. He is highly vulnerable, and this power struggle could give the Taliban — the strongest of the lot — the upper hand, but not without igniting another insurgency.

The Doha deal also provides for the withdrawal of American and NATO troops, nearly 13,000 of which remain in Afghanistan. Five thousand of these will be pulled out by May; the remainder will go home by April 2021.

Khan was right when he claimed vindication of his view that peace can only come to the region through a negotiated arrangement. He also was correct in warning against spoilers. Afghanistan has always been vulnerable to foreign interests, and past experience has shown how the Afghans have suffered because their underdeveloped, poverty-stricken country has become a haven for self-serving outsiders. This has happened before. It could happen again.

After the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan following the 1988 Geneva accords, the region was engulfed in a political vacuum. That was not surprising. The U.S. had already lost interest in post-Geneva events in Southwest Asia, believing that Pax Americana had been ushered in to ensure the United States’ global supremacy. It was left to Pakistan to bear the brunt of the Afghan quagmire left behind by the end stage of the Cold War. That created the conditions conducive to the birth of the Taliban under the supervision of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s spy agency.

This is unlikely to happen this time. There has been a shift in Pakistan’s military strategy. The army appears to be serious about cracking down on terrorism, hence the push for peace from the Pakistan-backed Taliban. Pakistan’s role in promoting the Doha Accord has been widely acknowledged. The Pakistani foreign minister’s presence in Qatar at the scene of the signing ceremony was highly significant.

But when Afghans fight, they love to invite foreign allies. The withdrawal of U.S. troops may be a positive step. But President Trump cannot afford to wash his hands of South Asian politics, as he seems to be doing. His recent trip to New Delhi did not go down well with opinion leaders in Pakistan. Even his offer to mediate on Kashmir, which the government in Islamabad welcomed, failed to make the designed impact. As a prominent opposition leader pointed out, Trump’s statements in India indicated his desire to have it play the role of policeman in the region. Trump refrained from commenting on India’s autocratic policy on Kashmir, which has been under a lockdown since August. He was also strangely silent on the controversial citizenship law that has angered many in both India and Pakistan. Trump’s visit to India at this point was not timely, and it has sent wrong signals to South Asia.

The most worrisome aspect of these developments is the fear — voiced by feminists and progressives all over the region — that the Doha accord is no more than a “dressed-up U.S. surrender that will ultimately see the Taliban return to power.”

If the Doha accord is treated as a pretext for Trump to turn his back on world affairs and foreign policy as he faces the American electorate in 2020, he may well be leading his country into another disaster.

Russia and China have shown a steady interest in Afghanistan throughout the 15 months that the on-again, off-again Doha dialogue took place. In fact, there were occasions when talks between the Taliban and other Afghan leaders were facilitated by Moscow.

The post-Doha phase will be the crucial stage, when the future of Afghanistan will be decided for its men, as well as its women.

The historic deal, signed by chief negotiators from the two sides and witnessed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, could see the withdrawal of all American and allied forces in the next 14 months and allow President Donald Trump to keep a key campaign pledge to extract the U.S. from “endless wars.” But it could also easily unravel, particularly if the Taliban fail to meet their commitments.

At the White House, Trump told reporters the U.S. deserves credit for having helped Afghanistan take a step toward peace. He spoke cautiously of the deal’s prospects for success and cautioned the Taliban against violating their commitments.

“We think we’ll be successful in the end,” he said, referring to all-Afghan peace talks and a final U.S. exit. He said he will be “meeting personally with Taliban leaders in the not-too-distant future,” and described the group as “tired of war.”

He did not say where or why he plans to meet with Taliban leaders. He said he thinks they are serious about the deal they signed but warned that if it fails, the U.S. could restart combat.

“If bad things happen, we’ll go back” in with military firepower, Trump said.

Pompeo was similarly cautious.

“Today, we are realistic. We are seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation,” Pompeo said in the Qatari capital of Doha. “Today, we are restrained. We recognize that America shouldn’t fight in perpetuity in the graveyard of empires if we can help Afghans forge peace.”

Under the agreement, the U.S. would draw its forces down to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next three to four months, with the remaining U.S. forces withdrawing in 14 months. The complete pullout would depend on the Taliban meeting their commitments to prevent terrorism, including specific obligations to renounce al-Qaida and prevent that group or others from using Afghan soil to plot attacks on the U.S. or its allies.

The deal sets the stage for intra-Afghan peace talks to begin around March 10, with the aim of negotiating a permanent cease-fire and a power-sharing agreement between rival Afghan groups. It’s perhaps the most complicated and difficult phase of the plan. It does not, however, tie America’s withdrawal to any specific outcome from the all Afghan talks, according to U.S. officials.

Pompeo said that “the chapter of American history on the Taliban is written in blood” and stressed that while the road ahead would be difficult, the deal represented “the best opportunity for peace in a generation.”

At a parallel ceremony in Kabul, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani signed a joint statement committing the Afghan government to support the U.S.-Taliban deal, which is viewed skeptically by many war-weary Afghans, particularly women who fear a comeback of repression under the ultra-conservative Taliban.

President George W. Bush had ordered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to 9/11. Some U.S. troops currently serving there had not yet been born when al-Qaida hijackers flew two airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, crashed another into the Pentagon and took down a fourth in Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people.

It only took a few months to topple the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaida militants scrambling across the border into Pakistan, but the war dragged on for years as the U.S. tried to establish a stable, functioning state in one of the least developed countries in the world. The Taliban regrouped, and currently hold sway over half the country.

The United States has spent nearly $1 trillion in Afghanistan, two-thirds of that on defense, most of it for its own soldiers but also for the Afghan Security Forces. More than 3,500 U.S. and coalition soldiers have died in Afghanistan, more than 2,400 of them Americans.

But the conflict was also frequently ignored by U.S. politicians and the American public as the memory of the attacks on that crisp, sunny morning faded, despite having changed how many Americans see the world.

While Pompeo attended the ceremony in Qatar, he appeared to avoid any direct contact with the Taliban delegation. The deal was signed by U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who then shook hands. Members of the Taliban shouted “Allahu Akhbar” or “God is greatest.” Others in attendance, including the Qatari hosts, applauded politely.

“We are committed to implementing this agreement,” Baradar said in brief comments. “I call on all Afghans to honestly work for peace and gather around the table for peace negotiations.”

Some Taliban celebrated the deal as a victory. “Today is the day of victory, which has come with the help of Allah,” said Abbas Stanikzai, one of the Taliban’s lead negotiators.

Meanwhile in Kabul, in a rare show of unity, Ghani sat beside his chief political rival Abdullah Abdullah at a ceremony with Esper and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that included a declaration between the Afghan government and the United States intended to show U.S. support for Afghanistan.

For Afghanistan’s government which has been deeply criticized by its political opponents, including Abdullah, the real job ahead will be cobbling together a negotiating team to sit across from the Taliban. The talks are to determine the face of a post-war Afghanistan.

Those negotiations, to be held in Oslo, Norway, are expected to begin around March 10. The Taliban have made it clear they expect the Afghan government to release their 5,000 prisoners before the start of negotiations. Around that time, the Taliban are to release 1,000 government security forces. Until now the government has not agreed to the prisoner release which could unravel intra-Afghan negotiations before they even get started.

