Quotes of the Day:
"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion."
- Simone de Beauvoir
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
- Ambrose Bierce
"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.' "
- H.L. Mencken
1. Inside the Hidden War Between the Taliban and ISIS
2. After Decades of War, ISIS and Al Qaeda Can Still Wreak Havoc
3. In Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan, Al Qaeda-Linked Haqqani Network Rises to Power
4. For First Time, Half of Americans Favor Defending Taiwan If China Invades
5. Kori Schake on why America should keep faith in the rules-based order
6. Lawmakers, veterans step in to help Americans, Afghan allies escape Afghanistan
7. Crisis Management Lessons from the Clinton Administration's Implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56
8. ‘A Total F*cking Disaster’: Inside Seth Moulton’s Secret Trip to Kabul
9. The Roads Not Taken in Afghanistan
10. US special operations vets carry out daring mission to save Afghan allies
11. A Better Approach to Organizing Combatant Commands
12. Amid Afghan Chaos, a C.I.A. Mission That Will Persist for Years
13. Former Green Beret asks SF vets to tell their stories for future generations
14. A Stranded Interpreter, and the Soldiers Who Would Not Let Go
15. Glitch in FBI's 'Palantir' allowed unauthorized access to private data
16. Budding Resistance to the Taliban Faces Long Odds
17. Behind Enemy Lines: Will America Face an Afghan Hostage Crisis?
1. Inside the Hidden War Between the Taliban and ISIS
A complex situation. Can this hidden war be exploited?
Inside the Hidden War Between the Taliban and ISIS
The group took aim at the Islamic State offshoot, earning it some support from world capitals. The Kabul airport bombings raise the specter of a longer, bloodier battle.
“They will let me free if they are good Muslims,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.
When Taliban fighters seized Kabul last week, they took control of the prison, freed hundreds of inmates, and killed Mr. Khorasani and eight other members of his terror group.
Just as the Taliban has been fighting American coalition forces in Afghanistan, it has been waging a separate but parallel war against its rival Islamist group.
On one side are the Taliban, who have co-opted remnants of al Qaeda. On the other is the Afghan arm of Islamic State, known as ISIS-K, which has sought to incorporate parts of Afghanistan into a broader caliphate emanating from the Middle East.
Two powerful explosions, attributed by the U.S. to an affiliate of Islamic State, caused havoc on Thursday.
Photo: Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The continued presence of Islamic State in Afghanistan is one reason the Taliban could receive international support from countries, including the U.S., that view Islamic State as a profound threat.
Russia, China and Iran say they see Taliban as a mainstay of stability in Afghanistan—a reason they plan to keep their Kabul embassies open after the U.S. withdrawal.
During a news conference after Thursday’s attack, Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the U.S. was relying on the Taliban to screen Afghans as they approached the airport.
“We use the Taliban as a tool to protect us as much as possible,” he said.
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Taliban had few allies. The organization was reviled in the West for hosting al Qaeda terrorists, and opposed by regional powers including Russia and Iran.
Behind the appearance of solidarity between the Taliban and al Qaeda was an uneasy relationship, with many Taliban resenting Osama bin Laden for using the country as an operating base starting the late 1990s.
A computer recovered by the Journal in Kabul after the Taliban were ousted in 2001 showed that al Qaeda members often looked down on their Afghans allies as illiterate and incapable of understanding the Quran. Members of the Taliban in turn blamed some in al Qaeda for exacerbating problems with the West and contributing to their country’s isolation.
Rick Loomis/Getty Images
The Sept. 11 attacks created new fissures as leaders of both organizations were forced into hiding. Taliban founder Mullah Omar didn’t appear to know about the attacks in advance, and his relationship with bin Laden was chilly while both were in hiding in Pakistan, said Anne Stenersen, an academic researcher of Islamism and author of the book “Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.”
After U.S. forces killed bin Laden in 2011, documents recovered from his Pakistan hideout suggest scant contact between the al Qaeda leader and Omar, she said.
The Taliban and al Qaeda forged stronger bonds on the battlefield as both fought U.S. occupation forces.
While the Taliban took years to regroup after 2001, al Qaeda launched the first successful attacks on U.S. troops in the eastern province of Ghazni in 2004, using improvised explosive devices, said one former Taliban commander who fought U.S. and government troops there.
By 2009, the groups began to merge their commands, usually with al Qaeda members embedded alongside Taliban fighter groups, the former commander said. The combined forces of the two groups waged a terror campaign against the U.S.-backed government and coalition forces through hit-and-run attacks, bombings and targeted assassinations.
The dynamic shifted as al Qaeda sought a lower profile and Islamic State rose in prominence in 2015. The new group seized territory in Syria and Iraq, and invited fighters to join to create a province of “Khorasan,” a historical region encompassing parts of Afghanistan, Iran and former Soviet states of Central Asia.
The group found devotees among disaffected Taliban and militants from Central and South Asia, some of whom volunteered for service in Syria and Iraq. Two Islamic State enclaves appeared inside Afghanistan itself; one in the eastern province of Nangarhar and another in the northern province of Jowzjan.
The arrivals weren’t welcomed by the Taliban, which viewed Islamic State as an impediment. Islamic State had more ambitious global goals, while the Taliban sought to regain control of Afghanistan and had no interest in helping Islamist groups outside the country, said Mr. Khorasani in interviews conducted shortly before his death.
Afghan security personnel gather in front of a prison in Jalalabad in early August after an Islamic State group attack on the facility.
Photo: Rahmat Gul/Associated Press
“The leadership of Daesh is independent, the goals of Daesh are independent,” Mr. Khorasani said, using an alternative name for Islamic State. “We have a global agenda and so when people ask who can really represent Islam and the whole Islamic community, of course we’re more attractive.”
Other nations began to view the Taliban as a potential bulwark against Islamic State’s global ambitions.
“There was huge concern about it and suddenly there was a desire to find some common ground with the Taliban,” said Bruce Hoffman, director of security studies at Georgetown University. “People began saying maybe they were a group we could reason with.”
Russia, which still officially classifies the Taliban as a terrorist organization, opened negotiations with the group more than five years ago, according to Ivan Safranchuk, a Central Asia expert and professor at Moscow State University. The rise of Islamic State in Afghanistan “became a motive to go big with these contacts,” he said.
The U.S. has accused Russia of providing arms to the Taliban, an allegation that Russia denies. Iran also has provided arms, according to U.S. intelligence. China separately hosted a high-level Taliban delegation as recently as this year.
Mr. Khorasani said he joined ISIS-K when it opened a chapter in Afghanistan. He rose to be regional governor—its then-highest ranking member—overseeing South Asia and the Far East.
Similar to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the group in Afghanistan became infamous for grisly execution videos, attacks on civilian targets, and use of extreme violence against newly conquered locals who opposed their rule.
A village in Nangarhar Province, which has seen fighting by the U.S., Afghan government forces, ISIS and the Taliban.
Photo: Andrew Quilty for The Wall Street Journal
In Nangarhar, where Mr. Khorasani served as governor, the group executed village elders and locals by seating them blindfolded on a pile of explosives on a hillside, which it detonated. The group later circulated a video recording of the execution.
Mr. Khorasani said those executed in the video were criminals.
He said attacks by Islamic State often benefited the Taliban, despite the enmity between the groups. He noted that a prison break in Jalalabad last year, organized by Islamic State and involving four suicide bombers and 11 gunmen, set free hundreds of prisoners from both the Taliban and Islamic State.
A showdown between the Taliban and Islamic State took place in Jowzjan in 2017, Mr. Khorasani said, after a commander with Taliban ties and his fighters swore allegiance to Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They were joined by a militant Uzbek group called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Together they seized two valleys of the province and raised Islamic State flag over their statelet, Mr. Khorasani said.
The fighting that he described corresponds with U.S. accounts of the battles, in which the forces of the U.S., the Afghan government and the Taliban crushed Islamic State militants over the course of several months. Hundreds of Islamic State militants surrendered to government forces the following year.
In Nangarhar, Islamic State was similarly ground down by attacks by the U.S., Afghan government and the Taliban, Mr. Khorasani said. The U.S. dropped what is known as the Mother of All Bombs, or a MOAB, the most powerful conventional bomb in the U.S. military arsenal, to wipe out a Soviet-era cave complex controlled by Islamic State militants.
The prison at the National Directorate of Security in Kabul held Mr. Khorasani and Taliban prisoners. Mr. Khorasani was executed when the Taliban took over Kabul.
Photo: Victor J. Blue for The Wall Street Journal
“Everyone supported the Taliban one way or another against us,” Mr. Khorasani said. “It’s no secret why they began to win.”
The U.S. said at the time that it killed more than 90 militants including several commanders in the bombing of the cave complex. Mr. Khorasani disputed that, saying the complex was evacuated at the time.
The rise of Islamic State as a new international enemy furthered the Taliban’s global diplomatic efforts, boosting a group that for years had sought to scrub itself of a terrorist taint, according to former officials of the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
The U.S. offered the Taliban international recognition by opening negotiations in Doha that led to the release last year of 5,000 inmates from Afghan prisons. Many of those former detainees flocked to the battlefield, strengthening Taliban forces, former Afghan government officials said.
As part of the agreement reached in Doha, the Taliban promised to prevent militant groups from attacking the West.
Mr. Khorasani said he left Nangarhar last year as the remnants of Islamic State fighters dispersed inside Afghanistan. He was arrested by U.S. and Afghan forces in a house outside Kabul in May 2020.
A judge sentenced him to death and 800 years in prison, he said. The Taliban got to him first.
—Ghousuddin Frotan contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications
The Taliban took years to regroup after 2001. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it took years to regroup after 2011. (Corrected on Aug. 27)
2. After Decades of War, ISIS and Al Qaeda Can Still Wreak Havoc
Excerpts:
The Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country hardly assures that all militants in Afghanistan are under their control. To the contrary, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — is a bitter, albeit much smaller, rival that has carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan this year against civilians, officials and the Taliban themselves.
In the months before American forces withdrew, some 8,000 to 10,000 jihadi fighters from Central Asia, the North Caucasus region of Russia, Pakistan and the Xinjiang region in western China poured into Afghanistan, a United Nations report concluded in June. Most are associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, which are closely linked.
After Decades of War, ISIS and Al Qaeda Can Still Wreak Havoc
The U.S. and its allies waged war for 20 years to try to defeat terrorists in Afghanistan. A double-suicide bombing demonstrated that they remain a threat.
A victim of the attacks at the Kabul airport at a hospital on Thursday.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Aug. 26, 2021
DOHA, Qatar — The nightmare that kept counterterrorism experts awake even before the Taliban returned to power is that Afghanistan would become fertile ground for terrorist groups, most notably Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Two explosions claimed by the Islamic State that killed dozens of people, including at least 13 American service members, in Kabul on Thursday bolstered fears that the nightmare was fast becoming a reality.
“I can’t tell you how upsetting and depressing this is,” said Saad Mohseni, the owner of Tolo, one of Afghanistan’s most popular television channels. “It feels like it’s back to business as usual — more bombings, more attacks, except that now we’re going to have to deal with it all under a Taliban regime.”
Twenty years of military action by the United States and its international partners aimed at stamping out terrorism have exacted major tolls on Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, killing many of their fighters and leaders and largely preventing them from holding territory.
But both groups have proved able to adapt, terrorism experts say, evolving into more diffuse organizations that continually seek out new global trouble spots to take root and put their violent extremism into action.
The twin suicide bombings near the Kabul airport on Thursday underscored the devastating power these groups still have to inflict mass casualties in spite of the American effort. And they raised haunting questions about whether the Taliban can live up to the central promise they made when the Trump administration agreed in early 2020 to withdraw American forces from the country — that Afghanistan would no longer be a staging ground for attacks against the United States and its allies.
People arriving at a Kabul hospital for treatment after the blasts.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
The Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country hardly assures that all militants in Afghanistan are under their control. To the contrary, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — is a bitter, albeit much smaller, rival that has carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan this year against civilians, officials and the Taliban themselves.
In the months before American forces withdrew, some 8,000 to 10,000 jihadi fighters from Central Asia, the North Caucasus region of Russia, Pakistan and the Xinjiang region in western China poured into Afghanistan, a United Nations report concluded in June. Most are associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, which are closely linked.
But others are allied with ISIS-K, presenting a major challenge to the stability and security the Taliban promise to provide for the country.
While terrorism experts doubt that ISIS fighters in Afghanistan have the capacity to mount large-scale attacks against the West, many say that the Islamic State is now more dangerous, in more parts of the world, than Al Qaeda.
“It is clear that the Islamic State is the bigger threat, in Iraq and Syria, in Asia or Africa,” said Hassan Abu Hanieh, an expert on Islamic movements at the Politics and Society Institute in Amman, Jordan. “It is clear that ISIS is spread more widely and is more attractive to the new generations.”
Just Wednesday, American officials warned of specific threats by the group, including that it could send suicide bombers to infiltrate the crowds outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Crowds of Afghans struggling to leave the country offered a soft target for a terrorist attack.Credit...Akhter Gulfam/EPA, via Shutterstock
The threat seems to have been a factor in President Biden’s decision to stick to his Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw all American forces from the country.
“Every day we’re on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent civilians,” Mr. Biden said Wednesday.
Created six years ago by disaffected Pakistani Taliban fighters, ISIS-K has vastly increased the pace of its attacks this year, the U.N. report said.
The group’s ranks had fallen to about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters, about half that of its peak in 2016 before American airstrikes and Afghan commando raids took a toll, killing many of its leaders.
But since June 2020, the group has been led by an ambitious new commander, Shahab al-Muhajir, who is trying to recruit disaffected Taliban fighters and other militants. ISIS-K “remains active and dangerous,” the U.N. report said.
The Islamic State in Afghanistan has mostly been antagonistic toward the Taliban. At times the two groups have fought for turf, particularly in eastern Afghanistan, and ISIS recently denounced the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. Some analysts say that fighters from Taliban networks have even defected to join ISIS in Afghanistan, adding more experienced fighters to its ranks.
The history of the Islamic State shows how difficult it can be to shut down and contain terrorist networks. The group began after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a branch of Al Qaeda, but later broke away, establishing a so-called caliphate, an Islamic theocracy, in large parts of Iraq and Syria that at its peak was the size of Britain.
The group’s extremist vision for global expansion, extensive use of social media and cinematic violence drew in fighters from around the world, inspiring deadly attacks in Arab, European and American cities, and spurring the United States to form an international coalition to combat it.
As the United States and its partners bombed the group’s main territories, the Islamic State branched out in other countries. Many of these affiliates have remained active since the group lost its last patch of territory in Syria in March 2019, including in West and Central Africa, the Sinai and South Asia.
Al Qaeda has changed substantially as well since Osama bin Laden oversaw the organization and spread his views via videotaped statements delivered to television stations.
It, too, established affiliates, in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa and Asia, some of which modified, or even discarded, the group’s ideology in pursuit of local goals. The group’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, is elderly and believed to be ailing and living somewhere in Afghanistan, after failing to match Bin Laden’s stature among Islamic radicals.
Supporters of a Syrian militant group with the Taliban flag last week. The Taliban victory in Afghanistan has become a rallying cry for jihadis of all stripes.
In general, Al Qaeda did not maintain the same operational control over its affiliates as the Islamic State did, which may have given the latter an advantage, said Hassan Hassan, the co-author of a book about the Islamic State and the editor in chief of Newlines Magazine.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.
What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.
For Al Qaeda, “it’s like opening a Domino’s franchise and you send someone out for quality control,” he said. The Islamic State, on the other hand, would “take it one step further and appoint a manager from the original organization.”
ISIS also terrified cities around the world with its call for so-called lone wolf attacks, in which a jihadist with no orders from the group’s commanders would record a video pledging allegiance to the group’s leader and then carry out atrocities. The central group would then publicize and support the attacks.
The two groups remain bitter foes, compete for recruits and financing and have fought directly against each other, in Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere.
Afghanistan could now become their primary battlefield, as the United States withdraws its troops and the Taliban extend their control.
In an agreement with the Trump administration last year, the Taliban vowed not to allow Al Qaeda to use Afghan territory to attack the United States. But how closely the Taliban will respect that commitment, and whether they can, remain open questions.
The Islamic State has no such constraints, which could leave it better positioned to exploit the chaos surrounding the Aug. 31 deadline for the United States withdrawal and the transition from a United States-backed government to the Taliban.
“The changeover from one security force to another, by default, provides an opportunity for ISIS,” Mr. Hassan said.
