Quotes of the Day:
“The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.”
- Joyce Carol Oates
“We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost."
- Karl Kraus
1. Biden vows to evacuate all Americans -- and Afghan helpers
2. Are US citizens being asked to pay $2,000 for evacuation flights out of Kabul?
3. David Petraeus on American Mistakes in Afghanistan
4. US Helicopters Rescued 169 Americans Outside Airport; More Ops Could Follow
5. State Dept. will not charge for evacuation flights from Afghanistan
6. U.S. helicopters at Kabul airport flew outside the gates to bring Americans to safety
7. US general tells British special forces: Stop rescuing people in Kabul, you're making us look bad
8. Son of anti-Taliban fighter calls for US weapons assistance
9. More Americans now say government should take steps to restrict false information online than in 2018
10. I was in Kabul when it fell to the Taliban. The speed of the collapse stunned me | Franz J Marty
11. Army Eyes Intelligence Community Campus at Fort Belvoir North Area
12. Rare earth trillions lure China to Afghanistan's new Great Game
13. The intelligence community's silence is deafening
14. Here’s How the US Could Get Afghanistan Evacuees to the United States More Quickly
15. Taliban Takeover Brings Cheers, Fears to SE Asia and Bangladesh
16. Amanda Gorman and Kate Winslet join advocates urging Biden to protect Afghan women
17. Will the Next American War Be with China?
18. This Navy captain is now the first woman commanding a nuclear aircraft carrier
19. Germany Sending Special Ops Helicopters To Kabul To Rescue Evacuees Outside The Airport (Updated)
20. A New York Times reporter and former Marine who evacuated Kabul flew back to help his Afghan colleagues escape the Taliban
21. Where’s Biden’s Plan to Stop Terrorism?
22. ‘We mishandled this so dramatically’: Trump acting SECDEF Chris Miller on US withdrawal from Afghanistan
23. Don Bolduc calls Afghanistan exit a 'geopolitical disaster of unparalleled proportions'
24. Biden Insiders: Our Afghanistan Exit Is a Part of a Much Bigger Reset
25. The Right and Our Afghan Allies (Wall Street Journal Editorial Board)
26. Protests in Pakistan erupt against China’s belt and road plan
27. The Taliban Are Promising Inclusivity and Amnesty in Afghanistan. But Some Officials Predict Bloodshed
28. The School That Built Asia
29. Anti-Taliban resistance makes modest gains outside Panjshir | FDD's Long War Journal
30. Veterans who once sought ‘hearts and minds’ in Afghanistan must now mend their own
1. Biden vows to evacuate all Americans -- and Afghan helpers
Note this excerpt:
Senior American military officials told the AP that an American CH-47 Chinook helicopter picked up Afghans, mostly women and children, and ferried them to Hamid Karzai International Airport on Friday. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division airlifted the Afghans from Camp Sullivan, near the Kabul airport.
The officials said such sorties have been underway for several days from various points in Kabul as Afghans seek to flee the country taken over by the Taliban. Intelligence teams inside Kabul are helping guide both Americans and Afghans and their families to the airport or are arranging for them to be rescued by other means.
For those living in cities and provinces outside Kabul, CIA case officers, special operation forces and agents from the Defense Intelligence Agency on the ground are gathering some U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for the U.S. at predetermined pick-up sites.
The officials would not detail where these airlift sites were for security reasons. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing operations.
Biden vows to evacuate all Americans -- and Afghan helpers
By ZEKE MILLER, ELLEN KNICKMEYER, ROBERT BURNS and MATTHEW LEE
21 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden pledged firmly on Friday to bring all Americans home from Afghanistan — and all Afghans who aided the war effort, too — as officials confirmed that U..S. military helicopters were flying into Taliban-held Kabul to scoop up would-be evacuees.
But Biden’s promises, and the limited U.S. helicopter sorties beyond the concrete barriers ringing the Kabul airport, came as thousands more Americans and others seeking to escape the Taliban struggled to get past crushing crowds, Taliban airport checkpoints and sometimes-insurmountable U.S. bureaucracy.
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Biden’s comments, delivered at the White House, were intended to project purpose and stability at the conclusion of a week during which images from Afghanistan more often suggested chaos, especially at the airport.
His commitment to find a way out for Afghan allies vulnerable to Taliban attacks amounted to a potentially vast expansion of Washington’s promises, given the tens of thousands of translators and other helpers, and their close family members, seeking evacuation.
“We’re making the same commitment” to Afghan wartime helpers as to U.S. citizens, Biden said, offering the prospect of assistance to Afghans who largely have been fighting individual battles to get the documents and passage into the airport that they need to leave. He called the Afghan allies “equally important” in the evacuations.
Meanwhile, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had disconcerting news for the lawmakers he briefed on Friday, confirming that Americans are among those who have been beaten by the Taliban at airport checkpoints.
Biden is facing continuing criticism as videos and news reports depict pandemonium and occasional violence outside the airport.
“I made the decision” on the timing of the U.S. withdrawal, he said, his tone firm as he declared that it was going to lead to difficult scenes, no matter when. Former President Donald Trump had set it for May in negotiations with the Taliban, but Biden extended it.
Thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw most remaining U.S. troops. Flights were stopped for several hours on Friday because of a backup at a transit point for the refugees, a U.S. airbase in Qatar, but they resumed in the afternoon, including to Bahrain.
A defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes, guarded by a temporary U.S. military deployment that’s building to 6,000 troops. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.
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Senior American military officials told the AP that an American CH-47 Chinook helicopter picked up Afghans, mostly women and children, and ferried them to Hamid Karzai International Airport on Friday. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division airlifted the Afghans from Camp Sullivan, near the Kabul airport.
The officials said such sorties have been underway for several days from various points in Kabul as Afghans seek to flee the country taken over by the Taliban. Intelligence teams inside Kabul are helping guide both Americans and Afghans and their families to the airport or are arranging for them to be rescued by other means.
For those living in cities and provinces outside Kabul, CIA case officers, special operation forces and agents from the Defense Intelligence Agency on the ground are gathering some U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for the U.S. at predetermined pick-up sites.
The officials would not detail where these airlift sites were for security reasons. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing operations.
In Washington, some veterans in Congress were calling on the Biden administration to extend a security perimeter beyond the Kabul airport so more Afghans could get through.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said a “small number” of U.S. troops did go outside the perimeter a short distance for a “short amount of time” to help bring in 169 people, but gave no details. Those were Americans, Biden said. The administration has said it’s not capable at current deployment levels in Kabul of bringing order to the chaos.
The lawmakers also said they want Biden to make clearer that the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops is not a firm one.
The deadline “is contributing to the chaos and the panic at the airport because you have Afghans who think that they have 10 days to get out of this country or that door is closing forever,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who served in Iraq and also worked in Afghanistan to help aid workers provide humanitarian relief.
With mobs of people outside the airport and Taliban fighters ringing its perimeter, the U.S. renewed its advisory to Americans and others that it could not guarantee safe passage for any of those desperately seeking seats on the planes inside. The Taliban are regularly firing into the air to try to control the crowds, sending men, women and children running.
The advisory captured some of the pandemonium, and what many Afghans and foreigners see as their life-and-death struggle to get inside. It said: “We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open.”
While Biden has previously blamed Afghans for the U.S. failure to get out more allies ahead of this month’s sudden Taliban takeover, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that American diplomats had formally urged weeks ago that the administration ramp up evacuation efforts.
Biden said Friday he had gotten a wide variety of time estimates, though all were pessimistic about the Afghan government surviving.
He has said he was following the advice of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, in not earlier expanding U.S. efforts to fly out translators and other endangered Afghans. Ghani fled the country last weekend as the Taliban seized the capital.
Biden has also said that many at-risk Afghan allies had not wanted to leave the country. But refugee groups point to yearslong backlogs of applications from thousands of those Afghans for visas that would let them take refuge in the United States.
Afghans and the Americans trying to help them also say the administration has clung to visa requirements for would-be evacuees that involve more than a dozen steps, and can take years to complete. Those often have included requirements that the Taliban sweep has made dangerous or impossible — such as requiring Afghans to go to a third-country to apply for a U.S. visa, and produce paperwork showing their work with Americans.
___
Associated Press reporters Josh Boak, Lolita C. Baldor and Kevin Freking contributed from Washington, James LaPorta from Boca Raton, Florida.
2. Are US citizens being asked to pay $2,000 for evacuation flights out of Kabul?
Funny story. We supported rewards for justice and we killed two major ASG leaders in the Philippines each with a $5 million reward. We had never paid a reward before but there were a number of informants that provided valuable information. The ambassador wanted to pay them So we asked Attes for the funds.
They said they did not have the funds available. We had conducted a NEO from Lebanon in 2006 and we demanded the AMCITS pay the travel expenses. This caused quite a stir and State had to backtrack. However the funds had to be reimbursed to USTRANSCOM. Since no one had used the funds in the rewards for justice pot of money State used it to repay TRANSCOM. When we asked for the funds there were none and they asked us if we could the informants to accept annuities. Of course that was unacceptable and it took us about 5 months to finally get them money to pay out the rewards.
I am sure the same thing will happen here.
Are US citizens being asked to pay $2,000 for evacuation flights out of Kabul?
After the State Department issued an alert over the weekend saying U.S. citizens could have to pay $2,000 or more for evacuation flights out of Afghanistan, a report indicated people hoping to escape are being asked to pay up.
Although U.S. officials told Politico evacuation flights out of Kabul would be free, its National Security Daily newsletter reported some sources said otherwise, including one who said State Department staff were asking for up to $2,000 per U.S. citizen and more from noncitizens.
But, in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner on Thursday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said, “In these unique circumstances, we have no intention of seeking any reimbursement from those fleeing Afghanistan.”
A security alert published on the website of the Overseas Security Advisory Council, part of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was issued over the weekend on "repatriation assistance" for U.S. citizens in Afghanistan. The bulletin published on Saturday — one day before the Taliban swept into Kabul and Hamid Karzai International Airport became a chaotic scene of crowds desperately trying to escape Kabul — encouraged U.S. citizens to take advantage of commercial flights while they remained an option, offering guidance on eligibility requirements for those who sought charter flights.
One part of the alert said: "Repatriation flights are not free, and passengers will be required to sign a promissory loan agreement and may not be eligible to renew their U.S. passports until the loan is repaid. The cost may be $2,000USD or more per person."
A separate State Department webpage , which focuses on crisis situations, also said that generally, such flights would not be free.
"In extreme situations, if there are no commercial transportation options (planes, trains, boats/ferries, etc.) available, and if we have consular officers at the embassy or consulate, and if the conditions permit, we may help U.S. citizens seeking to depart by working with the host government, other countries, and other U.S. government agencies to identify — and in some cases arrange — available transportation. Regardless of the method of transportation, or who provides it, U.S. citizens (and others who are eligible for U.S. government assistance) are generally responsible for reimbursing the government for the cost of their travel," the page says.
The second page of the form tells each applicant that evacuation flights are not free and the cost could exceed $2,000 per person. Each U.S. citizen is prompted to fill out a checklist to say he or she understands the conditions or chooses not to continue with filling out the form.
“All passengers will need to reimburse the U.S. Government for the flight. A promissory note for the full cost of the flight, which may exceed $2000 per person, must be signed by each adult passenger before boarding,” the form says. “No cash or credit card payments will be accepted.”
The next question addresses loan repayment, stating that U.S. citizens "who have signed a loan agreement for repatriation may not be eligible for a new passport until the loan is repaid."
The form was still accessible and live on the webpage for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as of late Thursday evening, the Daily Caller reported . The Washington Examiner found an information page on the State Department's main website dated Thursday that also directed people to fill out the form.
Prior to the statement by Price, Politico reported a spokesperson for the State Department did not deny that U.S. citizens were being asked to pay for flights out of Afghanistan.
“U.S. law requires that evacuation assistance to private U.S. citizens or third-country nationals be provided ‘on a reimbursable basis to the maximum extent practicable.’ The situation is extremely fluid, and we are working to overcome obstacles as they arise,” the representative said.
The report drew outrage from at least one member of Congress, Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, who called on President Joe Biden to resign and said she was drafting legislation to ensure no U.S. citizen would have to pay for an evacuation flight out of Afghanistan.
A White House official said on Wednesday evening the United States, which sent thousands of troops back to assist with the effort at the Kabul airport, has evacuated nearly 6,000 people since Saturday. Price said on Thursday that there were 6,000 people at the airport in Kabul who have been "fully processed by our consular team and will soon board planes."
Biden told ABC News on Wednesday that U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan until all U.S. citizens are evacuated, even if that means keeping them there past the Aug. 31 deadline for a complete withdrawal.
3. David Petraeus on American Mistakes in Afghanistan
David Petraeus on American Mistakes in Afghanistan
The Former general defends Afghan troops and blames the government's collapse on the speed of the withdrawal
by Issac Chotiner
David Petraeus on American Mistakes in Afghanistan | The New Yorker
David Petraeus, the retired four-star Army general, served in the military for nearly four decades, eventually becoming the most famous and revered member of the armed forces during the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Known for developing a new theory of counter-insurgency, which emphasized winning the support of civilians rather than seizing territory, Petraeus was placed in charge of all troops in Iraq by President George W. Bush in 2007 and oversaw the so-called surge of forces meant to turn around a faltering war effort. In 2010, President Barack Obama, who had ordered a surge of troops in Afghanistan—a move opposed by then Vice-President Joe Biden—appointed General Petraeus the commander of forces in that country. Petraeus retired from the military the following year, and went on to serve as Obama’s C.I.A. director. He resigned from that post in 2012, after providing classified information to his biographer, Paula Broadwell, with whom he was having an affair. Petraeus later pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling classified information. He is now a partner in the global investment firm K.K.R. and chairman of the K.K.R. Global Institute.
On Wednesday, Petraeus and I talked by phone about the situation in Afghanistan. We spoke for nearly eighty minutes; Petraeus was passionate about how he felt the Biden Administration had erred in the withdrawal, and why he thought it was wrong to blame Afghan forces for the collapse of the government. He believes the U.S. should have remained in Afghanistan, and gave a full-throated defense of an active military presence abroad. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
How do you think the situation in Afghanistan ended up where it is today?
It started with the Trump Administration, and not getting much of an agreement [with the Taliban], to put it mildly. We forced the Afghan government, which was not allowed to be in the negotiations about the future of their country, to release more than five thousand Taliban fighters, and didn’t get anything significant in return. And of course the new Administration came in and did a quick review and analysis and announced the decision to withdraw, which you may recall that at the time I said I feared we would come to regret. And I think we already have. That was a psychological blow, I think, the significance of which may not have been obvious to all.
Then you actually had the withdrawal. And this was not of forces in frontline combat. What we had were advise-and-assist units, who were located in the headquarters of the Afghan forces, and they include essentially liaison teams and tactical air controllers who can—with the aid of drones over the top of battlefields—confirm the targeting necessary for true close air support. We are not talking about bombing the mountain over there. We are talking about bombing as close to troops in combat as was possible. And that was quite an elaborate structure, and it was enormously important to the Afghans, who still had a very modest-sized air force. But if you don’t have the liaison teams with the Afghan headquarters who are sitting next to an Afghan commander who is getting radio reports from his people and often looking at the same feed of what a Reaper drone is seeing underneath it, it is really hard to bring serious airpower to bear.
So you have the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which includes not just the airpower but the systems and people who enable its use in close air support. And, somewhat overlooked, although some of us did identify this months ago, the departure of some eighteen thousand contractors who maintain the U.S.-provided Afghan air force and also manage the maintenance system. It is a huge system that involves supply chains and regular inspections—a lot of very sophisticated diagnostic equipment, tools, and this enormous logistic support structure to provide these spare parts in a very austere environment. And of course they are also being shot up by the Taliban.
That air force worked very, very hard. And they are trying to ferry commandos who are really quite good fighters, very well trained by our Special Ops, and well equipped. And they did go out in these early battles, and they were holding off the Taliban, but I think at a certain point in time they realized that there was nobody coming to the rescue anymore, nobody has our back, there is no emergency resupply, there are no reinforcements, there is no emergency medical evacuation, and there is no close air support. And I think that happened in a couple of cases, and those troops did what I think troops do in those circumstances, if they are left alone and isolated and no one is coming to the rescue. Along with local leaders of those districts or provinces, they either cut a deal or they negotiate a surrender or they flee. And then I think the psychological collapse of the Afghan military set in. And I think that was infectious. You talk about infectious enthusiasm. This was an epidemic of, basically, surrender.
Was there an error somewhere along the way, given that when we pulled out this collapse just happened? How did we not prepare for that in twenty years?
I just think it was premature to leave. Now, you can say, Well, when do you leave? Ideally you say that there are certain conditions. Let’s keep in mind that everyone is criticizing nation-building. Well, part of nation-building is developing security forces. It is developing institutions that can take over tasks that we were provided. Undoubtedly, there were innumerable mistakes made in the name of nation-building and infrastructure overbuilt. You can name the different shortcomings. But, again, you have to build something you can hand off. Keep in mind that, once we topple the Taliban, we own the country. It’s easy to say, “You got Osama Bin Laden. What are you hanging around for?” Well, because Al Qaeda will be back. If there is one thing we should have learned in the last twenty years of war, it’s that if you don’t keep an eye on an Islamist extremist group, it will come back.
You think that’s the main lesson?
Well, there are a lot of lessons. There are actually five lessons from the last twenty years of war, if you want to hear them.
Yes, please.
The first is that Islamist extremists will exploit ungoverned spaces, or spaces governed by kindred spirits in the Muslim world. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when and how it will be.
Sorry, General, there is some wind.
I was walking. The sign I am really serious about this, and giving someone my best attention, is that you walk the dog instead of doing it in front of a screen. Lesson No. 2 is that you actually have to do something about this problem itself. You can’t study it until it goes away. We did that for a time with respect to the Islamic State in Syria, and it wasn’t until they had generated enormous combat power, swept back into Iraq, established the caliphate in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria, carried out activities on social media to galvanize and instigate terrorist attacks. You have to do something, because what happens there doesn’t stay there. It’s not Las Vegas rules. It’s the opposite. And these situations tend to have violence, extremism, instability, and, most significantly in the case of Syria, a tsunami of refugees in our NATO allies, causing the biggest domestic political challenges since the end of the Cold War.
No. 3, in doing something, the U.S. generally has to lead, and that is because we have such an enormous preponderance of military capabilities—in particular when it comes to the assets that are the most useful in the way we have been able to fight in recent years, which is by advising, assisting, and enabling host nations’ forces with the armada of drones we now have, and an unequal ability to fuse intelligence. Now, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a coalition. We should. And let’s remember we did in Afghanistan. And you should have Muslim partners with you, as we did. By the way, the validation of No. 3, that the U.S. had to lead, is that, when the United States departed Afghanistan, the coalition countries all departed as well, even though many if not most wanted to stay. We know the U.K. wanted to stay. You saw people in the U.K. Parliament say, “We can’t do anything independently?” The answer unfortunately is probably not.
You are giving rules and saying why they are important, but, when someone asks why the things you say were necessary didn’t happen in Afghanistan in twenty years, how do you understand the answer?
It’s really complicated and complex! And you don’t take a seventh-century, ultra-fundamentalist, theocratic Islamist regime, now it would be an emirate, and turn it into a modern military power. You can say the Taliban did that, but they had bases in Pakistan, and that is something you cannot forget. That’s why, when I was nominated to be the commander in Afghanistan and, subsequent to that, I said we would not be able to accomplish in Afghanistan what we did in the surge in Iraq, which was seemingly miraculous to some people, but we believed we could do it. We knew we could do it. And we got that. I laid this out to [Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld in September, 2005, when, on my way home from Iraq, he asked me to come to Afghanistan. And the first slide in the briefing was “Afghanistan does not equal Iraq.” And it laid out all the differences, all of which made Afghanistan the most challenging context in which to fight an insurgency. No. 1, the insurgent headquarters are outside the country, and the Pakistanis refused to deal with them. Beyond that, the country has very limited roads and other infrastructure. So, every time we increased bases, they had no money. By the way, the Taliban is about to experience this.
In any event, we were up to No. 3, which is that the United States, in taking action against Islamist extremists, has to lead. The fourth lesson is that, if you want to really deal with the problem, you can’t counter terrorists like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State with just counterterrorist forces. You have to have something that is more comprehensive. You need all those elements, but we don’t want to do that.
“We” the American people?
The American military and State Department. The American government wants the Iraqis to do the fighting on the front lines. We want the Somalis and Somali surrogate forces to. So we are up to No. 4. But the key there is that you have to have a comprehensive approach, but we don’t want to be doing the frontline fighting, we don’t want to have to do the political reconciliation we brokered in Iraq, we don’t want to have to do the restoration of basic services, reëstablishment of local institutions, repair of infrastructure, et cetera. We want local forces and local governments to do that.
No. 5 is, the reason that we need those host-nation forces to do that fighting on the front lines is that we have to have a sustainable approach. And sustainability is measured in terms of the expenditure of our blood and treasure. And, if you can get that down sufficiently, you don’t see people demonstrating in the streets in the way we saw in the final five or more years of the Vietnam War. And that means determining how to help host-nation forces without having to put our troops on the front lines, except in extremis. But we can maintain a very considerable number of unblinking eyes around the world with Reapers [armed drones]. In any event, every unit has a drone nowadays, and they are all helpful, but the Reaper is the coin of the realm. You can never have enough of those.
You are putting forward the need for a sustained effort at every level—military, political, financial—
But very sustainable. We have drawn down in Afghanistan from a hundred and fifty thousand coalition forces that I was privileged to command at the height of the war to below twelve thousand. But let’s not forget who has been doing the vast majority of the fighting and dying on the battlefield in Afghanistan, which is why I found the comments about the Afghan forces not fighting disappointing. Anybody who served in Afghanistan knows a number of Afghans who died on the battlefield, which is something like twenty-seven times the number of U.S. losses. So to say that the Afghans won’t fight for their country needs an asterisk. And it should say the Afghans will fight for their country if they are confident someone has their back and will provide reinforcements of ammunition, food, medical supplies, will provide emergency medical evaluation, and, most important, will provide close air support to get them out of a tough fight. Keep in mind, again, that the Taliban could mass anywhere on what were some isolated outposts.
And I did voice concerns months ago. And I was told the operational tempo of the Afghan air force, and it was totally unsustainable. I am not sure we could have sustained the tempo at which they were flying. And they were getting shot up. There were a lot of heroic Afghan pilots and air crews. We were a really critical component of the Afghan Security Forces that just could not be replicated. And Afghanistan had so many disadvantages, no history of strong central government.
Do you think that political or military leaders are to blame for people feeling like this had gone on too long? The Afghanistan Papers showed that there were false promises of how things were going, and claims that the training of Afghan forces was going better than it was. Was that a problem, and is it part of the issue with getting Americans to accept such a long war?
All I can say is that I stand absolutely by everything that I stated publicly, and what I stated privately—by the way, most of which has been published in Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta’s, and Barack Obama’s memoirs. I can’t go back and say whether General So-and-So was overly rosy here or whether President Obama, by changing the name of the operation, was, I don’t know, making more of something than was substantively well-founded.