Esper warned the road ahead was a long one and would not be without its challenges. “This is a hopeful moment, but it is only the beginning, the road ahead will not be easy.”

Trump has repeatedly promised to get the U.S. out of wars in the Middle East, and the withdrawal of troops could boost his re-election bid in a nation weary of involvement in distant conflicts. Last September, on short notice, he called off what was to be a signing ceremony with the Taliban at Camp David after a series of new Taliban attacks. But he has since been supportive of talks.

It’s not clear what will become of gains made in women’s rights since the toppling of the Taliban, which had repressed women and girls under a strict brand of Sharia law. Women’s rights in Afghanistan had been a top concern of both the Bush and Obama administration, but it remains a deeply conservative country, with women still struggling for basic rights.

There are currently more than 16,500 soldiers serving under the NATO banner, of which 8,000 are American. Germany has the next largest contingent, with 1,300 troops, followed by Britain with 1,100.

In all, 38 NATO countries are contributing forces to Afghanistan. The alliance officially concluded its combat mission in 2014 and now provides training and support to Afghan forces.

The U.S. has a separate contingent of 5,000 troops deployed to carry out counter-terrorism missions and provide air and ground support to Afghan forces when requested.

Since the start of negotiations with the Taliban, the U.S. has stepped up its air assaults on the Taliban as well as a local Islamic State affiliate. Last year the U.S. air force dropped more bombs on Afghanistan than in any year since 2013.

Seven days ago, the Taliban began a seven-day “reduction of violence” period, a prerequisite to the peace deal signing.

Gannon reported from Kabul, Afghanistan. Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and Tameem Akhgar in Kabul, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Robert Burns in Washington and Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed.

The planned Feb. 29 signing depends on the success of a week-long nationwide ‘reduction in violence’ agreement in which all sides have committed to end attacks. It is due to start at midnight Friday local time (1930 GMT, 2:30 p.m. EST), according to an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The announcement follows months of negotiations between the two sides that have broken down before. Yet both parties have signaled a desire to halt the fighting that began with the U.S. invasion after the September 11, 2001, attacks by Osama bin Laden’s Afghanistan-based al-Qaida network.

Should the truce stand, the U.S.-Taliban deal would be followed within 10 days by the start of all-Afghan peace talks that could result in the formation of a new government in Kabul, a pledge from the Taliban not to allow terrorist groups to operate in the country, and the phased withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops over 18 months.

The plan is a gamble for Trump, who retweeted several news accounts of the agreement. If it’s successful, he will be able to claim to have taken a first step toward meeting his 2016 campaign pledge to bring American troops home. But if it fails, Trump could be painted by his Democratic adversaries in an election year as being naïve and willing to sacrifice the security of U.S. soldiers and American interests for the sake of political expediency.

For the Taliban, the successful completion of the truce and Afghanistan peace talks would give the group a shot at international legitimacy, which it lacked at the time it ran the country and gave bin Laden and his associates safe haven.

The truce, to be monitored by American forces, will likely be fragile and U.S. officials have noted the possibility that “spoilers” uninterested in peace talks could disrupt it. Determining who is responsible for potential attacks during the seven days will therefore be critical.

Both sides were cautiously optimistic in announcing the agreement that had been previewed a week ago by a senior U.S. official at an international security conference in Munich, Germany. The announcement had been expected shortly thereafter but was delayed in part because of Monday’s release of the results of Afghanistan’s disputed September 2019 elections that showed President Ashraf Ghani winning by an extremely narrow margin.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the peace agreement, to be signed in Doha, Qatar, by U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban representatives, will eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire. The deal also envisions guarantees from the Taliban that Afghanistan will not be used to attack the U.S. or its allies.

“We are preparing for the signing to take place on February 29,” Pompeo said. “Intra-Afghan negotiations will start soon thereafter, and will build on this fundamental step to deliver a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire and the future political road map for Afghanistan.”

The Taliban, meanwhile, said in a statement that the agreement is intended to achieve nationwide peace and and end to the foreign troop presence in the country.

The statement said both sides “will now create a suitable security situation” ahead of the agreement signing date, invite international representatives to a signing ceremony, arrange for the release of prisoners, structure a path for peace talks, “and finally lay the groundwork for peace across the country with the withdrawal of all foreign forces.”

The Taliban added that they will not allow “the land of Afghanistan to be used against security of others so that our people can live a peaceful and prosperous life under the shade of an Islamic system.”

But the road ahead is fraught with difficulties, particularly as some Taliban elements and other groups have shown little interest in negotiations. An attack that killed two Americans last September disrupted what at the time was an expected announcement of a peace deal.

And, it remained unclear who would represent Kabul at the intra-Afghan talks. Ghani’s rivals have disputed the Afghan election commission’s declaration that he won the presidential election.

The Taliban have refused to talk to Ghani’s government and also denounced the election results, saying they will talk to government representatives but only as ordinary Afghans, not as officials. Germany and Norway have both offered to host the all-Afghan talks, but no venue has yet been set.

Pompeo did not say who would represent Kabul, only that talks “will build on this fundamental step to deliver a comprehensive and permanent cease-fire and the future political road map for Afghanistan.”

Under the terms of the ‘’reduction in violence” — which covers all of Afghanistan and also applies to Afghan forces as well as the United States and Taliban — all sides have committed to end attacks for seven days. For the Taliban, that includes roadside bombings, suicide attacks and rocket strikes.

The Taliban military commission issued instructions to its commanders “to stop attacks from Feb. 22 against foreign and Afghan forces until Feb 29.”

The peace deal also calls for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, most of whom are being held by the Afghan government. Although the U.S. has already discussed the prisoner release with government representatives, there has been no public announcement about it from Ghani’s government.

Neighboring Pakistan, which has long been accused of backing the Taliban, welcomed the reduction-in-violence plan.

“’We hope the Afghan parties would now seize this historic opportunity and work out a comprehensive and inclusive political settlement for durable peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region,” said a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement. Pakistan hosts more than 1.4 million Afghan refugees.

During any withdrawal, the U.S. would retain the right to continue counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, which have been focused mainly on an Islamic State group’s affiliate and al-Qaida, according to Pentagon officials.

Ghani said in a statement that “for the week of Taliban’s reduction in violence, our defense and security forces will remain in defensive mode” and continue operations against the Islamic State, al-Qaida “and other terrorist groups except Taliban.”

The Pentagon has declined to say whether the U.S. had agreed to cut its troop levels in Afghanistan to zero. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said if the truce is successful and the Afghan peace talks begin, the U.S. would reduce its troop contingent “over time” to about 8,600. There are more than 12,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Yet Suhail Shaheen, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Doha, tweeted that the Taliban expect a complete withdrawal. In a Pashto language tweet, he said, “based on the agreement with the U.S., all international forces will leave Afghanistan and the invasion will end and no one will be allowed to use Afghan soil against others.”

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the developments. The U.S.-led military alliance has some 16,000 troops in Afghanistan helping to train the country’s security forces, but it could draw down on its operation to accommodate any firm peace agreement. More than 8,000 of these alliance troops are American.

“This is a critical test of the Taliban’s willingness and ability to reduce violence, and contribute to peace in good faith,” Stoltenberg said in a statement. “This could pave the way for negotiations among Afghans, sustainable peace, and ensuring the country is never again a safe haven for terrorists.”