How the Taliban choose to govern this time around is likely to affect the future of the terrorist groups in Afghanistan. In their public statements since seizing Kabul, Taliban officials have put forward a more accommodating face, suggesting that they would not impose the same strict interpretation of Islamic rules with the same iron fist as they did before they were ousted by the American-led invasion of 2001.
But the group is hardly united, said Mr. Abu Hanieh, the expert on Islamic movements, and steps toward moderation by the leadership could lead to defections by hard-line members to the Islamic State.
“This is a big challenge for the Taliban,” he said. “Even if they wanted to get rid of the radical wing, it would not be easy.”
Ben Hubbard reported from Doha, Qatar, Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Matthew Rosenberg from Mexico City. Adam Nossiter contributed reporting from Paris.
3. In Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan, Al Qaeda-Linked Haqqani Network Rises to Power
As I read these reports in the WSJ and NYT it seems that the terrorism threat continues to rise. Has it been ignored by political leaders and the public (it is apparent our intelligence community has seen this - are their warnings going unheeded?)? And it seems like Afghanitan is going to remain a center of gravity for terrorism.
In Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan, Al Qaeda-Linked Haqqani Network Rises to Power
Haqqani network’s new prominence undermines Taliban’s claims of severing terrorist ties
WSJ · by Sune Engel Rasmussen and Nancy A. Youssef
Closely linked to al Qaeda, the network also has for decades been involved in the hostage-taking of Westerners, and currently holds at least one American citizen captive, according to U.S. officials.
“I do not believe that anyone in the West fully understands the reach of the Haqqani network,” said retired Lt. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, a former director of strategy for the National Counterterrorism Center. “It is the single most impressive nonstate militant group I have ever seen, with the exception of ISIS in the first two years of the caliphate.”
Experts who have followed the group for years worry that its consolidation of power will enable the kind of transnational terrorism that the U.S.-led invasion of 2001 aimed to eradicate.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the militant network, in 1998.
Photo: Mohammed Riaz/associated press
Since the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, the normally elusive Haqqani network, which is built around a family of the same name, has assumed a public role in the Afghan capital. Khalil Haqqani, brother of the group’s founder, Jalaluddin, addressed the faithful in public in Kabul’s Pol-e Khishti Mosque last week—despite a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head.
According to people who attended, Mr. Haqqani said Afghanistan had been freed, would become peaceful and that people associated with the ousted U.S.-backed government would be forgiven.
Along with his nephew, Anas Haqqani, who spent four years in custody at Bagram Air Base, Khalil met with former President Hamid Karzai and the fallen republic’s chief peace negotiator Abdullah Abdullah for talks about a more inclusive government that could gain international recognition.
A Taliban delegation led by Anas Haqqani met this month with former Afghan government officials.
Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The network’s de facto leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin, worked closely with Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, according to files recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Today, Sirajuddin is the Taliban’s military chief, and his forces have been put in charge of security in Kabul.
“The Haqqanis expose the lie that there is a line between Taliban and other jihadist groups, especially al Qaeda,” said H.R. McMaster, a national-security adviser in the Trump administration and former deputy commander for U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The Taliban pledged in the February 2020 Doha agreement with the U.S. that Afghanistan would never again host international terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. President Biden has justified the American withdrawal by emphasizing that al Qaeda has been eradicated from Afghanistan.
“We went to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, as well as getting Osama bin Laden. And we did,” Mr. Biden said Friday.
Afghan officials have for years accused the Haqqani network of facilitating deadly attacks on civilians by providing Islamic State’s local affiliate with technical assistance and access to criminal networks in Kabul, even though Islamic State and the mainstream Taliban are sworn enemies. Such attacks include an assault by gunmen on a maternity ward in Kabul in May 2020 that killed 24 people, mostly women and children.
At the airport, Badri 313, an elite Taliban unit, plays a particularly prominent role. They are among the best trained and equipped forces operating within Afghanistan, and the Taliban posted footage of its fighters guarding the airport, wearing sophisticated tactical gear and holding American-acquired weapons—within sight of U.S. Marines.
The Haqqani network has a force called the Badri Army, which some U.S. officials believe is the same as the Badri 313. Intelligence officials of the fallen Afghan republic say the two groups are the same.
Afghan Army Gen. Yasin Zia, who served as chief of staff of the army until June and before that held a senior intelligence role, said the Haqqani network, due to training by the Pakistani intelligence services, is by far the most proficient of Afghan militant groups in surveillance and counter surveillance. Because of that, it is likely to take control of the country’s intelligence apparatus, he said.
Afghan TV showed images of the Taliban's Badri 313 on patrol in the country.
Photo: Afghan TV RTA/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
While the Haqqanis’ connections to Islamic State are disputed by some analysts and officials, the network’s ties to al Qaeda are clear.
“Relations between the Taliban, especially the Haqqani network, and al Qaeda remain close, based on friendship, a history of shared struggle, ideological sympathy and intermarriage,” a May United Nations Security Council report said. The U.N. says between 400 and 600 al Qaeda fighters are active in 12 provinces, and the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is still based in Afghanistan.
Born out of the Central Intelligence Agency-funded anti-Soviet mujahedeen movement in the 1980s, the Haqqani network pledged allegiance to the Taliban in 1995. Since then, the family has been an integral part of the Taliban, but has maintained its autonomy and relations with a host of international jihadist groups, particularly al Qaeda.
Sirajuddin Haqqani also had close relations with a prominent al Qaeda commander, Abdul Rauf Zakir, who was responsible for protecting Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, according to U.S. intelligence.
“Al Qaeda is in lockstep with the Taliban,” said Rob French, a retired senior analyst with the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, a multiagency U.S. intelligence organization. “They are basically a subsidiary of the Taliban at this point.”
WSJ · by Sune Engel Rasmussen and Nancy A. Youssef
4. For First Time, Half of Americans Favor Defending Taiwan If China Invades
Excerpt:
- When asked about a range of potential scenarios, just over half of Americans (52%) favor using US troops to defend if China were to invade the island. This is the highest level ever recorded in the Council’s surveys dating back to 1982, when the question was first asked.
- Republicans (60%) are more likely to support sending US troops to Taiwan’s defense than Democrats (50%) or Independents (49%) – see appendix for more information on partisan divides and Taiwan.
For First Time, Half of Americans Favor Defending Taiwan If China Invades
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August 26, 2021
RESEARCH by Dina Smeltz and Craig Kafura
REUTERS
2021 Chicago Council Survey data show a majority of Americans support a range of US policies towards Taiwan: recognition as an independent country, inclusion in international organizations, and a US-Taiwan free trade agreement.
Key Findings
- The American public supports a range of US policies in support of Taiwan. Majorities favor US recognition of Taiwan as an independent country (69%), supporting its inclusion in international organizations (65%), and signing a US-Taiwan free trade agreement (57%).
- A slimmer majority (53%) support the United States' signing a formal alliance with Taiwan, and a plurality (46%) favor explicitly committing to defend Taiwan if China invades.
- When asked about a range of potential scenarios, just over half of Americans (52%) favor using US troops to defend if China were to invade the island. This is the highest level ever recorded in the Council’s surveys dating back to 1982, when the question was first asked.
- Republicans (60%) are more likely to support sending US troops to Taiwan’s defense than Democrats (50%) or Independents (49%) – see appendix for more information on partisan divides and Taiwan.
- At the same time, Americans are divided over whether the United States should (50%) or should not (47%) sell arms and military equipment to Taiwan.
- Distrust of China is a significant factor in US public support for Taiwan: while most Americans see Taiwan as an ally (30%) or necessary partner (30%), most see China as a rival (32%) or an adversary (29%).
Explore the full report
About the Authors
Senior Fellow, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy
Dina Smeltz, a polling expert, has more than 25 years of experience designing and fielding international social and political surveys. Prior to joining the Council to lead its annual survey of American attitudes on US foreign policy, she served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the US State Department's Office of Research from 1992 to 2008.
Assistant Director, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy
Craig Kafura is the assistant director for public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, and a Pacific Forum Young Leader. At the Council, he coordinates work on public opinion and foreign policy and is a regular contributor to the public opinion and foreign policy blog Running Numbers.
Methodology
This analysis is based on data from the 2021 Chicago Council Survey of the American public on foreign policy, a project of the Lester Crown Center on US Foreign Policy. The 2021 Chicago Council Survey was conducted July 7–26, 2021, by Ipsos using its large-scale nationwide online research panel, KnowledgePanel, among a weighted national sample of 2,086 adults, 18 or older, living in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is +/- 2.33 percentage points, including a design effect of 1.1817. The margin of error is higher for partisan subgroups or for partial-sample items.
Partisan identification is based on respondents’ answer to a standard partisan self-identification question: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or what?”
The 2021 Chicago Council Survey is made possible by the generous support of the Crown family and the Korea Foundation.
Additional results come from the Council’s 2021 Trilateral Survey, part of a larger project focusing on US-Japan-South Korea cooperation. This survey was conducted by Ipsos from March 19 to 21, 2021, using its large-scale online research panel, KnowledgePanel, among a weighted national sample of 1,019 adults 18 or older living in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is +/- 3 percentage points. This survey was made possible by the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Korea Foundation, and the Nakasone Peace Institute.
5. Kori Schake on why America should keep faith in the rules-based order
For those who do not think we should protect and defend the rules-based-order what do you think should replace it?
Excerpts:
Allies and enemies alike are right to question whether America’s capacity for regeneration is enough this time to fix its myriad problems. The country seems to luxuriate in performative politics. The culture wars have evolved into stark ideological divisions over everything from mask-wearing to army recruiting commercials to the integrity of the presidential election in 2020. Governing amid social diversity is difficult and social media’s immediacy and pervasiveness complicates everything.
Yet such challenges have always typified the American experience, and are perhaps to be expected for a country “so brilliantly and sometimes brutally in motion”, in Mr Pinsky’s words. The Black Lives Matter protests illustrated injustices in America, but also showed the breadth of solidarity and demand for improvement. The protests inspired demands for changes around the world—fitting for a country that sees its values as universal.
The past three American presidents have argued for less international involvement, evoking the idea of “nation-building at home”. But it is not a binary choice; the aims are complementary not contradictory. America needs an international order that prevents trouble so that it can focus on domestic challenges, and strengthening the country domestically boosts its influence internationally. The alternatives to the rules-based order are costlier and more dangerous than sustaining what exists: shielding ourselves against a hostile or chaotic order would require more expense and effort. America should strengthen the current system. Three steps for this stand out.
First, close the “strategy-resources” gap. For the past 20 years, America has tolerated a chasm between its ambitions and the money it commits to achieve them: financing wars through debt and allowing dedicated social programmes to outpace funding.
....
Second, smarten up diplomacy. American diplomats are typically generalists on whom the State Department spends a fortune for language training. Instead, the country needs to hire language speakers and put the emphasis on teaching strategy: the arts of nuclear deterrence, successful negotiation and diplomatic history.
...
Third, stop imperiling dollar supremacy. So much of the latitude America enjoys in order to run high deficits comes from issuing the global reserve currency.
Kori Schake on why America should keep faith in the rules-based order
Despite disillusionment over Iraq and Afghanistan, America should strengthen the global system it created—not give up on it
Aug 26th 2021
This By-invitation commentary is part of a series by global thinkers on the future of American power—examining the forces shaping the country’s global standing, from the rise of China to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Read more here.
The Economist Today
MY FAVOURITE expression of America’s dynamism comes from the country’s former poet laureate, Robert Pinsky: “American culture”, he observed, “seems so much in process, so brilliantly and sometimes brutally in motion, that standard models for it fail to apply.” What pessimists about American power overlook is the protean regeneration that is the country’s essential nature.
The United States has a government created by people who distrusted government, and is a great power whose people would prefer to remain uninvolved in the world. Those anomalies make it difficult to sustain international commitments, especially involving countries not constituted along similar domestic lines. And yet America is the architect of a durable political, economic and security order that has made it and others safer and more prosperous.
The debacle in Afghanistan will require demonstrations of greater commitment elsewhere, but it doesn’t call into question the order itself. In fact, that America and its allies persevered in Afghanistan for 20 years despite very slow progress may even deter some challengers.
The global order should not be taken for granted. Its genius is that it benefits not just America and its allies but every country that plays by its rules. And it is especially beneficial to middle-sized and smaller powers. They would have little ability to protect their interests in an environment where the strongest weren’t constrained by rules and institutions. That makes the system more stable and cost-effective than those that other hegemons have established, such as French dominance of Europe in the Napoleonic era or even Spain with all its plunder from the New World. While the rules prevail, everyone prospers.
The world is confronted with a historic challenge. It is happening economically, diplomatically, militarily, technologically and more. But at its core, it is philosophical, contesting the Hegelian belief that as people grow wealthy, they demand more political rights. That idea seemed to explain how the world’s most sustainably prosperous countries were free societies. The rise of China, where there is economic well-being without an open society, calls that into question.
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Yet it would be wrong to regard the tension as a great-power competition. Instead, it is a situation in which America and the vast majority of other countries are attempting to sustain a mutually beneficial order against a country that seeks to overturn it for its sole advantage. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea illustrates the distinction: China is a signatory, but routinely violates it; America has not ratified the convention yet not only abides by its terms, but also assists other countries in upholding it.
Although China benefits enormously from orderly global trade, it is still willing to abuse its terms to penalise Australia and Japan for pursuing foreign policies with which it disagrees. Russia may share China’s ambition of an international order favouring authoritarianism, but it lacks the economic heft to create systemic change. If America cannot or will not uphold the international, rules-based system, the likeliest outcomes will be either a frayed, more chaotic world, or one dominated by China. Either outcome would be less peaceful and prosperous.
Certainly, American power has ebbed relative to the growing economies of the global south that America’s rules-based order helped bring about, as well as from the country’s own mistakes, such as the Iraq war and the chaotic departure from Afghanistan. Yet tales of American decline fail to capture the country’s capacity for reinvention and rejuvenation, from creating Silicon Valley to electing a black president. Critics underestimate how difficult it is for other countries to get right what America already has right.
The United States has both high- and low-skilled labour through immigration and social acceptance, university systems that generate technical and scientific innovation, deep and diverse capital pools for investment, reliable commercial law and recourse through the courts, and a political system responsive to public concerns. Washington is designed to be at a stalemate unless there is a broad political consensus. It’s a regrettable byproduct of beneficial democratic features: congressional elections every two years that make the chamber closer to public attitudes, less centralised party control that provide wider avenues for newcomer participation (Donald Trump, for example), and a federal system that enables policy experimentation by the states.
Allies and enemies alike are right to question whether America’s capacity for regeneration is enough this time to fix its myriad problems. The country seems to luxuriate in performative politics. The culture wars have evolved into stark ideological divisions over everything from mask-wearing to army recruiting commercials to the integrity of the presidential election in 2020. Governing amid social diversity is difficult and social media’s immediacy and pervasiveness complicates everything.
Yet such challenges have always typified the American experience, and are perhaps to be expected for a country “so brilliantly and sometimes brutally in motion”, in Mr Pinsky’s words. The Black Lives Matter protests illustrated injustices in America, but also showed the breadth of solidarity and demand for improvement. The protests inspired demands for changes around the world—fitting for a country that sees its values as universal.
The past three American presidents have argued for less international involvement, evoking the idea of “nation-building at home”. But it is not a binary choice; the aims are complementary not contradictory. America needs an international order that prevents trouble so that it can focus on domestic challenges, and strengthening the country domestically boosts its influence internationally. The alternatives to the rules-based order are costlier and more dangerous than sustaining what exists: shielding ourselves against a hostile or chaotic order would require more expense and effort. America should strengthen the current system. Three steps for this stand out.
First, close the “strategy-resources” gap. For the past 20 years, America has tolerated a chasm between its ambitions and the money it commits to achieve them: financing wars through debt and allowing dedicated social programmes to outpace funding. Its defence posture is predicated on an annual 3-5% increase in real spending that has not materialised. President Biden’s defence budget doesn’t even keep pace with inflation. We’re tempting adversaries to test whether we can do what we say we will. It is past time to buy a wider margin of safety, either by increasing military spending (perhaps to 6% of GDP from 3.7% today) or giving the Defence Department latitude to spend differently (such as by eliminating non-defence elements—like cancer research—from its budget).