Look, again, clearly there were tons of mistakes made along the way. Let’s focus on the most important one, which I happen to have said publicly, which was that we didn’t even get the inputs right in Afghanistan until late 2010. That’s not because I happened to be the commander. It was because of, first, the Bush Administration toward the end, and then the Obama Administration with the first additional tranche of troops from the policy review, and it took a good year or so to deploy those troops. We didn’t have the organizational architecture right. You have to get the right people, the preparation of the people and the units, the right equipment, certain communications gear, blimps with optics, towers with optics.
But of course we only had the inputs right for about seven months, because Obama announced the withdrawal date to begin the redeployment of those forces during the speech in which he announced the buildup. If [the former special representative Richard] Holbrooke is trying to negotiate from a position of strength, telling the enemy you are going to start withdrawing in July of 2011 probably is not providing him that position of strength. Obviously there are impatient leaders and rotations and all the rest of that, but this is really hard government work.
Now, there were enormous accomplishments. It is painful to say we didn’t accomplish anything. There are twenty years’ worth of Afghan girls and women who got to go to school. My wife and I funded a scholarship at the American University of Afghanistan, which, by the way, was attacked by the Taliban, with dozens of people killed. I remember talking to one of those women wounded, and she said, “General, I will die to get an education.” There are all these inspirational stories like that. So, again, they have twenty years of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, particularly in the big cities. It’s different out in the rural areas, to be sure. However imperfect the Afghan government was, however corrupt, whatever shortcomings we had, they will look back on it as a golden age. The economy in Kabul was bustling. We see them paint over the wedding-gown shops and the hair salons. I don’t equate that necessarily with, well, it is progress. They were allowed to do that, is the point. There were freedoms that will not now exist.
Now, we didn’t go there to give them those freedoms. It is where the 9/11 attacks were planned. To keep Al Qaeda from making it a sanctuary, and to gradually draw down, you had to develop security forces to whom you could transition tasks while keeping the capabilities that kept them in the fight in the tough times. You have to hand off to something. And keep in mind that, in the early years, we were the something. In northern Iraq, I was the sheikh of the strongest tribe in Iraq as a two-star general. And, under the Geneva Conventions, I was the executive, legislative, and judicial all in one, by international law. So how do you get yourself out of that? You do what we did in Iraq. We ran an election. Or, rather, a selection or caucus in Mosul. And all of a sudden we had Iraqis to help carry the rucksack of all these responsibilities.
So it’s easy to disparage, and, again, did we go overboard? I’m sure. But part of it was, you are constantly under the gun. I went to Iraq knowing that within a year I would have to begin drawing down. So you’ve gotta produce results. And that leads you to say, “O.K., let’s give it a shot. Let’s try this.” And perhaps with a longer time horizon, and I am not saying less resources necessarily, although what we have or had was sort of what Biden advocated [in 2009].
So more resources and more time?
Yeah. And time is actually the most important resource. In Afghanistan there was all this impatience that it was our longest war and all the rest of that, overlooking the fact that we have been in Korea, which still is technically—obviously people aren’t being shot and killed—but we have way more than thirty thousand troops there and in Japan.
If you knew that this would end after twenty years, do you think policymakers should have acted differently?
We needed to do what we did, by and large. Did we do more in many cases? Perhaps. Certainly the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
We did too much, you are saying?
Overbuilt. This kind of stuff. Threw resources at problems. You have them now and you are not going to have them a year from now, if you see what I mean. There were even cases where we went too far with our troops. It took us too long to realize that we went too far with some of our troops. Some of these valleys, the people there didn’t like the Taliban, but they hated everybody. They didn’t want us in there or others in there. You had to learn how far you can go.
What would you do differently if you knew you had to come out in 2021? Boy, it is really hard to say. You would like to build an Afghan air force that is more substantial. But nothing is easy. You teach somebody how to teach English and be an air-traffic controller and you know what they do? Instead of working for the Afghan government, they go work as a translator for the United Nations because they get paid more. It is one challenge after another, and you have to work your way through it. You have to have enormous fortitude and determination. Somebody asked me if we lost the Afghan war. I said I don’t think we lost it. I think we withdrew from it. And I think there is a pretty big distinction there.
In “A Fish Called Wanda,” Kevin Kline says about Vietnam that “We didn’t lose. It was a tie.”
[Laughs.] This wasn’t a tie. Not when they take over within weeks of your departure.
More New Yorker Conversations
4. US Helicopters Rescued 169 Americans Outside Airport; More Ops Could Follow
I think only the US is capable of this kind of logistical support.
Excerpt:
On a call with reporters Friday, the commander overseeing U.S. Air Force tanker support for the mission, Brig. Gen. Dan DeVoe, said that fuel at Hamid Karzai International Airlift is also limited, so military planes are arriving and departing without taking any of the fuel on the ground.
“There’s obviously concerns about that,” DeVoe said. “We don’t take any gas out of HKIA,” DeVoe said, using the short form name for Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Those aircraft are refueling in flight via aerial tankers so that the fuel on the ground can be used for other needs.
Biden Could Send Troops to Help Americans Reach Kabul Airport
Biden “will mobilize every resource necessary” to save more, but U.S. has yet to test Taliban checkpoints. Meanwhile, fuel-strained air operations resume.
By JACQUELINE FELDSCHER and TARA COPP
AUGUST 20, 2021 04:42 PM ET
President Joe Biden is considering sending troops on rescue missions throughout Kabul to help get Americans and Afghan allies to the airport for evacuation.
American troops have already left the perimeter in small numbers, Biden said Friday. U.S. forces on Thursday went beyond the airport boundary to help 169 Americans get in. Those people were “very close” to the perimeter, and troops did not have to pass through any Taliban checkpoints to retrieve them, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said at a briefing Friday.
Biden said he is “considering every opportunity and every means by which we can get folks to the airport,” and revealed that the United States had provided “overwatch” for French troops to bring hundreds of French citizens to the airport.
“Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home,” Biden said at the White House. “I cannot promise what the final outcome will be, or that it will be without risk of loss. But as commander in chief, I can assure you that I will mobilize every resource necessary.”
Some allies, including the British and French, have already sent troops into the city to help recover their citizens. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that the United States did not have the military capability in Afghanistan to help people get to the airport for flights.
U.S. commanders have not negotiated with the Taliban on conducting operations in Kabul outside the airport because they have not received any orders to do so, Maj. Gen. William Taylor, the deputy director for regional operations and force management for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday at a briefing.
Biden was asked why the United States has not expanded the perimeter outside the airport where civilians trying to enter are getting harassed. “The reason why we have not gone out—it’s likely to draw a lot of unintended consequences,” he said, of the risk to U.S. forces and civilians of being attacked by terrorist groups in Afghanistan, such as ISIS.
Biden reiterated America’s commitment to the Afghans who face threats from the Taliban because of their service alongside U.S. troops and contractors during the war. “There is nothing more important than bringing American citizens out, I acknowledge that,” he said. “But they’re equally important almost as all those...who in fact helped us. They were translators. They went into battle with us.”
Since Aug. 14, the military has evacuated 13,000 people, including American citizens and permanent residents, plus Afghans who helped the United States during the war and their families. Nearly 6,000 of those left Afghanistan on Thursday.
It’s unclear how many Americans and Afghan allies remain to be evacuated. Asked if the United States could complete the evacuation by the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, Biden said he thought so, but that he would “make that judgement as we go.”
The president also addressed reports that people are struggling to pass through the Taliban checkpoints on the way to the airport, saying that the administration has reached an agreement with the terrorist group’s leaders to allow evacuating personnel to pass through, but that disorder remains around the American-controlled airport.
“To the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints, they are letting through people showing American passports. Now, that’s a different question when they get into the rush and crowd of all the folks just outside the wall near the airport,” he said.
At a briefing on Capitol HIll Friday however, Austin told lawmakers that in some cases U.S. citizens have been beaten by Taliban, according to Politico. Kirby said “we’re certainly mindful of these reports, and they are troubling.”
Once civilians do get to Hamid Karzai International Airport they are facing delays there and at follow-on locations such as Al Udeid Air Base, in Qatar, where they are being processed by State Department consular officers for travel to the United States.
Air operations in Kabul on Friday were paused for about eight hours, leaving thousands of Afghans who had been processed and were ready to board without a flight out because the Qatar base where the U.S. has been delivering passengers was at capacity—and there was nowhere else so far to take them.
On a call with reporters Friday, the commander overseeing U.S. Air Force tanker support for the mission, Brig. Gen. Dan DeVoe, said that fuel at Hamid Karzai International Airlift is also limited, so military planes are arriving and departing without taking any of the fuel on the ground.
“There’s obviously concerns about that,” DeVoe said. “We don’t take any gas out of HKIA,” DeVoe said, using the short form name for Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Those aircraft are refueling in flight via aerial tankers so that the fuel on the ground can be used for other needs.
Kabul has resumed flights, but they will be “metered” to not further overwhelm Al Udeid and other locations that are quickly spinning up in the Middle East and Europe to take evacuees. U.S. troops at Ramstein Air Base in Germany prepped temporary cots and housing structures on Friday for the potential influx of evacuees.
Air Mobility Command has the capability to fly people directly to the United States from Kabul, but that would require too many crews and tankers for the long flights over and back to Afghanistan. For now, the fastest evacuation is to fly evacuees from Kabul to locations nearby, DeVoe said.
5. State Dept. will not charge for evacuation flights from Afghanistan
Good news.
Excerpt:
The law requires that Americans or other foreign nationals agree to pay back the cost of an evacuation, which is typically comparable to the cost of a full fare economy flight, or comparable transportation to the designated destination.
State Dept. will not charge for evacuation flights from Afghanistan
The Hill · by Laura Kelly · August 19, 2021
People evacuated from Afghanistan by the U.S. will not be charged the cost of their flight, State Department spokesman Ned Price told The Hill.
"In these unique circumstances, we have no intention of seeking any reimbursement from those fleeing Afghanistan," he said.
The statement provides a point of clarification over federal law that mandates the State Department seek reimbursement for U.S.-chartered evacuation flights.
The law requires that Americans or other foreign nationals agree to pay back the cost of an evacuation, which is typically comparable to the cost of a full fare economy flight, or comparable transportation to the designated destination.
The Biden administration’s evacuation efforts in Afghanistan are in chaos amid the Taliban’s takeover of the country and control over the capital city of Kabul that occurred at a breakneck pace.
The administration has evacuated 7,000 people from Afghanistan since Saturday, including 2,000 Americans.
The Department of Defense says it is hoping to scale up efforts and evacuate between 5,000 and 9,000 people per day, but chaos on roads leading to the airport and at its gates are hampering efforts for the State Department to process those for evacuation flights.
Price on Thursday said that about 6,000 people have been processed for evacuation at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport
His statement on the free flights pushes back against reports that those seeking to board American evacuation aircraft have been told they must pay for the flights.
Politico reported in its National Security newsletter on Thursday that at least one person said State Department staff were seeking large payments — up to $2,000 from American passengers and even more from non-U.S. citizens.
A State Department spokesperson referred Politico to federal law that calls for evacuees to reimburse their evacuations.
At least two congressional aides contacted by The Hill who are corresponding with Americans stuck in Afghanistan were not aware of reports of charges for flights.
The Hill · by Laura Kelly · August 19, 2021
6. U.S. helicopters at Kabul airport flew outside the gates to bring Americans to safety
U.S. helicopters at Kabul airport flew outside the gates to bring Americans to safety
Army helicopters on Thursday landed at a hotel in Kabul to pick up more than 160 stranded Americans who couldn’t make it to to the relative safety of Hamid Karzai International Airport because of the chaos that has erupted there since the fall of the Afghan government.
President Biden alluded to the operation on Friday during a speech at the White House in which he defended his administration’s handling of the evacuation effort. “Any American who wants to get home, we will get you home,” he said while standing in front of Vice President Harris and other members of the cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Pentagon officials said the Americans were told by representatives of another country to gather at the Baron Hotel, located adjacent to the airport. The information about the wayward Americans was then passed to U.S. commanders at the scene, who ordered a flight of three CH-47 helicopters to pick them up.
“There was an established landing zone there on the hotel premises,” said chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The (helicopters) flew in, picked up the 169 Americans and flew them right back,” to the airfield.
The original plan was for the Americans to gather themselves at the hotel and walk a short distance to one of the entrances leading to the airfield, known as the Abbey Gate.
“There was a large crowd established outside the Abbey Gate. (It was) a crowd that not everybody had confidence in, in terms of their ability to walk through it,” Mr. Kirby said. “Local commanders on the scene took the initiative and flew these helicopters out there to pick them up.”
It wasn’t clear on Friday whether the Americans were diplomats, intelligence officials, contractors or just civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time as Afghanistan fell during the Taliban’s lightning-fast advance.
“They Americans so they’re all of great value to us,” Mr. Kirby said.
It was apparently the first such incident since the evacuation in Kabul began following the Taliban’s quick takeover of the country.
Pentagon officials said the militant group, which adheres to strict Islamic law, has mostly allowed American citizens and Afghans with proper immigration documentation to make it past their checkpoints and onto the airfield.
“I certainly recognize that there have been multiple cases of Afghans, even some with credentials, being assaulted, beaten and harassed,” Mr. Kirby said. “But by and large, those Afghans who have the proper credentials … are getting through the checkpoint. We have not seen that become a major issue.”
Rep. Mike Waltz, Florida Republican and former Green Beret, said one of his Afghan interpreters was beheaded in 2015 after documents linking him to the U.S.-led war effort were found on him at a Taliban checkpoint.
“Don’t let the Taliban propaganda campaign fool you. They are brutal, extremist thugs that do not deserve international recognition,” Mr. Waltz said in a Twitter message.
While the U.S. military is sticking to its plans of not moving into Kabul to assist U.S. citizens and their Afghan allies get to safety, NATO allies such as France and the United Kingdom have launched missions to rescue their citizens who might be trapped behind Taliban lines. According to British and French media reports, both nations have conducted multiple such operations over the last several days.
On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. military lacked “the capability and the capacity” to mount missions into Kabul to round up Americans and Afghan allies. Since then, the security at the airport is more stable, Pentagon officials said.
Following Mr. Biden‘s call that he would order any action necessary to rescue Americans and Afghan partners in distress, the Pentagon appears more flexible about the possibility it might start running its own missions into Kabul.
“The secretary [of defense] is going to want to keep as many options as available open,” Mr. Kirby said. He “is not going to rule anything out or in.”
Like any military mission, a rescue operation would have to go through a planning phase before it could be launched, he said.
“We would examine those options to weigh the benefits versus the risks and then offer up options to the secretary to make a recommendation. Then we would go from there,” Mr. Kirby said. “But I’m not going to talk about potential future operations one way or the other.”
7. US general tells British special forces: Stop rescuing people in Kabul, you're making us look bad
There is a very colorful email going around the interwebs on social media supposedly from the Brit perspective of this "blow-up" but since I cannot confirm its authenticity I will not share it (but it is along the lines of this report0. It appears now we have gone outside the wire and there are some US personnel operating outside of Kabul who are tyring to secure Americans and at-risk Afghans. But I know it is frustrating and embarrassing to US troops to have more restrictive ROE than our Brit and French allies. We are so often too risk averse. But one explanation I have seen on the interwebs for our risk averseness at the political level (not the military as every solder, sailor, airmen, and Marine on the ground is will to go forth and rescue Americans and at-risk civilians) is summed up in three words: "Blackhawk Down" and "Benghazi."
US general tells British special forces: Stop rescuing people in Kabul, you're making us look bad
I understand that the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division has told the commander of the British special forces at the Kabul airport to cease operations beyond the airport perimeter.
Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue has told his British Army counterpart, a high-ranking field-grade officer of the British army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, that British operations were embarrassing the United States military in the absence of similar U.S. military operations. I understand that the British officer firmly rejected the request.
This show of rare tension between the U.S. and British command groups in Kabul reflects three factors.
First, it shows the obvious stress of attempting to extricate thousands of personnel under a situation of increasing terrorist threat. Elements of the Haqqani network, the Islamic State in Afghanistan, and possibly al Qaeda are now operating in proximity to Kabul airport with some degree of command separation from the Taliban.
In addition, the British military has more operational latitude in Kabul than the U.S. military, including the Navy SEAL elements present at the airport. I understand that the SAS has conducted operations to bring American citizens, as well as British citizens and at-risk personnel, through checkpoints and to the airport. This is not an indictment on U.S. capabilities or special operations intent, but rather, it's a reflection of political-military authorities. In part, this difference is understandable. Large-scale U.S. military operations beyond the Kabul airport perimeter would entail significant risk absent prior Taliban approval. But there is a sense, at least by allies, that the U.S. military could be doing more to leverage the Taliban into providing greater ease of access to the airport for those most at risk.
A bureaucratic tug of war between the State Department, Pentagon, and White House is also disrupting evacuation operations out of Kabul. This is aggravating British, French, and other Kabul-present military authorities. I understand that these governments have been further aggravated by the failure of the White House and Pentagon to communicate adequately, or in some cases, to communicate at all, on their intentions and actions. All these allies admit, however, that only the U.S. military could provide the airfield defense and air traffic control capabilities now on display.
Still, as I noted on Wednesday , the Biden administration's conduct of the Afghanistan withdrawal has raised deep concerns by allies as to the administration's credibility and confidence. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, allied officials reemphasized this concern to me on Friday.
8. Son of anti-Taliban fighter calls for US weapons assistance
Who is assessing the resistance potential and what actions are we going to take?
Son of anti-Taliban fighter calls for US weapons assistance
Posted August. 20, 2021 07:40,
Updated August. 20, 2021 07:40
Son of anti-Taliban fighter calls for US weapons assistance. August. 20, 2021 07:40. by Jae-Dong Yu jarrett@donga.com.
The son of a national hero in Afghanistan called for help from Western powers, declaring the start of resistance against the Taliban.
“The mujahideen resistance to the Taliban begins now. But we need help,” said Ahmad Massoud, the son of former Afghan Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud, posting an op-ed on The Washington Post on Wednesday.
“My father never forgot this as he fought against the Taliban regime,” he said, emphasizing about how his father was “fighting for the fate of Afghanistan but also for the West” until he was killed by assassins from al Qaeda.
Ahmad Shah Massoud led the armed guerrillas of mujahideen during the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in the 1980s. His father Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, led the strongest resistance against the Taliban from his stronghold in the valley northeast of Kabul until his assassination in 2001. His nickname – the Lion of Panjshir – was given to him when he demolished the Soviet Army in Panjshir Valley, the north of Afghanistan. In the face of the emergence of Taliban, Massoud, the then defense minister of Afghanistan, opposed to the jihadists’ Islamic fundamentalism. And on Sept. 9, 2001, two days before the 9/11 attack, he was killed in a bombing by terrorists disguised as reporters at the age of 48. Also know as “Massoud Day,” September 9 is still observed as a national holiday in Afghanistan.
"I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father's footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban," Ahmad Massoud said in his opinion piece on The Washington Post. He said he has long stocked up ammunitions and weapons for this day, stressing he has been joined by former members of the country's special forces and soldiers from the Afghan army "disgusted by the surrender of their commanders.”
“But we need more,” he added, calling on the United States to supply arms and ammunition to his militia to prevent an imminent depletion of military resources. Though America and other allies have left the battlefield, he said “America can still be a great arsenal of democracy” by supporting his fighter while quoting President Franklin Roosevelt from his declaration for the Second World War.
Massoud said the Taliban poses a threat beyond Afghanistan's borders, warning, “Under Taliban control, Afghanistan will without a doubt become ground zero of radical Islamist terrorism.”
9. More Americans now say government should take steps to restrict false information online than in 2018
No. The government is not the answer or at least this is not the answer to disinformation and active measures. The government has a role in educating people and exposing the strategies and actions of our adversaries (the revisionist and rogue/revolutionary powers who are leading with influence) but we cannot counter active measures by restricting information on line.
This should not be a partisan issue. But the fundamental partisan issue is between those who believe in personal liberty and those who think the government can solve every issue. Unfortunately the real partisan issue is between those who deliberately exploit different forms of "false information" and tout it as free speech but really use it to push their partisan views.
Partisan divisions on the role of government in addressing online misinformation have emerged since 2018. Three years ago, around six-in-ten in each partisan coalition – 60% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents and 57% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – agreed that freedom of information should be prioritized over the government taking steps to restrict false information online. Today, 70% of Republicans say those freedoms should be protected, even it if means some false information is published. Nearly as many Democrats (65%) instead say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means limiting freedom of information.
AUGUST 18, 2021
More Americans now say government should take steps to restrict false information online than in 2018
Amid rising concerns over misinformation online – including surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, especially vaccines – Americans are now a bit more open to the idea of the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online. And a majority of the public continues to favor technology companies taking such action, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Roughly half of U.S. adults (48%) now say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means losing some freedom to access and publish content, according to the survey of 11,178 adults conducted July 26-Aug. 8, 2021. That is up from 39% in 2018. At the same time, the share of adults who say freedom of information should be protected – even if it means some misinformation is published online – has decreased from 58% to 50%.
When it comes to whether technology companies should take steps to address misinformation online, more are in agreement. A majority of adults (59%) continue to say technology companies should take steps to restrict misinformation online, even if it puts some restrictions on Americans’ ability to access and publish content. Around four-in-ten (39%) take the opposite view that protecting freedom of information should take precedence, even if it means false claims can spread. The balance of opinion on this question has changed little since 2018.
How we did this
Partisan divisions on the role of government in addressing online misinformation have emerged since 2018. Three years ago, around six-in-ten in each partisan coalition – 60% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents and 57% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – agreed that freedom of information should be prioritized over the government taking steps to restrict false information online. Today, 70% of Republicans say those freedoms should be protected, even it if means some false information is published. Nearly as many Democrats (65%) instead say the government should take steps to restrict false information, even if it means limiting freedom of information.
Partisan views on whether technology companies should take such steps have also grown further apart. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats (76%) now say tech companies should take steps to restrict false information online, even at the risk of limiting information freedoms. A majority of Republicans (61%) express the opposite view – that those freedoms should be protected, even if it means false information can be published online. In 2018, the parties were closer together on this question, though most Democrats still supported action by tech firms.
Some demographic differences that existed on these questions in 2018 have now largely disappeared. Three years ago, older Americans and those with less education were more likely than younger and more educated adults, respectively, to say the U.S. government should take steps to restrict false information online, even if means limiting some freedoms. Now, Americans across nearly all age groups are fairly evenly divided between the two views. Similar changes have occurred when it comes to Americans’ educational background.
Women still tend to be more open than men to the idea of both the government and tech companies taking action to restrict false information online, though both groups have become a bit more supportive of the government taking such steps.
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Amy Mitchell is director of journalism research at Pew Research Center.