Lee reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Tameem Akhgar in Kabul, Afghanistan, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Lolita Baldor and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

The 2003 “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq had finally stopped. From the balcony of my room in Baghdad’s Al Fanar Hotel, I watched U.S. Marines moving between their jeeps, armored personnel carriers, and Humvees. They had occupied the street immediately in front of the small, family-owned hotel where our Iraq Peace Team had been living for the past six months. Looking upward, a U.S. Marine could see enlarged vinyl photos of beautiful Iraqi children strung across balconies of our fifth-floor rooms. We silently stood on those balconies when the U.S. Marines arrived in Baghdad, holding signs that said “War = Terror” and “Courage for Peace, Not for War.” When she first saw the Marine’s faces, Cynthia Banas commented on how young and tired they seemed. Wearing her “War Is Not the Answer” T-shirt, she headed down the stairs to offer them bottled water.

From my balcony, I saw Cathy Breen, also a member of the Iraq Peace Team, kneeling on a large canvas artwork entrusted to us by friends from South Korea. It depicts people suffering from war. Above the people, like a sinister cloud, is a massive heap of weapons. We unrolled it the day the Marines arrived and began to “occupy” this space. Marines carefully avoided driving vehicles over it. Sometimes they would converse with us. Below, Cathy read from a small booklet of daily Scripture passages. A U.S. Marine approached her, knelt down, and apparently asked to pray with her. He placed his hands in hers.

April Hurley, of our team, is a doctor. She was greatly needed in the emergency room of a nearby hospital during the bombing. Drivers would only take her there if she was accompanied by someone they had known for a long time, and so I generally accompanied her. I’d often sit on a bench outside the emergency room while traumatized civilians rushed in with wounded and maimed survivors of the terrifying U.S. aerial bombings. When possible, Cathy Breen and I would take notes at the bedsides of patients, including children, whose bodies had been ripped apart by U.S. bombs.

The ER scenes were gruesome, bloody and utterly tragic. Yet no less unbearable and incomprehensible were the eerily quiet wards we had visited during trips to Iraq from 1996 to 2003, when Voices in the Wilderness had organized 70 delegations to defy the economic sanctions by bringing medicines and medical relief supplies to hospitals in Iraq. Across the country, Iraqi doctors told us the economic war was far worse than even the 1991 Desert Storm bombing.

In pediatrics wards, we saw infants and toddlers whose bodies were wasted from gastrointestinal diseases, cancers, respiratory infections and starvation. Limp, miserable, sometimes gasping for breath, they lay in the arms of their sorrowful mothers, and seemingly no one could stop the U.S. from punishing them to death. “Why?” mothers murmured. Sanctions forbade Iraq to sell its oil. Without oil revenues, how could they purchase desperately needed goods? Iraq’s infrastructure continued to crumble; hospitals became surreal symbols of cruelty where doctors and nurses, bereft of medicines and supplies, couldn’t heal their patients or ease their agonies.

In 1995, UN officials estimated that economic sanctions had directly contributed to the deaths of at least a half-million Iraqi children, under age 5.

Kathy Kelly with children in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 2016 (Provided photo)

The economic war continued for nearly 13 harsh and horrible years.

Shortly after the Marines arrived outside of our hotel, we began hearing ominous reports of potential humanitarian crises developing in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities. A woman who had been in charge of food distribution for her neighborhood, under the “Oil for Food” program, showed us her carefully maintained ledger books and angrily asked how all who had depended on the monthly food basket would now feed their families. Along with food shortages, we heard alarming reports about contaminated water and a possible outbreak of cholera in Basra and Hilla. For weeks, there had been no trash removal. Bombed electrical plants and sanitation facilities had yet to be restored. Iraqis who could help restore the broken infrastructure couldn’t make it through multiple check points to reach their offices; with communication centers bombed, they couldn’t contact colleagues. If the U.S. military hadn’t yet devised a plan for emergency relief, why not temporarily entrust projects to U.N. agencies with long experience of organizing food distribution and health care delivery?

Cathy, who is a nurse, Dr. April Hurley, and Ramzi Kysia, also a member of our group, arranged a meeting with the civil and military operations center, located in the Palestine Hotel, across the street from us. An official there dismissed them as people who didn’t belong there. Before telling them to leave, he did accept a list of our concerns, written on Voices in the Wilderness stationery.

The logo for our stationery reappeared a few hours later, at the entrance to the Palestine Hotel. It was taped to the flap of a cardboard box. Surrounding the logo were seven silver bullets. Written in ball-point pen on the cardboard was a message: “Keep Out.”

In response, Ramzi Kysia wrote a press release headlined: “Heavy-handed & Hopeless, The U.S. Military Doesn’t Know What It’s Doing In Iraq.”

Kathy Kelly holds Shoba at the Chamin-E-Babrak refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, in January 2014, a few days after the child had been saved from a burning tent, during a fire that destroyed much of the camp. (Abdulhai Darya)

In 2008, our group, renamed Voices for Creative Nonviolence, was beginning a walk from Chicago to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. We asked Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid to speak at a “send-off” event. He encouraged and blessed our “Witness Against War” walk  but then surprised us by saying he had never heard us mention the war in Afghanistan, even though people there suffered terribly from aerial bombings, drone attacks, targeted assassinations, night raids and imprisonments. Returning from our walk, we began researching drone warfare, and then created an “Afghan Atrocities List,” on our website, carefully updating it each week with verifiable reports of U.S. attacks against Afghan civilians.

The following year, Joshua Brollier and I headed to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. In Kabul, Afghanistan, we were guests of a deeply respected non-governmental organization Emergency, which has a Surgical Centre for War Victims there.

Filippo, a sturdy young nurse from Italy who was close to completing three terms of service with Emergency, welcomed us. As he filled a huge backpack with medicines and supplies, he described how the hospital personnel managed to reach people in remote villages who have no access to clinics or hospitals. The trip was relatively safe since no one had ever attacked a vehicle marked with the Emergency logo. A driver would take him to one of Emergency’s 41 remote first aid clinics. From there, he would hike further up a mountainside and meet villagers awaiting him and the precious medicines he carried. In a previous visit, after he had completed a term in Afghanistan, he said people had walked four hours in the snow to come and say goodbye to him. “Yes,” he said, “I fell in love.”

How different Filippo’s report was from those compiled in our Afghan Atrocities List. The latter tells about U.S. special operations forces, some of the most highly trained warriors in the world, traveling to remote areas, bursting into homes in the middle of the night, and proceeding to lock the women in one room, handcuff or sometimes hogtie the men, rip apart closets, mattresses and furniture, and then take the men to prisons for interrogation. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch filed chilling reports about torture of Afghan prisoners held by the U.S.

In 2010, two U.S. Veterans for Peace, Ann Wright and Mike Ferner, joined me in Kabul. We visited one of the city’s largest refugee camps. People faced appalling conditions. Over a dozen, including infants, had frozen to death, their families unable to purchase fuel or adequate blankets. When the rain, sleet and snow came, the tents and huts become mired in mud. Earlier, I had met with a young girl there whose arm had been cut off, her uncle told me, by a U.S. drone attack. Her brother, whose spine was injured, huddled under a blanket, inside their tent, visibly shaking.

Opposite the sprawling refugee camp is a huge U.S. military base. Ann and Mike felt outraged over the terrible contrast between the Afghan refugee camp with a soaring population of people displaced by war, and the U.S. base housing military personnel who had ample supplies of food, water, and fuel.