Second, smarten up diplomacy. American diplomats are typically generalists on whom the State Department spends a fortune for language training. Instead, the country needs to hire language speakers and put the emphasis on teaching strategy: the arts of nuclear deterrence, successful negotiation and diplomatic history. Moreover, creativity should be encouraged. For example, faced with a lack of transparency in China, the American embassy started tweeting Beijing’s air quality on an hourly basis, which pressed the government to take environmental policies more seriously.
Third, stop imperiling dollar supremacy. So much of the latitude America enjoys in order to run high deficits comes from issuing the global reserve currency. It has been lucky that, so far, the alternatives like the euro or yuan are inferior. But the rise of “secondary sanctions” (imposed on individuals and organisations outside a country under sanctions) creates incentives for the development of new payment mechanisms to skirt the dollar zone—the very system that keeps America’s debt affordable. A plan to end deficit spending and exercising restraint in using the financial system as a weapon when imposing sanctions needs to be a national-security priority.
Americans are experiencing a crisis of confidence over whether their democracy can handle its challenges, and they question the universality of their values. They are also questioning the use of military force after failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. However leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping embrace no such introspection. They imprison political activists, build surveillance systems, suffocate dissent and constrain business.
It is true that many people would not want a society as brilliantly and brutally “in motion” as America, but they probably do wish for a government that is fair and accountable. America should not lose faith that the truths it holds to be self-evident genuinely are just that. Sustaining an international system is hard work. No dominant power has had as much voluntary co-operation from allies as America. With collaboration and creativity, the country may grow even stronger in the 21st century.
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Kori Schake is the director of foreign and defence policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. She has previously held positions at the Defence Department and State Department, and on the National Security Council
6. Lawmakers, veterans step in to help Americans, Afghan allies escape Afghanistan
This has been an amazing effort by so many people.
But this tweeter has criticized the effort.
Mike
@forbesmm
Remember—when you’re reading a soft-focus CNN piece on the next keyboard warrior claiming credit for “helping get people out”—what it took to *actually* get a hundred thousand people on airplanes.
Mike
@forbesmm
Helping fill out paperwork and passing information is fine and good, but don’t break your arm patting yourselves on the back when there are people literally standing on the ‘X’ where they KNOW an IS-K suicide bomb is coming.
My response to him:
David Maxwell
@DavidMaxwell161
True & correct. We respect & mourn our fallen today. However, we should also keep in mind many of those “keyboard warriors” are veterans who have stood on the X many times & now in retirement remain committed to doing what they can for their brothers in arms & their families.
Lawmakers, veterans step in to help Americans, Afghan allies escape Afghanistan
Lawmakers and veterans groups are working feverishly around the clock to help as many U.S. citizens and refugees as possible get out of Afghanistan before President Biden’s withdrawal deadline Tuesday.
Calls pour in from Americans frantically trying to make it through the chaos engulfing the Taliban-controlled country and to the Kabul airport, where twin bomb attacks Thursday killed dozens — including at least 13 U.S. service members — and further hampered people’s escape plans.
Rep. Michael Waltz, Florida Republican and a former Army Green Beret, said he and other lawmakers have devoted their entire staff to “connecting the dots and doing what needs to be done” to assist trapped Americans.
“We’re having to fight through our own bureaucracy to help fellow Americans and to help those who stood with us,” he said. “Just think about that for a moment: how the private sector has had to mobilize to get this done because our government isn’t getting it done.”
The U.S. military controls only the perimeter of Hamid Karzai International Airport. Taliban checkpoints dot the city. Tens of thousands of people gather outside of the airport gates, grinding passage to a halt.
Every attempt to flee the city poses a substantial risk for U.S. citizens and Afghan refugees alike.
The Taliban have circled the Kabul airport. They were letting American citizens into the airport, but Afghan interpreters and others who worked alongside the U.S. military were being turned away, said Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Sometimes, more grimly, they are returned to their homes where they behead their family and then behead them,” Mr. McCaul said.
Rep. Andy Kim, New Jersey Democrat and a former State Department diplomat who served as a civilian adviser in Afghanistan, said more than 6,000 people had reached out to his office for help in getting out of Afghanistan.
“I spent several hours this morning just trying to help several American citizens that are still trying to get to the airport, still trying to get help,” Mr. Kim said.
Others trapped in Afghanistan turn to the Americans they knew during the war to lend a hand. As Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in mid-August, Afghan interpreters began making calls to former U.S. service members, pleading for help to get out.
Brandon Trent, a former Marine, said he received several calls like that.
“It is tough to ask a man to take his family at 2 in the morning through a crowd of 20,000 just to get them to the gate,” Mr. Trent said.
He said many of the interpreters would be met with beatings at Taliban checkpoints. It was common, he said, for the Taliban to confiscate the documents they needed to make it out of the country.
Mr. Trent and other former U.S. service members began coordinating efforts, exchanging tips and real-time guidance on how to navigate the Taliban checkpoints.
The mission became known as Digital Dunkirk and eventually grew into a network of several hundred former service members.
Dunkirk, a French seaport, was the site of a massive evacuation of British and allied troops during World War II, saving more than 200,000 troops from advancing German forces.
“Suddenly, you know, two people became four people became two or three nuclei of six or seven people who started joining up,” said Benjamin Bryant, a former Department of Defense civilian involved in the initiative. “You get a lot of people with a lot of trust with a lot in common, working day and night to get stuff done.”
While they have been able to get many to the airport and out of the country safely, those involved say they are nowhere near completing the job — much like their former colleagues who are still in uniform.
The U.S. evacuation effort at Kabul airport has flown nearly 100,000 people out since full-scale operations began on Aug. 14. At least 1,500 Americans remained in the country, the State Department said Wednesday.
The former military involved in helping Afghan allies said they don’t know how many of them are stuck in Kabul or elsewhere in the country. The number is in the tens of thousands.
“It’s mission first,” Mr. Bryant said. “And right now the mission is to facilitate the evacuation and extraction when necessary of as many people as possible.”
7. Crisis Management Lessons from the Clinton Administration's Implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56
The sad news is that this is published posthumously. Len Hawley has passed away. I did not learn that until I got to the end and read the bio of the editor who prepared this publication posthumously.
In 1997-1998 at the direction of General Tilelli, Bob Collins and I participated in a PDD 56 interagency project hosted by State at the Foreign Service Institute to look at north Korean instability and regime collapse. Since we wrote the CONPLAN for instability and collapse we contributed to the project to examine how the interagency would address the contingencies on the Korean peninsula. PDD 56 proved to be a very useful process for engaging the interagency in contingency planning.
The project gave us this great quote from the current Asia Czar (INDOPACIFiC Coordinator):
"There are only two ways to approach planning for the collapse of North Korea: to be ill-prepared or to be really ill-prepared."
--Dr. Kurt Campbell, DASD, 1 May 1998
This process might have been helpful in planning for the Afghan withdrawal and NEO (if it was conducted months (or longer) ago).
Abstract
Drawing on personal experience, the author asks what the current administration can learn from the Clinton administration’s implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56, examines the real-world application of the directive during the Clinton administration and the pitfalls of its agency-centric successor during the Bush administration, and identifies recurring problems and best practices for successfully responding to current global crises.
Recommended Citation
8. ‘A Total F*cking Disaster’: Inside Seth Moulton’s Secret Trip to Kabul‘
Congressman Moulton's "trip report" from his unique CODEL.
‘A Total F*cking Disaster’: Inside Seth Moulton’s Secret Trip to Kabul
The scene at the Kabul airport during Moulton’s visit. Photo: Courtesy of Seth Moulton
Seth Moulton saw things during his trip to Afghanistan that were “truly out of this world.” He spent about 15 hours on Tuesday at the airport in the capital city of Kabul, the epicenter of America’s messy withdrawal from the nearly 20-year war there. The Massachusetts congressman described the scene as “the most visceral, raw view of humanity that I will probably ever see in my life,” with “thousands upon thousands” of refugees camped out and “desperate” to fly out of the country, which was overtaken by fundamentalist Taliban forces. The experience left Moulton more convinced than ever that President Joe Biden made grave mistakes in his handling of the exit.
Moulton was on his way back from Kabul in the wee hours of Thursday morning when he spoke to New York about the trip, during a layover in Madrid.
“The thing that everybody needs to understand, even if you completely agree with the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw, the way they have handled this has been a total fucking disaster,” said Moulton, who traveled to the country with Republican representative from Michigan, Peter Meijer. “It will be measured in bodies, because a lot of people are dying because they can’t get out.”
That brutal toll began earlier this month as crowds of civilians and Taliban fighters rushed the airport. Biden ultimately ordered 6,000 troops to secure the facility following shocking images of terrified people hanging onto planes as they took off. The surge allowed the U.S. to rapidly evacuate over 100,000 people, including special visa holders, ethnic minorities, and others who faced persecution by the Taliban. But the violence and danger has not ended. On Thursday, as Moulton and Meijer made their way back to the States, two suicide bombers and gunmen staged attacks at the aiport that killed at least 60 Afghans and 12 American troops. The Pentagon has blamed fighters associated with the militant group Islamic State for the latest violence.
Despite the clearly dangerous conditions at the airport, many of Moulton’s fellow Democrats in Capitol Hill saw his clandestine trip as blatant attention-seeking that only added to the risky atmosphere on the ground. However, Moulton insisted the mission brought him valuable insights, including about dire conditions at an airfield in Qatar where refugees are being held and where the congressmen stopped en route back to the States.
“Refugees are going to start dying today if we don’t get them help in places like Qatar. Thousands will get slaughtered by the Taliban if we don’t somehow devise a plan to get them out before we leave,” Moulton said. “These are all things that the administration has failed to do, and I know that because the people on the ground are telling me.”
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Moulton, 42, has been no stranger to high-profile battles with members of his party since he first took office in 2014. He’s a broad-shouldered, square-jawed former Marine captain with notably sharp elbows and ambitions. Last year, he mounted both a long-shot presidential campaign and an unsuccessful effort to oust House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
His military experience means the threat to Afghan refugees, many of whom were granted special immigrant visas for helping American troops during the war, is personal for Moulton. During four deployments in Iraq, he relied extensively on local translators. Moulton later worked to help multiple interpreters emigrate to the U.S. and opened his home to Mohammed Harba, one of the interpreters he worked closely with in Iraq.
“I wouldn’t be alive today without people like Mohammed. I put my life in their hands every single day I went out the gate, and I knew that they put their lives in mine,” Moulton said of his time in Iraq. “I promised him, ‘I will have your back. We will protect your family … and we will never leave you behind.’”
Since his arrival in Congress, Moulton has repeatedly pressed to have the special immigrant visa program, which was started in 2009, expanded or expedited. His efforts took on a new urgency this year as Biden prepared to follow through on an Afghanistan withdrawal plan initiated by former President Trump. In May, Moulton called the delays in processing SIVs an “immediate crisis,” as he urged the Biden administration to move applicants to an American territory for processing ahead of the exit.
“We do not have time to fix the SIV process before we withdraw,” Moulton said. “We need to evacuate our Afghan allies and friends before they are slaughtered in the wake of our departure.”
Over the next three months, Moulton backed a plan for evacuation and raised the issue in hearings and on the House floor. He also claims to have brought the issues up in multiple private meetings with administration officials.
Moulton and Meijer have not been alone in banging the drum about issues with the SIV program and looming dangers ahead of the withdrawal. Last June, the State Department’s inspector general conducted a review of the program, which found multiple “obstacles” that would prevent most visas from being issued in nine months or less. The audit described the program as “generally understaffed” and noted no one was appointed to “oversee and direct” it throughout the Trump administration. Multiple lawmakers have joined Moulton in recent months in urging the Biden administration to expedite the visa process.
As the situation morphed into an immediate crisis with the Taliban’s swift advance earlier this month, Moulton and Meijer have also joined efforts to evacuate individual Afghans. These unofficial rescue operations have been coordinated in Slack channels and group chats on encrypted messaging apps with current and former Hill staffers, members of the military, and others. One current staffer who has helped arrange multiple successful evacuations in recent days said the two congressmen have been “very involved in this.”
For those trying to aid evacuations, getting people past the crowds outside the gates of the Kabul airport is a major obstacle. Moulton said he’s worked to get “a few” people “over the wall.” When he arrived in Kabul, he could hear gunshots outside the gates mixed with the cries of people on both sides of the divide. Inside, Moulton said he saw troops and diplomats trying to make the best of a bad situation, but who were overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task and the number of people they wouldn’t be able to save.
“I’ve never seen more people cry, just salty Marines, seasoned State Department veterans just break down in tears, talking about their work, and hugging me, and saying thank you for coming,” Moulton said.
According to Moulton, one of the exhausted officials summed up the situation by saying, “I know this had to end someday, but none of us wanted it to end like this.” Moulton said that by raising alarm bells about the evacuation in recent months, he had hoped to avoid this very situation. He described watching those warnings go ignored as an “unfolding disaster.”
“I did everything I could. I mean, I would get on these calls with like a small number of members of Congress, mostly Democrats, who would all very politely say, ‘We love you Biden administration, but can you do a little bit more on this,’” he recalled. “I would be the only one who would just say starkly, ‘Here are the stakes. People are going to die.’”
Moulton’s years of work on the issue and personal involvement complicate the idea that he’s simply rushing into the spotlight. Yet he also clearly relishes playing the role of hero. As he discussed the trip with New York, Moulton read text messages he received from people praising his work and quoted anonymous officials who he claimed had privately expressed appreciation for his demands for more urgent action from the White House.
Following one of these meetings with administration officials, Moulton said a deputy secretary of State pulled him aside and said, “Thank you for all your advocacy and thank you for pushing us so hard.” Moulton believes leaders at the Defense Department and diplomats were ready and willing to begin a mass evacuation more quickly. “They were never given the order, or probably more accurately, they were stopped from doing this,” Moulton said.
Moulton said he doesn’t know why the evacuation didn’t begin earlier. However, it’s something he’d “absolutely” like to investigate as part of a congressional commission. With deadly violence outside the airport and thousands of potential refugees stranded, Moulton is adamant that “the administration has created a disaster of epic proportions.”
And Moulton lays the blame squarely at the feet of the White House. In contrast to the president and his Cabinet, Moulton said “a lot of people below the top get this,” because U.S. diplomats and leaders in the Pentagon have “relied on translators as well” throughout their careers.
While Moulton might have allies behind the scenes, the public response from leaders in Washington following his trip has been overwhelmingly negative.
Shortly after news of Moulton and Meijer’s secret mission broke on Tuesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to members of Congress “to reiterate that the Departments of Defense and State have requested that Members not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger.” On Wednesday, a Hill source said Pentagon officials “led with” a request for members to avoid travel to the region during a briefing call with congressional staffers. The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment. When asked about the trip during his briefing on Wednesday, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said they were “not encouraging VIP visits” and that, by virtue of their presence, Moulton and Meijer “took time away from what we had been planning to do that day.”
However, Moulton claimed he and Meijer, who is also an Iraq War veteran, repeatedly tried to obtain permission for an official congressional delegation, or “codel,” before the emergency at the airport began.
“Peter and I had been talking for a while about going to Kabul because all our official requests had been denied … which I had made many over months, not just recently,” he said.
Monica Matoush, a spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee’s Democrats, said they had not received a “formal request” from Moulton.
“The House Armed Services Committee’s policy for congressional travel requires a formal letter from the member requesting international travel at least two weeks prior to the requested travel date,” Matoush said. “To date and since the beginning of the year the committee has not received any formal requests for congressional travel to Afghanistan.”
A spokesperson for Moulton said he did not make a written request because he “was eventually informed at the staff level that a formal request would not be approved.”
Once they decided to go rogue, Moulton said the pair’s visit “had the lightest footprint of any codel in history.”
“Our goal was to be as efficient as possible at finding the truth and saving a few lives,” he explained.
To that end, the pair flew commercial to the United Arab Emirates before boarding military planes to Kabul. The C-17 cargo jets being used for the airlift are largely empty on the way into Afghanistan. When they left Kabul, Moulton said he and Meijer traveled in vacant space in the crew cabin located behind the cockpit, noting these spaces are not accessible to refugees. before boarding commercial flights out of the Middle East. Moulton, who has made multiple prior codels to Afghanistan, said it was easy for him to make the travel arrangements.
“Look, man, when you’ve been in the Middle East as long as I have, it’s not that hard to find a friend who can get you on a flight,” said Moulton.
A senior Democratic House staffer said Moulton and Meijer’s trip “had all of official Washington talking about them.”
“I’ve been arguing with staffer friends about this since the minute the news broke,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity to discuss the situation candidly. “I am very much of the thinking this is a crazy thing to do.”