10. I was in Kabul when it fell to the Taliban. The speed of the collapse stunned me | Franz J Marty
I was in Kabul when it fell to the Taliban. The speed of the collapse stunned me | Franz J Marty
The old system in Afghanistan has been overthrown, and now there is fear for what the future will bring
I was on my way to the mountains of Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan when, on 8 August, the Taliban accelerated their offensive that would, a mere week later, sweep them into the presidential palace in Kabul. During the four days I spent in the mountains, the Taliban captured 10 out of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals in addition to the two they had already taken over on 6 and 7 August.
This happened often without a fight, resembling the fall of districts that took place in a first wave of Taliban advances between May and July. Footage on TV channels on 11 August showed police and army vehicles leaving the northern towns of Fayzabad and Pul-i Khumri in the darkness of night, only illuminated by ghostly headlights. The Nuristanis who hosted me and followed this news on TV had come to an arrangement with the Taliban. They had only recently overtaken the last tiny islands of government control in their remote home districts of Kamdesh and Barg-e Matal, but the Nuristanis were not jubilant. They were quiet. And concerned. It looked bad for the Afghan republic. The Nuristanis and a taxi driver in Kunar began to refer to the situation as an “enqelob” – revolution – a term that I hadn’t heard Afghans use before.
On my way back to Kabul, I spent a night in Asadabad, the then government-held provincial capital of Kunar. When night fell, machine-gun fire rang out. “Nothing to worry about. The Taliban just shoot at the outposts as they do every night,” locals reassured me. The next morning, on 13 August, just when it got light after morning prayers, the shooting resumed, this time more intensely. “This is also normal,” the residents said again. However, with one after the other provincial capital falling – some without much, if any, warning – I deemed it better to leave.
After an uneventful drive, I reached Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar, the most important province in eastern Afghanistan. Jalalabad was as always: bustling and stifling hot. The streets were crowded with cars and the much more numerous rickshaws. The place from where shared cabs and buses leave to Kabul was as busy as ever, with drivers fighting over passengers like vultures over carcasses. The thought went through my head: “Business as usual, so at least this part of the country won’t fall immediately.”
Arriving in Kabul a few hours later, any sense of normality did not last long. The next day, on 14 August, Asadabad fell to the Taliban, apparently with less fighting than I witnessed the day before. On the same day, the Taliban took over the northern hub of Mazar-i Sharif – notably, after Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad Noor, traditional anti-Taliban powerbrokers in northern Afghanistan, had vowed to fight until the end. Nonetheless, when the then Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, addressed the nation on the same day, he did not offer a resignation or some plea for negotiations. He defiantly announced to defend Kabul.
This announcement was detached from reality. On 15 August, Jalalabad surrendered without a shot being fired. Kabul was effectively surrounded, hard, if at all possible, to defend. Ghani’s assurances that the capital would make a stand evaporated. Government forces melted away and by night the Taliban had entered the presidential palace. Ghani and other high ranking officers had fled the country. While significant Taliban advances had been expected, the practical full takeover – and particularly its speed – stunned residents of Kabul as the fall of numerous provincial capitals had stunned Afghans only days before. It was arguably a mix of various reasons that caused the collapse: supply issues, poor leadership and strategy and, last but not least, low morale spiralling out of control.
Reactions on the next morning varied. Some Afghans, fearing that the Taliban might clamp down and take revenge on people linked to the overthrown government or international military forces, frantically rushed to Kabul’s airport, hoping to get on flights out. “They are going to kill us,” many said, expressing fears that were arguably often exaggerated. The mass of people immediately overwhelmed the airport, also because the procedure of how to get them on evacuation flights was, and still is, improvised and flawed.
However, many more, like the Nuristanis in Kamdesh and Barg-e Matal, decided to stay, or resigned themselves to the fact that they had no reasonable way out of the country. Some continued their lives without any interruption, for example opening their shops despite the Taliban takeover. Most stayed in their houses to wait to see how the change in power would play out. With government troops not having put up any notable fight and the Taliban keen to display themselves as a responsible force and not the barbaric butchers they are often portrayed to be, the situation in the city remained surprisingly quiet. Members of the Talib manning checkpoints in the city interacted little, if at all, with civilians, letting them pass mostly unharassed.
“I am happy that the Taliban are here,” an elderly woman selling snacks at the roadside told me. “All is peaceful and they leave regular people alone.” Others echoed similar sentiments. However, the atmosphere felt subdued and hushed, as if many residents, wary of whether the relative peace would last, were holding their breath to see how the Taliban will actually govern and how this will affect their lives. Then reports about Taliban atrocities began to surface. Often they were vague and unverified but sometimes they were credible, raising spectres from a darker past. Numerous people who seemed unperturbed at first would later ask me privately whether I could help to get them a visa.
Apart from some vague general statements, the Taliban have still not explained the path forward that they envision. As a result, the same situation persists: the old system has been overthrown with people wondering – or fearing – what the future might bring.
Franz J Marty is a journalist based in Afghanistan
11. Army Eyes Intelligence Community Campus at Fort Belvoir North Area
Army Eyes Intelligence Community Campus at Fort Belvoir North Area - Executive Gov
Fort Belvoir North Area
The U.S. Army is considering constructing multiple buildings on the northern part of Fort Belvoir in Virginia, including a potential Intelligence Community campus near the headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Washington Business Journal reported Thursday.
The service has come up with a draft master plan for the Fort Belvoir North Area, formerly the Army Engineer Proving Ground, that proposes three options on how to expand and further develop the site, ranging from minimal development to maximum expansion capacity.
The maximum capacity version includes the construction of several unidentified buildings and parking facilities for a possible IC campus.
All three versions of the draft master plan include the development of a potential Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) headquarters, Defense Logistics Operations Center, a fire station and an undisclosed tenant facility.
The draft development plans were presented to the National Capital Planning Commission, which is expected to assess the plans at its meeting on Sept. 2nd, according to the report.
12. Rare earth trillions lure China to Afghanistan's new Great Game
Excerpts:
Finally, while the U.S. has departed Afghanistan, it will seek to maintain intelligence overwatch through satellite surveillance; clandestine CIA operations; cooperating with other nations who continue to maintain embassies there; monitoring cyber and cellphone intelligence; and building human networks.
Particularly if there is evidence of reconnection between the Taliban and terrorist groups, notably al-Qaida, the U.S. will weigh if and how to reenter the Great Game. NATO and other U.S. allies will operate around the edge. But for the moment, the dominant forces in Afghanistan will be from the neighborhood -- notably led by China. Thus the Great Game continues, but the players are all locals.
Rare earth trillions lure China to Afghanistan's new Great Game
Beijing will be the first major power to recognize the new regime
James Stavridis
A Taliban fighter holding an assault rifle stands guard outside the Interior Ministry in Kabul on Aug. 16: Afghanistan seemingly reverts to 2001.
Admiral James Stavridis was 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and 12th Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He spent the bulk of his operational career in the Pacific, and is author of "2034: A Novel of the Next World War."
For most of the 19th century, the Russian and British empires contended over Afghanistan in what was known as the Great Game.
The geopolitical competition recognized the strategic position of Afghanistan, and its potential to influence what is today Pakistan and India. Both the Brits and the Russians, of course, were defeated over time in Afghanistan, the so-called "graveyard of empires."
Today, following the spectacular collapse of the American-trained Afghan army, the triumph of the Taliban, and the humiliating withdrawal under combat conditions of the remnants of the U.S. diplomatic mission, Afghanistan seemingly reverts to 2001 -- run by hardline religious zealots determined to follow strict Sharia law. Will anything change, and a new Great Game emerging?
Perhaps. While I would guess that Taliban 2.0 will not be kinder or gentler to their own citizens, they have probably learned that allowing their nation to serve as a base for international terrorist operations can lead to twenty years in the wilderness -- or in this case, the mountains of Pakistan. Likely they will be less interested in spreading jihad globally than in simply dominating the fractious Afghan nation.
That will not be easy. There are still regional warlords, especially in the north, who will not willingly bend a knee to the Taliban for long. Likewise, there are restive ethnic elements in the Afghan population -- notably the Tajiks and Hazaras -- who have no love for what they see as Pashtun fanatics from Kandahar. Afghanistan has a long and rich tradition of internal squabbling once an external foe is ejected.
All of which brings us to the role other major nations will play in Afghanistan now that the U.S. has folded its tents and flown away into the night. The sudden shock to the system regionally is palpable. Other Asian nations, including China, Russian, India, Pakistan and Iran, all have interests that will drive events going forward.
China is clearly positioning itself to be a major international partner to the Taliban. They could care less about human or gender rights in Afghanistan, and will only want to consolidate a dominant position in regard to the $1-2 trillion worth of rare earths -- most notably lithium. As China seeks to consolidate as much control as they can over strategic supply chains for everything from microchips to electric car batteries, they want primacy in Kabul -- and will be the first major nation to recognize the new regime.
For Pakistan, this is a moment of triumph. They have assiduously supported the Taliban for the past two decades, both to control terrorist groups that occasionally threaten Pakistan and to deny India a foothold in a country on the other side of their border. Closely aligned with China internationally, they will seek to partner with the Chinese in exploiting the mineral wealth and blocking India from a role with the Taliban regime. Pakistan also wants a certain level of stability to avoid mass illegal migration, something they have dealt with repeatedly from Afghanistan.
Russia has a different set of interests than the China-Pakistan axis. They seek first and foremost a stable situation that can reduce the propensity for radical Islamic terrorism exported north through the former republics of the old Soviet Union.
And while Putin is always happy to see the U.S. receive a black eye, the Russians are also hopeful that the Taliban can be encouraged to exert a higher level of control over the massive heroin production -- much of which ends up in the arms of young Russians and other Europeans. Look for Russia to quickly recognize the Taliban, ignore any human or gender rights violations, and offer modest assistance in return for stability and at least some level of reduction in the narcotics trade.
A poppy field in Jalalabad province, pictured in April 2014: the Russians are hopeful that the Taliban can be encouraged to exert a higher level of control over the massive heroin production. © Reuters
To the west, Iran has had a fractious relationship with the Taliban in the past. The Taliban are Sunni and the Iranians, of course, are Shia. Overall, the Iranians are thrilled with the ejection of the U.S. from bases on their border and will place a premium on how the Pashtun Taliban treat the Tajiks, who are linguistically connected to the Iranians and constitute almost a third of the nation's population. In the west around Herat and in the north surrounding Mazar-e-Sharif, the Iranians will strengthen commercial relationships and seek amicable relations with the new government.
Perhaps the most interesting role may be played by India. The Indians have long sought relationships in Afghanistan, both for the commercial potential of the nation and to put pressure on Pakistan. Some of the most virulent terrorist groups that have attacked India, including the infamous massacre at the Taj Hotel in 2008, emanated from Pakistan and demonstrate connections to terrorist groups operating on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border. China will do all it can, in concert with Pakistan, to foreclose any Indian influence in Kabul -- which had grown significantly under Ashraf Ghani's presidency.
Finally, while the U.S. has departed Afghanistan, it will seek to maintain intelligence overwatch through satellite surveillance; clandestine CIA operations; cooperating with other nations who continue to maintain embassies there; monitoring cyber and cellphone intelligence; and building human networks.
Particularly if there is evidence of reconnection between the Taliban and terrorist groups, notably al-Qaida, the U.S. will weigh if and how to reenter the Great Game. NATO and other U.S. allies will operate around the edge. But for the moment, the dominant forces in Afghanistan will be from the neighborhood -- notably led by China. Thus the Great Game continues, but the players are all locals.
13. The intelligence community's silence is deafening
Private intelligence competing with the intelligence community?
Excerpts:
If these conversations do not take place — earnestly, expansively and soon — the growing privatization of the intelligence function becomes a very real risk. With the seeds already sown, private intelligence companies will compete for policymakers’ attention. These shadow capabilities in the private sector will match the government’s in timeliness, speed and even accuracy. As trust in their methods and findings grows, the IC will be pushed aside slowly in favor of faster, more complementary assessments — despite disquieting questions regarding politicization and profit.
Unless the intelligence community finds its voice within this rising cacophony, its silence will facilitate its demise — and along with it, the safety and security of the nation it is sworn to protect and defend.
The intelligence community's silence is deafening
The Hill · by Deb Pfaff and Bo Miller, opinion contributors · August 20, 2021
National security is the federal government’s most basic responsibility, laid out in the first sentence of our Constitution’s preamble: “provide for the common defense.” But what was once the exclusive domain of the public sector now depends upon a range of actors, individuals, corporations and entities who —unlike the government — are not beholden to the public interest. Their voices are noisy, voluminous and often ill-informed. The public knows little about how our government protects us, and even less about the role of the intelligence community in national security. This offers them no meaningful presence in the democratic discourse, and limited recognition of the intelligence community’s most precious commodity: its objectivity.
From its beginning, the intelligence community (IC) was modeled on and grounded in secrecy. It was forced to mature rapidly as a mechanism to deal with the Soviet Union and quickly evolved into a closed system that required secret collection methods to obtain information on our enemies. But in its persisting eagerness to ensure that information does not slip into the wrong hands, the IC has forgotten that the hand that feeds it belongs to the American public. They are the greatest consumer of the public good that is national security. Democracy and democratically accountable institutions, such as the intelligence community’s 19 members, require the public to have knowledge, not just faith.
Intelligence agencies have made cursory attempts at transparency, but these efforts have been reactive, not proactive — always in response to an accusation of wrongdoing. They are meant to mollify and slake the public’s curiosity, rather than to engage and assimilate. The IC’s unwillingness to even consider a comprehensive strategy for public engagement has put it back on its heels, forced to defend its position to a skeptical public without offering evidence and without the benefit of an established brand and a proven track record.
Increasingly, choosing what to pay attention to also means choosing what to believe. As our brains struggle with information overload, we try to make sense of competing data streams. But we’re overwhelmed, so we take shortcuts; we trust information that fits into our preexisting worldview. This is especially troubling for national security because most of what the public hears and believes about national intelligence comes from information sources outside the intelligence community. The IC’s voice hasn’t gotten lost in the noise — it was never there in the first place.
Data on the IC are restricted for nearly all of the American public, which must then turn to available sources of information to make sense out of the basic need that is national security. Information from journalists, Congress, political elites and Hollywood forms too much of the public’s perception. These entities have their own motivated reasoning for communicating certain information in a particular way, which is not always faithful to fact. Experts may be silenced, and these interpreters speak in fragments and half-truths. Because the IC cannot talk about its wins, its losses appear to be mounting.
As others’ voices rise to add to the global cacophony, those voices in the IC must embrace their own conversations and ask hard questions that threaten the status quo — questions about building a strategy to engage the public, transparency efforts, the blended commitment to security, a credible voice, and true value to the common defense.
If these conversations do not take place — earnestly, expansively and soon — the growing privatization of the intelligence function becomes a very real risk. With the seeds already sown, private intelligence companies will compete for policymakers’ attention. These shadow capabilities in the private sector will match the government’s in timeliness, speed and even accuracy. As trust in their methods and findings grows, the IC will be pushed aside slowly in favor of faster, more complementary assessments — despite disquieting questions regarding politicization and profit.
Unless the intelligence community finds its voice within this rising cacophony, its silence will facilitate its demise — and along with it, the safety and security of the nation it is sworn to protect and defend.
Deb Pfaff, Ph.D., is an associate professor of research with the Ann Caracristi Institute for Intelligence Research at National Intelligence University (NIU). She has 20 years of government service, 17 with the IC. Prior to the NIU, she served in the analyst career field at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Bo Miller, Ph.D., is a professor of transnational issues at the National Intelligence University. His more than 50 years in intelligence have spanned Air Force counterintelligence, Department of State all-source intelligence analysis, research and teaching.
The opinions expressed here are the authors’ and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Intelligence University, the Department of Defense or any of its components, or the U.S. government.
The Hill · by Deb Pfaff and Bo Miller, opinion contributors · August 20, 2021
14. Here’s How the US Could Get Afghanistan Evacuees to the United States More Quickly
Excerpts:
“I’m taking [the C-17s] out of the proverbial fight, if you will, for a longer period of time before I get them back in,” DeVoe said. “[That], in the longer run, reduces the number of evacuees that I can get out of Afghanistan.”
The C-17s had been flying to Al Udeid Air Base, a large base outside of Doha, Qatar, used by the U.S. military, but the processing facility there reached capacity Friday.
Germany said the U.S. could ferry evacuees through Ramstein Air Base—another facility already used by the U.S. military—as a stop on the way back to the United States. The Air Force posted pictures on its Facebook page showing Ramstein being readied for Afghan refugees. The Pentagon said Friday that it was preparing to house 22,000 Afghans at three U.S. Army bases in the United States.
The U.S. government also has several options for getting the evacuees back to the United States on commercial airliners, according to current and former military and defense officials.
Here’s How the US Could Get Afghanistan Evacuees to the United States More Quickly
A mix of military and commercial aircraft flying between designated hubs is the most likely scenario.
The U.S. military is evaluating several options to fly American citizens and Afghans to the United States, according to U.S. officials.
While the military is likely to continue shuttling evacuees on large C-17 cargo planes between Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul and military bases in the Middle East, it will likely need help from commercial and charter carriers to move the evacuees from those bases to points west.
Brig. Gen. Dan DeVoe, the commander overseeing U.S. Air Force aerial refueling tankers, acknowledged in a call with reporters Friday that flying planes directly to the United States would require multiple refuelings and reduce the number of aircraft going in and out of Afghanistan.
“I’m taking [the C-17s] out of the proverbial fight, if you will, for a longer period of time before I get them back in,” DeVoe said. “[That], in the longer run, reduces the number of evacuees that I can get out of Afghanistan.”
The C-17s had been flying to Al Udeid Air Base, a large base outside of Doha, Qatar, used by the U.S. military, but the processing facility there reached capacity Friday.
Germany said the U.S. could ferry evacuees through Ramstein Air Base—another facility already used by the U.S. military—as a stop on the way back to the United States. The Air Force posted pictures on its Facebook page showing Ramstein being readied for Afghan refugees. The Pentagon said Friday that it was preparing to house 22,000 Afghans at three U.S. Army bases in the United States.
The U.S. government also has several options for getting the evacuees back to the United States on commercial airliners, according to current and former military and defense officials.
The first is through what officials call commercial augmentation, where the Pentagon hires an airline, or airlines to fly their own planes. The commercial planes could meet the C-17s at Al Udeid or other bases or airports in the region, then fly the evacuees to other bases abroad, or directly back to the United States.
The second option would be to mobilize the Civil Reserve Air Fleet: commercial aircraft that the airlines, cargo, and charter carriers make available to the military during an emergency. The consortium was created in the 1950s as a way to assist the military in an emergency by flying people and supplies. The Pentagon has only activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet twice: in the lead ups to the 1990 and 2003 Iraq wars.
All of the major U.S. airlines—including United, American, and Delta—are part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Some of the large airlines have grounded their largest, widebody aircraft, the type needed for this mission, due to international travel restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The last option is for the State Department to contract directly with commercial airlines. Unlike the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which exclusively uses U.S. air carriers, the State Department can contract with U.S. or foreign airlines. The State Department did this when it airlifted 15,000 American citizens out of Lebanon during the 2006 war.
Emirates, the Dubai-based airline, has grounded dozens of its Airbus A380 super jumbo airliners during the pandemic. Etihad, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier, has grounded all 10 of its A380s, as has Qatar Airways. It’s unclear how quickly they could return to service if the U.S. contracted either carrier.
Tara Copp contributed to this report.
15. Taliban Takeover Brings Cheers, Fears to SE Asia and Bangladesh
As Cohen and Gooch wrote all military failures are the failure to learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate. Are we anticiating a rise in terrorism in SE Asia and what ware we doing in conjunction with our friends, partners, and allies to help them with their internal development and defense programs to help them defend themselves against lawless, subversion insurgency AND TERRORISM.
Taliban Takeover Brings Cheers, Fears to SE Asia and Bangladesh
The Taliban’s swift takeover in Afghanistan is drawing cheers of support from some Islamic and political groups in Southeast Asian countries and Bangladesh, as well as warnings from experts and security officials that it may embolden local militants.
The Afghan government collapsed at the weekend after President Ashraf Ghani fled abroad and Taliban insurgents seized the capital. The Islamic fighters swept into Kabul without any armed resistance after the United States withdrew military forces that were part of an international coalition backing the government.
According to Rommel Banlaoi, a Filipino security expert, in the days since Kabul fell militant groups worldwide have been celebrating it as “the victory of jihadism.”
“The possibility of a spillover of violence in the southern Philippines is high,” he warned, with serious implications globally “because Afghanistan continues to be a safe haven for active international terrorist groups.”
Banlaoi said Taliban supremo Haibatullah Akhundzada was “a good friend” of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri and the relationship between the two groups “will really have serious implication for global counter-terrorism.”
In the southern Philippines, where violent extremist groups have operated for years, Muslimin Sema, chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), said it was “sheer determination, persistence, and resoluteness of the Taliban that defeated hypocrisy and opportunism in Afghanistan.”
MNLF is an Islamic separatist force that signed a peace deal with Manila in 1996.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – an offshoot of MNLF – expressed hope that all parties in Afghanistan could strike a compromise, to prevent that country from descending into more conflict after decades of war.
“We opted for negotiation for the sake of the people,” MILF spokesman Von Al Haq told BenarNews, referring to talks that led to the group’s peace settlement in 2014.
Drieza Lininding, a civic leader in the southern Philippines, likewise appealed to the Taliban and other stakeholders to come up with a peace plan “inclusive of all.”
“We congratulate the Taliban and the people of Afghanistan for the successful coup and liberation against the incompetent and corrupt politicians of Afghanistan,” Lininding said.
Lininding is from the southern city of Marawi, which was destroyed during a battle between government forces and pro-Islamic State fighters who seized it for five months in 2017.
One of the most violent Islamic groups in the southern Philippines, Abu Sayyaf was founded by a Filipino who fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
A more recent leader of Abu Sayyaf, Isnilon Hapilon, became the emir of the so-called Islamic State group in Southeast Asia, and headed the siege of Marawi.
After the 9/11 attacks in the United States 20 years ago, the southern Philippines became an Asian theatre in the global war on terror largely because of Abu Sayyaf’s presence.
The international terrorist group al-Qaeda had launched the 9/11 attacks from its safe haven in Afghanistan, when the Taliban first ruled the country.
Buildings burn in Marawi, weeks after militants took over the southern Philippine city, June 5, 2017. [Richel V. Umel/BenarNews]
Victory will ‘ignite spirit of jihad’
In Indonesia, local veterans of the war against the Russians in Afghanistan were among extremists who joined Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian affiliate of al-Qaeda. Indonesian authorities blamed JI for the October 2002 Bali bombings – the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesian history.
The Taliban victory in Kabul “will ignite the spirit of jihad in Indonesia,” said Sofyan Tsauri, a former member of Jemaah Islamiyah.
Sofyan defended the Taliban, comparing them to the Islamic State group.
“The Taliban don’t require people to pledge allegiance and they don’t kill innocent people just like that,” Sofyan, a former policeman who spent five years in jail for terrorism-related offenses, told BenarNews.