Most of the funds earmarked by the U.S. for reconstruction in Afghanistan have been used to train and equip Afghan Defense and Security forces. My young friends in the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APV) were weary of war and didn’t want military training. Each of them had lost friends and family members because of the war.

In December 2015, I again visited Emergency’s Surgical Centre for War Victims in Kabul, joined by several Afghan Peace Volunteers. We donated blood and then visited with hospital personnel. “Are you still treating any victims of the U.S. bombing in Kunduz?” I asked Luca Radaelli, who coordinates Emergency’s Afghan facilities. He explained how their Kabul hospital was already full when 91 survivors of the U.S. attack on the Kunduz hospital operated by Médecins Sans Frontières were transported for five hours over rough roads to the closest place they could be treated, this surgical center. The Oct. 15 attack had killed at least 42 people, 14 of whom were hospital staff.

Kathy Kelly and Voices in the Wilderness delegation with Afghan Peace Volunteer friends in Bamyan, Afghanistan, in 2010 (Hakim Young)

Even though Kunduz hospital staff had immediately notified the U.S. military, the U.N., and the Afghan government that the U.S. was bombing their hospital, the warplane continued bombing the hospital’s ER and intensive care unit, in 15-minute intervals, for an hour and a half.

Luca introduced our small team to Khalid Ahmed, a former pharmacy student at the Kunduz hospital, who was still recovering. Khalid described the terrible night, his attempt to literally run for his life by sprinting toward the front gate, his agony when he was hit by shrapnel in his spine, and his efforts to reassemble his cell phone — guards had cautioned him to remove the batteries so that he wouldn’t be detected by aerial surveillance — so that he could give a last message to his family, as he began to lose consciousness. Fortunately, his call got through. His father’s relatives raced to the hospital’s front gate and found Khalid in a nearby ditch, unconscious but alive.

Telling his story, Khalid asked the Afghan Peace Volunteers about me. Learning I’m from the U.S., his eyes widened. “Why would your people want to do this to us?” he asks. “We were only trying to help people.”

Images of battered and destroyed hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of hospital personnel trying nevertheless to heal people and save lives, help me retain a basic truth about U.S. wars of choice: We don’t have to be this way.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to uproot entrenched systems, like the military-industrial-congressional-media-Washington, D.C., complex, which involves corporate profits and government jobs. Mainstream media seldom help us recognize ourselves as a menacing, warrior nation. Yet we must look in the mirror held up by historical circumstances if we’re ever to accomplish credible change.

The recently released “Afghanistan Papers” criticize U.S. military and elected officials for misleading the U.S. public by covering up disgraceful military failures in Afghanistan. Pentagon officials were quick to dismiss the critiques, assuring an easily distracted U.S. public that the documents won’t impact U.S. military and foreign policy. Two days later, UNICEF reported that more than 600 Afghan children had died in 2019, because of direct attacks in the war. From 2009 through 2018, almost 6,500 children lost their lives in this war.

Addressing the U.S. Senate and Congress during a visit to Washington, D.C., Pope Francis voiced a simple, conscientious question. “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” Answering his own question, he said: “the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”

What are the lessons learned from the rampage, destruction and cruelty of U.S. wars? I believe the most important lessons are summed up in the quote on Cynthia Banas’s T-shirt as she delivered water to Marines in Baghdad, in April, 2003: “War Is Not the Answer”; and in an updated version of the headline Ramzi Kysia wrote that same month: “Heavy-handed & Hopeless, The US. Military Doesn’t Know What It’s Doing” -in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of its “forever wars.”

• Originally published by National Catholic Reporter

            <p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Friday, January 3rd, 2020 at 10:30pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/afghanistan/" rel="category tag">Afghanistan</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/children/" rel="category tag">Children/Youth</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/middle-east/iraq/" rel="category tag">Iraq</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/afghanistan/kabul/" rel="category tag">Kabul</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/economics/sanctions-economics/" rel="category tag">Sanctions</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/united-states/" rel="category tag">United States</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/united-states/us-lies/" rel="category tag">US Lies</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/united-states/us-media/" rel="category tag">US Media</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/united-states/us-military/" rel="category tag">US Military</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/united-states/us-terrorism/" rel="category tag">US Terrorism</a>. 

“Is the work hard on your body?” I ask.

“Ohhh, yes,” he says, without hesitation.

“Where does it hurt?”

Saabir raises his right hand to give his thin upper arm a couple of squeezes.

Saabir supports the 8 Pashtun family members in their home in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father died from an illness when Saabir was 6, and by age 8, Saabir was working in the streets, transporting items in a wheelbarrow.

A few days ago, the House of the Afghan Parliament approved a law on the protection of children, but it only addresses, in principle, children age 5 and younger. At least a quarter of Afghan children ages 5 to 14 work. With no social safety net, few avenues exist for families to meet basic needs. Given the decades of war, extreme poverty, and the highest number of drug addicts in the world, families in Afghanistan who have lost their breadwinner are often left with two choices: send a child out to work or join the 219 million forcibly displaced migrants, seeking food and physical safety.

A group of Afghan high school and university students, the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs), is taking a step to increase families’ financial security with a program that teaches Afghan teenagers a trade. Instead of calling for a blanket ban on child labor, they believe that if a youth is taught a trade to earn money for food and other necessities, this training may in fact enable that youth to stay in school.

Having studied at the APVs’ Street Kids School for almost two years, Saabir recently joined a course to learn how to repair cell phones. In past years, students at the Street Kids School would receive a monthly food ration of rice, lentils, oil, and other basic food items if they regularly attended the school’s nonviolence and literacy classes, but the APV youth coordinators have decided to shift from running the food distribution program to offering training in livelihood skills.

Twenty-one self-selected students from the Street Kids School age 13 and older, and 3 family members of younger students, are taking the repair course at the private Gharejestan University in Kabul.

During a recent class, some students brought their own cell phones to class, and as in the US, could not resist checking messages as the instructor talked about “factory reset” and “safe mode.” Mohammad Haidary, age 16, sat in the front of the classroom, listening attentively and asking questions. During the first two weeks, Mohammad has learned the parts of a cell phone, the problems that arise when a SIM card is faulty, and how improper language settings can turn recognizable speech in SMS messages to a series of squares and question marks.

Like Saabir, Mohammad started working young, at about age 9 or 10, joining Hazara family members in weaving carpets at home. He is taking the cell phone repair course because he wants to be able to repair his own phone if something goes wrong, or the phones of his friends. The repair shops charge high prices for a simple problem, he says. He also believes he’ll be able to find a better job and be able to keep attending school. “It takes me a month, together with my family members, to weave a carpet,” Mohammad says, often working all day and therefore unable to attend school. “But with the repair of mobile phones, I don’t have to use the whole day, and the income is higher.”

Mohammad values having his own phone to review school lessons shared digitally by his teachers and to listen to downloaded English audio lessons. He agrees with the transition from providing food gifts to teaching a trade: “I may be able to find a job in the future, and that will, in fact, enable me to have an income. . . . With that income, I can also, then, meet my food needs.”

Saabir Gulmadin, left, works with a fellow Street Kids School student during a cell phone repair course at Gharejestan University.