The staffer said they know Moulton “really cares about this” and that there are some on the Hill who “think this was amazing.” Personally, though, they don’t believe it would have been possible for the trip to avoid wasting resources.
“Once you have a member of Congress there, someone is going to have to babysit you … The worst-case scenario is that bad actors find out who they are and try to use them as leverage,” the staffer said of Moulton and Meijer. “You have to be able to not make the story about you.”
Meijer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In their initial statement announcing the trip, Moulton and Meijer said, “As Members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch.” The staffer doesn’t buy that justification.
“I don’t feel super-convinced that they are returning with some kind of special info that changes everything,” said the staffer. “What Moulton is saying when he comes back sounds remarkably similar to what Moulton was saying before he went there.”
Another Democratic Hill aide, who also requested anonymity to offer a frank assessment of the situation, similarly said the trip was reckless.
“I don’t doubt their intentions of also wanting to assist the appropriate people,” the aide said. “There are ways to do that from home that’s not putting yourself into a literal combat zone.”
While they agreed that the SIV program had been handled badly, the aide said that considering the wall-to-wall coverage prior to the visit, they questioned whether Moulton and Meijer were overly eager to get into the spotlight.
“Was this driven by wanting to be at the center of a story that was finally getting the attention that this deserves?” the aide asked.
Moulton angrily brushed off the critiques.
“There’s nobody in Congress who understands our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan better than me. So, for a colleague to second guess this decision is pretty hypocritical and it just shows how many people don’t understand what’s at stake,” Moulton said. “The overwhelming response from everyone we met on the ground was, ‘Thank you for coming.’ That’s what matters. What matters are the people on the ground, not the critics in Congress.”
Moulton argued oversight was necessary, particularly since foreign journalists have largely left Kabul. He also believes he gained vital information from the trip. Prior to visiting Kabul, Moulton thought Biden needed to extend the U.S. troop presence beyond the August 31 deadline that the president has set for withdrawal. Based on what he saw in Afghanistan, Moulton said getting along with the Taliban is a “diplomatic necessity” that makes getting out on time imperative.
“We understood as one only can from being on the ground in Kabul that we were never going to finish this in time, even if we extended to September 11th,” he explained. “As crazy as this sounds, we need a positive relationship with the Taliban to have any hope of getting out the thousands of people we’ll leave behind down the road.”
The journey home through Qatar also alerted Moulton to what he described as deadly conditions for refugees. He said Afghans there are packed in at an air base “in 120-degree heat literally sheltering under aircraft wings, which is not safe, by the way.”
“They’re in hangars, some of them are just on the tarmac, and it’s crazy,” Moulton said.
Photos provided by Moulton and another source showed refugees in Qatar crowded shoulder to shoulder at an airfield. Some sat on the hard ground, which was visibly dirty.
Photo: Courtesy of anonymous Hill staffer
Despite what he described as “heroic” efforts by U.S. troops and officials at the airfield, Moulton said the situation is potentially deadly. According to the congressman, “One of the many State Department officials who couldn’t stop thanking us for coming said, ‘You have to tell the administration to call off their lawyers and stop preventing donations of food and water to these refugees in Qatar, because they’re going to start dying tomorrow.” Moulton claimed he relayed that warning to Democratic House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, who immediately passed it on to administration officials. Smith and the White House did not respond to questions about this incident.
“That’s just one example of how critical congressional oversight is at this moment,” said Moulton.
Moulton’s decision to be an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal put him and his Democratic colleagues in a politically awkward position. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy echoed Pelosi’s view that members of Congress should not go to the region to avoid taking focus from the military, but he also expressed some sympathy for Moulton and Meijer’s concerns over the handling of the withdrawal.
“They’re both veterans and they’re both frustrated,” McCarthy said.
Moulton said he hates “criticizing Biden,” a fellow Democrat. However, he also said, “If telling the truth is what’s required to save a few lives, then it’s worth all the bad politics in the world.”
“I agree with 95 percent of his agenda. I’m still onboard with him and I believe this was a massive mistake,” Moulton said. “But I come to all of this as a Marine first and politician second. That’s always who I’ve been and it’s always who I’ll be.”
And there are people on Capitol Hill who are on his side. The Hill staffer who has been heavily involved in the ad hoc efforts to evacuate Afghans said they felt both Moulton and Meijer had “abandoned party lines and are operating purely as military men.”
“There’s nothing disingenuous about this,” the staffer said. “I think what they did was brave, and it was necessary.”
9. The Roads Not Taken in Afghanistan
A critical review of administration actions.
Excerpts:
The Taliban’s success in Afghanistan will encourage jihadis everywhere. Whether the Taliban are brazen enough to provide direct support to jihadis probably depends on their calculation of Washington’s willingness to reengage in Afghanistan. A Taliban regime would be able to withstand one-off U.S. airstrikes; the group endured much worse when the United States had forces in country. And the Taliban can reliably bank on Biden’s likely refusal to do more. The administration’s claims that the United States will maintain the ability to carry out counterterrorism operations inside Afghanistan are unlikely to deter jihadis, given the limits on U.S. intelligence that will be the inevitable consequence of ending the U.S. military presence there.
It is true that Afghanistan is a marginal U.S. interest. The Afghan war wasn’t a central front in a conflict between great powers, comparable to Germany during the Cold War. It was more akin to Korea in 1950 or to Vietnam in the 1960s. It is also true that the United States dramatically overreacted to the threat of terrorism after 9/11, diverting the country’s trajectory and squandering both hard and soft power with its policy choices. U.S. interests would have been better served and American power better sustained by limiting the objectives in Afghanistan and not invading Iraq.
But none of that reduces the unnecessary damage that Biden has inflicted on Afghans, on U.S. allies, on his own broader foreign policy agenda, and on American power. The Biden team made costly choices and is counting on public apathy to prevent any political blowback at home, even calculating that the horrifying images of Afghans desperate to flee the country will eventually benefit the president politically. Reputations matter in international politics, and the Biden administration has just earned a bad one.
The Roads Not Taken in Afghanistan
Despite Biden’s Claims, Catastrophe Was Not Inevitable
Since the fall of Kabul on August 15, U.S. President Joe Biden and his top advisers have advanced four main claims to justify the decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan and to deflect criticism of the disastrous outcome. They have said that the mission in Afghanistan was unsustainable without a dramatic escalation of U.S. forces. They have argued that they had no choice but to honor an agreement that the administration of President Donald Trump reached with the Taliban that required the United States to withdraw its military forces from the country. They have lamented that Afghanistan’s military was unwilling to fight the Taliban. Finally, they have claimed that the administration “planned for every contingency” but that chaos was unavoidable.
None of those things are true—and Biden knows it. His cynical defense of a failed policy and its inept execution are only adding to the damage caused by this catastrophe.
A HOLLOW DEFENSE
The administration’s case that the status quo was unsustainable rests on two premises. The first is that the Taliban were inexorably gaining ground and could have been pushed back only with large additions of U.S. military forces. The second is that the only thing preventing U.S. casualties was the agreement that the Trump administration had made with the Taliban.
On the inevitability of a Taliban victory, perhaps one should credit the group’s own view of its chances: “We have achieved a victory that wasn’t expected,” remarked the Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar after Kabul fell. The fact is that until relatively recently, Afghan security forces had held their own against the Taliban, even as U.S. and allied forces stepped back from direct participation in the fighting. As recently as 2018, the Taliban controlled only four percent of Afghanistan’s territory—just 14 largely rural districts out of 419 total. Meanwhile, 122 districts had no Taliban presence at all. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, until at least mid-2020, Afghan national security forces were growing stronger and more capable of doing the fighting that the United States wanted done but didn’t want to do itself.
American casualties dropped not because the Taliban stood down but because the Afghan military stood up.
What accounts for the reversal of fortunes that saw the Taliban gain momentum and the Afghan military weaken? First, corruption in the Afghan state eroded public trust in the government, encouraged greater support for the Taliban, and even funded the insurgency. As the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction concluded in a 2016 report, “corrupt officials at all levels of government victimized and alienated the Afghan population. Substantial U.S. funds found their way to insurgent groups.” Worse yet, Washington was fully complicit in the Afghan government’s decadence: according to the Afghanistan expert Sarah Chayes, who advised the U.S. military for many years, the Obama administration made a conscious policy choice to permit corruption, because it was so pervasive among the very Afghan political leaders on whom Washington’s strategy relied.
Corruption wasn’t uniquely or particularly a military problem; corruption among Afghan police was far more problematic. But the Afghan government inflated its military budget by putting “ghost soldiers” on its payrolls, allowing corrupt officials to skim $300 million. The Afghanistan expert Carter Malkasian observed as early as 2009 that corruption led to many Afghan troops not getting paid, with predictably damaging consequences for morale. Still, corruption coexisted with progress, and the United States managed to limit the harm caused by graft by depositing money directly into the bank accounts of Afghan soldiers.
That progress, however, evaporated with the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban and the Biden team’s decision to adhere to it. The deal humiliated the Afghan government, which was excluded from the negotiations but was required to release around 5,000 imprisoned Taliban fighters as part of the agreement. The deal badly damaged morale in the Afghan military and among the police, since Washington secured a promise from the Taliban to cease targeting U.S. personnel but won no such concession for Afghan forces. It is not uncommon for Washington to negotiate with adversaries without the participation of U.S. allies that will be affected by the result. But the agreement with the Taliban allowed adversaries to attack U.S. allies without any risk of retribution—a concession without any clear precedent in U.S. history.
The Biden administration has asserted that repudiating the agreement would have caused an explosion of violence in Afghanistan, necessitating an escalation of U.S. military involvement. Yet even if that were true, the Afghan government and Afghan soldiers—and not American forces—would have borne the brunt of it, and they were willing to do so. For them, continuing the fight with limited U.S. backing would have been far preferable to the current situation. And if coupled with redoubled efforts to reduce corruption, a continuation of the U.S. military mission would have improved the Afghan government’s public standing. Biden has suggested that he had no choice but to proceed with the Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban. But such circumspection doesn’t appear to have constrained him from reversing Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement or from seeking to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump walked away.
It is hard to overstate the damage to U.S. credibility wreaked by this fiasco.
Biden’s contention that his administration “planned for every contingency” has been fully exploded by finger-pointing leaks from within his own administration. And anyone watching the botched exodus from Kabul can see that the administration was unprepared for this outcome, even though intelligence agencies and diplomats had been warning for months about the prospect of a rapid disintegration. Seeing American civil society organizations mobilize to help evacuate Americans and Afghans who worked with U.S. forces has been heartening but should not have been necessary. Biden claims that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani pleaded with him not to evacuate Americans and Afghans who worked with them earlier. But if, as Biden also contends, chaos was inevitable and the timetable for withdrawal was already set and in motion, there was little reason for him to defer to Ghani’s request. American veterans organizations had been pushing for months to get more people out; in mid-July, the U.S. embassy in Kabul also advocated accelerating the evacuation.
Finally, Biden’s shameful disparagement of the Afghan security forces ignores the reality about who has done most of the fighting and dying in this war. As the writer and veteran of the Afghan war Elliot Ackerman stingingly points out, “as much as we’ve heard about Afghans giving up the fight, we should not forget who was the first to leave the battlefield: It was us.” Although every casualty is cause for grief, it has been the Afghan security forces who have borne the brunt of losses since at least 2007. Negotiations with the Taliban carried out by the Trump administration and the Biden administration are not the reason that U.S. casualties dropped; in truth, the United States has suffered relatively few casualties since 2014, when Afghan forces took over primary responsibility for direct combat operations against the Taliban. American casualties dropped not because the Taliban stood down but because the Afghan military stood up.
CREDIBILITY GAP
It is hard to overstate the damage to U.S. credibility wreaked by this fiasco. Biden’s cynical self-justifications have not acknowledged the commitment of the other 36 countries with troops in Afghanistan nor how Washington’s accelerated abandonment of the country has made it harder for those countries to pull out safely and justify the mission to their publics. These countries have spent 20 years in Afghanistan not primarily because they consider Afghanistan essential to their security but because they consider the United States essential to their security. The disastrous withdrawal will make it harder for Washington to put together such coalitions in the future. And after the U.S. surrender to the Taliban, it will be hard for anyone to take seriously the Biden administration’s posturing about promoting human rights and defending democracy—which are supposedly central features of Biden’s foreign policy.
The Taliban’s success in Afghanistan will encourage jihadis everywhere. Whether the Taliban are brazen enough to provide direct support to jihadis probably depends on their calculation of Washington’s willingness to reengage in Afghanistan. A Taliban regime would be able to withstand one-off U.S. airstrikes; the group endured much worse when the United States had forces in country. And the Taliban can reliably bank on Biden’s likely refusal to do more. The administration’s claims that the United States will maintain the ability to carry out counterterrorism operations inside Afghanistan are unlikely to deter jihadis, given the limits on U.S. intelligence that will be the inevitable consequence of ending the U.S. military presence there.
It is true that Afghanistan is a marginal U.S. interest. The Afghan war wasn’t a central front in a conflict between great powers, comparable to Germany during the Cold War. It was more akin to Korea in 1950 or to Vietnam in the 1960s. It is also true that the United States dramatically overreacted to the threat of terrorism after 9/11, diverting the country’s trajectory and squandering both hard and soft power with its policy choices. U.S. interests would have been better served and American power better sustained by limiting the objectives in Afghanistan and not invading Iraq.
But none of that reduces the unnecessary damage that Biden has inflicted on Afghans, on U.S. allies, on his own broader foreign policy agenda, and on American power. The Biden team made costly choices and is counting on public apathy to prevent any political blowback at home, even calculating that the horrifying images of Afghans desperate to flee the country will eventually benefit the president politically. Reputations matter in international politics, and the Biden administration has just earned a bad one.
10. US special operations vets carry out daring mission to save Afghan allies
When we do the AAR on the Afghan NEO we need to ensure we examine these kinds of groups. They may very well be developing best practices for a public private (military, state, Congress and volunteer organizations) collaboration and relationship. State and DOD may be able to also adapt their processes to include best practices from these organizations.
And the question I would ask is what can we do to prepare the environment for possible NEO in high threat, high risk areas before a crisis occurs so that we can more effectively conduct NEO when the sh*t hits the fan? (E.g., everyone in a high threat area completes an ISOPREP like form). https://www.futuresoldiers.com/portal/fsts/training/modules/personnel_recovery/task5/resources/ISOPREP.pdf. Of course there are privacy issues and personally identifiable information and many will not want such information in the hands of governments
US special operations vets carry out daring mission to save Afghan allies
With the Taliban growing more violent and adding checkpoints near Kabul's airport, an all-volunteer group of American veterans of the Afghan war launched a final daring mission on Wednesday night dubbed the "Pineapple Express" to shepherd hundreds of at-risk Afghan elite forces and their families to safety, members of the group told ABC News.
Moving after nightfall in near-pitch black darkness and extremely dangerous conditions, the group said it worked unofficially in tandem with the United States military and U.S. embassy to move people, sometimes one person at a time, or in pairs, but rarely more than a small bunch, inside the wire of the U.S. military-controlled side of Hamid Karzai International Airport.
The Pineapple Express' mission was underway Thursday when the attack occurred in Kabul. Two suicide bombers believed to have been ISIS fighters killed at least 13 U.S. service members -- 10 U.S. Marines, a Navy corpsman and an Army soldier and one to be determined -- and wounded 15 other service members, according to U.S. officials.
There were wounded among the Pineapple Express travelers from the blast, and members of the group said they were assessing whether unaccounted-for Afghans they were helping had been killed.
As of Thursday morning, the group said it had brought as many as 500 Afghan special operators, assets and enablers and their families into the airport in Kabul overnight, handing them each over to the protective custody of the U.S. military.
That number added to more than 130 others over the past 10 days who had been smuggled into the airport encircled by Taliban fighters since the capital fell to the extremists on Aug. 16 by Task Force Pineapple, an ad hoc groups of current and former U.S. special operators, aid workers, intelligence officers and others with experience in Afghanistan who banded together to save as many Afghan allies as they could.
"Dozens of high-risk individuals, families with small children, orphans, and pregnant women, were secretly moved through the streets of Kabul throughout the night and up to just seconds before ISIS detonated a bomb into the huddled mass of Afghans seeking safety and freedom," Army Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret commander who led the private rescue effort, told ABC News.