Another former terrorism convict, Joko Tri Harmanto, said Indonesian jihadists “will have more motivation because the Taliban’s struggle is successful.”
“But I hope our brothers (in Indonesia) realize that the Taliban’s success has been because they hold on to their principles by not hurting women and children and respecting human rights,” said Joko, who was jailed for more than four years for his involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
Meanwhile, Abu Bakar Bashir, an 83-year-old radical cleric whose sermons were believed to have inspired the Bali bombers, was rejoicing over the Taliban victory, according to his son, Abdul Rohim Bashir. Bashir, JI’s co-founder, was freed in January after serving nearly 10 years of a 15-year-sentence.
“Ustadz (teacher) Abu is happy that the Taliban have succeeded in liberating their country after 20 years,” Abdul Rohim said.
“What the Taliban have done for so long is exemplary. Their consistency in fighting on the path of Allah and their struggle finally paid off. They also continue to adhere to Islamic law. They don’t even kill corrupt government officials, who are allowed to stay,” the son said.
Since 2002, Indonesia has witnessed a rise in radicalization, along with occasional terrorist attacks. Dozens of Indonesians travelled to the Middle East to join the Islamic State after it took over parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.
Wawan Hari Purwanto, a spokesman for the National Intelligence Agency (BIN), said the “movement of terrorist groups in Indonesia is more or less influenced by developments at the global and regional levels.”
Since the Taliban takeover, the agency “has taken steps to strengthen early detection and early prevention, especially regarding terrorist groups that have an ideological resemblance to the Taliban,” he said.
“The Indonesian government continues to monitor the security situation in Afghanistan,” he told BenarNews on Thursday.
According to Indonesian security expert Muhammad Adhe Bhakti, the authorities should watch out for Indonesian militants leaving for Afghanistan.
“A power struggle between the Taliban and other groups, including Islamic State, could attract Indonesian jihadists to travel to Afghanistan,” warned Adhe, the executive director of the Center for Radicalism and Deradicalization Studies (PAKAR).
Indonesian radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir enters a courtroom for the first day of an appeal hearing in Cilacap, Central Java, Jan. 12, 2016. [Reuters]
Different times, different situation
In Malaysia, the chief of the police’s counter-terrorism branch said it was too early to make an assessment about a terror threat stemming from the events in Afghanistan, “because the Taliban is still offering peace to all parties.”
“The time is different, the situation is different and the outcome surely different,” Normah Ishak told BenarNews when asked if the Taliban takeover would energize local extremist groups or cells in Malaysia.
Former counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, for his part, warned that the establishment of a new Taliban government may energize dormant terror cells in Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia.
“The Taliban may have changed its approach in gaining power and softened its stand on certain issues,” he told BenarNews.
“But those who have been analyzing terror organizations and extremist outfits would know their agenda and propaganda remain the same. They want to establish an Islamic State.”
He said some Malaysians may even emigrate to fight alongside the Taliban, adding “they are willing to make sacrifices in the name of religion.”
Meanwhile, a government security source said that former Malaysian members of Muslim militant outfits, such as Jemaah Islamiyah and Islamic State, had expressed their happiness “with the new development” in Afghanistan.
“They say finally an Islamic State has been established. They finally won a fight against colonizers. They are quite high-spirited,” the source told BenarNews on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to reporters on the matter.
“There is a possibility of Afghanistan becoming a training ground. The possibility of foreign fighters migrating there is also there.”
People light candles at a beach during a memorial service to mark the 10th anniversary of terrorist attacks in Kuta, Indonesia, Oct. 12, 2012. [AP]
In Bangladesh, another Muslim-majority country, police said this week they were monitoring online activities after the Taliban victory.
“We have seen that some youth in Bangladesh have posted euphoric comments after the Taliban took over Afghanistan,” Md Faruk Hossain, the spokesman for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told BenarNews on Monday.
“The Taliban usurpation of power in Afghanistan is likely to inspire the local militants and their sympathizers in Bangladesh,” he warned, adding that police, counter-terrorism units, and other agencies were on “high alert.”
But the militants and extremists will be dealt “with an iron hand,” Hossain said.
A day before the fall of Kabul, Dhaka Police chief Shafiqul Islam said that, in recent weeks, “some people from Bangladesh had responded to the call of the Taliban to join the war in Afghanistan,” and had left their families to go and fight for the Taliban.
“We suspect that some of them were caught in India, while others have been trying to reach Afghanistan on foot,” Islam told reporters on Aug. 14.
Mohammed Yahya, a former vice president of the radical and influential faith-based group Hefazat-e-Islam, issued an assurance that “what has happened in Afghanistan will not take place in Bangladesh.”
“We at the madrassa do not teach violence. We teach our students about true values of Islam,” he told BenarNews. “The government… should not fear us.”
Jason Gutierrez, Dennis Jay Santos, Jeoffrey Maitem, Mark Navales, and Froilan Gallardo in the Philippines; Ahmad Syamsuddin and Kusumasari Ayuningtyas in Indonesia; Muzliza Mustafa and Nisha David in Malaysia; and Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Bangladesh contributed to this report.
16. Amanda Gorman and Kate Winslet join advocates urging Biden to protect Afghan women
Such an unbearable tragedy for these women and all who have helped them and have helped Afghanistan to evolve include rights for women.
Excerpts:
Over the last few days, female Afghan journalists have been trying to destroy traces of their identity as they receive death threats from the Taliban. Some reported that they had been visited by the Taliban already and had their houses searched.
“Nobody is supporting women journalists in Afghanistan. We are scared if the Taliban find us they will definitely kill us,” said one who was in hiding. “One more thing to mention – even if they let us live they will not let us go back to work, which is really a financial challenge for me as a woman that lives alone,” she added.
Amanda Gorman and Kate Winslet join advocates urging Biden to protect Afghan women
Sheryl Sandberg, Charlize Theron and Diane von Furstenburg among dozens who signed open letter
Dozens of women’s rights advocates and high-profile figures, including the poet Amanda Gorman, are calling on the Biden administration to protect and support Afghan women and girls.
In an open letter titled “Do Not Abandon Afghan Women and Girls”, Gorman, alongside the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, actors Charlize Theron and Kate Winslet, and others, urged the administration to honor its commitment.
“Immediate action must be taken to safeguard Afghan women most at risk: women’s rights activists, journalists, educators, civil society leaders, human rights defenders and direct service providers. The very women who have been on the frontlines for decades, risking their safety to realize the promise of equal rights, are being abandoned by those who pledged to protect them,” it said.
The letter, organized by Vital Voices and Women International, demands the administration take four concrete steps: provide direct evacuation flights for women who are under imminent threat, expand special immigrant visas to include a category for at-risk women and raise the refugee cap, allocate resources for livelihood assistance and resettlement, and protect and invest in women who remain in Afghanistan.
Vital Voices, an NGO that works with female leaders on economic empowerment, women’s political participation and human rights, previously funded Gorman as a young activist.
The 2017 national youth poet laureate has been an outspoken champion of social justice causes, including women’s rights.
“As Afghanistan suffers, America has to take a long look at how we’ve perpetuated horror & how we can provide healing. We must welcome refugees & at last become the country we say we are,” Gorman tweeted on Tuesday. “Today is the day to take in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
During the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001, the group barred women from schools and most work, forced them to wear the burqa when they left home, and controlled their shoes and makeup.
Under the group’s narrow and repressive interpretation of Sharia law, many women were harshly punished for even minor transgressions. Punishments included stoning, whipping and killings.
This week, the Taliban said that women’s rights would be respected, “within the limits of Islam”. Nevertheless, many women have stayed at home in fear of being beaten for not covering up or for going out without a male guardian. In several parts of the country, reports of forced marriage to Taliban fighters have emerged following the Taliban takeover.
Over the last few days, female Afghan journalists have been trying to destroy traces of their identity as they receive death threats from the Taliban. Some reported that they had been visited by the Taliban already and had their houses searched.
“Nobody is supporting women journalists in Afghanistan. We are scared if the Taliban find us they will definitely kill us,” said one who was in hiding. “One more thing to mention – even if they let us live they will not let us go back to work, which is really a financial challenge for me as a woman that lives alone,” she added.
The Pentagon said on Thursday that about 7,000 civilians had been taken out of Afghanistan in the past five days, but the spokesperson John Kirby says the US military is still working towards its goal of getting a maximum of 5,000 to 9,000 people out a day.
17. Will the Next American War Be with China?
Ian Easton and I had this twitter exchange regarding this article.
Ian Easton
@Ian_M_Easton
“Basically, my view is, if you’re in the U.S. military and you’re not working on China...get yourself a new job.” —
@ElbridgeColby
Ian Easton
@Ian_M_Easton
11h
Super important point, which could be extended to State and pretty much every other department and agency. There is a massive knowledge deficit on PRC. Assuming a rogue comet/asteroid is not coming, the challenges & threats China pose to our country far outstrip the others. twitter.com/ian_m_easton/s…
David Maxwell
@DavidMaxwell161
Yes, but…. We still need experts in all regions but those experts must also have China expertise as well to address how China is influencing those regions. We cannot have one trick ponies.
Ian Easton
@Ian_M_Easton
Agree. But we need actual PRC experts, we need depth, and that takes a decade or more. Right now, where are the opportunities and incentives for that kind of investment? I’m not sure.
Our best and brightest are encouraged to become a mile wide and an inch deep, AKA shallow.
David Maxwell
@DavidMaxwell161
11h
Concur. We need the right balance. When is the best time to plant a tree? 20 yes ago. Next best time? Now. Yes we have neglected development of China experts for far too long. We need to get on with it but we have to have the right mix of experts is my point.
Will the Next American War Be with China?
Elbridge Colby is leading a conservative effort to prepare Americans for a military conflict in Taiwan.
Will the Next American War Be with China? | The New Yorker
The images from Afghanistan circulating in Washington this week have been of collapse and evacuation: the interior of a military cargo plane, filled with more than six hundred Afghan evacuees sitting on the floor and grasping straps; a little girl with a pink backpack being handed over a wall, with hopes of escaping; hundreds of Afghans chasing a departing cargo plane on the runway at Hamid Karzai International Airport, as if they might grab hold of it and be lifted away. “Please don’t leave us behind,” an Afghan Air Force pilot pleaded, via the news network the Bulwark, speaking on behalf of many who were undeniably being left behind. “We will be great Americans.” In the U.S., some of the deepest lamentations came from people who had poured themselves into this project. “We were overly optimistic and largely made things up as we went along,” Mike Jason, a retired Army colonel who trained Afghan police, wrote in The Atlantic last week. “We didn’t like oversight or tough questions from Washington, and no one really bothered to hold us accountable anyway.” The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, anticipating that the lamentations might grow even deeper and more catastrophic, sent out a suicide-prevention blast: “Veterans may question the meaning of their service or whether it was worth the sacrifices they made. They may feel more moral distress.” These feelings, the V.A. noted, were normal. “You are not alone.”
That so many in Washington were seeing the same images, and reacting in many of the same ways, had a strange-bedfellows effect on politics this week. This past Sunday, on MSNBC, Representative Barbara Lee, of Oakland, the only member of Congress who voted against the Authorization for Use of Military Force, in September, 2001, explained what this week’s events proved to her. “There is no military solution, unfortunately, in Afghanistan,” she said. “We have been there twenty years. We have spent over a trillion dollars. And we have trained over three hundred thousand of the Afghan forces.” On Twitter, you could find a very similar sentiment coming from a former senior Trump defense official, Elbridge Colby, who wrote, “We Americans are just not good at imperialism. Many of the same pathologies characterized our effort in Vietnam.”
Colby, a fortysomething graduate of Yale Law School, was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development in the Trump Administration. Amid many people saying roughly the same thing about the now-ending generational conflict over Islamic extremism, Colby is distinguished by a vision of the generational conflict to come. In his view, idealism and Afghanistan are both sideshows to the real military, economic, and diplomatic action—all of which concerns China. I spoke to Colby by Zoom last week, as the Taliban captured Kandahar and Herat. He was in Brazil, where, it turned out, his family has spent the pandemic. “Get out of the Middle East,” he said, when I asked how the U.S. should reprioritize its resources. “More significantly, I think we’re going to have to reduce in Europe. Basically, my view is, if you’re in the U.S. military and you’re not working on China”—he paused for a moment to acknowledge a couple of lesser but still worthy projects, nuclear deterrence and “a cost-effective” approach to counterterrorism—“get yourself a new job.”
Elbridge Colby goes by Bridge. To his patrician name, add a patrician face (long nose, side-parted sandy hair) and a patrician legacy: his grandfather, William Colby, was Nixon’s C.I.A. director, and his father, Jonathan Colby, is a senior adviser in the Carlyle Group, the defense-friendly private-equity giant. Bridge nearly overlapped at Harvard College with Tom Cotton, and at Yale Law School with Josh Hawley. He was considered for a role as a foreign-policy adviser to Jeb Bush in 2015; according to the Wall Street Journal, campaign operatives torpedoed his chance to be Bush’s foreign-policy director by raising concerns that he was insufficiently hawkish about Iran. Colby arrived at Trump’s Pentagon as an aide to the President’s first Secretary of Defense, General Jim Mattis. Mattis aside, the Administration’s skepticism of neoconservative idealism suited him (as Colby put it, “a nice version of ‘What’s in it for us?’ ”), as did Trump’s emphasis on China-baiting. Following Trump’s lead, many elected Republicans of Colby’s generation, Cotton and Hawley among them, have increasingly described China as an omni-villain, a prime source of economic competition and a national-security threat for a generation to come. In this context, Colby has found his star on the rise. This fall, he will publish his first book, “The Strategy of Denial,” which offers a military strategy for how to deal with China. As advance copies circulated this summer, Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, pronounced it “brilliant” and said that it would be “constantly referred to as we grapple with this challenge”—a suggestion, if one were needed, that many conservatives believe that this conflict is here to stay.
Colby’s book is clinical and ominous. He wants the American people prepared to go to war with China over Taiwan, both because that might deter China from invading the island and because, if deterrence fails, he thinks that American military intervention will be the only way to keep Taiwan free. He notes the Chinese leadership’s decades-long insistence that Taiwan is part of China, and documents the steady Chinese military buildup: around ten-per-cent annual increases in its budget for a quarter century; he also pointed out that China has a Navy that exceeds America’s in the number of boats, if not yet tonnage, as well as missiles that can reach U.S. bases around Asia and as far as Honolulu. All of this is pointing, Colby argues, to an invasion of Taiwan, an event he sees as likely and whose consequences he believes could be disastrous. His concerns in the book do not include human rights; they are instead almost entirely strategic—a successful invasion would send an unmistakable message to all other countries in Asia about who is the dominant power in the region and who gets to write the rules of the economic order.
Military strategists come with all kinds of personalities—Colby is a worrier. He argues that Chinese aspirations and military buildup suggest a specific danger: a series of focussed, regional wars, likely to begin with Taiwan, and he sketches out scenarios for how the U.S. would need to defend or retake the island. As Afghanistan fell to the Taliban this week, the Global Times, a state-affiliated Chinese media outlet, published an editorial arguing, “From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and U.S. military won’t come to help.” Colby told me, “My gut says, ‘Bridge, maybe you’re exaggerating,’ but my mind says, ‘Holy shit!’ ” He added, “Excuse my language.” His book, which takes something of a chess-game view of grand strategy in the Far East, argues that, if China loses a military campaign for Taiwan, it will be forced to confront the “burden of escalation”—of broadening a conflict that it’s losing—and will likely retreat, but that if Taiwan’s allies lose a limited war they will either have to retake the country from China or concede Chinese supremacy in the Far East. Colby said, “The situation’s already bad now, and it’s going to get worse—to the point where they could win a fight over Taiwan and they might pull the trigger. And Taiwan’s not going to be the end.”
When Colby and I spoke, he seemed anxious to emphasize that his warning is not intended for a conservative audience but for a broad one. He worries that Americans have been too persuaded by post-Cold War propaganda to understand that, in any conflict with China, Washington will need to partner with Asian nations (Vietnam, perhaps, or Malaysia, or Indonesia) whose modes of governance we may not love. And he is troubled by whether most Americans will see Taiwan as of sufficient interest to them. Colby said that he wrote his book largely to make a “brass tacks” case to ordinary Americans about why they should care enough to defend Taiwan and “other exposed Asian partners.” “Great powers create market areas,” he said. “And that’s what China’s trying to do. And, if the Chinese have a trade area over which they’re ascendant that comprises fifty per cent of global G.D.P. or more, you can bet that Americans are going to suffer.” Last November, he pointed out, the Chinese government had sent Australia a list of fourteen grievances, ranging from the Australian government’s regulation of Chinese companies to criticisms of the Chinese government made by Australian M.P.s. Chinese strength has been building for a quarter century, he said. “The problem is coming due in this decade.”
I asked Colby how well he thought Americans had been prepped for this potential conflict by their leaders. “Great question,” Colby said. “The state is terrible.”
A smart liberal’s reply to Colby might be: Is this for real? Americans have spent much of the past two decades trying to find some way through the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan that political hawks urged on them. Now that the full depth of the latter debacle has become so impossible to deny that the V.A. is issuing suicide-awareness bulletins for former soldiers suffering from “moral distress,” the hawks want to urge another generation-defining conflict on Americans?
Colby’s response is to try to sever the transformational vision of the forever wars from his own hawkishness—to argue that those were neoconservative adventures, intent on democratizing foreign countries, and that his own realist camp does not envision regime change and does not aspire to remake China. “What really makes me angry, frankly, is the aggressive kind of neoconservatives and liberal hawks. They are the ones that used up that gas tank of will,” Colby told me. “Now the American people are tired. They are skeptical. And they”—the neoconservatives—“said, ‘Oh, we’re going to fight Islamofascism because otherwise we’re going to turn into the Caliphate,’ or whatever. And it’s like, no, that’s not what’s going to happen.” But the Afghanistan experience, recounted in the news this week, suggests that the original ideological design of a national-security encounter—whether “realist” or “idealist”—doesn’t matter for very long: any conflict is quickly defined by the decisions made in its midst. What matters most of all is whether that conflict is brought into existence.
Among Republicans, it hasn’t been hard to detect warlike notes against China: Hawley has denounced Big Tech for its alleged willingness to sell out to the Chinese government, Marco Rubio has focussed on China’s persecution of the Uyghur Muslims, and Cotton has promoted a “targeted decoupling” from China’s economy, insisting that the two great powers will find themselves in a “protracted twilight struggle that will determine the fate of the world.” As the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims has worsened and its pressure on Hong Kong has mounted, plenty of liberals have been alarmed, too, for reasons that are sometimes the same and sometimes different. “The two nations represent systems of governance that are diametrically opposed,” George Soros wrote last week, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Relations between China and the U.S. are rapidly deteriorating and may lead to war.”
Bill Kristol, the founding editor of the Weekly Standard and a conservative foreign-policy eminence, told me that with the exception of the onset of the Cold War he could not recall such a “quick kind of pivot” across the whole foreign-policy establishment, both Democratic and Republican, as the one now taking place to a focus on China—one which struck him as often aggressive. “Look, I am a hawk,” Kristol said. But “even I get a little bit nervous by the bellicosity on Taiwan. And this is where things can get out of hand. You can either encourage people in Taiwan to do things that are a little foolish, or you can encourage the hawks in Beijing to say, ‘Let’s act now because it will get worse in five years.’ There’s not a lot of subtlety in the discourse.”
This week, one line coming out of the Afghanistan crisis was that the American era was over, that the U.S. was a chastened and exposed power. To listen to the China hawks was to hear an opposite contention: that the patterns of American intervention ran deep, and were politically various, and were not likely to be so simply dislodged. When I asked Colby what he thought united the changing Republican Party with the China cause, he said that to him it was a story of disempowerment. The Republican story post-Trump, he told me, was “ ‘We’ve been deindustrialized, we have economic insecurity, there’s these élites’—there’s a disempowering function going on.” Colby said he detected in these politics an “anti-hegemonic” tone that echoed the fear of China. Like a lot of what Colby said, that assertion struck me as smart and interesting but a little overelaborate. The real situation seemed more basic. As U.S. involvement in Afghanistan ends, a hawkishness on China is emerging, in some expected places and some unexpected ones, and we might soon find ourselves managing claims about the necessity of war all over again.
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18. This Navy captain is now the first woman commanding a nuclear aircraft carrier
This Navy captain is now the first woman commanding a nuclear aircraft carrier
Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt is now the commanding officer of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln — becoming the first woman to lead a nuclear carrier in U.S. Navy history.
Bauernschmidt, who previously served as the carrier’s executive officer from 2016-2019, relieved Capt. Walt “Sarge” Slaughter of his duties Aug. 19 during a change of command ceremony in San Diego.
Capt. Amy N. Bauernschmidt, then-commanding officer of the amphibious transport dock San Diego, meets with Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith during his visit to the ship in 2019. (MC1 Woody Paschall/Navy) (Petty Officer 1st Class Woody Paschall/Commander, Naval Surface Force, )
“There is no more humbling sense of responsibility than to know you are entrusted with the care of the people who have chosen to protect our nation,” Bauernschmidt said, according to a Navy news release. “Thank you, Capt. Slaughter, for turning over the finest ship in the fleet.”
The carrier, homeported at Naval Air Station North Island, California, wrapped up its maintenance period in April, following a 294-day, round-the-world deployment.
The Lincoln left Norfolk Naval Base, Va., its previous homeport, in April 2019 and — after its deployment was extended twice — arrived at its new homeport in Coronado in January 2020. The Navy announced in December 2020 that Bauernschmidt had been tapped to command the Lincoln.
After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994, Bauernschmidt became a helicopter pilot and was assigned to Helicopter Anti-submarine Squadron Light 45, the “Wolfpack,” in San Diego.
While assigned to HSL-45, she deployed with destroyer John Young in support of maritime interdiction operations in the northern Arabian Gulf.
Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt observes sea and anchor detail on the bridge of the USS San Diego in 2020. (MC1 Benjamin Kittleson/Navy) (Petty Officer 1st Class Benjamin Kittleson/USS SAN DIEGO (LPD 22))
Subsequent assignments include serving as an instructor pilot and quality assurance officer with the “Seahawks” of HSL-41 in San Diego, and as the senior military advisor to the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. State Department.
This isn’t Bauernschmidt’s first CO tour. She previously served as the commanding officer of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 70 and the amphibious transport dock San Diego.
Altogether, she has racked up more than 3,000 flight hours during her career.
19. Germany Sending Special Ops Helicopters To Kabul To Rescue Evacuees Outside The Airport (Updated)
Germany Sending Special Ops Helicopters To Kabul To Rescue Evacuees Outside The Airport (Updated)
French and British forces have also been conducting operations outside of Kabul's airport to help get people to safety.
Bundeswehr
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As early as tomorrow, a pair of German military Airbus H145M helicopters configured to support special operations missions could be zipping around Kabul helping people evacuate the city. They will be working together with elements of the German Army's elite Kommando Spezialkrafte, or Special Forces Command, some of which have been at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan's capital since Monday. This comes after British and French forces started conducting similar rescue missions outside of the airport's perimeter, but while the U.S. military, at least publicly, continues to insist it does not have any intention or the capacity to do the same.