Among the youngest in the repair course is Gul Mohammad Jamshadi, 14, from the Uzbek ethnic group. The cut off is age 13, in part because Afghans would be unlikely to trust in him for a repair if he were much younger.

Gul Mohammad started selling bread in a bakery when he was 8. Now he works in a provisions shop, earning 200 Afghanis per week, about $2.50 US. This weekly pay is just double the cost of what a Kabul repair shop charges to replace a phone charger.

Gul Mohammad Jamshadi, left, solders parts to a motherboard. Mohammad Haidary, wearing a hat, works to his left.

Gul Mohammad works to support his mother, his unmarried sister, and himself. His elder brother was killed, and his father has passed away. He says he doesn’t have the tools or phone parts to practice at home what he learns in class, but he studies his course book.

If children like himself had a choice, Gul Mohammad thinks it better that they be able to study instead of having to work, better if the government would ensure that the needs of children were met. He values an education and doesn’t want to join the estimated 1.6 million addicts in the country. When the course ends, Gul Mohammad plans to work part time repairing phones while continuing in school. “If I don’t study, I could become like some people who stop studying and become addicts and who can’t find any job to support their families.”

            <p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Thursday, January 2nd, 2020 at 10:40pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/afghanistan/" rel="category tag">Afghanistan</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/children/child-labour/" rel="category tag">Child Labour</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/children/" rel="category tag">Children/Youth</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/education/" rel="category tag">Education</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/afghanistan/kabul/" rel="category tag">Kabul</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/education/students/" rel="category tag">Students</a>. 

A cease-fire had been demanded by Washington before any peace agreement could be signed. A peace deal would allow the U.S. to bring home its troops from Afghanistan and end its 18-year military engagement there, America’s longest.

There was no immediate response from Washington.

Related Articles

The U.S. wants any deal to include a promise from the Taliban that Afghanistan would not be used as a base by terrorist groups. The U.S. currently has an estimated 12,000 troops in Afghanistan.

The Taliban chief must approve the cease-fire decision but that was expected. The duration of the cease-fire was not specified but it was suggested it would last for 10 days. It was also not specified when the cease-fire would begin.

Four members of the Taliban negotiating team met for a week with the ruling council before they agreed on the brief cease-fire. The negotiating team returned Sunday to Qatar where the Taliban maintain their political office and where U.S. special peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been holding peace talks with the religious militia since September, 2018.

Talks were suspended in September when both sides seemed on the verge of signing a peace pact. However, a surge in violence in the capital Kabul killed a U.S. soldier, prompting President Donald Trump to declare the deal “dead.” Talks resumed after Trump made a surprise visit to Afghanistan at the end of November announcing the Taliban were ready to talk and agree to a reduction in violence.

Khalilzad returned to Doha at the beginning of December. It was then that he proposed a temporary halt to hostilities to pave the way to an agreement being signed, according to Taliban officials.

Taliban officials familiar with the negotiations spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media outlets.

A key pillar of the agreement, which the U.S. and Taliban have been hammering out for more than a year, is direct negotiations between Afghans on both sides of the conflict.

Those intra-Afghan talks were expected to be held within two weeks of the signing of a U.S.-Taliban peace deal. They will decide what a post-war Afghanistan will look like.

The first item on the agenda is expected to address how to implement a cease-fire between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s National Security Forces. The negotiations, however, were expected to be prickly and will cover a variety of thorny issues, including rights of women, free speech, and changes to the country’s constitution.

The intra-Afghan talks would also lay out the fate of tens of thousands of Taliban fighters and the heavily armed militias belonging to Afghanistan’s warlords. Those warlords have amassed wealth and power since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001 by the U.S.-led coalition. They were removed after Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The Taliban had harbored bin Laden, although there was no indication they were aware of al-Qaida’s plans to attack the United States.

Even as the Taliban were talking about ceasing hostilities, insurgents carried out an attack in northern Afghanistan on Sunday that killed at least 17 local militiamen.

The attack apparently targeted a local militia commander who escaped unharmed, said Jawad Hajri, a spokesman for the governor of Takhar province, where the attack took place late Saturday.

Local Afghan militias commonly operate in remote areas, and are under the command of either the defense or interior ministries.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack.

Last week, a U.S. soldier was killed in combat in the northern Kunduz province. The Taliban claimed they were behind a fatal roadside bombing that targeted American and Afghan forces in Kunduz. The U.S. military said the soldier was not killed in an IED attack but died seizing a Taliban weapon’s cache.

The U.S. military in its daily report of military activity said airstrikes overnight Sunday killed 13 Taliban in attacks throughout the country.

Taliban as well as Afghan National Security Forces aided by U.S. air power have carried out daily attacks against each other

The Taliban frequently target Afghan and U.S. forces, as well as government officials. But scores of Afghan civilians are also killed in the cross-fire or by roadside bombs planted by militants. The United Nations has called on all sides in the conflict to reduce civilian casualties. The world body said increased U.S. airstrikes and ground operations by Afghan National Security Forces, as well as relentless Taliban attacks, have contributed to an increase in civilian casualties.

Last year, Afghanistan was the world’s deadliest conflict.

Gannon reported from Islamabad.

The just published The Washington Post report – “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war, At war with the truth”, (by Craig Whitlock, December 9, 2019) – carries the story of this limit. It’s, to some, a story of corruption. To another section, the war is mismanaged, which is inefficiency, wrong planning, etc. But, the root of the failure is in the deep: Imperialism’s characteristic.

The 18 years long war with nearly $1 trillion taxpayers’ money is costlier as the US people lost 2,300 of their citizens – US troops. More than 20,000 US troops were injured in the war. And, since 2001, more than 775,000 US troops have deployed to Afghanistan. Three US presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and their military commanders tried/are trying to win the Afghan war.

Citing the WaPo report, Slate in its report “The War in Afghanistan was Doomed from the start, The main culprit? Corruption” (by Fred Kaplan on December 9, 2019) said:

The war in Afghanistan has been a muddle from the beginning, steered by vague and wavering strategies, fueled by falsely rosy reports of progress from the battlefield, and almost certainly doomed to failure all along.

This is the inescapable conclusion of a secret U.S. government history of the war — consisting of 2,000 pages, based on interviews with more than 400 participants — obtained and published by The Washington Post on December 9, 2019 after years of legal battles to declassify the documents.

Written by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an agency created by Congress in 2008 to investigate waste and fraud, the report, titled Lessons Learned, is the most thorough official critique of an ongoing American war since the Vietnam War review commissioned in 1967 by then – Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

The Afghan War Doc, if it may be dubbed in this way, is a significant document for studying imperialism that exposes its inner working system, its character and a number of its weaknesses. It’s not only an exposure of the national security bureaucracy of the state waging the war; it’s also a revelation of the state – the way the state perceives, thinks, analyzes, calculates, plans, acts. It points its fingers to the politics and political process of the state involved before pointing fingers to the national security bureaucracy; because this bureaucracy can’t move a millimeter in any direction without directives from any faction of the political leadership of the state, and all the factions of the political leadership move along the routes the political process permits.

Citing the WaPo report, the Slate report said: The war has been “built on ignorance, lies, and counterproductive policies.”