Capt. Zac Lois
An all-volunteer group of American veterans of the Afghan war launched a daring mission on Wednesday night dubbed the "Pineapple Express" to shepherd critically at-risk Afghan elite forces and their families to safety.
After succeeding with helping dozens of Afghan commandos and interpreters get into the protective ring of the airport created by the 6,000 American troops President Joe Biden dispatched to the airfield after Kabul fell to the Taliban, the group initiated an ambitious ground operation this week aided by U.S. troops inside. The objective was to move individuals and families through the cover of darkness on the "Pineapple Express." The week-long effort and Wednesday's operation were observed by ABC News under the agreement of secrecy while the heart-pounding movements unfolded.
The operation carried out Wednesday night was an element of "Task Force Pineapple," an informal group whose mission began as a frantic effort on Aug. 15 to get one former Afghan commando who had served with Mann into the Kabul airport as he was being hunted by the Taliban who were texting him death threats.
They knew he had worked with U.S. Special Forces and the elite SEAL Team Six for a dozen years, targeting Taliban leadership, and was, therefore, a high-value target for them, sources told ABC News.
Two months ago, this commando told ABC News he had narrowly escaped a tiny outpost in northern Afghanistan that was later overrun while awaiting his U.S. special immigrant visa to be approved.
Capt. Zac Lois
An all-volunteer group of American veterans of the Afghan war launched a daring mission on Wednesday night dubbed the "Pineapple Express" to shepherd critically at-risk Afghan elite forces and their families to safety.
The effort since he was saved in a harrowing effort, along with his family of six, reached a crescendo this week with dozens of covert movements coordinated virtually on Wednesday by more than 50 people in an encrypted chat room, which Mann described as a night full of dramatic scenes rivaling a "Jason Bourne" thriller unfolding every 10 minutes.
The small groups of Afghans repeatedly encountered Taliban foot soldiers who they said beat them but never checked identity papers that might have revealed them as operators who spent two decades killing Taliban leadership. All carried U.S. visas, pending visa applications or new applications prepared by members of Task Force Pineapple, they told ABC News.
"This Herculean effort couldn't have been done without the unofficial heroes inside the airfield who defied their orders to not help beyond the airport perimeter, by wading into sewage canals and pulling in these targeted people who were flashing pineapples on their phones," Mann said.
With the uniformed U.S. military unable to venture outside the airport's perimeter to collect Americans and Afghans who've sought U.S. protection for their past joint service, they instead provided overwatch and awaited coordinated movements by an informal Pineapple Express ground team that included “conductors” led by former Green Beret Capt. Zac Lois, known as the underground railroad's “engineer.”
The Afghan operators, assets, interpreters and their families were known as “passengers” and they were being guided remotely by “shepherds," who are, in most cases their loyal former U.S. special operations forces and CIA comrades and commanders, according to chat room communications viewed by ABC News.
Hassan Majeed/UPI/Shutterstock
Refugees are evacuated from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on, Aug. 26, 2021.
There was one engineer, a few conductors, as well as people who were performing intelligence-gathering duties. The intelligence was pooled in the encrypted chat group in real-time and included guiding people on maps to GPS pin drops at rally points for them to stage in the shadows and in hiding until summoned by a conductor wearing a green chem light, ABC News observed in the encrypted chat.
Once summoned, passengers would hold up their smartphones with a graphic of yellow pineapples on a pink field.
Before the deadly ISIS-K bombing on Thursday near the Abbey Gate of the airport known as HKIA, intelligence warnings were issued about possible improvised explosive device attacks by ISIS-K. Around 8 p.m. EST Wednesday, the shepherds reported in the chatroom, which was viewed by ABC News, one by one that their passenger groups maneuvering discreetly in the darkness toward rally points had suddenly gone dark and were unreachable on their cell phones.
"We have lost comms with several of our teams," texted Jason Redman, a combat-wounded former Navy SEAL and author, who was shepherding Afghans he knew.
There was concern the Taliban had dropped the cell towers -- but another Task Force Pineapple member, a Green Beret, reported that he learned the U.S. military had employed cell phone jammers to counter the IED threat at Abbey gate. Within an hour, most had reestablished communications with the "passengers" and the slow, deliberate movements of each group resumed under the ticking clock of sunrise in Kabul, ABC News observed in the encrypted chat.
Capt. Zac Lois
An all-volunteer group of American veterans of the Afghan war launched a daring mission on Wednesday night dubbed the "Pineapple Express" to shepherd critically at-risk Afghan elite forces and their families to safety.
"The whole night was a roller-coaster ride. People were so terrified in that chaotic environment. These people were so exhausted, I kept trying to put myself in their shoes," Redman said.
Looking back at an effort that saved at least, by their count, 630 Afghan lives, Redman expressed deep frustration "that our own government didn't do this. We did what we should do, as Americans."
Many of the Afghans arrived near Abbey Gate and waded through a sewage-choked canal toward a U.S. soldier wearing red sunglasses to identify himself. They waved their phones with the pineapples and were scooped up and brought inside the wire to safety. Others were brought in by an Army Ranger wearing a modified American flag patch with the Ranger Regiment emblem, sources told ABC News.
Lois said the Task Force Pineapple was able to accomplish a truly historic event, by evacuating hundreds of personnel over the last week.
"That is an astounding number for an organization that was only assembled days before the start of operations and most of its members had never met each other in person," Lois told ABC News.
Lois said he modeled his slow and steady system of maneuvering the Afghan families in the darkness after Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad for American slave escapees.
The Afghan passengers represented the span of the two-decade war there, and participants included Army Maj. Jim Gant, a retired Green Beret known as "Lawrence of Afghanistan," who was the subject of a 2014 "Nightline" investigation.
"I have been involved in some of the most incredible missions and operations that a special forces guy could be a part of, and I have never been a part of anything more incredible than this," Gant told ABC News. "The bravery and courage and commitment of my brothers and sisters in the Pineapple community was greater than the U.S. commitment on the battlefield."
"I just want to get my people out," he added.
Sgt. Jillian G. Hix/U.S.Marines
U.S. soldiers with the 82nd Airborne division provide security around the permitter of Hamid Karzai International Airport during Operation Allies Refuge Aug. 25, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Dan O'Shea, a retired SEAL commander, said he successfully helped his own group, which included a U.S. citizen who served as an operative and his Afghan father and brother in a nail-biting crucible as they walked on foot to one entry point after another for hours. They dodged Taliban checkpoints and patrols in order to get inside the U.S. side of the airport and on a plane out of Kabul.
"He was not willing to let his father and his brother behind; even it meant he would die. He refused to leave his family," O'Shea, a former counterinsurgency adviser in Afghanistan, told ABC News. "Leaving a man behind is not in our SEAL ethos. Many Afghans have a stronger vision of our democratic values than many Americans do."
It all began with trying to save one Afghan Commando, whose special immigrant visa was never finalized.
During an intense night last week involving coordination between Mann and another Green Beret, an intelligence officer, former aid workers and a staffer for Florida Republican and Green Beret officer Rep. Mike Waltz, the ad hoc team enlisted the aid of a sleepless U.S. Embassy officer inside the airport. He helped Marines at a gate to identify the former Afghan commando, who was caught in the throngs of civilians outside the airport and who said he saw two civilians knocked to the ground and killed.
"Two people died next to me -- 1 foot away," he told ABC News from outside the airport that night, as he tried for hours to reach an entry control point manned by U.S. Marines a short distance away.
Capt. Zac Lois
An all-volunteer group of American veterans of the Afghan war launched a daring mission on Wednesday night dubbed the "Pineapple Express" to shepherd critically at-risk Afghan elite forces and their families to safety.
With Taliban fighters mixing into the crowd of thousands and firing their AK-47s above the masses, the former elite commando was finally pulled into the U.S. security perimeter, where he shouted the password "Pineapple!" to American troops at the checkpoint. The password has since changed, the sources said.
Two days later, the group of his American friends and comrades also helped get his family inside the airport to join him with the aid of the same U.S. embassy officer.
Mann said the group of friends decided to keep going by saving his family and hundreds more of his elite forces comrades on the run from the Taliban.
Former deputy assistant secretary of defense and ABC News analyst Mick Mulroy is part of both Task Force Pineapple and Task Force Dunkirk, who are assisting former Afghan comrades.
"They never wavered. I and many of my friends are here today because of their bravery in battle. We owe them all effort to get them out and honor our word," Mulroy said.
11. A Better Approach to Organizing Combatant Commands
"The only thing harder than getting a new idea into a military mind is getting an old one out." (I do not have attribution for this very true statement!)
Excerpts:
The process of overhauling the organization of combatant commands will never be easy. As one military graduate thesis notes, a rewrite of this magnitude would “generate major parochial battles among the service components” and drive substantial bureaucratic upheaval. Indeed, Michael O’Hanlon argued in 2016 that the Pentagon should “avoid change for change’s sake” with respect to combatant command reorganization. However, others have demonstrated that any change can in fact help disrupt entrenched power structures, perhaps an effort whose time has come in an era of “modern day proconsuls.” Where incrementalism has been insufficient to meet the needs of today’s and future conflicts, even the costs of temporary upheaval are almost certain to be outweighed by the benefits. If they aren’t, the structured analytic process described above is designed to reveal that.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reviews the responsibilities, boundaries, and forces of each combatant command at least every two years and recommends changes to the secretary of defense and president. The next Unified Command Plan revision may already be underway, so now is the time to think about doing things differently, to begin to devise some truly innovative — if uncomfortably non-conformist — approaches to organizing combatant commands.
The next step in advancing a combatant command configuration that works for the peacetime competition of today and modern conflict of tomorrow would be for national security leaders to turn the unthinkable into new, feasible organizing principles. They should then test them and have the courage and fortitude to design a fit-for-purpose Unified Command Plan.
A Better Approach to Organizing Combatant Commands - War on the Rocks
MARGAUX HOAR, JEREMY SEPINSKY, AND PETER M. SWARTZ
In 1805, James Gillray published a satirical cartoon that showed Napoleon of France and the British prime minister, William Pitt, carving up a globe fashioned out of plum pudding. They were claiming their respective areas of ownership by slicing through oceans and land masses. Humorous as this may be, the depiction is little different from the way the U.S. Department of Defense currently organizes its combatant commands — carving up the world and creating many seams in the process. Is that dangerous? Yes, it is.
The department divides the world comprehensively — the entire globe is covered — and in a way that does not align with other U.S. government agencies. Our findings from recent wargames and scenario exercises confirm what organizational theory and real-world experience indicate: In peace and in war, the Defense Department’s current way of doing business simply won’t create the outcomes it desires. Peacetime competition demands an interdepartmental approach. And future conflicts, especially against near-peer countries, are increasingly likely to be global in today’s interconnected world, not confined within the borders of existing U.S. combatant commands. To succeed in the global competition of today and in the potential conflicts of tomorrow, the United States should find a better way to organize its defense, one that is not beholden to implicit but unnecessary assumptions about what a combatant command should be.
A new way of organizing the combatant commands should have three missions in mind. First, the U.S. government should align peacetime responsibilities across agencies. This would enable the rapid coordination of all relevant instruments of national power to achieve a desired effect, instead of an approach that develops siloed plans within each department and fails to leverage their complementary capabilities. Second, the Defense Department should have the ability to transition smoothly across the spectrum that runs from competition to conflict. This would ensure that the appropriate level of force can be rapidly applied to potential adversaries when and where needed, instead of relying on the building of slow-to-form layers of command once unambiguous indications of impending war arise. Third, the United States should be able to prosecute a global conflict against an adversary.
Other ways to organize the combatant commands have been suggested before. It’s not for lack of creativity that such change has not been undertaken. All organizational reform is hard, and massive change is massively hard. It requires consistency and commitment, something difficult to achieve when administrations and military leadership cycle quite frequently. It requires overcoming risk aversion in a very risk-averse defense bureaucracy. But it also requires determination and alignment among leadership. That should come from a clear-eyed appreciation of the risks and rewards of an alternate approach, which an analytic framework that includes wargaming can illuminate.
The Weaknesses With How the Combatant Commands Are Currently Organized
The missions and areas of responsibility of the combatant commands are laid out in a Unified Command Plan, a document reviewed and revised by the secretary of defense (and signed by the president) every two years. There are currently 11 combatant commands responsible for U.S. military operations. Seven cover specific regions, including space. Four are responsible for unique capabilities: Strategic Command, Special Operations Command, Transportation Command, and Cyber Command.
All organizations have seams, but where you draw them matters. Since seams require costly handoffs of information, tasking, and products that result in lost context and time, we regularly counsel military organizations to consider where they place seams so that they do not create disadvantages where they can least afford them. In a hyperconnected, information-saturated world where many threats are global, seams that are geographically defined will certainly create high risks.
There are plenty of examples where the misalignment between the Pentagon and other government agencies creates challenges. For example, in the Department of Defense, responsibility for Pakistan resides with Central Command, while issues related to India are part of Indo-Pacific Command. But a single bureau at the State Department — the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs — has responsibility for matters related to both India and Pakistan.
Sometimes, by contrast, a single Defense Department combatant command deals with issues that are handled by separate State Department bureaus. For instance, in considering the implications of skirmishes between China and India, the commander of Indo-Pacific Command would have to coordinate not only with the U.S. chiefs of mission in those two countries but also with the heads of two State Department regional bureaus. Meanwhile, monitoring fighters and conflict traversing the Chad-Libya border requires Africa Command to coordinate with the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and its Bureau of African Affairs.
Pentagon joint doctrine acknowledges the challenges when it states that, “Organizational differences between [the State Department] and [the Department of Defense] can complicate efforts to coordinate interagency activities whose execution or effects extend beyond one country.”
The problem snowballs when a policy challenge affects a large geographic area. Consider a hypothetical but plausible drought and mass migration event in Africa during peacetime. Such a disaster could require humanitarian assistance led by the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development. They would be supported with planning and logistics by U.S. Africa Command, which would also address the security implications in a region prone to terrorist activity. Should the drought prompt migration to the shores of Italy, as seen in the past, U.S. European Command could be mobilized to rescue stranded migrants. To locate adrift ships, U.S. Space Command’s overhead imaging capabilities would be used. As Sen. Jack Reed recently argued in a congressional hearing, the strategic challenges in Africa “do not lend themselves to geographic or bureaucratic boundaries.”
Actions by American adversaries could exacerbate the coordination challenges. In that same congressional hearing, Gen. Stephen Townsend, who heads U.S. Africa Command, explained that in Africa, “Russia seeks to exploit instability and fragility for their own gain.” Should the Russian government decide to take advantage of a mass migration crisis, U.S. European Command could add competition responsibilities to its humanitarian tasks.
Between State, Africa Command, European Command, and Space Command, there are at least six organizational seams. In a scenario such as this, the U.S. Agency for International Development and local country teams would be likely to receive requests for similar information from, at a minimum, U.S. Africa Command and U.S. European Command. Such requests could quickly overwhelm relevant U.S. embassies, whose staffs are smaller than Defense Department combatant commands. By contrast, good organizational design tries to minimize many-to-one touchpoints in order to reduce duplicate requests and improve situational awareness.
As American competitors and adversaries expand their global reach, they cross more and more seams of responsibility between U.S. combatant commands. For example, Iranian ships that recently traveled from their home ports to the Baltic Sea transited waters monitored by three separate combatant commands — Central Command, Africa Command, and European Command. China’s activities in Africa and South America mean that Indo-Pacific Command, Southern Command, and Africa Command need to coordinate regularly to gain a full picture of one competitor’s plans.
The stakes would be even higher if commands were coordinating across seams in the lead-up to potential conflict. In that event, the adverse impacts of losing time and context could be especially pronounced. Joint Staff guidance on the spectrum of conflict emphasizes that there may be no clear indications that adversaries are moving from peacetime to wartime. Modern warfare requires agility. Yet because combatant commands are responsible for entire regions — which can include areas in conflict, areas traversed by supply lines, and other allied, adversary, or neutral countries — those commands have historically fought wars via joint task forces. Such task forces, created at the point of need and kludged from forces in theater, create yet more seams of command and require lead time to form that may not exist in a future fight.
In the event of conflict, the time and information lost in coordination across seams could mean the difference between winning and losing. Waiting for empirical proof — attained during actual warfare — that the current Unified Command Plan is not fit-for-purpose is an invitation for military disaster.