German officials announced the deployment of the pair of H145Ms, via Airbus A400M cargo planes, and their expected mission in Kabul on Aug. 20, 2021. They will join thousands of other U.S. and foreign troops, including another contingent of special operations helicopters from the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), already at Hamid Karzai International Airport.
German Air Force
A German Air Force H145M LUH SOF helicopter.
German Air Force A400Ms, as well as Airbus A310 Multirole Tanker Transports (MRTT), have been flying an increasing number of evacuation sorties out Hamid Karzai International Airport since Aug. 16. Chaos in and around the airport hampered those operations initially, with only seven evacuees on the first German flight out of Afghanistan. Navigating through the country's capital, which is now firmly under the control of the Taliban, just to get to the airport remains difficult, if not potentially perilous, for foreign nationals and Afghans alike.
"We have just informed the German Bundestag that we are expanding our operation in Afghanistan," a post earlier today from the German Ministry of Defense's official Twitter account read, using the formal name of the country's parliament. "The aim is to bring those to be protected from their whereabouts in Kabul to the airport."
The H145M is powered by a pair of Turbomeca Arriel 2E engines and can cruise at just over 130 knots. It comes standard from Airbus with a glass cockpit, digital avionics, and other modern systems. Germany's helicopters, also sometimes referred to by the name of the program under which they procured, Light Utility Helicopter Special Operations Forces (LUH SOF), have a number of additional distinctive features, including provisions for fast-roping equipment, as well as missile approach warning sensors and dispensers on the skids for launching decoy flares.
Airbus
Personnel fast-rope from a German military H145M helicopter.
The Germany H145Ms can also be armed with 7.62mm Minigun Gatling-type machine guns, known as the G6 in German service, on mounts in the doors on either side of the main cabin. There are no Miniguns visible in the official pictures the German armed forces have released so far regarding the deployment of these helicopters, but a gun mount appears to be visible on at least one of the two helicopters as it is being loaded onto an A400M.
Bundeswehr
A German H145M being loaded into an A400M cargo plane for deployment o Kabul. What appears to be a mount for a G6 Minigun is visible through the open main cabin.
Exactly how the German military will employ these helicopters remains to be seen, but German news outlet Der Spiegel has reported that the plan is to use them to extract individuals from areas of Kabul and bring them to the safety Hamid Karzai International Airport.
"The Bundeswehr emphasized that the KSK helicopters should only be used over Kabul," according to Der Spiegel, using the formal name for the German armed forces. "In addition, every flight must be well prepared, a meeting point and signs agreed with which the people to be rescued can clearly identify themselves. The time on the ground must be as short as possible so that there is no crowd."
Der Spiegel also highlighted how the relatively small H145Ms could be particularly useful for operating within a dense urban area such as Kabul, being able to more readily land on rooftops or in small open areas on the ground in order to rescue people compared to larger types. The helicopters could also help provide cover for teams working on the ground.
Bundeswehr
A member of Germany's Kommando Spezialkrafte Marine, or Naval Special Forces Command, armed with a 7.62mm G27 rifle provides overwatch support while riding an H145M helicopter during a training exercise.
"It won't be a normal taxi shuttle," Eberhard Zorn, the Bundeswehr Inspector General, said according to Der Spiegel.
With regards to which individuals the KSK might be soon be looking to rescue, the German government has said it is working to help both "German nationals and other persons at risk" get out of the country safely. There are reports that several hundred, but less than 1,000, German citizens remain in Afghanistan at present.
Despite reports that the Taliban have given assurances that foreigners will be allowed to leave unmolested, there are numerous reports that reality on the ground is very different. The situation is also much more dangerous for Afghans, especially those who have worked with foreign governments over the past two decades and are now at risk of Taliban reprisals.
Just with regards to Germany, at least one German national was shot while traveling to the airport, though thankfully the wound was not life-threatening. Separately, a relative of an Afghan reporter working for German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle in Germany was murdered by the Taliban, and another member of their family was seriously injured in the attack.
With all of this in mind, there are also questions about whether the Taliban will allow the German H145M helicopters to conduct their activities in Kabul without interference. Bundeswehr Inspector General Zorn said there is an assumption that the Taliban will "let the helicopters go," according to Der Spiegel, but there does not appear to be even any formal assurances, for whatever those might be worth, that this will happen. If the helicopters or KSK personnel come under attack and are forced to defend themselves it's not hard to see how that could escalate into a more serious situation that could have subsequent impacts on foreign evacuation operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport.
At the same time, it is worth noting that British and French forces have been conducting similar activities on the ground in Kabul outside of the airport for days now without any major reported pushback from the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military has publicly insisted it is focused entirely on operations at the airport itself and is not planning to send troops out into the city to round up American citizens and others. President Joe Biden and other U.S. officials did confirm today that American forces at the airport have helped people get over the perimeter walls, in addition to through established gates.
It is worth noting, though, that elements of the U.S. Army's 160th SOAR would be ideally suited to performing similar missions to the ones the German military is planning to carry out with their H145Ms, and would be able to do so on a much broader scale, if they aren't already. The 160th's mix of AH/MH-6 Little Bird, MH-60 Black Hawk, and MH-47 Chinook helicopters presently in Kabul offers a wide array of unique capabilities, including the ability to carry out highly surgical close air support missions, if required, which you can read more about here.
Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that unspecified American forces, working with "multiple allies," including the British, had carried out a mission to rescue a former Afghan National Police officer and members of his family. The New York Times has also now reported on independent efforts carried out by its own employees to help Afghans get to the safety of the airport.
The situation in and around the airport remains tense and fluid. Evacuation operations, all of which have to share the airport's single runway, are also still facing various hurdles. Today, it emerged that commercial flight operations had been shut down for approximately eight hours due to bureaucratic and logistical issues inside and out of Afghanistan that had resulted in congestion on the military side.
All of this only adds to persistent questions about how long it might take to complete all of the planned foreign evacuation operations. Speaking today, President Joe Biden committed to getting all Americans, as well as various at-risk Afghans, out of the country, but declined to say whether or not the expectation was still that it would be possible to get this done by the end of the month, when the entire mission is supposed to end.
This, of course, doesn't take into account that the Taliban could change their position at any moment on allowing an island of foreign military presence at the airport in Kabul, where thousands of troops are on the ground now and with more, such as this new German contingent, on the way, to exist at all. Any concerted and deliberate attacks by the Taliban on foreign forces at Hamid Karzai International Airport would, of course, completely change the character of the ongoing evacuations there and any operations elsewhere in Afghanistan's capital. Depending on how rapidly the security situation might then devolve, troops at the airport might be forced to hastily evacuate, which might compel them to abandon large pieces of equipment, such as helicopters, that cannot be quickly loaded onto flights out of the country.
No matter how the overall situation in Kabul continues to evolve, Germany's deployment of the two H145M helicopters underscores that more and more foreign governments are coming to the conclusion that they cannot limit their evacuation activities to the confines of Hamid Karzai International Airport. It's not clear how anyone can reasonably expect the majority of foreign nationals, not to mention at-risk Afghans, to otherwise even get to the airport safely.
Update 4:50 PM EST:
The full statement from Bundeswehr Inspector General Eberhard Zorn also says that the U.S. military requested the deployment of the H145Ms to help support operations.
"These helicopters were requested by the American side," he said, according to Behörden Spiegel. "The Americans mostly fly there with large-volume helicopters, so they needed a smaller machine in the urban environment of Kabul."
“So it's always a collaborative effort,” he continued. “We always have a corresponding airmobile intervention reserve provided by the Americans in the background. So that means they are real aerial operations."
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com
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20. A New York Times reporter and former Marine who evacuated Kabul flew back to help his Afghan colleagues escape the Taliban
I have been worried about our good friend Thomas Gibbons-Neff or TM. He is a great American, Marine, and Journalist.
But I do have to chuckle at a "no comment" from a journalist (though in this case entirely appropriate).
Excerpts:
One NYT foreign correspondent who's also a former US Marine, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, helped coordinate the effort. He was in Kabul covering the conflict and left the city with an early round of American evacuees.
But Neff soon returned to the country to aid his Afghan colleagues' escape. He flew back on a military plane and stayed in the American-occupied wing of the airport, advising Afghans when and how to flee, the Times reported.
Neff did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
A New York Times reporter and former Marine who evacuated Kabul flew back to help his Afghan colleagues escape the Taliban
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, enters a plane evacuating people, at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021.
(Capt. William Urban/U.S. Navy via AP
- Three US newspapers led an effort to evacuate their Afghan employees out of the country.
- One NYT journalist initially left Afghanistan but returned to help his Afghan colleagues escape.
- A group of 128 people for the Times left the country through the help of the Qatari government.
10 Things in Politics: The latest in politics & the economy
Three US media organizations — the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal — led a global rescue effort to evacuate their Afghan employees amid the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
A New York Times report published Thursday described this week's chaotic journey to get over 200 Afghans — journalists connected to the three papers and their families — through the Kabul airport and on a plane out of the country. The journalists reported fears for their safety under a new Taliban rule.
The newspapers sought assistance from high-level diplomats, Biden administration officials, and people on-the-ground to evacuate their colleagues.
One NYT foreign correspondent who's also a former US Marine, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, helped coordinate the effort. He was in Kabul covering the conflict and left the city with an early round of American evacuees.
But Neff soon returned to the country to aid his Afghan colleagues' escape. He flew back on a military plane and stayed in the American-occupied wing of the airport, advising Afghans when and how to flee, the Times reported.
Neff did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
After several failed attempts, a group of 128 people from the NYT successfully managed to leave Afghanistan once the Qatari government stepped in to help, the newspaper reported. Qatar has a relationship with the US and hosts the biggest US military base in the Middle East.
NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger said the news organization was "deeply grateful" to Qatar "which has been truly invaluable in getting our Afghan colleagues and their families to safety," per the Times.
"We also thank the many U.S. government officials who took a personal interest in the plight of our colleagues and the military personnel in Kabul who helped them make their exit from the country," Sulzberger said. "We urge the international community to continue working on behalf of the many brave Afghan journalists still at risk in the country."
Thirteen people from the Washington Post were able to leave for Qatar on Tuesday, the Times reported. Seventy-six people from the Wall Street Journal also left, publisher Almar Latour announced in a staff email on Friday.
21. Where’s Biden’s Plan to Stop Terrorism?
Unfortunately it may become even more critical with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Excerpts:
Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan could be the most significant foreign-policy failure of his presidency—and among the most significant foreign-policy failures of any U.S. president since the Vietnam War. An aggressive counterterrorism strategy would at least blunt the ability of terrorists to hide in Afghanistan and threaten America.
Where’s Biden’s Plan to Stop Terrorism?
He acknowledges the national interest, but his administration has failed to develop a strategy.
U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have long known the Taliban continue to have close ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. In a June 2021 assessment, the United Nations Security Council concluded that a “large number of al Qaeda fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan.” The Taliban this week released thousands of them from prisons in Bagram, Kabul, Kandahar and elsewhere.
The Taliban and al Qaeda enjoy longstanding personal relationships, intermarriage, a shared history of struggle and sympathetic ideologies. Al Qaeda leaders have pledged loyalty to every Taliban leader since the group’s establishment. It is shocking, then, that U.S. officials have brushed off the implications of a Taliban victory, even as intelligence analysts said that a Taliban victory would likely be a boon for jihadists.
The Taliban has well-established ties with other regional and international terrorist groups, such as the Pakistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. In addition, there are roughly 2,000 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, and the group has conducted mass-casualty attacks across the country.
The Taliban victory presents a remarkable opportunity for these groups to reorganize and threaten the U.S. at home and abroad. Jihadist groups gleefully celebrated the Taliban’s conquest of Kabul on chat rooms and other online platforms, pledging the revitalization of a global jihad. We have seen this before. The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan in the late 1980s spawned al Qaeda.
The best way to target terrorists in Afghanistan is through armed overwatch—collecting intelligence from airborne assets and striking terrorists from drones and fighter jets. The U.S. will need to fly persistent strike and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) missions, most likely from Qatar and other countries in the Persian Gulf.
The unmanned MQ-9 Reaper drone is probably the most effective U.S. platform for conducting intelligence and strike missions against al Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists. It takes a Reaper some 12 hours to fly round-trip from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar to Afghanistan over Pakistani territory, giving it several hours of flying time in Afghanistan to conduct intelligence and strike missions. The newest MQ-9 platform, the MQ-9B SkyGuardian, would be even better and allow the U.S. to fly at least 15 hours over Afghanistan with a larger payload.
The SkyGuardian would be particularly useful for conducting lethal strikes against terrorists in the country, as the U.S. has done elsewhere. In addition, the U.S. could use other aircraft flying from the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and elsewhere to conduct strikes. Since the Taliban doesn’t yet have significant surface-to-air missile capabilities or an air force, the U.S. will continue to have air superiority in Afghanistan.
Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan could be the most significant foreign-policy failure of his presidency—and among the most significant foreign-policy failures of any U.S. president since the Vietnam War. An aggressive counterterrorism strategy would at least blunt the ability of terrorists to hide in Afghanistan and threaten America.
Mr. Jones is senior vice president and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a former senior civilian in U.S. Special Operations Command in Afghanistan, and author of “In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan.”
22. ‘We mishandled this so dramatically’: Trump acting SECDEF Chris Miller on US withdrawal from Afghanistan
Conclusion:
MT: At this point, you’re not prepared to say what that failure was.
CM: I think it’s just too politicized right now. With all the finger-pointing, I hope to assist our nation as we go through this reckoning and our after-action review and develop our lessons learned about how we can avoid something like this in the future.
‘We mishandled this so dramatically’: Trump acting SECDEF Chris Miller on US withdrawal from Afghanistan
Exclusive: Former SECDEF discusses Afghanistan with Military Times (Full Interview)
Former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller--also an Afghanistan vet and retired Greed Beret--talks to Military Times' Howard Altman about Afghanistan
Christopher C. Miller, then-President Donald Trump’s surprise pick to replace fired Mark Esper and serve as acting defense secretary, has a personal stake in the outcome of events in Afghanistan. As an officer with the 5th Special Forces Group, he was one of the first troops into Afghanistan after 9/11, and he fought with and trained Afghan forces. Miller, a retired colonel, was working on plans to leave Afghanistan by May before the election of Joe Biden. In this Aug. 18 interview with Military Times, Miller talks about his reaction to the chaos unfolding in Kabul. how the decisions to bring the war in Afghanistan have played out, his impressions of Trump, how the U.S. might prevent al-Qaida from re-establishing a presence there, why Afghan National Security Forces were unable to defend their territory, and what he might have done differently.
Some questions and responses have been edited for brevity.
MT: Chris, as a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan, who fought there and helped train Afghans, what was it like to watch the fall of Afghanistan and the unfolding chaos in Kabul?
CM: It’s heartbreaking. I spent last Friday weeping all day long, because I was just so heartbroken. And then I just kind of got angry after that because I think I was going through the process of mourning. And now with what’s going on, it seems like the United States military has finally established some capabilities there. But it seems so preventable. And as a military person that understands military operations and planning and how we do these things. it really bothered me a great deal. What went wrong? I don’t know. I mean, it’s easy for me to sit here and Monday morning quarterback, and I don’t want to do that, because everybody’s doing that and all the shows, pointing fingers and whatnot. I don’t know, I wasn’t involved in those conversations. I wasn’t in those rooms, where the president and his leadership team made those decisions. I heard the president speak and you have to give them respect as he’s the president of the United States. And we all want this to turn out as well as it can. But you just can’t help but think as a former military person, as former secretary of defense … you can’t help but wonder what was going on that we mishandled this so dramatically.
MT: What made you so angry?
CM: I felt so much of this could have been prevented. With a little diligence and planning. That’s probably the most powerful part of our military is logistics and planning ability, and the ability to get any place in the world. So, I had questions and I still have questions, but the team that’s in there now, they just need our support. And I don’t want to be finger -pointing nerd second guessing or chicken-lipping them at this time. What’s concerning to me, though, is … it all seemed to start to really hit Sunday. Of course, that’s the day where the Taliban entered Kabul, with people that are stuck in bed-down locations and are in a bad way, asking for assistance. It seems like things are coming together now. But at the time, I couldn’t help wonder if we couldn’t have predicted that was going to happen. We’d been there for 20 years. Obviously, we had all the intelligence we needed there. To use the horrible Rumsfeld phrases about known unknowns and unknown unknowns, this was not an unknown unknown. This was a known known, we knew what was going to happen. Certainly, after 20 years on the ground, we had all the information we needed. And somehow it wasn’t. I want to know, I really want to know what the decision=making process was and why we didn’t take different actions and put in place different plans. So, that’s kind of where I am.
MT: What would you have done?
CM: It’s easy for me to say what I would have done. It’s not relevant. I thought we very much had a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in an orderly, deliberate process. Now, why that wasn’t executed by this administration is beyond my knowledge at this time. I don’t know why that is.
MT: Have you been in touch with people who are stuck in in Kabul, maybe former Afghan security forces, Afghan interpreters?
CT: Yes
MT: What’s that been like?
CM: It’s so hard. In one weird way. I was talking to a colleague of mine that I’d grown up with and who just left a very high-level position in the military, and he replied, ‘I feel like I have a mission. For the first time, I’m just not fighting the bureaucracy or trying to protect my people, I actually feel like I’m trying to do something worthwhile and relevant.’ So, that’s it. You’re sitting there at 1:30 in the morning, on Sunday night, Monday morning, just absolutely exhausted. But you couldn’t help but think, I might be exhausted here, but I can’t imagine what those folks are going through. So, you’re like, I’m going to go a little bit further, I’m going to try a little bit more. So, in a weird sort of way, it felt like you had a mission again, but you were also just heartbroken that it all played out this way, where these people were put in such risk and without any deliberation, it seems, obviously.
Chris Miller, then a member of the 5th Special Forces Group, in Afghanistan. (Courtesy Chris Miller).
MT: In your initial message to troops in November, 2020, you wrote that ‘This war isn’t over. We are on the verge of defeating al Qaeda and its associates, we must avoid our past strategic error of failing to see the fight through to the finish.’ Did we see the fight through to the finish?
CM: I thought there was a different way to end our operations in Afghanistan. I do firmly believe that. We have to remember, defeat is a very specific, very specific definition in the military. And I had to look this up. Defeat is not a permanent state. Defeat could be a temporary state. I felt strongly at the time that we had defeated al-Qaida, I still think they’re defeated. Now the question is, can we maintain pressure on them to deny them the ability to mass and train and equip and plan and execute follow-on attacks that could change our way of life? I strongly felt that we had defeated al-Qaida. We had not defeated the Taliban. We were absolutely in a stalemate at the time. I felt that in the administration that I represented — the Trump administration — I felt we had a good plan for how we were going to wind this thing down. You know, the idea was, we would force some sort of coalition interim government and use traditional Afghan processes and governmental structures — the Loya Jirga. And much like happened after the Bonn accords in 2001, 2002, of course, was the Loya Jirga. There was a way that we could have had an Afghan solution. Now the counter argument is [Ashraf] Ghani, the president wouldn’t have allowed that. I felt we still had leverage over the process. And I don’t know why we gave that leverage up. I wasn’t a part of the discussions after 12:01 a.m. on the 20th of January 2021.
MT: Do you think the over-the-horizon approach being suggested by the Pentagon now of being able to provide some level of security from afar to prevent groups like al-Qaida from re-establishing themselves is feasible?
CM: Absolutely. After Desert One in 1980, when we failed to rescue our hostages that were being held in Tehran, we’ve created the most remarkable counterterrorism organization in the world. It can go any place in the world in 24 hours or less and protect Americans or strike back when needed. We know how to do this. That’s not the question. It’s the will to do it. And so yes, we can absolutely prevent al-Qaida and other terrorist groups that have an international inclination or an international reach from massing, we can do that.
MT: In December 2020, you met with Ghani and Afghan officials. What was your sense, then, about their ability to defend their own country?
CM: President Ghani was enormously gracious and so was his vice president. He recognized the sacrifice of so many Americans and also cautioned that the Taliban were a great threat. We all knew that. It wasn’t anything I didn’t know. We didn’t talk specifically about the durability of the Afghan National Security Forces. I’d been there long enough and I knew the challenges there and I’d worked with surrogate forces. Oftentimes, in the past, there were methodologies and ways of using special operations forces or paramilitary forces, to provide capabilities to the Afghan National Security Forces. Specifically to call in fires, close air support, sustainment assets. So, we know how to do this. We’ve done it before. … I’d argue we’re doing it in Syria very effectively. Right now. I believe the strategy that was used in the operational plan that was used to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was very effective. I know we could have done something of the same sort with the Afghan National Security Forces.
MT: What was your sense of their capabilities? Did you get any sense that something like what we’ve seen in the last seven days would happen?
CM: I think any intelligence assessment analysis would recognize that the Afghan National Security Forces have great heroism and fighting ability. They needed some stiffening and some support from very low-key, small … American and allied support that probably would have given them the confidence to continue to fight. I have a lot of empathy for the young Afghan soldier in an outlying province … to see that the Taliban had moved in and recognizing that you didn’t have any support. I think it would be obvious and based on your tradition of warfighting, that probably you’re going to not continue to fight at that point.
Afghan security guards stand on a wall as hundreds of people gather outside the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 17. (AP)
MT: Do you think the U.S. announcing the withdrawal was the final straw?
CM: I have no idea. But I think we had all the information we needed about the tradition of Afghan warfighting and how they conduct combat. And it would be it was very clear to me that without some sort of support the Afghan National Security Forces … would be likely faced with significant resistance to not continue to fight.
MT: What advice did you give President Trump about how to proceed in Afghanistan? And how did he take that?
CM: We didn’t talk specifically about tactics or force structure or force capabilities. He agreed to — I think we were at 5,800 [U.S. troops}, then you had probably another 1,000 … people that were temporary duty and rotating through country. He agreed to withdraw forces down to 2,500. We didn’t specifically talk about operational capability or going forward in the future of how this would look.
MT: Did he object to the 2,500 number?
CM: No. The president was comfortable with that. The idea that we would maintain leverage and try to, as I mentioned earlier, try to establish some sort of interim government and coalition government that would have reduced the chance of a chaotic departure.
MT: What was his grasp of the situation in Afghanistan? And what did he want to see, from your vantage point as the acting defense secretary?
CM: I felt that he had a very good grasp. One of the criticisms is that, you know, he didn’t understand national security. He had enormous common sense when it came to how things work. And I was always intrigued, if not surprised, because I picked up all the press that, you know, he didn’t know what he was doing and whatnot. I never really knew that. I didn’t know the president until the night where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in that operation. That’s where I met him. I was with all our national security interactions, I was always very, very impressed with his grasp of the details and grasp of the overarching situation. And people will say, Well, he didn’t use typical national security language, which most people would like. ‘What’s the most dangerous course of action, what’s the most probable enemy course of action? And that sort of vernacular. But I always saw that he actually covered all that stuff in his own way, because he’s a businessman and he was looking at it from that context, the way he was trained. But at the end of the day, everybody got his say, he listened to everybody. He asked really good questions. And at the end of a cabinet level meeting in the Oval Office, he always went around and asked for your final recommendation. And then he made a decision. And I’m like, ‘What more could you want from a boss?’