No state intentionally or deliberately wages war on ignorance, lies and counterproductive policies. The state machine’s inherent process produces ignorance, lies, etc. It means somewhere in the machine lies are produced, ignorance is manufactured, and the machine perceives lies, etc. are beneficial to it. Where’s this “somewhere”? How it survives and operates with lies, corruption, etc.? The bourgeois politicians, academia, its theoreticians don’t look into this “somewhere”, into this process of manufacturing ignorance, lies, corruption.

Slate said in its report:

Central to the current war effort — and to its failure — was corruption. [….] The United States failed because the billions of dollars we poured into the country only made Afghanistan’s corruption worse.

A state machine, most powerful in today’s world as is widely perceived, fails to check corruption in the machine it has constructed in the land – Afghanistan – it’s waging its longest war! It’s a “riddle” – money poured to win a war, and the money is eating out the war-effort. The state fails to manage either money or war. In spite of this fact of failure, the state dreams to dictate the world!

The WaPo report said:

[S]enior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth […] making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

It was lying to the taxpayers, the citizens employing the officials to carry on duties the citizens entrusted to the officials. And, the state can’t control the lying business. It’s the state’s failure – a few persons employed by the state were misleading the state and the entire body of the taxpayers, and the state is not a lifeless identity as there are hundreds of intelligent persons including veteran politicians. And, the state machine is not separate from these persons – officials and political leaders in charge of the affairs. Alternatively, there’s something else behind this deliberate job of “deviating” from truth, if it’s deviation, if not usual practice, which is not. Any of the two is serious failure, fatal ultimately, if this – deviation from truth – is the case.

The documents, according to the WaPo, were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in US history. The US government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The WaPo won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle. It took three years and two federal lawsuits for the WaPo to pry loose 2,000 pages of interview records. US officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it. It shows bourgeois state is not inherently and always transparent. State machine serving a class can never be always transparent. Moreover, who decides what to release publicly or not? Isn’t it a group of officials? Marxist political scientists already discussed this issue – role of executive – many times. Thus, they – the officials – stand above taxpayers, citizens.

The documents show:

1. Bush and Obama had polar-opposite plans to win the war. Both were destined to fail.
2. Despite vows the US wouldn’t get mired in “nation-building” in Afghanistan, it has wasted billions doing just that. The US has allocated more than $133 billion to build up Afghanistan — more than it spent, adjusted for inflation, to revive the whole of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II. An unidentified former State Department official told government interviewers in 2015: “The timeframe for creating a strong central government is 100 years, which we didn’t have.”
3. The US flooded the country with money — then ignored the graft it fueled.
4. Afghan security forces, despite years of training, were dogged by incompetence and corruption.
5. The US war on drugs in Afghanistan has imploded at nearly every turn.
6. The US government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war, but the costs are staggering.
7. US officials acknowledged that their war strategies were fatally flawed.

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan — we didn’t know what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.”

“If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction . . . 2,400 lives lost,” Lute added, blaming the deaths of US military personnel on bureaucratic breakdowns among Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

So, it’s found:

1. Lack of knowledge! [Unbelievable in the case of the state widely perceived as the most powerful in the world.]
2. No comprehensive war plan! [Also unbelievable.]
3. No accounting! [How much money the taxpayers spent behind inspectors to check with spending? A lot.]
4. The US people were not aware of the real picture. What’s the level of transparency, accountability, and the media claiming to be free? [The WaPo’s legal struggle to get the documents is evidence of “free” flow of info, and the decisive role of the executive branch.]
5. A breakdown within the system of Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department – a system with elected politicians and employed persons.

Then, what does this signify? Is it a powerful, vibrant, working system? Only fools keep trust on this machine, which appears, with a shortsighted view, very powerful, but very weak to its core in the long-term.

Since 2001, the US Defense Department, State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, according to an inflation-adjusted estimate calculated by Neta Crawford, a political science professor and co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University. These figures do not include money spent by other agencies including the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?” Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers. He added, “After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.”

The documents, the WaPo report said, also contradict a long chorus of public statements from US presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured the US taxpayers year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.

The report said:

Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the US government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case. [Emphasis added.]

‘Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,’ Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to US military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. ‘Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.’ [Emphasis added.]

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show ‘the American people have constantly been lied to. [Emphasis added.]

Diplomats and envoys from this state constantly advise Third and Fourth World countries to be factual regarding all aspects of life in these countries. Do they have any moral ground for delivering this sort of sermon? Neither the mainstream politics nor the MSM in these countries raise this question when these diplomats shower sermons; even a group of the organizations and persons claiming to be anti-imperialist feel shy to raise the question.

The interviews are the byproduct of a project led by Sopko’s agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the agency the US Congress created in 2008 to investigate waste and fraud in the war zone. Reports SIGAR produced, said WaPo, were “written in dense bureaucratic prose and focused on an alphabet soup of government initiatives, left out the harshest and most frank criticisms from the interviews.”

The reports omitted the names of more than 90 percent of the people interviewed. While a few officials agreed to speak on the record to SIGAR, the agency said it promised anonymity to everyone else it interviewed to avoid controversy over politically sensitive matters.

James Dobbins, a former senior US diplomat who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan under Bush and Obama, told government interviewers: “[W]e clearly failed in Afghanistan.”

The WaPo obtained hundreds of pages of previously classified memos about the Afghan war that were dictated by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld between 2001 and 2006. Dubbed “snowflakes” by Rumsfeld and his staff, according to the WaPo, “the memos are brief instructions or comments that the Pentagon boss dictated to his underlings, often several times a day. Most of his snowflake collection — an estimated 59,000 pages — remained secret.”

Bourgeois state business is mostly secretive until it gets pressure to act in another way although its propaganda machine relentlessly sings the opposite song.

The report said:

Fundamental disagreements went unresolved. Some U.S. officials wanted to [….] to reshape the regional balance of power among Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia.

No confusion in finding a great game – an imperialist strategy.

The interviews reveal US military commanders’ struggle to identify their enemy and the logic behind their war:

Was al-Qaeda the enemy, or the Taliban? Was Pakistan a friend or an adversary? What about the Islamic State and the bewildering array of foreign jihadists, let alone the warlords on the CIA’s payroll?

According to the documents, the US government never settled on an answer.

As a result, in the field, U.S. troops often couldn’t tell friend from foe.

They thought I was going to come to them with a map to show them where the good guys and bad guys live,” an unnamed former adviser to an Army Special Forces team told government interviewers in 2017. “It took several conversations for them to understand that I did not have that information in my hands. At first, they just kept asking: ‘But who are the bad guys, where are they?’

The view wasn’t any clearer from the Pentagon.

“I have no visibility into who the bad guys are,” Rumsfeld complained in a September 8, 2003, snowflake. “We are woefully deficient in human intelligence.”

It seems the machine is blind. And, it’s not the war machine that appears blind, but the state running the war machine. And, in ultimate analysis, the state machine and the war machine are not separate identities. In actual sense, the machine isn’t blind; it has no alternative other than acting blindly. And, humans direct the machine. So, the flaw is not of the machine. It’s the human identities that have to act in that way.

During the peak of the fighting from 2009 to 2012, the report said, “US lawmakers and military commanders believed the more they spent on schools, bridges, canals and other civil-works projects, the faster security would improve. Aid workers told government interviewers it was a colossal misjudgment, akin to pumping kerosene on a dying campfire just to keep the flame alive.”

One unnamed executive with the USAID guessed that 90 percent of the money they spent was overkill: “We lost objectivity. We were given money, told to spend it and we did, without reason.”