Previous Efforts at Reform
These incremental solutions all use the same, geographically based organizing principle for combatant commands. Marginal fixes will, at most, yield marginal gains, and they will still not configure combatant commands for the national security needs of today. Proposed solutions will be better if they are unconstrained by implicit assumptions about what a combatant command should be. While we will provide some examples shortly, any proposal for organizing combatant commands will be insufficient unless it is subjected to the analytic methodology we outline below. Alternative configurations should be devised through careful analysis and relative risks explored via wargaming.
Designing a Better Way to Organize Combatant Commands
To build a fit-for-purpose Unified Command Plan, leaders should explore combatant command organizing principles that support the needs of modern-day operations and threats. As practiced organizational designers, we suggest a three-step approach. First, define the “box” drawn by constraints and restraints: What should each organization do and not do? Second, identify possible organizing principles for combatant command configuration. Finally, employ theory and wargaming to explore the risks and benefits of alternative constructs, with special attention paid to the challenges created by the seams in the existing construct.
First, draw the box. Constraints are no-kidding requirements that underpin the existence of the organization, while restraints are generally limited to those actions or characteristics proscribed by law. To avoid over-defining the problem, organizational designers keep these as small as possible. Outlining the actual constraints and restraints for combatant command design represents a major opportunity for change because the types of reform effort described above are burdened by a number of implicit — and unnecessary — assumptions. These include assumptions that combatant commands are standing, semi-permanent organizations, that collectively they need to cover the entire globe, that they have responsibilities across the spectrum of conflict from peacetime through full-scale war, and that each combatant command should have a large staff and multiple service components. None of these are written into law, so we suggest deliberately excluding them from the constraints/restraints box at the start of the process.
In fact, considering the reverse of the implicit assumptions about combatant commands can help with the second step: defining alternative organizing principles. For instance, if combatant commands do not collectively have to span the entirety of the globe, could they be mission area-focused or adversary-focused, akin to uber-joint task forces? If they don’t have to include components from all of the services, could the United States have, for example, a maritime combatant command? Again, less is more. Because each alternative would need to be explored for risk and benefit, we suggest developing three or four alternative constructs as a good place to start.
A final step is to explore the risks and benefits of each alternative. The assessment should compare the new alternatives to each other, as well as to the current construct, and should address the costs of the transition. The evaluation would include analyzing risks and benefits directly resulting from reorganization, such as eliminating or creating gaps, seams, or overlaps in operational responsibility. There may be second-order effects as well: Combatant commands that are not permanent organizations may be less predisposed to overhead growth and might have a shorter tenure of existence, and combatant commands oriented around a mission might also be specified commands (requiring only a single service). Both of these options could generate a distinct benefit whereby commands reduce headquarters billets to shore up tactical and operational ones, and could even bring down ratios of general and flag officers to service endstrength. There could also be geopolitical implications if allies and partners perceive changes in U.S. commitment to particular regions due to a reorganization of combatant commands — however, the United States sends plenty of signals of commitment, or lack thereof, without organizational change.
Historical examples and theory are a first step in anticipating how alternative constructs might operate. But the best way to test out ideas and structures that do not yet exist is to wargame them. Wargames can be much more than map drills, despite common perception. Appropriately designed wargames can capture the operational, political (both internal and external), interagency, fiscal, and organizational risks associated with a new structure. At CNA, we pioneered the technique of wargaming for organizational analysis. These types of wargames can be used to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of different organizational designs and to anticipate gaps, seams, and overlaps, as well as to explore increases or reductions in requisite staff size. Wargames can be used, for example, to explore whether “uber-joint task forces” would result in a proliferation of myopic entities, whether a maritime combatant command would result in its having an overwhelming span of control, or whether aligning geographic combatant commands with State Department regional bureaus would really enable more effective collaboration.
The Path Ahead
The process of overhauling the organization of combatant commands will never be easy. As one military graduate thesis notes, a rewrite of this magnitude would “generate major parochial battles among the service components” and drive substantial bureaucratic upheaval. Indeed, Michael O’Hanlon argued in 2016 that the Pentagon should “avoid change for change’s sake” with respect to combatant command reorganization. However, others have demonstrated that any change can in fact help disrupt entrenched power structures, perhaps an effort whose time has come in an era of “modern day proconsuls.” Where incrementalism has been insufficient to meet the needs of today’s and future conflicts, even the costs of temporary upheaval are almost certain to be outweighed by the benefits. If they aren’t, the structured analytic process described above is designed to reveal that.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reviews the responsibilities, boundaries, and forces of each combatant command at least every two years and recommends changes to the secretary of defense and president. The next Unified Command Plan revision may already be underway, so now is the time to think about doing things differently, to begin to devise some truly innovative — if uncomfortably non-conformist — approaches to organizing combatant commands.
The next step in advancing a combatant command configuration that works for the peacetime competition of today and modern conflict of tomorrow would be for national security leaders to turn the unthinkable into new, feasible organizing principles. They should then test them and have the courage and fortitude to design a fit-for-purpose Unified Command Plan.
Margaux Hoar directs the Organizations, Roles, and Missions program at CNA. She has helped (re)design military organizations great and small, including leading analysis to establish the U.S. Space Force. She also directs CNA’s StaffLab™, which helps senior leaders test organizational ideas before implementing them in the real world.
Jeremy Sepinsky is CNA’s lead wargame designer. He has designed and facilitated dozens of wargames at Navy and Joint commands, as well as for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and the Joint Staff. His recent wargames covered broad topics such as logistics, personnel organization, command and control, cyberspace operations, national strategy, technology planning, special operations, and homeland defense.
Peter M. Swartz is a retired U.S. Navy captain and former director of CNA’s Strategy and Policy Analysis program. He has contributed to and analyzed U.S. national security strategy and unified command policies for more than three decades. In 2020 he was the recipient of the Naval Historical Foundation’s Commodore Dudley Knox medal for lifetime achievement in naval history and had a Festschrift published in his honor by a dozen of his colleagues in the United States and abroad on conceptualizing maritime and naval strategy.
The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of CNA, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
12. Amid Afghan Chaos, a C.I.A. Mission That Will Persist for Years
A tough mission obviously made harder by recent events.
Amid Afghan Chaos, a C.I.A. Mission That Will Persist for Years
The spy agency had plans to de-emphasize counterterrorism operations to focus on rising global powers. History got in the way.
The spy agency had plans to de-emphasize counterterrorism operations to focus on rising global powers. History got in the way.
The rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban derailed the C.I.A.’s plans to refocus on gathering intelligence about global rivals, rather than on counterterrorism.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Aug. 27, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — As the Afghanistan war wound down, the C.IA. had expected to gradually shift its primary focus away from counterterrorism — a mission that transformed the agency over two decades into a paramilitary organization focused on manhunts and killing — toward traditional spycraft against powers like China and Russia.
But a pair of deadly explosions on Thursday were the latest in a series of rapidly unfolding events since the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban takeover of the country that have upended that plan. Like a black hole with its own gravitational pull, Afghanistan could draw the C.I.A. back into a complex counterterrorism mission for years to come.
American officials are reworking plans to counter threats that could emerge from Afghanistan’s chaos, according to current and former officials: negotiating for new bases in Central Asian countries; determining how clandestine officers can run sources in the country without the military and diplomatic outposts that provided cover to spies for two decades; and figuring out from where the C.I.A. could launch drone strikes and other Afghanistan operations.
Thursday’s attacks at the Kabul airport, which killed more than a dozen U.S. service members and scores of Afghan civilians, were evidence that terrorist groups are already working to sow further chaos in the country and could hope to use it as a base for attacks outside Afghanistan.
Hours later, President Biden pledged to hunt down those responsible for the bombings. “We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and at the moment of our choosing,” he said.
The United States and its allies want to keep Afghanistan from devolving into a terrorist haven akin to Syria a decade ago and Afghanistan before Sept. 11, when the chaos of war lured a hodgepodge of terrorists and new extremist groups were born. The most urgent threat in Afghanistan is the local Islamic State group, American officials said. Leaders of Al Qaeda may also try to return to the country. And while the Taliban may not want either group in Afghanistan, they may be incapable of keeping them out, current and former American officials said.
“It’s going to get a lot harder,” said Don Hepburn, a former senior C.I.A. officer who served in Afghanistan. “The agency is being drawn in many, many directions.”
Mr. Biden’s determination to end the military’s involvement in Afghanistan means that, starting next month, any American presence in the country would most likely be part of a clandestine operation that is not publicly acknowledged.
The C.I.A.’s new mission will be narrower, a senior intelligence official said. It no will longer have to help protect thousands of troops and diplomats and will focus instead on hunting terrorist groups that can attack beyond Afghanistan’s borders. But the rapid American exit devastated the agency’s networks, and spies will most likely have to rebuild them and manage sources from abroad, according to current and former officials.
The United States will also have to deal with troublesome partners like Pakistan, whose unmatched ability to play both sides of a fight frustrated generations of American leaders.
William J. Burns, the agency’s director, has said that it is ready to collect intelligence and conduct operations from afar, or “over the horizon,” but he told lawmakers in the spring that operatives’ ability to gather intelligence and act on threats will erode. “That’s simply a fact,” said Mr. Burns, who traveled to Kabul this week for secret talks with the Taliban.
Challenges for the C.I.A. lie ahead in Afghanistan, the senior intelligence official acknowledged, while adding that the agency was not starting from scratch. It had long predicted the collapse of the Afghan government and a Taliban victory, and since at least July had warned that they could come sooner than expected.
In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, C.I.A. officers were the first to meet with Afghan militia fighters. The agency went on to notch successes in Afghanistan, ruthlessly hunting and killing Qaeda operatives, its primary mission in the country after Sept. 11.
It built a vast network of informants who met their agency handlers in Afghanistan, then used the information to conduct drone strikes against suspected terrorists. The agency prevented Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base to mount a large-scale attack against the United States as it had on Sept. 11.
But that chapter came with a cost in both life and reputation. At least 19 personnel have been killed in Afghanistan — a death toll eclipsed only by the agency’s losses during the Vietnam War. Several agency paramilitary operatives would later die fighting the Islamic State, a sign of how far afield the original mission had strayed. The last C.I.A. operative to die in Afghanistan was a former elite reconnaissance Marine, killed in a firefight in May 2019, a grim bookend to the conflict.
And one of the agency’s clandestine officers was nearly prosecuted for the 2002 torture death of a detainee at a C.I.A. black site known as the Salt Pit. Raids by C.I.A.-trained Afghan units killed a large number of Afghan civilians, increasing Taliban support in parts of the country.
The C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, right, has said that the agency is ready to conduct operations and collect intelligence about Afghanistan from afar.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
As the conflict dragged on in Afghanistan, veteran agency officers began to see that the war was lost. One of them was Greg Vogle, a former top agency officer who escorted Hamid Karzai into the country in 2001 and twice ran the C.I.A.’s sprawling station in Kabul in subsequent years. Mr. Vogle has told colleagues that the first time he went into Afghanistan, the United States was winning the war. By the second time, it was a tie. By the third time, he said, the United States was losing.
In recent days during the frantic withdrawal, the C.I.A. has been involved in secret rescue missions, according to a senior American official, who declined to detail the efforts.
The agency expects its mission ahead in Afghanistan will be “more focused” on tracking the development of terrorist groups determined to attack the United States, the senior U.S. intelligence official said.
The American covert operation in Afghanistan could be carried out by either C.I.A. operatives or Special Operations military troops acting under “Title 50” authority — similar to when Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on a mission run by the spy agency. Such episodes of putting the military under C.I.A. authority became more common in the post-9/11 era as the lines blurred between soldiers and spies.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
Card 1 of 5
Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.
What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.
But the narrower mission poses its own tests, including recovering from the damage to the C.I.A.’s source networks caused by the abrupt exit from Afghanistan.
Rebuilding America’s information collection will depend in part on electronic eavesdropping and in part on building new networks of human sources, this time from afar, according to former government officials. American officials predicted that Afghan opponents of the Taliban will most likely emerge who will want to help and provide information to the United States.
And without a large American military presence in Afghanistan, any drone strike against an Islamic State or Qaeda target there will have to depart, for now, from the Persian Gulf. Such long flights reduce the amount of time the planes have to hunt targets, increasing the risk of errors and missed targets. Or they could require a large, and expensive, fleet of drones to be used.
The State Department has yet to secure access to bases in Central Asian states that were once part of the Soviet Union, and it is unclear whether that will happen.
The C.I.A. predicted the collapse of the Afghan government and a Taliban victory, and since at least July had warned that they could come sooner than expected.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Russia has made clear it opposes any American presence in Central Asia. While the former Soviet states sometimes try to balance Moscow’s influence with agreements with the Americans, Russia exerts far more control than it did 20 years ago, when the United States got access to bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan during the early parts of the war in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan garnered little attention during Mr. Burns’s confirmation hearings in February. The bulk of questions from both Democrats and Republicans focused on the Biden administration’s plans to shift intelligence resources to the challenge of China, which Mr. Burns identified as a top priority.
Not long afterward, the White House issued an interim national security strategy that put new emphasis on the need to focus on “great power” competition with Russia and China. Senior American officials said that priority has not changed, and while Afghanistan has a new urgency, American intelligence agencies can handle multiple priorities at once.
But history shows that such multitasking can be difficult, and that there are opportunity costs. When the military and the C.I.A. focused on the war in Iraq, Afghanistan suffered from inattention. A new, more adversarial government in China emerged as the United States obsessed over the return of Russian aggression in Europe and the rise of the Islamic State.
“The front burner is crowded,” said John E. McLaughlin, a former acting director of the C.I.A. “The future holds a mix of challenges. Inevitably, we’re in a world now where China, Russia, countries have that magnitude and influence are going to be in the forefront, but you know lurking in the background, there’s the possibility of terrorists regrouping.”
The potential for Afghanistan to evolve into a hub for terrorist networks also carries its own political risks for the president.
Any terrorist attack originating from Afghanistan would expose Mr. Biden to fierce criticism from his political opponents that it was a result of his decision to pull American troops from the country — yet another factor that is likely to bring intense White House pressure on spy agencies to keep a laser focus on Afghanistan.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
13. Former Green Beret asks SF vets to tell their stories for future generations
Former Green Beret asks SF vets to tell their stories for future generations
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Lyle Hendrick has a lot of stories to tell. The former Green Beret officer, who was stationed in Germany during the 1980s, fills rooms with his presence — thanks to his 6-foot-5-inch frame, booming voice and gregarious personality.
Hendrick’s story is a winding one, and he’s told it many times. It starts with his 1974 enlistment and includes a post-military career as a private investigator, as well as a 16-month stint as a private military contractor in Iraq during the early years of the war there that later featured in The New York Times Magazine.
But Hendrick is more interested in helping other Special Forces veterans to tell their stories now, despite their reputation as so-called “quiet professionals.” And he’s leading a renewed effort to sit down and record them — dubbed the Special Forces Oral History Project.
Army Times sat down Wednesday morning and spoke with Hendrick and Andrea L’Hommedieu, who is the director of the oral history department at Hendrick’s alma mater, the University of South Carolina.
“People need to understand what makes the heart of a Green Beret,” Hendrick said. “The Green Beret [veterans] out there need to know that their story does not end with active duty, and that it is really important that they share [their stories] because it’s a way they can give back as leaders to the younger men who aspire to come up behind them.”
The backstory
Oral history is the practice of creating permanent recordings of people telling their life stories to trained interviewers, frequently on tape or camera.
Former Green Beret Lyle Hendrick interviews another Special Forces veteran in 2019 as part of the pilot for his Special Forces Oral History Project. The project is relaunching in fall 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted expansion plans. (Courtesy of Lyle Hendrick)
When it comes to the stories of veterans, this technique of saving history became widely utilized in the 1990s in order to capture the stories of World War II veterans before they died. This ultimately led Congress to authorize and fund the still-ongoing Veterans History Project in 2000, a Library of Congress initiative that helps to preserve stories collected by volunteers around the country.
And the stories go beyond one-off tales of combat and seek “deep context,” L’Hommedieu said.
“We’re not just flying in and out to say ‘Hey, we want to grab some stories about your military experience,’” she explained. “We want to know about you. We want to know who you are. We want to know who your family was. That’s important — to you and to us...we’re trying to let [participants] tell their story in full.”
L’Hommedieu, who has been a professional librarian for three decades, first started collecting veterans’ oral histories as part of an assignment for her students a few years ago. The resulting South Carolina Veterans Oral History Project won national awards — and its public exhibit caught the eye of Hendrick.
“As I’m walking around the exhibit, I’m thinking, ‘So where are the Green Beret stories?’” Hendrick said. “So that’s when I sought out [L’Hommedieu].”