MT: Do you think that negotiating with the Taliban was ultimately a mistake?
CM: No, it wasn’t. That’s how these wars end. You have to negotiate with your opponent and that [for] insurgencies and counterinsurgency, this is kind of par for the course, this is a standard. There was no ability to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield. There was the ability — we just decided not to do what was necessary to do that, which I, as an American, agreed with, by the way. We can win. But is it worth the trampling of American values and ethics and norms? The United States military can win any war, let’s be perfectly clear. But we also have our value-based democracy where there’s some things that we’re not going to do. And I totally agree with that.
MT: What would it have taken to win to win the war in Afghanistan.
CM: In 2002, deciding to make it a special operations theater and just keep it small footprint and not expand the war the way we did.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., center, listens as President Donald Trump speaks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington on Sunday to announce that Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed during a U.S. raid in Syria. White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino, far left, National Security Council Senior Director of Counterterrorism Kashyap "Kash" Pramod Patel, second from right, and National Security Council Senior Director for Counterterrorism and Threat Networks Chris Miller, right, stand by Graham. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
MT: Was there mission creep in Afghanistan?
CM: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Classic example of mission creep and lack of strategic coherence. I was just a young person when I went. I had orange hair then. So, I wasn’t involved in those discussions. I was just an implementer, like so many of our current members and veterans were. So, I wasn’t involved in that, but you execute the orders given by your superior.
MT: But now, you look back, you have the white hair. You were acting defense secretary. What are the lessons to be learned by the U.S. military and the American public about getting involved in a foreign conflict?
CM: They’re not lessons learned. They’re lessons relearned. No. 1 is cultural arrogance will hurt you, and understanding local dynamics and how foreign countries and their populations interact is really important. No. 2, we did it again. We tried to — just like we did in Vietnam — we tried to create an army in our image, which was completely inappropriate for their skills, their desires and their traditions of warfighting. So, that was another lesson relearned, I would argue. And then I really think we have to be honest with ourselves as a military. In these wars, the United States military, we pretty much had full authorization and the ability to execute the strategy we decided, and I think we need to do some serious soul searching. The thing is, we came out of Iraq, it took forever to do Iraq lessons learned — the military was very adamantly opposed. Some very courageous general officers and others decided to do that, of course. That occurs, what, eight years after the end of the war? I think it’s really, really important that the military does an accurate, fair, unbiased assessment of what occurred.
MT: When you were part of the decision-making system, were you confident in a May withdrawal as President Trump had wanted? Would it have worked and why?
CM: Yeah, I mean, there’s this. The negotiation process wasn’t over with the agreement between the United States and the Taliban. There was a follow-on phase, which was going to be to establish an interim coalition government and let the Afghans use their traditional structure of the Loya Jirga to ratify the next government and the next stage of their development as a country. I don’t know, because I’d never happened. And also the idea was that we maintain a small counterterrorism footprint there as well. … So, it wasn’t executed. So, I can’t say. Well, maybe it was. I don’t know,
MT: What were the plans that you were talking about? Would there have been a complete withdrawal, giving up Bagram for instance, or have it maintained as a U.S. base?
CM: At that point, we weren’t into the details,. Gen. [Scott] Miller and CENTCOM Commander Gen. [Frank] McKenzie had numerous courses of action for how to retrograde, so I did not go into the precise details of that. And giving up Bagram — I mean, those were always the questions, you know? Is it Kandahar? Is it Bagram? But we weren’t at a point where we could go into those details yet because we still had some other things that we needed that we planned to do.
MT: Was giving up Bagram a mistake?
CM: It is easy for me to sit here and Monday morning quarterback. I don’t know the challenges they were under. And I don’t know, the decision-making that went into giving up Bagram. Having an [air base] in the middle of nowhere, where you can control a large amount of space outside the perimeter is always helpful. But by the same token, you know, how would people have gotten to Bagram, it’s, what, 60 miles north of Kabul? I don’t know. So, it’s easy for me to sit here and throw rocks. But I’m just not going to do that.
CM: Straight politics. Don’t want to get involved. Don’t care. It’s not helpful to America. I think the question is, who’s going to accept responsibility? And I think that my thing is, I was always raised as a military enlisted man — never was an NCO — then was an officer. I was always raised to accept responsibility when something goes wrong. That was the ethos. And that was the core value that I felt strongly about. I haven’t seen anybody accept responsibility yet. I think there does need to be accounting because something went dramatically wrong — someone should accept responsibility. I don’t know who that is. I don’t have enough information. … Here’s what I’m concerned about, like if you’re a young buck sergeant, or you’re a young second lieutenant, first lieutenant, and you’re watching your leadership kind of play these politics. I mean, what is that the message that that our leadership should be sending? These kids are desperate for authenticity, they’re desperate for just truth. And when they see the involvement of the military in these political affairs, it must be very confusing for them. And that’s what concerns me the most about what’s going on right now.
Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller speaks during a meeting with Lithuania's Minister of National Defence Raimundas Karoblis Nov. 13, 2020, at the Pentagon. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
MT: Do you accept any responsibility for any of this? And if so, what is that?
CM: I’d gladly, eagerly accept all responsibility for every Department of Defense decision that was made up till 12:01 a.m. on the 20th of January 2021. I’ll stand by these decisions. I’m a career Special Forces special operator, and I’m extremely critical of my performance. That’s the beauty of special operators, they always do their after-action review and try to improve their performance. And obviously, there are things I always want to improve. But I will take full responsibility for every decision that was made there in the department.
MT: Is there anything you would do differently?
CM: I probably should have been more vocal in guaranteeing that the incoming administration recognized the challenges they were going to face. I also was quite aware that they are part of the foreign policy intelligentsia and elite and, and I thought they would understand what was going on. I probably should have been more forceful. I don’t know if it would have done any good, because the whole process of transition was so politicized at that point. I wish it was about national security. I thought it was about America. That wasn’t the experience I had, and I probably went a little weak and kind of got puffy-lipped and, you know, took my stuff and went to the corner. I probably should have been much more dramatic. But I didn’t want, I didn’t think it was appropriate at the time, to go public with those things. Because you know, what’s good for the Department of Defense is good for America. So, I did not want to further politicize a horribly complex and difficult situation for the incoming team. So … I’ll accept full responsibility for that.
MT: What would you have said?
CM: I wasn’t asked. So it doesn’t make any difference. I mean, it would have been nice to be able to sit and go through the top five issues that were coming up and have a conversation about that. But that wasn’t the way it worked. And so, so be it.
MT: So, over this long, 20 years of war, you’ve known people who have lost their lives, who have lost limbs, who have continued to suffer the seen and unseen wounds of war. You know many families that have lost loved ones, who paid the ultimate price for this last 20 years. What’s your message to those people?
CM: I mean, that’s really what brought me out to speak with you and go public, that hasn’t been what I’ve done since I left the office. My heart goes out to the Gold Star families. And I can’t even fathom what they’re going through, the re-injury and the re-traumatization of what they’re going through. And every you know, the cliche question now is, was it worth it? I’ll go to my grave, believing this: There’s just an inherent value of service to your country. And the tragedy that befalls, that’s the nature of war. … War wouldn’t be war if there wasn’t tragedy, right? So, I can’t even fathom or have any words of solace or anything like that. I just, you know, been so honored to serve with them, and they’re well-served with their loved ones.
MT: Earlier, you said that your objective is to see this war end responsibly. We all saw the tumult and chaos in Kabul. Is this war being ended responsibly?
CM: Time will tell. It certainly didn’t get off to a good start. I thought there were other ways we could have brought this end-state into being without the chaos and the crisis that we have seen in the last couple days. I also understand, fundamentally, the challenges and the nature of war, fog, friction, chaos. But we do have a military that’s extremely well-trained, extremely experienced, that is designed to wring out as much of the unknown as they can. We have an intelligence community that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on. There’s been a fundamental failure that we need to look at and see how this happened and what we’re going to do to prevent it from happening again.
MT: At this point, you’re not prepared to say what that failure was.
CM: I think it’s just too politicized right now. With all the finger-pointing, I hope to assist our nation as we go through this reckoning and our after-action review and develop our lessons learned about how we can avoid something like this in the future.
23. Don Bolduc calls Afghanistan exit a 'geopolitical disaster of unparalleled proportions'
Don Bolduc calls Afghanistan exit a 'geopolitical disaster of unparalleled proportions'
'Fox News @ Night' panel discusses how the United States is going to get Americans out of Afghanistan
Retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who served 10 tours in Afghanistan and was one of the first Special Forces officers in the country after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, called the Biden administration's decision to withdraw the U.S. military from Afghanistan a "geopolitical disaster of unparalleled proportions."
The Taliban has gained control of the majority of Afghanistan territory amid the U.S. military's withdrawal from the country after 20 years, prompting thousands of citizens to flee their homes and seek refuge in the U.S. and elsewhere.
"I am very familiar with American history, and I have never seen a withdrawal or an action by the United States military that put so many people in peril and danger and was so … irresponsible towards our national security, both inside America and outside America," Bolduc told Fox News.
He continued: "And the damage that it does to our reputation — the damage that it does to the faith and confidence that people would have in us — and the doors that it opens for potential enemies like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. I mean, this is a geopolitical disaster of unparalleled proportions. I believe I could have given this mission to a lieutenant and he would have planned it better."
Retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc (Fox News)
Bolduc, who has been awarded two Purple Hearts and five Bronze Star medals over his military career, served in the 5th Special Forces Group in 2001 in an effort to boot the Taliban and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. Now, he's running for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, but he says he keeps his "kit" packed and "ready to go" since he retired.
The 33-year Army veteran detailed 20 years of shifts in leadership and military missions in Afghanistan through four presidents and said he has "less confidence in our senior levels" to handle an effective withdrawal by Sept. 1 and believes the military needs to "go back" into the country to restabilize things.
"We have a regional area that we should be very concerned with," Bolduc explained. "We've got Pakistan with nuclear weapons. We don't want that to destabilize. We have a very unstable north with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and so on. We have an unstable border with Iran in the west. China and Russia are going to come in and take advantage of this situation. The Taliban are going to go back to their old ways of ruling."
Current and retired service members "know how to put together the proper plan to go back in there and to change this dynamic in short order against the Taliban and al Qaeda," he said.
Taliban fighters display their flag on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
"I'm going to be bold here and I am going to recommend that's what we need to do," Bolduc said of going back into Afghanistan. "…. This is a huge national national security issue for the homeland. … And what we need to do is — I'm sorry, it's the last thing I wanted to recommend — but doing careful thought, we need to go back. We need to do it the right way. And there are people that know how to do it."
He continued: "When our service members are given a mission, they accomplish it. Unlike the senior leaders, they do the job."
The Biden administration on Thursday acknowledged reports that evacuees were having trouble reaching the international airport and Kabul, which is surrounded by Taliban checkpoints.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said during a Thursday news briefing that the government had received a "small handful of reports" of American citizens who were unable to reach the airport. But he also said that though U.S. officials were aware of reports that interpreters and former Afghan military officers were being hunted and killed by the Taliban forces, he could not confirm their veracity.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, vowed to bring home all the Americans stuck in the country. The U.S. is believed to have about 6,000 troops there.
President Biden has remained firm in his decision to order the U.S. military's exit from the country.
"I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces," Biden said in an address to the nation on Monday. "That’s why we're still there."
The president suggested that the withdrawal debacle was the result of the peace deal he "inherited" from former President Donald Trump and claimed his only options were between "escalating the conflict and sending thousands of American troops back into Afghanistan."
Fox News' Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report.
24. Biden Insiders: Our Afghanistan Exit Is a Part of a Much Bigger Reset
This explains a lot.
Excerpts:
The Biden team view is based on the idea that becoming bogged down in a 20-year war with an unclear mission that drained our resources and distracted us from our priorities made us weaker, that entering Iraq without justification made us weaker, that retreat in the wake of the calamities of Bush foreign policy made us weaker, that Trump attacking our alliances and undermining the rule of law at home made us weaker. The gross failure of leadership in managing COVID made us weaker. A president inciting an attempted coup made us much, much weaker.
President Biden, recognizing all this, is seeking to systematically, comprehensively, and irreversibly undo that damage and to strengthen America, preparing us to lead in the decades ahead. As much as it means ending America’s longest war, it also means shifting the trillions spent on fighting to investing in ourselves, our infrastructure, our schools, and our health care system. Build Back Better is not simply a big domestic program in the eyes of the administration. It is, as was the interstate highway system to Dwight Eisenhower, an investment in our security and our competitiveness. Proposed major initiatives in cyber security, power grid resiliency, expanding broadband, and combating climate change make that crystal clear.
The effort also turns on efforts to undo the damage to our international standing done by unilateralism, contempt for the rule of law, attacks on democracy here at home, and the rise of domestic violent extremists who today pose a greater risk than overseas terror cells. Elements of the effort have included re-entering the Paris Climate Accords and rejoining the WHO, leading the way on vaccine diplomacy, recommitting ourselves to strengthening international institutions and our alliances, seeking to negotiate a re-entry of the U.S. into the Iran nuclear deal, and, perhaps above all else, preparing for the challenges and opportunities of the rest of the 21st Century. A shift in our focus and the deployment of our resources from the Greater Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region is another key part of that.
Biden Insiders: Our Afghanistan Exit Is a Part of a Much Bigger Reset
Biden and his team have clearer memories of the long litany of egregious and crippling missteps America’s leaders made during the first years of this century than do their critics.
David Rothkopf
Updated Aug. 21, 2021 3:00AM ET / Published Aug. 20, 2021 12:59PM ET
In world affairs, first impressions can be misleading. Soviet and American generals were photographed toasting the triumph of a great alliance in 1945 but in the blinking of an eye the Cold War was underway and we were great enemies. Crowds pressed against the U.S. embassy gates as Saigon fell and America lost a long, bloody war mere decades before Vietnam embraced a market economy and became a top tourist destination for Americans.
Statues are toppled, regimes collapse, city squares are thronged with tens of thousands of people demanding change, “Mission Accomplished” moments occur, and yet what follows is not what the pundits caught up in the drama and imagery of individual events predict. With time, members of the Biden administration anticipate, we will come to see the events of the past week very differently.
In other words, we are likely to come to see the events of the past week not only very differently but in the opposite light of that depicted by many commentators who, understandably but at the expense of the long view, were reacting to the horror of what we all saw happen in the streets of Kabul.
What is more, even as the talking heads and the Twitterverse and the editorial writers and the political opportunists were decrying the process by which the decision to leave was made, questioning the judgment of Biden and his team, the departure from Afghanistan, even if it unfolded badly, was actually the product of a laser-like focus on the big picture and the long-term interests of the United States on the part of the president and his top advisers.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the administration’s reasoning to me as follows: “The investment we made in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years was enormous. Two decades, one trillion dollars, 2,300 lives lost, thousands more with visible and invisible wounds. It’s no secret that our strategic competitors would like nothing more than for America to be bogged down in conflict for another two years—or two decades. The only element that rivaled the cost of this conflict was the opportunity cost. The president concluded it was time for us to end this war.”
“The actions in Afghanistan are all part of a much broader, carefully considered strategic reset for the United States. It will mean nothing less than finally bringing an end to the post-9/11 era. ”
A senior White House aide put it this way: “The president firmly believes that leaving Afghanistan improves our ability to be a stronger world leader, more engaged with allies, and more effective internationally.” The aide went on to echo Blinken, thus underscoring the centrality of the idea of returning our focus to great power competition for Biden and his team, saying, “As the president has said repeatedly, there is nothing that Russia or China would like to see more than the U.S. tied down in an endless war in Afghanistan. This is especially true as the terrorist threat grows in other places, and the geopolitical challenges elsewhere mount.”
Senior aides to the president repeatedly stressed to me that the actions in Afghanistan are all part of a much broader, carefully considered strategic shift for the United States. It will mean nothing less than finally bringing an end to the post-9/11 era. It will close the books on the recklessness and excesses of the war on terror, an end to the dangerous delusions of American exceptionalism and hubris-infused unilateralism.
The Biden team view is based on the idea that becoming bogged down in a 20-year war with an unclear mission that drained our resources and distracted us from our priorities made us weaker, that entering Iraq without justification made us weaker, that retreat in the wake of the calamities of Bush foreign policy made us weaker, that Trump attacking our alliances and undermining the rule of law at home made us weaker. The gross failure of leadership in managing COVID made us weaker. A president inciting an attempted coup made us much, much weaker.
President Biden, recognizing all this, is seeking to systematically, comprehensively, and irreversibly undo that damage and to strengthen America, preparing us to lead in the decades ahead. As much as it means ending America’s longest war, it also means shifting the trillions spent on fighting to investing in ourselves, our infrastructure, our schools, and our health care system. Build Back Better is not simply a big domestic program in the eyes of the administration. It is, as was the interstate highway system to Dwight Eisenhower, an investment in our security and our competitiveness. Proposed major initiatives in cyber security, power grid resiliency, expanding broadband, and combating climate change make that crystal clear.
The effort also turns on efforts to undo the damage to our international standing done by unilateralism, contempt for the rule of law, attacks on democracy here at home, and the rise of domestic violent extremists who today pose a greater risk than overseas terror cells. Elements of the effort have included re-entering the Paris Climate Accords and rejoining the WHO, leading the way on vaccine diplomacy, recommitting ourselves to strengthening international institutions and our alliances, seeking to negotiate a re-entry of the U.S. into the Iran nuclear deal, and, perhaps above all else, preparing for the challenges and opportunities of the rest of the 21st Century. A shift in our focus and the deployment of our resources from the Greater Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region is another key part of that.
The critics who have emerged in the past week have often been as misguided and unappreciative of the bigger picture as they have been scathing. One top European foreign policy expert said America had “cut and run”—pretty preposterous after 20 years of engagement, roughly 19 years too many. One right-wing American pundit called the exit from Kabul “the worst presidential dereliction in memory” which, I hope, has his friends and family getting him the counsel of a good neurologist as he clearly is suffering from severe short-term memory loss. One member of Britain’s Parliament suggested the U.S. was returning to “isolationism” which is, again, pretty ludicrous given that our exit comes at the end of the longest war in our history. It seems the honorable gentleman thinks the permanent engagement of colonialism is the desirable opposite of isolationism.
There were certainly mistakes made in planning and executing the U.S. pullout of Afghanistan—although many observers understate the responsibility the Taliban, the Afghan government, and the Afghan military have for the horrific scenes we witnessed. But even at the end of just one week, thanks to the fast action of the president and the U.S. military, the picture is very different. Evacuations are proceeding at a remarkable pace. The military side of the Kabul airfield has stabilized and is orderly. Our embassy team and the diplomats of our allies are safe. The U.S. has demonstrated its commitment to getting American citizens, allies, and as many Afghans who worked with the U.S. as possible out and doing so swiftly.
The events of the past week have been harrowing. They should not be minimized. America should actively work to find places within our borders and worldwide with our friends and allies for every Afghan who seeks refugee status. We are already beginning the work of finding other mechanisms—diplomatic, political, and economic—to foster security and justice to the extent possible within Afghanistan. But the administration also recognizes that many other nations suffer as do the Afghans (the people of Haiti, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and oppressed women in societies worldwide all wish they could get the calls for aiding them that have come this week for the people of Afghanistan) and that the most important thing the U.S. can do to influence good outcomes worldwide is to restore our standing, restore our vitality at home, strengthen the international system, consistently let our values lead us, and start again to lead by example.
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We have ignored much of that work during the past 20 years, a period that is likely to go down in history as among the worst ever for U.S. foreign policy. President Biden and his team have had the courage to recognize that to lead again as we once did, to lead to our full potential, we must have the courage to acknowledge and correct errors like the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, they seem to have clearer memories of the long litany of often egregious, sometimes crippling missteps America’s leaders have made during the first years of this century than do their critics. Fortunately for all of us, they also appear to have a much clearer understanding of what must be done if the U.S. is to finally put those errors and misspent years behind us and attend as we urgently must to the challenges and opportunities of the decades ahead.
25. The Right and Our Afghan Allies (Wall Street Journal Editorial Board)
The Right and Our Afghan Allies
It isn’t conservative to betray a promise to those who fought with us.
WSJ · by The Editorial Board
A man holds a certificate acknowledging his work for Americans as hundreds of people gather outside the international airport in Kabul, Aug. 17.
Photo: Associated Press
The chaos in Kabul will forever stain President Biden’s legacy, but he’s not the only one who is harming America’s reputation for constancy and honor. See the immigration restrictionists calling for the betrayal of U.S. allies in their moment of great need.
The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program creates a path to permanent U.S. residency for locals who worked with the U.S. government in Afghanistan. After at least a year of service—and a vetting process that can take years—a qualified Afghan can bring his spouse and children to America if he is “experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of such employment.” Anyone who worked with the U.S. now faces such a threat from the Taliban if he remains in Afghanistan.
Americans who served alongside these Afghans know they were crucial to the U.S. mission. Without local guides to language and mores, more Americans would have died. Hundreds of translators and their family members have been killed for assisting the U.S., in addition to the 66,000 members of the Afghan military and police who have died in the war.
The priority of U.S. forces in Afghanistan should be to rescue and extract trapped Americans. But the U.S. also has a duty to thousands of Afghans who are in mortal danger. The Biden Administration is rightly attempting to evacuate SIV applicants, often to third countries where they will wait for a visa decision.
The SIV program has deep bipartisan support, but it’s not unanimous. Last month the U.S. House passed, 407-16, a bill to allocate an additional 8,000 visas for translators. The no votes came exclusively from Republicans.
For the record, they are: Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Jody Hice of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Barry Moore of Alabama, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Bill Posey of Florida, Matt Rosendale of Montana and Chip Roy of Texas.
Former Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Politico that “most of the translators that we’ve worked with and most of the government operators we’ve worked with, who wanted to leave and who meet the conditions for the program, already have left.” President Biden has repeated a similar falsehood. The SIV program has a backlog of some 20,000 applicants, and thousands of others could be eligible.
Political operatives like Mr. Miller speak about these Afghans as if they were freeloaders. Yet their greatest advocates are veterans. “These interpreters risked their lives and their families’ lives by aiding the U.S. military,” Daniel Elkins, a Green Beret and Afghanistan veteran, said in June. “If we abandon our side of the commitment now, people in the future will be less willing to work with us.” Even die-hard Trump supporter Rep. Matt Gaetz said he supported the SIV bill because “there are people over there who have kept my constituents alive.”
Recalling the violence in Europe after the 2014-15 migrant surge, some Americans may have good-faith concerns about terrorism or cultural differences. Attacks by Taliban spies who worked with the coalition killed dozens of troops during the war, and Kandahar isn’t Kansas. We also worry about the Administration’s competence.