Many aid workers blamed the US Congress for what they saw as a mindless rush to spend.

One unidentified contractor told government interviewers he was expected to dole out $3 million daily for projects in a single Afghan district roughly the size of a US county. He once asked a visiting congressman whether the lawmaker could responsibly spend that kind of money back home: “He said hell no. ‘Well, sir, that’s what you just obligated us to spend and I’m doing it for communities that live in mud huts with no windows.’”

The huge aid that Washington spent on Afghanistan also gave rise to historic levels of corruption.

In public, US officials insisted they had no tolerance for graft. But they admitted the US government looked the other way while Afghan power brokers – allies of Washington – plundered with impunity.

Christopher Kolenda, an Army colonel who deployed to Afghanistan several times and advised three US generals in charge of the war, said that the Afghan government led by President Karzai had “self-organized into a kleptocracy” by 2006 – and that US officials failed to recognize the lethal threat it posed to their strategy.

Kolenda added, “Foreign aid is part of how” the Afghan kleptocrats “get rents to pay for the positions they purchased.”

Kolenda told government interviewers: “Kleptocracy, however, is like brain cancer; it’s fatal.”

By allowing corruption to fester, US officials told interviewers, they helped destroy the popular legitimacy of the Afghan government they were fighting to prop up. With judges and police chiefs and bureaucrats extorting bribes, many Afghans soured on democracy and turned to the Taliban to enforce order.

“Our biggest single project, sadly and inadvertently, of course, may have been the development of mass corruption,” Crocker, who served as the top US diplomat in Kabul in 2002 and again from 2011 to 2012, told government interviewers.

In China, the US had almost the same experience with Chiang while they – Chiang and the US – were fighting the Chinese people under the leadership of Mao.

Year after year, US generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train an Afghan army and police force capable of defending the country without foreign help.

In the interviews, however, US military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid by US taxpayers — for tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers.”

More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that US commanders have called unsustainable, said the report.

A US military officer estimated that one-third of police recruits were “drug addicts or Taliban.” Yet another called them “stealing fools” who looted so much fuel from US bases that they perpetually smelled of gasoline.

With this force, imperialism can’t win its war.

The report said:

Afghanistan became the world’s leading source of opium. The US has spent about $9 billion to fight the problem over the past 18 years, but Afghan farmers are cultivating more opium poppies than ever. Last year, Afghanistan was responsible for 82 percent of global opium production, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Former officials said almost everything they did to constrain opium farming backfired. Douglas Lute, the White House’s Afghan war czar from 2007 to 2013, said: “I thought we should have specified a flourishing drug trade – this is the only part of the market that’s working.”

Bravo, enterprise with drug trade! And, they instruct and accuse many countries about drug dealings.

The report finds:

US never figured out ways to incorporate a war on drugs into its war against al-Qaeda. By 2006, US officials feared that narco-traffickers had become stronger than the Afghan government and that money from the drug trade was powering the insurgency.

Their drug-war is an amazing story: At first, Afghan poppy farmers were paid by the British state to destroy their crops, which only encouraged them to grow more the next season. Later, the US government eradicated poppy fields without compensation, which only infuriated farmers and encouraged them to side with the Taliban.

An intelligent brain they have!

US military officials, according to the report, have resorted to an old tactic from Vietnam – manipulating public opinion. In news conferences and other public appearances, those in charge of the war have followed the same talking points for 18 years. No matter how the war is going, they emphasized that they were making progress.

Rumsfeld had received a string of unusually dire warnings from the war zone in 2006. After returning from a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army general, reported the Taliban had made an impressive comeback: “[W]e will encounter some very unpleasant surprises in the coming 24 months.” “The Afghan national leadership are collectively terrified that we will tip-toe out of Afghanistan […] and the whole thing will collapse again into mayhem,” McCaffrey wrote in June 2006. Two months later, Marin Strmecki, a civilian adviser to Rumsfeld, gave the Pentagon chief a classified, 40-page report stuffed with worse news. It said “enormous popular discontent is building” against the Afghan government because of its corruption and incompetence. It also said that the Taliban was growing stronger, thanks to support from Pakistan, a US ally.

Yet with Rumsfeld’s personal blessing, the Pentagon buried the bleak warnings and told the public a very different story.

In October 2006, Rumsfeld’s speechwriters delivered a paper – “Afghanistan: Five Years Later.” Overflowing with optimism, it highlighted more than 50 promising facts and figures, from the number of Afghan women trained in “improved poultry management” (more than 19,000) to the “average speed on most roads” (up 300 percent).

“Five years on, there is a multitude of good news,” it read. “While it has become fashionable in some circles to call Afghanistan a forgotten war, or to say the United States has lost its focus, the facts belie the myths.”

Rumsfeld thought it was brilliant.

“This paper,” he wrote in a memo, “is an excellent piece. How do we use it? Should it be an article? An Op-ed piece? A handout? A press briefing? All of the above? I think it ought to get it to a lot of people.”

His staffers made sure it did. They circulated a version to reporters and posted it on Pentagon websites. Generals followed their boss: Present picture of “progress” in the war front.

Thus, they market “facts”, and groups of politicians in countries rely on them.

During US’ Vietnam War, it was the same story. The report recollected:

US military commanders relied on dubious measurements to persuade Americans that they were winning.

Most notoriously, the Pentagon highlighted ‘body counts,’ or the number of enemy fighters killed, and inflated the figures as a measurement of success.

In Afghanistan, with occasional exceptions, the U.S. military has generally avoided publicizing body counts. […] [T]he government routinely touted statistics that officials knew were distorted, spurious or downright false.

Since 2001, an estimated 157,000 people have been killed in the war in Afghanistan. This includes Afghan civilians and security forces, humanitarian aid workers, Taliban fighters and other insurgents, US military contractors, journalists and media workers, US military personnel, NATO and coalition troops.

A person identified only as a senior National Security Council official said there was constant pressure from the Obama White House and Pentagon to produce figures to show the troop surge of 2009 to 2011 was working, despite hard evidence to the contrary, said the report.

“It was impossible to create good metrics. We tried using troop numbers trained, violence levels, control of territory and none of it painted an accurate picture,” the senior NSC official told government interviewers in 2016. “The metrics were always manipulated for the duration of the war.”

Even when casualty counts and other figures looked bad, the senior NSC official said, the White House and Pentagon would spin them to the point of absurdity. Suicide bombings in Kabul were portrayed as a sign of the Taliban’s desperation, that the insurgents were too weak to engage in direct combat. Meanwhile, a rise in US troop deaths was cited as proof that American forces were taking the fight to the enemy.

In other field reports sent up the chain of command, military officers and diplomats took the same line. Regardless of conditions on the ground, they claimed they were making progress.

“From the ambassadors down to the low level, [they all say] we are doing a great job,” Michael Flynn, a retired three-star Army general, told government interviewers in 2015. “Really? So if we are doing such a great job, why does it feel like we are losing?”

Bob Crowley, the retired Army colonel who served as a counterinsurgency adviser in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers “truth was rarely welcome” at military headquarters in Kabul.

“Bad news was often stifled,” he said. “There was more freedom to share bad news if it was small – we’re running over kids with our MRAPs [armored vehicles] – because those things could be changed with policy directives. But when we tried to air larger strategic concerns about the willingness, capacity or corruption of the Afghan government, it was clear it wasn’t welcome.”