After the two connected, they quickly worked out a general framework for the project.
Hendrick, who has a deep network in the SF community, would get interviewer training and take point on meeting veterans to record their stories.
L’Hommedieu and the university would offer institutional support, including permanent hosting and archiving of the interviews.
Lyle Hendrick, Andrea L'Hommedieu, and Beth Well compose the Special Forces Oral History Project team, pictured in 2019. Wall oversees fundraising as part of her position as a development director for the University of South Carolina Libraries. (Univ. of South Carolina/Facebook)
“By linking [the project] to my alma mater...there’s a connection of passion, structure, credibility and trustworthiness,” that Hendrick said will help foster trust in his interviewees.
Everything was set to go, and the pair announced a pilot version of the project at the 2019 Special Forces Association meeting. Hendrick even conducted “about 10 or 11″ interviews, he said.
But before the effort could expand, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and put the project on hold, but didn’t stop it.
“You don’t quit, ever,” Hendrick said. “I’m just a guy that has a passion for my SF brothers.”
Relaunching the SFOHP
Thanks to the continued dedication of Hendrick and L’Hommedieu, the project will relaunch later this year at the October international conference of the Special Forces Association in Las Vegas, Nevada.
On the to-do list between now and then — wooing potential donors, forming a non-profit entity to process donations and finding more Special Forces veterans for interviews.
L’Hommedieu explained that funding for long-term digital storage is “critical,” and she wants to be able to hire a staffer dedicated to processing and preparing the interviews for dissemination online.
A larger funding base would allow Hendrick to tour the country for additional interviews beyond the national Special Forces Association event, he said.
In addition to expanding the historical record, Hendrick thinks that Green Beret vets stand to benefit from telling their stories.
Storytelling — to include sitting down for an oral history interview — can fit into a broader program of “post-traumatic growth,” he argued.
“A major part of that is being able to share and tell their stories,” Hendrick said. “I’m a testament to that.”
“We’re the quiet professionals, but not mute.”
If you are a Special Forces veteran interested in telling your story to the Special Forces Oral History Project this fall, or if you wish to otherwise support the Special Forces Oral History Project, Hendrick asks that you email him at lhendrick56@outlook.com.
Davis Winkie is a staff reporter covering the Army. He originally joined Military Times as a reporting intern in 2020. Before journalism, Davis worked as a military historian. He is also a human resources officer in the Army National Guard.
14. A Stranded Interpreter, and the Soldiers Who Would Not Let Go
A Stranded Interpreter, and the Soldiers Who Would Not Let Go
Many Afghans who helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan are now in danger. One spoke to us about his battle to get his family out alive as he hid in Kabul.
Families arriving at Kabul’s airport at dawn on Tuesday, hoping to make it onto a flight out of the country.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
By
Aug. 26, 2021, 1:12 p.m. ET
The Americans called him “Mikey,” and as an interpreter for the Special Forces he did not just bridge language gaps. He did everything from easing negotiations with local Afghans loyal to the Taliban to warning a convoy away from an ambush.
“Mikey wasn’t just a regular interpreter,” recalls Sgt. First Class Joseph Torres, a Texan who served in the Special Forces. “He was our lifeline. He went everywhere we went on the most remote and dangerous missions. It was because of him that we returned home alive after deployments.”
But the day after Kabul fell to the Taliban, the 34-year-old Afghan was on his own.
Determined to get out of Afghanistan, he was making a desperate run to the airport with his wife and two young sons when they were caught in gunfire amid the crush of people who had gathered there to escape. His wife and one son, 6, were both shot in the foot.
As he carried the bloodied and screaming child in search of a hospital, Mikey says, he flashed back to his time on the battlefield with American forces.
“I kept thinking, after everything I did for the Americans,” he said. “After all my hard work and risking my life, now this is what happens to my family? They are leaving us to die here.”
Mikey — who is being identified by his American nickname only for safety reasons — is one of tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the United States and have applications pending for expedited visas allowing them to resettle in America. President Biden has pledged that Afghan allies will be welcomed to “their new homes” and called the situation on the ground “heartbreaking.”
But the evacuation of U.S. citizens and green-card holders remains the immediate priority of the military operation underway at the Kabul airport. That means that for many Afghans who worked with the United States, there is little to do but wait — and try to keep out of the sights of the Taliban.
Mikey worked as an interpreter for the Special Forces from 2009 to 2012 in Kandahar, and from 2015 to 2017 in Kabul. He was once so badly wounded in an explosion that he had to be airlifted to a field hospital.
The night his wife and son were shot, Mikey got them into a hospital and then went into hiding. Preferring rooms without windows, he switched locations four times in one week.
He was waiting for the U.S. government to give him an evacuation plan. He was waiting for the approval of his visa application.
And he was waiting for the Taliban to find him.
In interviews from his bunkers in Kabul as events unfolded over the past week, Mikey talked about the ordeal of trying to keep himself alive and his family safe in the chaos left behind by the U.S. exit from Afghanistan. With no word from the U.S. government about when or how he might get out, he realized that the bonds he had forged with U.S. soldiers might offer his only hope for safe passage.
Messages exchanged between Mikey and Joseph Torres this week.Credit...Joseph Torres
Mikey’s son, who was shot in the foot, recovering at a safe house in Kabul earlier this week.Credit...Mikey
That is where Sergeant Torres, who now lives in Pecos, Texas, came in.
He had worked with Mikey on multiple deployments, and now he had a new battle: leading a global operation to get him out.
To coordinate those efforts, Sergeant Torres and a group of about 20 former and current members of the military formed a WhatsApp chat group and an email thread. They reached out to military and State Department contacts, along with members of Congress, to try to get Mikey and his family onto a military evacuation plane.
They say they understand why U.S. citizens are getting priority when it comes to evacuations. The outrage is over the lack of a clear plan for all those Afghans who worked side by side with the Americans, who may have targets on their backs now that the Taliban is in control.
“It’s infuriating,” Sergeant Torres said. “My heart breaks for everyone who doesn’t have the support Mikey has.”
Joseph Torres, a former Special Forces soldier, in Pecos, Texas.Credit...Sarah M. Vasquez for The New York Times
It was not the case that Mikey tried to get out of Afghanistan only when the danger became clear.
He started his special visa application in 2012, when he was in Kandahar with the military. He had his interview, one of the final steps in the process, in November 2018 when he worked at Camp Duskin in Kabul. He is still waiting for medical tests and approval. Emails he has sent to follow up on his application have gone unanswered.
Across the United States, members of the armed forces are leading their own campaigns to pressure the Biden administration to scale up the evacuation of Afghans who worked as their interpreters. They have taken to social media and created fund-raising campaigns such as “Help Our Interpreters.”
Military interpreters are among the most vulnerable of Afghan allies. The nature of their work required that they accompany military personnel in the battlefield and be present during interactions with locals. If residents of the areas where they worked were hostile to Americans, the interpreters could be easily identified for the Taliban.
Mikey was a teenager in Kabul when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001. In high school he worked hard to learn English, and his language teacher suggested he work as an interpreter for the Americans after graduation.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
Card 1 of 5
Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.
What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.
He was dispatched to Kandahar airfield, one of the largest U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, and from there to multiple remote outposts, quickly working his way up to become a lead interpreter.
“Mikey was always fun to be around, very open-minded with a very big heart,” said Sgt. First Class Raymond Steele, an active member of Special Forces who has stayed in regular contact with him over the years.
Mikey listened to communications to intercept threats, talking to local tribal leaders in person and on his phone. On one patrol, he got word of an ambush and of insurgents burying explosive devices in their path.
“I felt proud of my job because it felt like I was helping my country,” Mikey said.
The crowd trying to get into the airport on the day after the Taliban took control of Kabul this month.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Between stints in Kandahar and Kabul, Mikey got married. He bought a car and worked as a taxi driver in Kabul. He and his wife had children.
But the U.S. era in Afghanistan was ending — and the Taliban’s resuming. That left countless Afghans feeling helpless and adrift, as Mikey was when we spoke by phone last Saturday night.
“We are in the dark,” he told me. “My American friends say just wait, wait to see what happens. Be ready to leave when we tell you.”
Then on Monday around 4 p.m. Mikey received an astonishing text from Sergeant Torres: We are going to get you out, it said. Get ready now. Wait for instructions.
The mission to rescue Mikey, with the help of current and former military contacts on the ground, was in motion — and things were moving quickly. In a space of two hours, Mikey and his family were hidden in a car, their documents stashed, heading for a gate at the Kabul airport where members of the military were expecting him.
They welcomed him, taking his family to a clinic so his wife and son’s bullet wounds could be treated. The children got candy.
When Sergeant Torres got the call that Mickey was finally in the clear, he broke into sobs. He never cries, he says. Sergeant Steele called Mikey and shouted, “I love you, man.”
On Tuesday, Mikey and his family flew out of Afghanistan aboard a U.S. military plane, his initial destination withheld for security reasons.
It was his son’s sixth birthday.
“I am extremely relieved and happy,” Mikey said during a call from the tarmac in Kabul as he waited to board the plane. “My infinite gratitude for the help and kindness of my American brothers. You gave us a second chance at life.”
15. Glitch in FBI's 'Palantir' allowed unauthorized access to private data
Palantir is a very powerful company and capability.
Glitch in FBI's 'Palantir' allowed unauthorized access to private data
Glitch in FBI's controversial 'Palantir' software allowed unauthorized agency employees to access private data for more than a year
- Prosecutors say they obtained a search warrant to legally access the private Twitter and Facebook data of Virgil Griffith
- Griffith was charged in 2019 after allegedly teaching North Koreans how to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions
- Prosecutors said they uploaded Griffith's social media data to Palantir
- FBI agents investigating other cases had access to the data for more than a year
PUBLISHED: 15:24 EDT, 26 August 2021 | UPDATED: 16:11 EDT, 26 August 2021
Daily Mail · by Michelle Thompson For Dailymail.Com · August 26, 2021
A software glitch in a controversial data-mining program used by the FBI allowed four employees to access classified data without permission for more than a year, the federal government has admitted.
The breach was quietly disclosed in an August 24 court filing by attorneys prosecuting programmer Virgil Griffith, who was charged in 2019 with conspiring to violate the international emergency economic powers act.
Prosecutors said data from Griffith’s Facebook and Twitter accounts that it legally obtained in 2019 was later uploaded by the FBI to Palantir, a data-mining program that has been accused of using unethical technology to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
At least four FBI employees – who were not part of the New York City prosecution team – accessed the information between May 2020 and August 2021, the court filing said.
The unauthorized employees were ‘conducting investigations into other matters,’ when they accessed Griffith’s social media files, according to the document.
Prosecutors trying programmer Virgil Griffith with conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers act say they obtained a search warrant to legally access Griffith's private social media data
Griffith was charged in November 2019 with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by traveling to North Korea to offer advice on how to use cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to evade sanctions
Prosecutors said they became aware of the breach August 12 when an FBI agent received an email from a colleague, indicating an FBI analyst had accessed the private data while conducting an unrelated investigation.
‘Based on communications with FBI personnel and Palantir employees, the government understands that this outside access to the search warrant returns was made possible because, when data is loaded onto the [Palantir] platform, the default setting is to permit access to the data to other FBI personnel otherwise authorized to access the platform,’ the court filing said.
‘When the search warrant returns here were loaded onto the platform, those default settings were not changed to restrict access to the search warrant returns to the FBI personnel actually engaged in reviewing the search warrant returns pursuant to the warrants.’
The revelation didn’t sit well for those in the business of defending consumer rights.
‘Palantir blamed the glitch on FBI misusing the program,’ Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, told Dailymail.com. ‘But the company really should put better controls in place so that it is not a default that multiple people in an organization as big as the FBI could access data that was meant to be restricted to other employees.’
Prosecutors say FBI agents were able to access the data because it wasn't restricted to those working on Griffith's case
Court cautioned the platform to take measures that would prevent such privacy violations from happening again.
‘Palantir stores some very sensitive data and it needs to take precautions that users don’t make errors that allow widespread access to data that is meant to be classified,’ Court added. ‘Security by design is critical to securing classified information. Palantir needs to adjust its programming so that even user error doesn’t allow sensitive information outside of the circles it is meant for.’
Griffith’s social media data has since been deleted from the platform, prosecutors said.
Palantir, cofounded by billionaire Peter Theil, has been criticized for aiding ICE agents
According to the court filing, a now-retired FBI agent was the first to conduct an unauthorized search on the platform on May 4, 2020. The data was accessed again between August 6 and August 19 by an FBI analyst who viewed at least some of Griffith’s data, the court filing said.
The data later viewed by at least two other FBI employees, the prosecution said.
Griffith was charged in November 2019 with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by traveling to North Korea to offer advice on how to use cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to evade sanctions, the Department of Justice said.
Prosecutors say Griffith's social media data has since been deleted from the platform
‘As alleged, Virgil Griffith provided highly technical information to North Korea, knowing that this information could be used to help North Korea launder money and evade sanctions,’ Geoffrey Berman, then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement following the arrest. ‘In allegedly doing so, Griffith jeopardized the sanctions that both Congress and the president have enacted to place maximum pressure on North Korea’s dangerous regime.’
While speaking at the Pyongyang conference in April 2019, he talked about how North Korea could use cryptocurrency to 'achieve independence from the global banking system,' according to a criminal complaint.
The conference was attended by 100 people, prosecutors said, including several who appeared to work for the North Korean government.
The criminal complaint Griffith planned to facilitate the exchange of cryptocurrency between North and South Korea and encouraged other US citizens to attend the same conference next year.
Palantir, which was cofounded by billionaire Peter Theil, has been criticized for aiding ICE agents preparing to conduct raids of undocumented immigrants.
Griffith’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Daily Mail · by Michelle Thompson For Dailymail.Com · August 26, 2021
16. Budding Resistance to the Taliban Faces Long Odds
There is unlikely to be a united resistance. We need a thorough assessment of the resistance potential.
Excerpts:
Opponents of the Taliban were not all on the same page yet, too.
“We’re changing to a guerrilla war,” said Colonel Saifi of the former Afghan army who is now with Mr. Massoud. “We don’t need thousands and thousands of troops to fight this war. In this war we need 20 guys, they make ambushes. We won’t fight like a government army, we’ll fight like the mujahedeen fought the Russians.”
Matin Bek, an ex-member of the government’s negotiating team with the Taliban, suggested that some opponents were waiting to seeing how the Taliban would govern, but that the resistance could inspire a rallying of the opposition. “If they fight the Taliban, it could become a hope for the entire nation,’’ he said.
But for now, “We don’t know the fate of this resistance,” he added. “Will they resist, or will they negotiate? I don’t know who is backing them.”
The most prominent ex-official to take refuge in the Panjshir Valley is Mr. Saleh, a former head of the National Directorate of Security and himself a former associate of the elder Massoud. Last week he proclaimed himself Afghanistan’s legitimate president, dismissing the Taliban’s seizure of power.
“The Taliban haven’t shown any readiness to engage in meaningful negotiations,” Mr. Saleh wrote in a text message. “They want allegiance, surrender or subordination. Our offer is very simple. People have to have a say in any decision determining the character of the state.”
Budding Resistance to the Taliban Faces Long Odds
For now, the fighters have merely two assets: a narrow valley with a history of repelling invaders and the legacy of a storied mujahedeen commander.
A portrait of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, by the side of the road last year in Panjshir, Afghanistan.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Aug. 25, 2021
The first signs of armed resistance to the Taliban have come from a narrow valley with a history of repelling invaders.
Just days after the Taliban swept into the capital and toppled the government in a lightning offensive, a group of former mujahedeen fighters and Afghan commandos said they had regrouped and begun a war of resistance in the last area in Afghanistan not under Taliban control.
The man leading them is Ahmad Massoud, the 32-year-old son of the storied mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, stepping into his father’s footsteps 20 years after his death to pick up his dogged fight against the Taliban.
But their struggle faces long odds. Strategic as their redoubt is, the resistance fighters are cut off and surrounded by the Taliban, have supplies that will soon start dwindling, and have no visible outside support.
For now the resistance has merely two assets: the Panjshir Valley, 70 miles north of Kabul, which has a history of repelling invaders, and the legendary Massoud name.
Spokesmen for Ahmad Massoud insist he has already attracted thousands of soldiers to the valley, including remnants of the Afghan Army’s special forces and some of his father’s experienced guerrilla commanders, as well as activists and others who reject the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate.