But Europe had to cope with millions of unvetted migrants.These are thousands of people who proved they work well with Americans. They aren’t Muslim extremists; they are fleeing Muslim extremists. The thousands of Afghans who already made it to the U.S. through the SIV program haven’t always had an easy time, but they haven’t caused havoc.
GOP hostility to these Afghans is also a political mistake. How large is the constituency for betraying allies? Voters know the difference between lawlessness on the southern U.S. border and Afghans who earned the right to emigrate in a lawful program.
Conservatives claim to believe in American exceptionalism, and they once took pride in welcoming exiles from authoritarian lands. They still court the votes of Cuban, Venezuelan, Korean and Vietnamese immigrants—all as American as anyone. Afghans who fought with us deserve no less.
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WSJ · by The Editorial Board
26. Protests in Pakistan erupt against China’s belt and road plan
Resistance to One Belt One Road.
Protests in Pakistan erupt against China’s belt and road plan
Demonstrations shut down Gwadar, where Chinese are blamed for lack of water and electricity and threat to local fishing
Protests have erupted in Pakistan’s port city Gwadar against a severe shortage of water and electricity and threats to livelihoods, part of a growing backlash against China’s multibillion-dollar belt and road projects in the country.
This week, demonstrators including fishers and other local workers blocked the roads in Gwadar, a coastal town in Balochistan. They burned tyres, chanted slogans and largely shut down the city, to demand water and electricity and a stop to Chinese trawlers illegally fishing in the nearby waters and then taking the fish to China. Two people were injured when the authorities cracked down on the protesters.
On Friday a suicide bomber killed two children, in an attack on Chinese nationals driving along the main expressway to the port, according to a senior Pakistani official. “The suicide bomber was able to hit the last car of the convoy as it passed,” he said, confirming that two children died and a Chinese engineer was injured.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which like other militant groups in the region accuses Chinese of exploiting Balochistan’s mineral resources, and has previously attacked Chinese nationals and the Chinese consulate in Karachi.
This week’s protests had been largely peaceful.
“It has been more than a month, we have been protesting and rallying against the Chinese trawlers, shortage of water and electricity. The government never paid heed to our demands, and we had to observe a complete shutdown strike and we were attacked by the district administration,” said Faiz Nigori, a local political worker.
The protests are part of a growing discontent with China’s presence in Gwadar, whose port is an integral part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project (CPEC), in which China has invested billions in infrastructure projects in Pakistan.
Under the project, Pakistan surrendered Gwadar port to a Chinese-backed multinational corporation for a lease of 40 years. It is part of China’s mammoth belt and road initiative, which stretches across 70 countries to give China a clear trade route from east Asia to Europe.
The Pakistan government accepted China’s investment in the hope it would help boost the country’s ailing economy. But Balochistan is home to a long-running violent insurgency, and China’s presence in Gwadar has been the cause of much social unrest and led to great anti-Chinese sentiment.
It has also given a fillip to Baloch militant insurgent groups, who have carried out terrorist attacks in protest at CPEC projects. However, there are signs that resentment at belt and road is growing across the country. Nine Chinese workers were killed last month when a vehicle laden with explosives and driven by a suicide attacker rammed a convoy heading out to work on the Dasu dam, another flagship CPEC project.
China’s ambassador to Pakistan was also targeted in a terrorist attack on his hotel in April, though he was not hurt.
China is not to blame for the power and water shortages that have plagued Gwadar in recent weeks. Balochistan is Pakistan’s most undeveloped and most neglected region, and Gwadar is not connected to the national grid. It had instead relied on power from neighbouring Iran, but that has slowed to a trickle in recent weeks. Water has also become scarce after a dam dried up.
However, locals said they had been promised that China’s investment in Gwadar would mean development for the area, including the establishment of a coal-fired power station to provide much-needed electricity.
Yet, in the years since China was granted a lease on Gwadar port, no work has begun on any such projects and instead locals say that China’s presence is undermining their livelihoods and creating local food shortages by allowing Chinese fishing boats to illegally fish in Pakistan’s waters around the port.
Nigori said that when the Chinese started developing the Gwadar port, Pakistani officials claimed that the port city would become the Singapore of Pakistan. “But today, we don’t have water, electricity and Chinese trawlers are illegally fishing at our coast. We just want our basic rights,” he said.
Mir Sher Baz Khetran, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, said such protests could prove very destabilising for China’s presence in Pakistan. “If there is no trickle-down of development projects under CPEC, it will strengthen the insurgents’ narrative of exploitation of resources of Balochistan,” he said.
Last month, Pakistan detained five Chinese trawlers on suspicion of illegal fishing not far from Gwadar port. Khudadad Waju, the president of Fisherfolk Alliance Gwadar, said it had sent a team of local fishers to examine the caught fish and they confirmed that “the fish were caught near Gwadar”.
However, Chinese authorities denied that the detained Chinese trawlers were illegally fishing and claimed instead that they were sheltering from a storm.
Akbar Askani, the minister for fisheries for the Balochistan state government, alleged that the central government, which has close ties with China, was granting Chinese vessels licences to fish in the seas around Gwadar, despite the cost to the local community.
27. The Taliban Are Promising Inclusivity and Amnesty in Afghanistan. But Some Officials Predict Bloodshed
The Taliban Are Promising Inclusivity and Amnesty in Afghanistan. But Some Officials Predict Bloodshed
TIME · by Kimberly Dozier letters@time.com
As the black-turbaned mullahs of the Taliban gather in Kabul and Kandahar to hash out how they’ll govern, the decisions they make will offer the world clues to whether they remain the same brutal regime that controlled Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion in 2001 or adopt a less extreme version of Islamic rule.
Change was not originally in the mullahs’ plans. While they declared an Islamic emirate in name Thursday, it was not clear they would bring back the rules and regulations of their former 1990s government, according to current and former U.S. and Western officials, that repressed women and used public amputations, beheadings and stonings as not only criminal punishments but also entertainment for a population denied access to television or music.
But in recent years, as the Taliban held peace talks with the U.S. in Doha, its leaders were offered counsel by international and regional officials, who urged the group to temper its fundamentalist practices in the interest of winning international political recognition and aid and securing support from young and fairly sophisticated Afghans who bristle at their version of Islam.
Since the fall of Kabul, the militants have been in continued communication with U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the State Department said Thursday, as well as former Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a senior member of the Ghani government the Taliban toppled. The Afghan officials have been arguing that the group will alienate the international community, and its own people, if it installs a purist interpretation of a religious emirate, with an appointed “emir for life” and an unelected shura council of mullahs ruling the country, according to current and former Afghan and Western officials briefed on the talks.
The Taliban is now in internal deliberations, with its triumphant military wing pushing for a more purist system and a political wing—which includes some of the negotiators from Doha—arguing in favor of a more “inclusive” Islamic system, according to regional officials familiar with the talks. “We want an inclusive Islamic government in Afghanistan,” Taliban spokesman in Doha Suhail Shaheen tells TIME. But he was not forthcoming with details, and a senior Taliban official told Reuters they may install a ruling council, with the movement’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, in charge, perhaps as “president.” That’s similar to how they ruled from 1996 to 2001, with Mullah Omar as figurehead, and the council managing governance.
While the deal-making isn’t done, the group has signaled that they’ll likely retain the Afghan government bureaucracy to run the country, and ordered their followers to protect public property and extend amnesty to “all those who have previously worked for and helped the invaders,” or worked for “the corrupt Kabul Administration,” according to a statement released to TIME.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban's spokesperson, addresses reporters on Aug. 17 during the group's first news conference since gaining control of Kabul.
Jim Huylebroek—The New York Times/Redux
In the group’s first press conference on Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid took the first question from a woman journalist and said the Taliban would honor women’s rights under Islam, though he offered few details. The group reportedly invited the Ghani Administration’s Health Minister to continue in the role as the country battles the COVID-19 pandemic. In many areas, the Taliban has called for policemen and other city workers to come back to their jobs.
But U.S., Western and Afghan officials remain highly skeptical. Taliban patrols in Kabul have harassed and beaten Afghans trying to reach the airport, according to U.S. and Afghan officials as well as reporters on the ground. They opened fire on young people demonstrating in the eastern city of Jalalabad and have responded violently to further protests Thursday in other parts of the country. Afghan and Western officials tell TIME that Taliban units are going door-to-door in some neighborhoods, asking for identification papers. (A Taliban spokesman tells TIME that opportunistic imposters are shaking down a scared populace, or taking personal vengeance that has nothing to do with the group.)
Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent and photographer Marcus Yam photographed Taliban fighters on the road to the airport firing automatic weapons into the air, then beating Afghans they’d corralled with “sticks, lengths of rubber hose, knotted rope, rifle butts.” They attacked Yam as he tried to film them. An Afghan pilot was assassinated and at least one former U.S. military translator was reported killed in the weeks before the militants took the capital.
U.S. and Western officials tell TIME they believe that after the last American troops depart, more bloodshed could follow. A regional official tells TIME the Taliban have been taking hard drives from the abandoned computers of former senior Afghan government officials, especially members of the intelligence and national security agencies, from which they can harvest data showing who ordered operations against the militants, sometimes in cooperation with the CIA. Regional security officials are bracing for the Taliban to take retribution.
Perhaps the greatest fear is that under Taliban control, Afghanistan will once again become a stronghold for groups plotting to attack the U.S. homeland. The Taliban have not severed ties with Al Qaeda, which remains entrenched in the country and whose fighters have married into Taliban ranks. The Afghan-based branch of the so-called Islamic State also remains active in the nation as well. The Haqqani network, a key Taliban faction, continues to hold hostage U.S. Navy veteran Mark Frerichs, taken captive in Kabul last year.
Men try to help a wounded woman and her child, who was also injured, after Taliban fighters use gunfire, whips, sticks and sharp objects to maintain control over a crowd of thousands waiting outside the airport in Kabul on Aug. 17.
Marcus Yam—Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
There are incentives for the Taliban to take a more moderate approach to governance than they did while running Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The U.S. and the UN still have sanctions in place that could cripple the group’s early attempts at governance, says Brian O’Toole, a former Treasury official who managed sanctions on foreign assets. “It gives the U.S. huge leverage, because the Taliban are going to find conducting any international trade, very difficult.” Billions of dollars in Afghan federal reserves has been frozen by the Biden Administration, according to Ajmal Ahmady, acting head of country’s central bank, and the International Monetary Fund also froze access to its funds, because of “lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in Afghanistan.”
Juan Zarate, a counterterrorism czar in the George W. Bush Administration, says sanctions will remain “a significant barrier to the legitimation of any Taliban regime, absent wholesale, fundamental reform on their part or simple diplomatic capitulation and accommodation by the West.” The sanctions could render the Afghan economy “a no-go zone” like North Korea, Zarate says. (China has signaled it will recognize the fledgling government, with Turkey and Russia expected to follow soon after.)
People seeking to leave Kabul gather at the international airport on Aug. 16.
Jim Huylebroek—The New York Times/Redux
But Gretchen Peters, executive director of the Center on Illicit Networks and Organized Crime, says the Taliban brings in up to a $1 billion a year from the opium trade, extortion and kidnapping, money they already used to fund the apparent pay-off of some of the Afghan officials who gave up without a fight. “They appear to be awash with cash,” she says.
Even without a cash crunch, the Taliban will have to contend with a culture clash. More than 70% of Afghanistan is under 25, and never experienced the group’s harsh rule in the 1990s. The new generation of Afghans have grown up with freedom of expression, social media and satellite television replete with Bollywood action movies and female news anchors. Much of this young population is used to access to education, healthcare, clean running water and electricity—services enabled in large part by Afghanistan’s international ties.
In the Doha talks, U.S. peace envoy Khalilzad spent hours trying to impart international civics lesson to Taliban leaders, according to Western officials briefed on the talks. Khalilzad explained, for instance, that if the Taliban didn’t have a certain percentage of women in the workforce, or committed the human-rights abuses that marked their previous reign, international organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund would shun them.
The Talibs checked the American’s advice with regional officials from Qatar and Pakistan, and got the same answer back: return Afghanistan to the dark ages, with women barred from leaving home and summary executions for the smallest of infractions without due process, and you will be a pariah. Regional sources say Pakistani and Iranian officials warned Taliban leaders in recent weeks against declaring an Islamic emirate.
Afghans march while carrying banners and the flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, despite the presence of Taliban fighters, in Kabul on Aug. 19.
Marcus Yam—Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Former top Afghan officials are waiting to see how the group’s decisions play out. One former Ghani official predicted to TIME that if the Taliban are more moderate than the last time, and are able to provide government services and end the fighting, Afghans will embrace them. Another says the group’s outreach to the last government is mere window dressing: “The Taliban will at best will appoint a name or two as a symbol.”
The former governor of Afghanistan’s Logar and Herat provinces, Abdul Qayum Rahimi, told TIME he had decided to stay in the country, in part because the Taliban treated him with respect despite resisting the militants’ onslaught. “They treated me well, and let me rescue around 260 people with me,” Rahimi says, who left the door open to serving in a new Taliban government. “I will see how it comes out.”
TIME · by letters@time.com
28. The School That Built Asia
A fascinating story that should be of interest to all Asia watchers.
But behind the scenes lay the realities of an ideologically complex past. Those victorious in building a new political order in Asia were not the ideologically pure, but the stern pragmatists who placed their various ideas at the service of building new regimes. In the end, Japan’s technocrats created a legacy that outlasted the imperial power that incubated their project. The Manchurian experience itself, once so isolated in Kenkoku and at the behest of imperial ambition, had the last laugh as it escaped the fate of its defeated Japanese masters and continued the project of pan-Asian technocratic development under new and shifting leadership. In a way, the Japanese imperial project to build a modernized Asian sphere of influence was successful despite the contradictions, just not for Japan.
The School That Built Asia
These days, Manchukuo is a name mostly known to dedicated historians. If it comes up, it is usually in the context of the Qing Emperor Puyi’s humiliating life in the Japanese client state, created after the Japanese invasion of September 1931 and which crumbled in the face of a massive Soviet incursion in August 1945 without putting up much of a struggle. In these stories, Manchukuo is generally thought of as a typical colony. Japan’s wartime pan-Asianist exercise, being a folly and a lie, became totally bankrupt at the end of the war and disappeared into thin air. The Cold War quickly rewrote the geopolitics of the region.
But during its lifetime, the Japanese colony was a highly unusual exercise in the history of imperialism. The harsh realities of Chinese life under the regime existed side-by-side with an ambitious pan-Asian ideological experiment. Japan’s tradition of technocratic modernization played a central role in Manchukuo’s governing bodies, like the Concordia Association, the one-party state’s governing apparatus, and in the so-called South Manchuria Railway Company Research Department, a RAND Corporation-like research institution which ended up running much of Manchukuo’s development.
This interest in technocratic modernization did not remain within established ideological confines; many radical ideas, anything that could inform development, found a receptive audience. For example even socialist ideas and Soviet policies informed the actions of Japanese technocrats and intellectuals, with a number of Japanese Marxists joining Manchukuo’s institutions after fleeing persecution in Japan itself. These Marxist exiles drew up industrial Five-Year Plans and promoted agricultural collectivisation, until they too fell afoul of the army-led purges of the political left in the early 1940s. Under the slogan of “Five Races Under One Union,” pan-Asianists in Manchukuo’s institutions attempted to put their ideas into practice, even finding themselves caught up or participating in movements against Japanese imperialism.
Through this dynamic and open-ended ideological ferment, and its application to practical problems of colonial development, Manchukuo became an experiment in developmental state‐building which had immense consequences for the whole of East Asia. Its intellectual legacy is exemplified by the Japanese “reform bureaucrats” of the 1930s and ‘40s, who saw a technocratic state leading national development—and embracing neither electoral democracy nor class struggle—as being the way forward for East Asia. The Manchurian influence can be found in all the most significant cases of East Asian developmental success.
The Manchurian model of forced industrialisation under single-party rule found post-war expression in China, North Korea, and South Korea during the Park Chung-hee years, directly influenced by people who had participated in the colony’s institutions. The Japanese technocratic planners who worked in Manchukuo likewise returned to serve in the highest levels of government and economic and planning bodies in Japan after the war. They led Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, which governed uninterrupted from 1955 to the 1990s. The most prominent among these was Kishi Nobusuke, once Manchukuo’s economic tsar and among the most ruthlessly anti-Chinese and imperialist of its political leaders, whose postwar position as America’s man in Tokyo allowed him to become Prime Minister from 1957-60 and retain prominence as an elder statesman until the 1980s.
Kenkoku University—the highest academic institution in Manchukuo from 1938 until 1945—was the educational center of the pan-Asianist experiment. Its students came from all over Asia under Japanese rule to learn how to modernize Asia. After the war, they maintained contact with each other while they assumed important roles in East Asia’s postwar order—some of their careers lasting until the 1990s. The legacy of Kenkoku lived on in their political achievements. Across East Asia, alumni implemented their goals of national liberation and state-led industrialization in the region’s postwar states and on all sides of the Cold War divide. By inculcating the region’s rising elites, Manchukuo’s rulers secured an unlikely legacy. While the Japanese empire met its end, its tradition of technocratic state-building endured as East Asia’s new leaders drew on their Japanese training to build its successor regimes.
Kenkoku University and its Pan-Asian Order
Kenkoku University—the name means “Nation-Building”—was located on a small hill outside the Manchukuo capital city of Shinkyō, then known as Hsinking and now called Changchun, capital of China’s Jilin Province. Founded by Japanese military leader Ishiwara Kanji, a major architect of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Kenkoku’s purpose was to nurture the leaders of a new pan-Asian order under Japanese hegemony. Ishiwara thought that an ultimate war between Japanese-led Asia and the U.S.-led West was unavoidable.
Kenkoku recruited its students from the Japanese Empire’s various ethnicities—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Mongolians, and even Russians. These incoming students were required to learn two foreign languages, while Japanese students had to demonstrate proficiency in Chinese, English, French, Russian, or German. Kenkoku even recruited Chinese and Korean professors with a background in organizing nationalist and anti-Japanese movements. Ishiwara hoped at one point to invite Gandhi and the pro-Japanese nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose from India, the American Sinologist Pearl Buck, and even Leon Trotsky.
From the outset, Kenkoku encouraged its students to criticize Manchukuo’s politics, a privilege justified on the grounds that the university was meant to be the incubator of Manchukuo’s future governance, not that of its present. Chinese students were allowed to write fiction on controversial themes: One surviving poem memorializes a female friend murdered by Japanese authorities, reminiscing about her nationalism by reading her writings and diaries every night.
This unusual tolerance also extended to faculty. Bao Mingqian was a Chinese professor at Kenkoku with a background in leading nationalist campaigns, including the May Fourth Movement. Ultimately, Bao found himself sidelined at Kenkoku and later grew disillusioned with it. He was granted leave after faking an illness, which lasted opportunely until 1945. In June 1946, he visited the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at Yan’an and was later briefly imprisoned by Nationalist authorities for his activities. In doing so, Bao was in fact continuing in a Kenkoku tradition of staff and students traveling to the “red capital” of the CCP at Yan’an or the wartime Nationalist capital of Chongqing.
Nor was the radical turn limited to Kenkoku’s Chinese members. Korean literary giant Choe Nam-seon, who had penned the “Korean Declaration of Independence” during the anti-Japanese March 1st Movement of 1919, was among the staff recruited. As a lecturer, Choe taught a different narrative to that of the Japan-centred view of Asia during his classes. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, Choe reportedly explained to his Korean students that a huge gap existed between the national strength of Japan and the U.S. and predicted that Japan would soon be defeated and Korea would become independent. One student remembered that it was at this very moment he “awakened to his Korean identity with an electrified feeling thanks to Professor Choe.” Choe told another student, “We live our lives solely for that purpose [of Korean independence]. Without that hope, how would we keep going?”
Yet what all this fundamentally reflects is how Kenkoku failed to rectify real political problems. It could not offer a convincing narrative for the imperial project’s necessity, nor justify its brutalities. Kenkoku’s experiment in pan-Asianism, the foundation of its existence, also became its own enemy. One Japanese student wrote in his diary that he “came to respect those Chinese students who left Ken[koku] to join the anti-Japanese movement.” The ideologies of the anti-Japanese resistance proved far more attractive to the very students that Kenkoku’s founders intended to become a future pan-Asian elite.
Due to this divide, Kenkoku became an important link in the very substantial phenomenon of “Manchukuo Marxism.” Marxist-inclined Chinese students betrayed their loyalties when registering en masse for Russian language courses. Books by Lenin, Marx, and the Japanese Marxist Kawakami Hajime circulated around the campus with the blessing of Kenkoku Vice President Sakuta Sōichi, an accomplished economist. In April 1940, Chinese students formed a group to contact the revolutionaries, and went as far as publishing a semi-annual bulletin called “Outpost.” These activities led to the arrest of 24 students by Japanese military police between 1941-43 during an anti-Marxist campaign. Frequently beaten and tortured, two of the students died in prison.
The contradictions of Kenkoku pan-Asianism spread among students too, with some Japanese students infamously using their privileges of access to rice as a way to bribe Korean students, who Manchukuo’s wartime rationing laws restricted to other grains. The Korean students instead stood up for the excluded Chinese students on the grounds that this was a truer expression of pan-Asian solidarity.
Kenkoku came uneasily together only because of extraordinary circumstances and arbitrary shifts in ideological influence. It easily fell apart when the political circumstances for its continuation no longer existed. Yet it was clear that an authentic pan-Asianism did exist there. Despite the defeat of both the university and the Japanese empire that built it, Kenkoku alumni went on to act on those impulses. Both through their political careers and their ongoing social ties, they confounded the strict borders that undergirded the East Asian political order—the very same borders they often helped to construct.
The Kenkoku Alumni Network
While Kenkoku proved counter-productive in the eyes of its sponsors and organizers, it was ultimately a useful incubator of post-war talent in both revolution and governance. With an alumni network that contributed to socialist, liberal, and nationalist revolutions across the region, it ironically fulfilled the task of building a new Asian political order that Ishiwara had set for it.
In 1954, former students founded the Kenkoku University Alumni Association in Japan. Contact between South Korean, Japanese, and Chinese alumni in Taiwan started in the 1950s, including group visits between countries. From 1980 onwards, alumni made four visits to mainland China, assisted by high-ranking CCP officials who were themselves former Kenkoku students—many of whom had suffered extensively during the Cultural Revolution.
Kenkoku graduates in China notably contributed to the restoration of Sino-Japanese ties from the 1960s onwards, an important element in securing the funding and trade deals that made China’s opening-up policy possible. Under the encouragement of Kenkoku alumnus and Jilin Party Secretary Gao Di, Kenkoku graduates even managed to resurrect the university in some form on its original site in the 1980s. One of the proposed names, Jianshe University (“Kensetsu” or “Construction” University), seemed a deliberate attempt to invoke Kenkoku’s memory. Deemed politically insensitive, the name ultimately became Changchun University.
The Cold War played a central role in preventing the evaporation of Kenkoku’s legacy. Common pro-Western geopolitical loyalties helped the initial reopening of contact between South Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese alumni. But additionally, China’s increasing participation in that same international order, spurred on by their common opposition to the Soviet Union, allowed the warming of relations with PRC alumni as well.