John Garofano, a Naval War College strategist who advised Marines in Helmand province in 2011, said military officials in the field devoted an inordinate amount of resources to churning out color-coded charts that heralded positive results.

But, Garofano said, nobody dared to question whether the charts and numbers were credible or meaningful.

“There was not a willingness to answer questions such as, what is the meaning of this number of schools that you have built? How has that progressed you towards your goal?” he said. “How do you show this as evidence of success and not just evidence of effort or evidence of just doing a good thing?”

Other senior officials said they placed great importance on one statistic in particular, albeit one the US government rarely likes to discuss in public.

“I do think the key benchmark is the one I’ve suggested, which is how many Afghans are getting killed,” James Dobbins, the former US diplomat, told a Senate panel in 2009. “If the number’s going up, you’re losing. If the number’s going down, you’re winning. It’s as simple as that.”

What are these: War-facts? Is this the way public is informed? Is this the way public are informed in a “free” society that claims fostering of free flow of information? Why facts are manipulated? It’s the fear of public, and public opinion. Imperialism fears public and public opinion, at home and abroad.

Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, told the investigators in a 2016 interview, “You just cannot put those amounts of money into a very fragile state and society, and not have it fuel corruption.” He added that the same thing happened in Iraq, where corruption is “pandemic and deeply rooted” and where “it’s hard to see how a better political order can ever be established.”

A big problem, Crocker said, was a perennial “American urge,” when intervening in a foreign conflict, to “start fixing everything as fast as we can.” Pouring in billions of dollars, and that flows in the pockets of the powerful. The report estimates that 40 percent of US aid to Afghanistan was pocketed by officials, gangsters, or the insurgents.

Sarah Chayes, who served as an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and who lived in Afghanistan for several years, told the investigators in 2015 that the problem was rooted in Washington. A major obstacle here, she said, was the “culture” in the State Department and the Pentagon, which focused on building relationships with their counterparts abroad. Since Afghan officials at all levels were corrupt, officials feared that going after corruption would endanger those relationships.

Chayes also said it was a big mistake to be “obsessed with chasing” the Taliban, to the point of neglecting the country’s political dynamics. We didn’t realize that many Afghans were “thrilled with the Taliban” for kicking corrupt warlords out of power. Instead, we aligned ourselves with the warlords, on the adage that “the enemy of our enemy is our friend”—and, as a result, further alienated the Afghan people and further enriched the corrupt powers, which in turn further inflamed the anti-government terrorists.

It’s a question that why a political leadership was moving in the way while a number of officials were identifying the problem realistically: Neglecting the political dynamics?

In September 2009, as the Obama administration was debating a new policy toward the Afghanistan war, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified at a Senate hearing that the main problem “is clearly the lack of legitimacy of the government” in Kabul.

Senator Lindsey Graham pushed the issue. “We could send a million troops, and that wouldn’t restore legitimacy in the government?” he asked.

“That is correct,” Mullen replied. The threat of corruption, he added, “is every bit as significant as the Taliban.”

Around this same time, during the closed-door National Security Council sessions, Mullen was urging then-president Obama to create a counterinsurgency strategy based on helping the Afghan government win the hearts and minds of its people – not addressing how to do this, if the government lacked legitimacy.

Almost all of Obama’s advisers sided with Mullen, a notable exception being then-vice president Joe Biden, who thought counterinsurgency wouldn’t work.

It’s impossible for imperialism to win hearts and minds of a people against whom it wages war while it depends on corrupt allies.

When General David Petraeus became commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2010, he appointed an anti-corruption task force. Sarah Chayes was one of its members. The task force concluded that corruption, from Kabul on down, was impeding the war effort and that the U.S. should cut off aid to the entire network of corruption. Petraeus sympathized with the findings, but he needed then-Afghan president Karzai’s cooperation to fight the war at all, and so he rejected the recommendation.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

However, the Pentagon released a statement saying there has been “no intent” by the department to mislead Congress or the public.

On October 11, 2001, a few days after the US started bombing the Taliban, a reporter asked Bush: “Can you avoid being drawn into a Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan?”

“We learned some very important lessons in Vietnam,” Bush replied confidently. “People often ask me, ‘How long will this last?’ This particular battlefront will last as long as it takes to bring al-Qaeda to justice. It may happen tomorrow, it may happen a month from now, it may take a year or two. But we will prevail.”

“All together now – quagmire!” Rumsfeld joked at a news conference on November 27, 2001.

“The days of providing a blank check are over. . . . It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan,” said then-president Barack Obama, in a speech at the US Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

“Are we losing this war? Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way,” said Army Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, in a news briefing from Afghanistan.

But, what does the reality say today?

1. Afghanistan is a quagmire for the US.
2. Lessons from Vietnam have not been learned by the US.
3. US hirelings in Afghanistan are failing to take responsibility of their security.
4. US is not winning its Afghan War.

The questions are

1. Why imperialism is failing to learn the Vietnam-lesson?
2. Why imperialism is bogged down in its Afghan-quagmire?
3. Why imperialism’s hirelings are failing to take charge of its security?
4. Why imperialism is embedded with its Afghan-corruption?
5. Why such manipulation of facts while presenting Afghan-picture to its public?

The brief answer to the questions is: These are part of imperialism’s working mechanism, which its economic interests define.

It can’t move away despite rationality tells differently. Imperialism has its own rationality, which is fundamentally different from rationality of other economic interests. It has to depend on its hirelings. It can’t depend on others. That’s because of economic interests. Moreover, the way taxpayers see reality is completely different from the way imperialism sees. Imperialism’s way of looking at incidents and processes are determined by its interests; and it’s impossible for imperialism to ignore its interests, which makes it impossible to act differently. And, this doesn’t depend on personal choice/preference or characteristics of this or that political leader.

Imperialism’s Afghan War is not a war conducted by the US only. There’s involvement of other NATO powers. Keeping this – the NATO’s Afghan War – in mind helps perceive the imperialist system’s involvement and failure in the country. It’s not the US’ war only. It’s imperialism’s war against a people; and a war, which is part of imperialism’s world strategy.

The failures, the lies, the manipulation with facts, the “non”-understanding with political dynamics are not of a few persons/generals/bureaucrats/politicians, or of a single imperialist country. It’s part of a political process that connects a particular type of economic interest ingrained among armaments industry, military contractors, suppliers of military hardware, lobbying firms, political interests bent on dominating others for self-interests, and thus making a system with complex connections, a system based on particular characteristics of an economy.

Only a people politically organized and mobilized can change this course of imperialism if imperialism is correctly identified with all its characteristics. And, in today’s world, it’s difficult to perceive any people’s struggle without taking into consideration imperialism’s anti-people role.

            <p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Tuesday, December 17th, 2019 at 3:56pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/afghanistan/" rel="category tag">Afghanistan</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/corruption/" rel="category tag">Corruption</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/imperialism/" rel="category tag">Imperialism</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/afghanistan/kabul/" rel="category tag">Kabul</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/lies/" rel="category tag">Lies</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/militarism/" rel="category tag">Militarism</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/militarism/nato/" rel="category tag">NATO</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/afghanistan/taliban/" rel="category tag">Taliban</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/united-states/us-military/" rel="category tag">US Military</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/war/" rel="category tag">War</a>.