The spokesmen, some of whom were with him in the Panjshir Valley and some who were outside the country drumming up support, said that Mr. Massoud has stocks of weapons and matériel, including American helicopters, but needs more.
‘‘We’re waiting for some opportunity, some support,” said Hamid Saifi, a former colonel in the Afghan National Army, and now a commander in Mr. Massoud’s resistance, who was reached in the Panjshir Valley by telephone on Sunday. “Maybe some countries will be ready for this great work. So far, all countries we talked to are quiet. America, Europe, China, Russia, all of them are quiet.’’
Ahmad Massoud, the son of the storied mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, in Bazarak in 2019.Credit...Mohammad Ismail/Reuters
In an opinion article in The Washington Post last week, Mr. Massoud appealed for the United States, Britain and France to support his uprising by sending arms, putting President Biden in a very difficult position.
Backing the Taliban’s enemies could infuriate them, worsen what is already a chaotic American exit from Afghanistan and incite the Taliban to break the main promise they made if American forces withdrew — to sever ties with terrorists.
But refusing to help Mr. Massoud carries its own risks, including global criticism that Mr. Biden turned his back on Afghan resistance fighters struggling to retake their country from an extremist group with a long history of repression and brutality.
The elder Massoud built his formidable reputation by holding out against repeated Soviet offensives in the 1980s, using his wits and the high mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush to survive. He inflicted devastating ambushes on Russian supply convoys, earning a grudging respect from several Soviet generals among his opponents.
He spearheaded the mujahedeen assault on Kabul that toppled the Communist government in 1992, and was appointed minister of defense. Yet he never enjoyed full-throated support from Washington or from neighboring Pakistan, bloodied his hands in the devastating civil conflict in Kabul, and withdrew to his stronghold in the Panjshir Valley when the Taliban rose to power and seized the capital in 1996.
He held out against the Taliban regime for five years, rallying a united opposition against a movement that he saw as totalitarian and alien to Afghan traditions in its dogmatic fundamentalism, even as he steadily lost territory.
He warned the West about the threat of terrorism from Al Qaeda. Under his leadership, the Panjshir Valley became a kind of forward listening post for Western intelligence, a free enclave of the minority Tajik ethnicity in a country dominated by the Pashtun regime of the Taliban, and a constant thorn in its side.
Ahmad Shah Massoud and his mujahedeen on the frontlines north of Kabul in 1996.
His son is clearly hoping to play the same role as his father, who was assassinated by Al Qaeda two days before Sept. 11, 2001 as a kind of gift to the Taliban regime that hosted it.
But there are critical differences between then and now. The father had supply lines that ran across the border to Tajikistan, allowing the resistance to replenish itself over a long period.
Since then, the Taliban have learned their lessons well from past military conflicts, and they made sure to cut off Afghanistan’s borders and isolate the Panjshir Valley before moving on Kabul.
The younger Mr. Massoud also has little military experience, though he was educated at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in Britain and King’s College, London, and earned a degree in war studies before returning to Afghanistan in 2016. This weekend, he sounded a defiant note.
“We confronted the Soviet Union, and we will be able to confront the Taliban,” Mr. Massoud told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya television channel Sunday. His father held off nine Soviet offensives, and he insists he is up to the legacy.
He left in haste for the Panjshir Valley on Aug. 15 in a military helicopter after the Taliban broke through government defenses on the western side of Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
Vice President Amrullah Saleh left for the valley at the same time, vowing to fight rather than sit under the same roof as the Taliban. He was attacked twice on the road but made it through, said Mohammad Zahir Aghbar, who has been serving as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan, in an interview last week.
It is possible that Mr. Massoud and his followers have taken a tough stance to gain leverage in the bargaining over any new government.
Members of the Taliban in Kabul last week.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
“We prefer peace,” said Fahim Dashty, Mr. Massoud’s chief of staff, in a phone message. “We are willing to enter negotiations to reach peace, but not only peace. We want an inclusive government in Afghanistan, which could represent all different ethnic groups of Afghanistan, which will ensure the rights of people of Afghanistan, human rights, women’s rights, and which will ensure social justice in Afghanistan.”
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.
What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.
But conflict was already underway. Mr. Massoud’s supporters said their forces had attacked a Taliban convoy in Andarab, on the north side of the Salang tunnel, inflicting heavy casualties, downing a bridge and cutting a critical highway that links the capital to the north.
The Taliban announced they were sending forces to subdue the province in a statement on Twitter: “Hundreds of the Islamic Emirate’s mujahedeen are heading to the Panjshir to bring it under control, after the local authorities refused to hand it over peacefully.”
The resistance forces were on high alert Monday as they prepared for Taliban retaliation, Mr. Dashty said.
An Agence France-Presse correspondent on Tuesday reported seeing “machine gun nests, mortars and surveillance posts fortified with sandbags” set up by the National Resistance Front to defend its positions in the Panjshir Valley.
Former senior officials in the recently deposed Afghan government were hesitant about the movement’s chances. “I don’t think that resistance will last long without international assistance,” said a former top official. “I think the Taliban will crush it in the coming months,” he said, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“He is in a more difficult situation than his father,” said Rahmatullah Nabil, a former head of the National Directorate of Security and vehement opponent of the Taliban, referring to the younger Mr. Massoud. Not only did the son have less experience than his father had when he resisted the Taliban, but he lacked outside support, he said. The elder Massoud had received limited support from regional neighbors including Russia, India, Iran and Tajikistan.
“The countries who supported his father, they are not interested,” Mr. Nabil said. Nevertheless, he said, Mr. Massoud could probably pull through.
The Panjshir Valley last year.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Opponents of the Taliban were not all on the same page yet, too.
“We’re changing to a guerrilla war,” said Colonel Saifi of the former Afghan army who is now with Mr. Massoud. “We don’t need thousands and thousands of troops to fight this war. In this war we need 20 guys, they make ambushes. We won’t fight like a government army, we’ll fight like the mujahedeen fought the Russians.”
Matin Bek, an ex-member of the government’s negotiating team with the Taliban, suggested that some opponents were waiting to seeing how the Taliban would govern, but that the resistance could inspire a rallying of the opposition. “If they fight the Taliban, it could become a hope for the entire nation,’’ he said.
But for now, “We don’t know the fate of this resistance,” he added. “Will they resist, or will they negotiate? I don’t know who is backing them.”
The most prominent ex-official to take refuge in the Panjshir Valley is Mr. Saleh, a former head of the National Directorate of Security and himself a former associate of the elder Massoud. Last week he proclaimed himself Afghanistan’s legitimate president, dismissing the Taliban’s seizure of power.
“The Taliban haven’t shown any readiness to engage in meaningful negotiations,” Mr. Saleh wrote in a text message. “They want allegiance, surrender or subordination. Our offer is very simple. People have to have a say in any decision determining the character of the state.”
Carlotta Gall reported from Istanbul, and Adam Nossiter from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Jim Huylebroek in Kabul, Afghanistan and Andrew Kramer in Moscow.
17. Behind Enemy Lines: Will America Face an Afghan Hostage Crisis?
I would assess this is likely.
Behind Enemy Lines: Will America Face an Afghan Hostage Crisis?
Whatever the final disposition of coalition forces in Afghanistan, personnel trapped in Taliban-controlled territory must be secured and evacuated.
The current situation in Afghanistan grows more dire by the day for the fate of the thousands of American, coalition, and Afghan civilians trapped by the Taliban. The last time the United States was faced with comparable thousands of its civilians trapped behind enemy lines was 1942 when the Japanese invaded and overran the Philippines. Back then, the outcome for U.S. civilians and prisoners of war was brutal beyond belief. Fortunately, the situation in Afghanistan should not require three years and a sixteen-division invasion force to rectify. What it will require is a willingness to embrace harsh expediency, to a degree not evidenced by the U.S. military in decades.
Conditions in Afghanistan are fluid. For the moment the Taliban seem to be limiting themselves to harassing and curtailing the movement of foreign nationals to Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIAP), rather than abducting them or worse. There is no guarantee that restraint will continue. The United States should prepare for this status quo to deteriorate rapidly once the euphoria of the Taliban’s victory dissipates and they begin to exercise a greater degree of control over their various forces.
To this end, there are multiple avenues of approach toward achieving what must be the overarching objective of NATO forces: securing and evacuating all coalition personnel, civilian and military. The methods will depend largely on how the Taliban behaves, but they can be broadly anticipated. Local Afghans are a secondary objective. Despite current emotional appeals, even vetted Afghans actively operating with coalition forces have a long history of betrayal. While those who are loyal and deserving of U.S. assistance should not be abandoned, blanket assumptions of loyalty will only lead to the direct importation of enemy combatants into the United States and coalition nations. Rigorous vetting will be complicated, time-consuming, and imperfect. It is also vital to prevent one last additional disaster that will have internal ramifications for years to come.
Broadly speaking there are three possibilities moving forward, with some overlap between them. Each of these will be impeded by the almost unbelievable fact that neither the U.S. State Department nor the Defense Department can accurately identify how many coalition nationals need to be evacuated out of Afghanistan, or where they are in the country. This colossal and astonishing failure makes it infinitely more likely that eventually some number of coalition nationals will end up in Taliban custody and need to be retrieved.
The first scenario, and the easiest to deal with, would be a slight modification of the status quo. The Taliban continues some harassment of Westerners fleeing to HKIAP, but ceases to prevent them from actually reaching the airport. While humiliating for the United States, it is also broadly acceptable in that it accomplishes the goal of eventually securing most coalition nationals currently in the Kabul area. Unfortunately, though reports are conflicting, some Westerners appear to be trying to shelter in place in the wake of State Department and Defense Department warnings that they cannot be protected as they travel through Kabul to HKAIP.
The fact that American forces are not entering Kabul proper to conduct Search and Rescue (SAR) operations during this lull in hostilities is another major leadership failure and likely to result in some isolated personnel, too afraid to risk venturing onto the streets, being left behind if the August 31 withdrawal date is adhered to. The British 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (2 Para), is under no such constraints. British Ministry of Defense and on the ground reports confirm 2 Para, along with Canadian, French, and Spanish Special Forces, are foraying into the city specifically to secure their own nationals, but are also taking custody of any Westerner they encounter. This must be emulated by the Americans immediately before they squander the gift of Taliban preoccupation with their victory.
Active SAR for trapped personnel, while the Taliban is still in a state of relative restraint, is the only possible way that all trapped personnel can be secured before the coalition is eventually forced to confront the necessity of negotiating for their release from the Taliban. Even if these efforts are enacted immediately by American forces, 100 percent retrieval is unlikely. The odds are excellent some will be left behind and fall into Taliban hands.
The pressing question then becomes how we would retrieve U.S. personnel if and when they are taken into Taliban custody. Broadly speaking, there are two options with some overlap: negotiation and force.
Negotiation is the preferable first option. Ideally, we assure the Taliban that prompt return of U.S. personnel will ensure we adhere to the August 31 withdrawal date. The Taliban, anxious for foreign military personnel to depart, then hand them over. This is theoretically plausible but unlikely.
The more probable scenario is that the Taliban demand some form of ransom or finder’s fee for “protecting” coalition personnel in their custody. This could take the form of international recognition from the United States, international aid, direct payments (as was done for convicted deserter Bowe Bergdahl) or assurances that allied forces will not take steps to destroy the military equipment that the Taliban has seized from Afghan forces. One possible pitfall to such an exchange is the uncertainty that all captive Westerners would be returned by the Taliban. The Taliban could easily, as the North Vietnamese did, release a few at a time while constantly claiming to “find” more allied personnel in order to increase their reward from any such exchange. Coalition nations would then be on the hook to continually pay as more of their nationals were “discovered” to secure their release. This could perhaps be countered by coalition threats to stay until all their nationals are turned over, but this is again hampered by the fact that the United States does not have accurate data on how many of its citizens remain in the country and where they are located.
The more dangerous scenario is that the Taliban could openly hold some allied personnel as bargaining chips, either to incrementally boost any ransom payments or to ensure coalition withdrawal from Afghanistan within the agreed timeline. Or, most dangerously, to be used overtly as hostages to leverage concessions from NATO members under threat of their execution. This would trigger the use of the second option to secure U.S. personnel with force once negotiations break down.
Once negotiations break down, U.S. forces must be prepared to execute a “heavy” military response to position U.S. forces for the task ahead and to send an unambiguous message of U.S. resolve. This will require the simultaneous execution of three operations. The first will be an insertion of the 82nd Airborne Division (minus its ready brigade already tasked to HKIAP) to recapture Bagram Airbase. A secure airhead remote from any major urban center with multiple runways and a defensible perimeter will be crucial to subsequent operations and provide a mooring point to which surviving Afghan forces still in the fight can rally or be evacuated to via American airlift.
The second would be the airlift of additional U.S. troops in the country to Bagram Airbase. The 10th Mountain Division, the 101st Air Assault Division, and the remainder of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit would be prime candidates. This movement should coincide with U.S. Air Force deployment of two to three squadrons of ground attack aircraft, the A-10 Warthog and AC-130 gunship equipped units would be ideal, supported by an air superiority or multi-role capable squadron. The former will act in the traditional ground support role while the latter’s mission will be the complete destruction of any Taliban air assets. The Air Force would also be required to conduct a marshaling of Air Mobility Command assets to affect the aforementioned movement and subsequent withdrawal of ground forces and civilians.
The third operation would involve the capture of the family of every member of the Taliban leadership currently identified, by units assigned to Joint Special Operations Command. As former President Donald Trump indicated in a statement to Sean Hannity last week, we know where they are. These individuals would then be extracted to secure facilities on Bagram Airbase.
Operations to secure trapped American/coalition civilians would then proceed as follows. Once Bagram Airbase is secure, American ground forces would proceed to establish collection points around the outskirts of Kabul to which trapped personnel would be instructed to rally. Instructions could be delivered via the internet or broadcast by loudspeaker from helicopters. Additional collection points or dedicated recovery operations would also be mounted to secure or free coalition nationals stranded outside Kabul. Coalition forces would sweep Kabul (and any other suspected locations) to ensure compliance and the completion of a full evacuation.
The ultimatum to the Taliban would be simple. Free all coalition prisoners and cease interdicting the movements of non-Afghans towards HKIAP or a collection point. Any opposition to U.S. recovery operations would be met with immediate and unrestrained combat operations by all forces in theatre against any and all identifiable Taliban targets. Any engagement of coalition forces would also precipitate the transfer of Taliban-affiliated prisoners into the custody of surviving Afghan National Government forces.
America must relearn the art of making “hard war,” forcing an opponent to say “yes” to a proposal by simultaneously offering a favorable outcome and by holding a knife to their throat. If the Taliban agree, recovery operations should proceed as swiftly and thoroughly as possible. If they refuse that ultimatum, the United States must be prepared to deliver on its threat of force and ignore all considerations other than the safe recovery of coalition personnel, including the inevitable civilian casualties inherent in major combat in an urban center. In either case, the center for evacuation should be transferred from HKIAP to Bagram Airbase as soon as is feasible.
The Taliban cannot be trusted to turn over all coalition personnel. Coalition forces must therefore have the capability to determine to their own satisfaction that all trapped nationals have been located and secured. Once this is accomplished, the United States, and other coalition units, can safely withdraw to Bagram Airbase to complete their evacuation as should have been done in the first place.
Once all coalition personnel has been safely extracted to Bagram Airbase, the United States will have a decision to make. It can leave, it can remain in the country to support the remnants of the Afghan government still fighting from Bagram Airbase, or it can leave while conducting strikes to destroy things like major captured equipment stockpiles (assuming they have not already been destroyed at this stage) and decapitate Taliban leadership. This should not be glossed over as a foregone conclusion or downplayed as unworthy of serious consideration. In light of the current disaster, all three options are viable and can garner significant public support by polling.
Whatever the final disposition of coalition forces in Afghanistan, personnel trapped in Taliban-controlled territory must be secured and evacuated. To accomplish this the United States will need to deploy sufficient combat power and secure sufficient negotiating leverage to force the issue in the face of Taliban opposition. The entire reason for the Government of the United States is the protection of its citizens. If it openly fails in this paramount duty to such a degree that thousands of Americans are betrayed and left to the tender mercies of the Taliban, it will face an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy internally and internationally.
Patrick Fox is an Iraq War veteran who served with the United States Air Force from 2005-2013. He holds a BS in Political Science from Tennessee State University and a Masters in Security from the University College of London.
Image: Reuters
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.