Among the earliest events in which Kenkoku alumni played a major role was the socialist takeover of Manchuria itself. Among the ranks of the local activists was an ethnic Mongolian graduate named Jirgal. Born in northern Liaoning province, Jirgal graduated from Kenkoku in July 1944 and was assigned to work as a staff officer with advisory duties at Horqin Right Front Banner—a Mongolian county-level administrative unit—in what was then Xing’an Province. When Manchukuo fell apart in August 1945, Jirgal joined the East Mongolian Ethnic Autonomy Movement, collecting Japanese ammunition for the purposes of a popular revolution. By February 1946, an East Mongolian People’s Autonomous Government had been founded at Horqin, where Jirgal became banner chief. At the time, he belonged to the Inner Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (IMPRP) Youth Corps, ideologically closer to the Soviet Union and the Mongolian People’s Republic. But in March 1946, the CCP started sending representatives to contact the East Mongolian movement. By October, Jirgal had joined its ranks.
During the April 1947 Inner Mongolian People’s Deputies’ Conference, which debated the issue of union with CCP-controlled China, Jirgal became a leading advocate of the union, arguing on the basis of the CCP’s new policy of ethnic autonomy. Jirgal’s own star rose with that of the party. He helped to devise a moderate policy against completely abolishing class differences in Inner Mongolia. Rising through the ranks until the Cultural Revolution, Jirgal found himself purged and brutally interrogated due to his previous alignment with Liu Shaoqi, his erstwhile links to the IMPRP, and suspected Soviet sympathies. But ultimately, he secured a release and returned to political office after Lin Biao died in 1971. Then in ill-health, Jirgal immediately flung himself into the work of reconstructing Inner Mongolia, collapsing and almost dying of a heart attack during a conference. By the time of his death from exhaustion and another heart attack in February 1982, he was Deputy Party Secretary and Vice-Chairman of Inner Mongolia. The Kenkoku graduate had seen the dawn of a new era.
Jirgal’s formation in the ideology of national liberation—first Mongolian, then Chinese—points to one of the major common inheritances of its alumni. Moreover, this tendency was shared across borders. But it was in South Korea that Kenkoku could boast its most prominent alumnus.
Kang Young-hoon, an ethnic Korean student of economics at Kenkoku, was already known as highly nationalist during his tenure there. After 1945, he joined the South Korean army, where he fought in the Korean War and rose to the ranks of Lieutenant-General and Superintendent of the Korean Military Academy. Unlike many of his peers, Kang refused to participate or even sympathize with Park Chung-hee’s military takeover of May 16th, 1961, earning the title of “Anti-Revolutionary Officer Number 1” as a result.
Kang was hardly the only major South Korean figure with a Japanese tie. Park himself was an ex-Manchukuo officer and drew many supporters in the South Korean army and bureaucracy from the ranks of other ex-Manchukuo men, later known as the “Manchurian Clique” in South Korean political circles. Under the Park regime, South Korea embarked on a markedly statist economic path, with state-backed development of key sectors and the occasional strong-arming of a reluctant industrialist putting the country on a path of rapid economic development.
Despite its greater friendliness to markets, the parallels with Japanese state-building were clear enough for Park’s enemies, who often invoked his admiration of and collaboration with Japan to undermine his nationalist credentials. They may have had a point: Park’s admiration for Japan was strong enough that Kishi Nobusuke, meeting Park after his own tenure as Prime Minister of Japan, reported some embarrassment at the fact that the Korean leader’s political rhetoric seemed to have been directly imported from the Manchukuo years, unreconstructed by the etiquette of American liberalism.
After a six-month stint at Seoul’s infamous Seodaemun Prison, Kang went on to spend most of the Park and Chun Doo-hwan years as a diplomat and academic. In the late 1980s, his fortunes finally changed: Roh Tae-woo, another military strongman who pledged to transition to democracy, chose Kang as Prime Minister in 1988 on the basis of his anti-Park credentials. Kang became an architect of Roh’s “Nordpolitik” and led peace talks with North Korean Premier Yŏn Hyŏngmuk, staying in his role until 1990. Whatever their internal disputes, former Manchukuo men walked the halls of power in South Korea for most of the 20th century and drew on their political and military experience in its construction. Throughout the ups and downs of his career, Kenkoku’s most prominent Korean graduate was in good company.
The Manchurian Legacy
One of Kenkoku’s enduring ideological contributions was its inculcation of a state-led vision of industrialization and economic construction. Manchukuo itself practiced state economic planning from 1937 onward, intent on exporting the Japanese technocratic tradition across Asia. Kenkoku Vice-Chancellor Sakuta Sōichi, who possessed a doctorate in economics, was himself devoted to these ideals, as shown by his 1934 book entitled Japanese Statism and the Controlled Economy. His ideological tolerance was pivotal in the spread of otherwise seditious books among students. Manchukuo’s broader policy of agricultural collectivization was directly supported by the South Manchuria Railway Company Research Department, including by Japanese Marxist members working under the inspiration of agrarian thinker Tachibana Shiraki.
Kenkoku’s main economic planning course was taught by Okano Kanki, who wrote several books on Japanese-Manchurian economic integration, as well as on Manchukuo’s Five Year Plans and material mobilization for defense. The lectures were influential enough that Yu Jiaqi, a 1938 Kenkoku graduate and later professor at Jilin University, still favorably recalled the course in his memoirs. After 1945, Okano continued to write on topics such as reparations after the First World War—likely in expectation of similar demands being made on Japan—and the British Labour government’s industrial nationalization policy. His last work, a textbook on finance, came out in 1969. Associate professor Nemoto Ryūtarō likewise went on to postwar political office as Japan’s Minister for Agriculture and Forestry in 1951, Chief Cabinet Secretary in 1954, and Minister for Construction in both the late 1950s and early 1970s. Although stripped of its imperial radicalism, Japan’s postwar economy remained characterized by strong state intervention and multi-year planning until the mid-1980s.
However, Kenkoku’s statist economics did not remain a purely Japanese product. It went on to influence Korean state-builders in both north and south, as well as Chinese ideologues of national construction.
The Korean associate and Kenkoku lecturer Hwang Toyŏn, who taught statistics and bookkeeping, got his start in economics at Kyoto Imperial University, where his mentor was the Marxist economist Ninagawa Torazō. In Manchukuo, Hwang worked on behalf of the government, researching topics from soybean production to the silk industry, agricultural commodification, and business profitability under the Controlled Economy.
After 1945, Hwang taught briefly in Seoul, until he resigned for political reasons and headed to North Korea. Under the auspices of the Democratic People’s Republic, he became a professor at Kim Il-sung University and became instrumental in establishing its planned economy. He was later appointed head of the Industrial Ministry Planning Office under Minister and General Kim Chaek. He was subsequently Chairman of the Central Statistics Bureau, a post he occupied until 1957. Even then, Hwang was still able to publish a work in Japanese introducing developments in and the transformation of the North Korean economy since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Nor was Hwang the only North Korean official with Japanese imperial ties: General Kim himself reported in his 1947 assessment of the new regime that 85% of its first cabinet had studied in Japanese, colonial Korean, or Manchurian tertiary institutions. Kim Tusam, its first Minister of Energy, began his own career in Machukuo’s Hydro-Electric Power Construction Office.
While Korean alumni eked out comfortable positions in officialdom, it was a Chinese alumnus who maintained the most prominent expression of its ideological radicalism. Just as Kang became Prime Minister in South Korea, Jilin province—the former home of Kenkoku—found itself governed by yet another alumnus: the party chief Gao Di, whose studies at Kenkoku came to a premature end along with the war. Gao was unique among Kenkoku alumni in his unparalleled loyalty to the original Manchukuo ideals of state-led social renovation using non-liberal administrative means in shaping the economy. Based on Gao’s actions in office, he could well be considered the last of the reform bureaucrats, a Chinese counterpart to the officials who had modernized Japan decades before.
Gao served first as Changchun City Party Secretary and Acting Mayor starting in 1981, before promotion to Jilin Provincial Party Secretary in the mid-1980s, operating out of the former Japanese Kwantung Army Headquarters in Changchun. Despite having been at the bottom of the Kenkoku social hierarchy due to his Chinese ethnicity, he went on to assist the later Changchun University project that explicitly invoked Kenkoku-era ideals of national construction. In 1985, Gao joined the 200-member Central Committee as one of a batch of younger members chosen to replenish the body’s elderly ranks. Gao was not only the top-performing Kenkoku student in the PRC, but also ensured the rise of Northeasterners such as Zhang Dejiang. Zhang had accompanied Gao on visits to North Korea in the 1980s and ultimately joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2012.
After the rise in 1989 of Jiang Zemin—himself a former engineer in the Northeast, having led automobile manufacturing in Changchun—as General Secretary and successor to Deng Xiaoping, Gao was appointed head of People’s Daily. Chinese leaders had deemed the party newspaper to have previously gone too far in the neoliberal direction. The paper had even given a platform to anti-Communist intellectuals in the run-up to the Tiananmen Incident.
But Gao did not abide by the party line, asking questions in his editorials about the nature of the Dengist reforms and allowing thinly-veiled attacks on Deng’s post-Incident speeches urging the continuation of the reforms. Gao questioned whether the housing shortages and high university fees as found in the capitalist west demonstrated any superiority of that model. Gao initially refused to publish Deng’s speeches on marketization, on the grounds that Deng had officially retired and was only an ordinary party member. He found himself removed from office in November 1992 after Deng’s victorious Southern Tour cemented pro-market reforms.
By all accounts, Gao genuinely believed in socialism, the planned economy, and public ownership. He defended these beliefs despite his own persecution during the Cultural Revolution and the end of his political career. While other Kenkoku alumni in the PRC relied more on their Japanese connections and language skills to advance their post-reform careers, Gao uniquely defended core components of its ideology. His loyalty to the planned economy and his alliance with Jiang was a very Manchurian, “post-Manchukuo” phenomenon. It represented the rise of technocracy and its theorists in a technologically advanced and economically progressive region that saw itself and its model as superior—long before more well-known reactions against market reforms, such as the Chongqing model. Rather than trumpeting the superiority of the Chinese model, what Gao was defending in 1992 was the Manchurian model of economic technocracy, with its reliance on state leadership to build up technological advancement and economic progress.
In the careers of Gao, Kang, Jirgal, and their fellow alumni, we can trace a dual legacy by which Kenkoku University and the wider Manchukuo project continued to influence East Asia after the war. Kenkoku was the incubator of both pro- and anti-Japanese forms of pan-Asianism, the legacy of which was reinforced by Cold War-era geopolitical alliances. Its alumni went on to play important roles in the creation of the Cold War order in East Asia. But Kenkoku’s second legacy was its pursuit and embodiment of scientific administration and economic modernization as the necessary methods for building a new political order across Asia. From post-war Japan to modern China, material advancement and the building up of competent, modern states went on to reshape East Asia—often in only two generations.
Kenkoku also demonstrates how the formation of new elite classes across East Asia often thwarted the national boundaries they themselves constructed and guarded. When Western colonialism swept across Asia, overthrew empires, and imposed modernity, the Asian continent found itself undergoing a common experience unlike any other. For the first time in history, intellectuals from India to Japan had grounds for a common cause. Pan-Asianists intended for their philosophy to be the awakening of the periphery against repression by core Western nations. New ideologies and institutions, even ones invoking strictly national liberation, inevitably found themselves operating in a continental political theater. Certain ideologies, like socialism and Japanese imperialism, explicitly sought to operate at the international level.
Yet Japan ultimately behaved as a newly-rising colonial power for which the rest of East Asia would remain a periphery. Pan-Asian ideology contradicted this aspect of Japanese development, despite their best efforts to employ it. In the end, it was the rise of both U.S. imperial power and of the socialist blocs loyal to Beijing and Moscow which displaced similar Japanese ambitions. The same logic plays out to this day: Despite the formal sovereignty of modern East Asian states, it is an international political order—undergirded by the military strength of the U.S. as its core—which guarantees the position of states like Japan and South Korea.
But behind the scenes lay the realities of an ideologically complex past. Those victorious in building a new political order in Asia were not the ideologically pure, but the stern pragmatists who placed their various ideas at the service of building new regimes. In the end, Japan’s technocrats created a legacy that outlasted the imperial power that incubated their project. The Manchurian experience itself, once so isolated in Kenkoku and at the behest of imperial ambition, had the last laugh as it escaped the fate of its defeated Japanese masters and continued the project of pan-Asian technocratic development under new and shifting leadership. In a way, the Japanese imperial project to build a modernized Asian sphere of influence was successful despite the contradictions, just not for Japan.
Ernest Ming-tak Leung is a PhD candidate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the history of economic planning in East Asia. He tweets @ernestleungmt.
Related
29. Anti-Taliban resistance makes modest gains outside Panjshir | FDD's Long War Journal
Resistance potential. What do we do with it?
Anti-Taliban resistance makes modest gains outside Panjshir | FDD's Long War Journal
The nascent resistance to the Taliban that has organized in Panjshir province has launched a counteroffensive against the Taliban and has taken control of four districts in two neighboring provinces.
The Panjshir resistance force, which is flying the flag of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, took control of Dih Saleh, Andarab, and Puli Hisar districts in eastern Baghlan province, as well as Charikar in Parwan. The resistance is led by former Vice President and National Directorate of Security chief Amrullah Saleh [See FDD’s Long War Journal report, After fall of Kabul, resistance to Taliban emerges in Panjshir].
Anti-Taliban fighters “captured those [four] key districts and are threatening the Taliban’s control of the highway to the north,” a source within the resistance told FDD’s Long War Journal. They also claimed to take “all of Andarab back.”
Within the past month, as the Taliban stormed their way across Afghanistan and ultimately seized Kabul, Andarab became a haven for Afghan security forces troops who did not surrender and capitulate to the Taliban. Andarab has long been a center of anti-Taliban sentiments, so the conquest of the district grants the Panjshir resistance further supporters and resources. Additionally, the capture of Andarab extends the resistance’s reach northward as it hopes to gain a vital lifeline to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The resistance is the only direct threat to the Taliban’s attempt to rule all of Afghanistan. The areas controlled by the resistance are now just 60 kilometers north of Kabul. Additionally, there are reports that the resistance inflicted heavy casualties on Taliban fighters in Baghlan.
Videos of the Panjshir resistance flying the Northern Alliance flag have circulated on social media. In Charikar, the capital of Parwan province, resistance forces paraded through the street.
— Manish Shukla (@manishmedia) August 18, 2021
— Afghan Hindu (@HinduAfghan) August 19, 2021
The Taliban, which announced the resurrection of its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan yesterday, is consolidating its hold of Kabul and the rest of the country. Only Panjshir, and areas in Parwan and Baghlan are out of the Taliban’s grasp. To tackle the Panjshir resistance, the Taliban may have to divert forces from Kabul and areas in the east, where there has been growing unrest in some cities.
While the Panjshir resistance’s odds remain long, if it is able to open a lifeline to neighboring countries and receive international support, it stands a chance to not only divert and disrupt Taliban operations but create a groundswell of interest that could lead to a larger campaign with more sustainable momentum.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
30. Veterans who once sought ‘hearts and minds’ in Afghanistan must now mend their own
Veterans who once sought ‘hearts and minds’ in Afghanistan must now mend their own
Shaun Duling and Festus McDonough enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2003 after graduating high school.
The two radio operators, the former from the Washington, D.C. area and the latter from Massachusetts, met by way of an assignment to the Hawaii-based 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, a unit that would shepherd them on a 2005 deployment to Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. Army veteran R.J. Blake soon followed suit, deploying from 2006 to 2007 to the same region as a member of the famed 10th Mountain Division.
Like many young service members navigating the early post-9/11 landscape, each clung to a semblance of belief in the mission, of unshakable optimism and what seemed a certainty of exacting revenge.
“I just felt we were over there fighting an enemy who attacked America and liberating the people of Afghanistan from Taliban rule,” Duling told me Tuesday.
Arriving in 2006 with much of the same hubris-fueled perceptions of an enemy now all-too familiar, Blake admitted anticipating “a cakewalk with no action.”
“We thought it was going to be easy to win hearts and minds.”
Failure
Afghanistan’s collapse in recent weeks signaled a seemingly overnight reversal of democratic policies and institutions instilled over the last two decades. Few predicted the speed in which the Taliban would route the Afghan army — or that the militia would roll through many of the nation’s provinces without a single shot fired in retaliation.
But outside of Washington, the events are forcing an estimated 2.8 million service members who have deployed at least once to war operations in Afghanistan or Iraq since 2001 to consider whether their service meant anything at all.
Twenty years is ample time to transition from battle-hungry youth to furious and, eventually, disillusioned veteran, a process that culminated in my own life years ago while watching helplessly as black ISIS flags were unfurled over hard-fought battlegrounds in Iraq, a country where I was deployed all of 2006 and parts of 2007 as a Marine scout observer.
My own experience prompted me to reach out to Duling, McDonough and Blake to discuss the evolution of their perceptions of Afghanistan. What did they think about the tumultuous images emerging from Kabul, where thousands of civilians at Hamid Karzai International Airport continue a desperate attempt to flee from Taliban control? Could they still find value in their experiences? How were their hearts and minds?
A hornet’s nest
McDonough, in center holding the flag, stands among Marine, Army, Navy and Air Force personnel after Operation Whalers. Army 1st Sgt. Tobias Meister, second from left, would later be killed in action. (Photo courtesy of Festus McDonough)
Soon after touching down in 2005 in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, Duling and McDonough found themselves stepping off as participants in well-known operations bearing names like Red Wings and Whalers.
Blake’s 2006-2007 brigade reconnaissance, meanwhile, landed him in combat-riddled valleys such as Korengal, Narang and Kamdesh, where the 10th Mountain Division “stirred up a hornet’s nest of a capable, resilient enemy,” he said. “Nothing about it was a cake walk.”
Nearly every day yielded intense action for Blake and the small reconnaissance teams from 10th Mountain, who faced innumerable clashes with Taliban forces of 50 to 80 that oftentimes came down to “holding a line from being overrun with only half that manpower,” he said.
In May 2006, the division was in the midst of Operation Mountain Lion when one of their CH-47 Chinook helicopters went down over the Kunar Province, killing 10 soldiers, including Lt. Col. Joseph Fenty, who, at the time, was the highest-ranking KIA of the conflict. That fall, Blake was manning Combat Outpost Kamdesh when Lt. Benjamin Keating was killed. The stronghold would later be renamed COP Keating, a location documented in the book — and movie of the same name — “The Outpost,” which chronicled the harrowing Battle of Kamdesh in 2009.
Intermittent excursions to meet with locals terrified of living under the Taliban’s barbarism reaffirmed early-held beliefs in expelling evil from Afghanistan. This became especially true after witnessing firsthand the militia’s “enslavement of kids for sex, and cutting off noses or ears of those who dared to work with Americans,” Blake said.
But as the months wore on, unrelenting firefights, mounting casualties and increasingly blurred lines began to wear on the war’s participants. Over time they began to curse the landscape they once admired and the soaring mountains they were forced to hump.
“It was such a complex war with more than one enemy, not just the Taliban,” Blake said. “Sometimes it seemed like it was just some young, bored kids shooting at us.”
“Hearts and minds sounded great on paper, but it was often seen as an empty promise to the locals,” McDonough said. “We would inevitably break those promises in one of two ways. First, the command may just up and move us to a different area, leaving those who helped us high and dry. Second, frequent deployment rotations meant personal relationships would only last, at most, a few months to a year.”
Months into patrolling the Kunar Province, McDonough experienced firsthand the ramifications of relationships that too often teetered on the edge of a knife. An ally one day could be an enemy the next, he said, defecting if the money was right.
“Several told us before leaving that it was nothing personal,” he said. “These are guys who lived on our [forward operating base] and knew every square inch of it. One day I was in a vehicle that was hit with an IED less than 100 yards from an Afghan National Police-manned checkpoint. They knew it was there. They were supposedly on our team and let us drive right at it.”
For Blake, Duling and McDonough, deployments that teased once-naive prospects would eventually come to an unceremonious end. Arriving units took the place of the outgoing, each comprising young men and women who would undergo a similar transformation. The Forever War continued to ebb and flow over the ensuing years more than the undulating valleys in which it was fought.
Duling at Jalalabad Air Field with two interpreters. (Courtesy of Shaun Duling)
Like their deployments, enlistments also drew to an end, ushering them into a world shockingly disconnected from their own. Hard-drawn lines of good versus evil and revenge became vague, replaced instead by decades of confusion and anger as images of returning bodies of American service members continued flowing during one administration after another.
“Seeing politicians use Afghanistan and Iraq as a talking points without any action, then seeing young men and women run through deployment after deployment until they have nothing left to give, only to be discarded and left to figure out how to cope...” Duling paused. “Processing all that is when I started to feel we have been lied to.”
Was it worth it?
The images emerging over the past week are staggering. One authenticated clip showed civilians in Kabul rushing an Air Force C-17 Globemaster in last-ditch effort to evade Taliban-imposed law. As the titanic plane ascended, multiple Afghans plummeted from the sky to their deaths, a vision that will likely be seared into the records of policy-makers who oversaw 20 years of decisions that will be questioned long after.
Those who carried out missions on the ground, however, are faced with juxtaposing the imagery of Afghanistan reaching its nadir with their own memories, of patrolling, of handing out treats to children, and of eating, drinking and laughing with locals who have spent their entire lives in fear of an enemy now in power.
“The locals were so appreciative of us there — this feels like we turned our backs on them,” Blake told me. “I’m just angry and sad. I love the Afghan people. Very hospitable. I loved their spirit and way of life.”
R.J. Blake's collage of scenes from the 10th Mountain deployment. (Photo courtesy of R.J. Blake)
“I can’t imagine being a family member of any of the service members who were killed in Afghanistan,” McDonough added. “It just shows such a total lack of planning in assisting those who helped us so much over the years.”
In a message to the fleet Wednesday, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Troy Black addressed the existential bewilderment rippling throughout the veteran community, assuring Marines past and present that “You fought for the Marine to your left and the Marine to your right. You never let them down.”
The message is similar to one that Duling, now 36, expressed to me from his office at Washington Gas, where he’s taken charge in recent years as a leader of the D.C.-area company’s veteran initiatives.
“The Marine Corps fundamentally changed the way I viewed the world, exposed me to incredible leaders, and even better friends,” Duling said. “I’m still very proud to be a Marine, and I know we did a lot of good during those 20 years. Despite seeing the current state of that beautiful country, I have to hold on to the belief that we gave them hope.”
After answering my questions, Duling and McDonough exchanged a few messages on Instagram. In a couple months, they will be rendezvousing in Austin, Texas, alongside a few other Marines who deployed with them, an annual reunion they kicked off a few years ago to make sure they remain a part of one another’s lives.
This year there will inevitably be more to discuss, more questions floated.
Was it worth it?
“Yes,” Berger wrote Wednesday. “Does it still hurt? Yes.”
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
