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Javier E

U.S. officials misled the public about the war in Afghanistan, confidential documents r... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...tan-war-confidential-documents

Afghanistan war politics history us crisis policy

shared by Javier E on 22 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare. With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
  • Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.
  • They underscore how three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promises to prevail in Afghanistan.
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  • With most speaking on the assumption that their remarks would not become public, U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation.
  • The interviews also highlight the U.S. government’s botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.
  • Since 2001, the Defense Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion
  • Those figures do not include money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is responsible for medical care for wounded veterans.
  • Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.
  • SIGAR departed from its usual mission of performing audits and launched a side venture. Titled “Lessons Learned,” the $11 million project was meant to diagnose policy failures in Afghanistan so the United States would not repeat the mistakes the next time it invaded a country or tried to rebuild a shattered one.
  • the reports, written in dense bureaucratic prose and focused on an alphabet soup of government initiatives, left out the harshest and most frank criticisms from the interviews.
  • “We found the stabilization strategy and the programs used to achieve it were not properly tailored to the Afghan context, and successes in stabilizing Afghan districts rarely lasted longer than the physical presence of coalition troops and civilians,” read the introduction to one report released in May 2018.
  • To augment the Lessons Learned interviews, The Post obtained hundreds of pages of previously classified memos about the Afghan war that were dictated by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld between 2001 and 2006.
  • Together, the SIGAR interviews and the Rumsfeld memos pertaining to Afghanistan constitute a secret history of the war and an unsparing appraisal of 18 years of conflict.
  • With their forthright descriptions of how the United States became stuck in a faraway war, as well as the government's determination to conceal them from the public, the Lessons Learned interviews broadly resemble the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's top-secret history of the Vietnam War.
  • running throughout are torrents of criticism that refute the official narrative of the war, from its earliest days through the start of the Trump administration.
  • At the outset, for instance, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had a clear, stated objective — to retaliate against al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
  • Yet the interviews show that as the war dragged on, the goals and mission kept changing and a lack of faith in the U.S. strategy took root inside the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department.
  • Fundamental disagreements went unresolved. Some U.S. officials wanted to use the war to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women’s rights. Still others wanted to reshape the regional balance of power among Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia.
  • The Lessons Learned interviews also reveal how U.S. military commanders struggled to articulate who they were fighting, let alone why.
  • Was al-Qaeda the enemy, or the Taliban? Was Pakistan a friend or an adversary? What about the Islamic State and the bewildering array of foreign jihadists, let alone the warlords on the CIA’s payroll? According to the documents, the U.S. government never settled on an answer.
  • As a result, in the field, U.S. troops often couldn’t tell friend from foe.
  • The United States has allocated more than $133 billion to build up Afghanistan — more than it spent, adjusted for inflation, to revive the whole of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II.
  • As commanders in chief, Bush, Obama and Trump all promised the public the same thing. They would avoid falling into the trap of "nation-building" in Afghanistan.
  • U.S. officials tried to create — from scratch — a democratic government in Kabul modeled after their own in Washington. It was a foreign concept to the Afghans, who were accustomed to tribalism, monarchism, communism and Islamic law.
  • During the peak of the fighting, from 2009 to 2012, U.S. lawmakers and military commanders believed the more they spent on schools, bridges, canals and other civil-works projects, the faster security would improve. Aid workers told government interviewers it was a colossal misjudgment, akin to pumping kerosene on a dying campfire just to keep the flame alive.
  • One unnamed executive with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) guessed that 90 percent of what they spent was overkill: “We lost objectivity. We were given money, told to spend it and we did, without reason.”Lessons Learned interview | 10/7/2016Tap to view full document
  • The gusher of aid that Washington spent on Afghanistan also gave rise to historic levels of corruption.
  • In public, U.S. officials insisted they had no tolerance for graft. But in the Lessons Learned interviews, they admitted the U.S. government looked the other way while Afghan power brokers — allies of Washington — plundered with impunity.
  • Christopher Kolenda, an Army colonel who deployed to Afghanistan several times and advised three U.S. generals in charge of the war, said that the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai had “self-organized into a kleptocracy”Christopher Kolenda | Lessons Learned interview | 4/5/2016Tap to view full document by 2006 — and that U.S. officials failed to recognize the lethal threat it posed to their strategy.
  • By allowing corruption to fester, U.S. officials told interviewers, they helped destroy the popular legitimacy of the wobbly Afghan government they were fighting to prop up. With judges and police chiefs and bureaucrats extorting bribes, many Afghans soured on democracy and turned to the Taliban to enforce order.
  • None expressed confidence that the Afghan army and police could ever fend off, much less defeat, the Taliban on their own. More than 60,000 members of Afghan security forces have been killed, a casualty rate that U.S. commanders have called unsustainable.
  • In the Lessons Learned interviews, however, U.S. military trainers described the Afghan security forces as incompetent, unmotivated and rife with deserters. They also accused Afghan commanders of pocketing salaries — paid by U.S. taxpayers — for tens of thousands of “ghost soldiers.”
  • an army and national police force that can defend the country without foreign help.
  • Year after year, U.S. generals have said in public they are making steady progress on the central plank of their strategy: to train a robust Afgh
  • From the beginning, Washington never really figured out how to incorporate a war on drugs into its war against al-Qaeda. By 2006, U.S. officials feared that narco-traffickers had become stronger than the Afghan government and that money from the drug trade was powering the insurgency
  • throughout the Afghan war, documents show that U.S. military officials have resorted to an old tactic from Vietnam — manipulating public opinion. In news conferences and other public appearances, those in charge of the war have followed the same talking points for 18 years. No matter how the war is going — and especially when it is going badly — they emphasize how they are making progress.
  • Two months later, Marin Strmecki, a civilian adviser to Rumsfeld, gave the Pentagon chief a classified, 40-page report loaded with more bad news. It said “enormous popular discontent is building” against the Afghan government because of its corruption and incompetence. It also said that the Taliban was growing stronger, thanks to support from Pakistan, a U.S. ally.
  • Since then, U.S. generals have almost always preached that the war is progressing well, no matter the reality on the battlefield.
  • he Lessons Learned interviews contain numerous admissions that the government routinely touted statistics that officials knew were distorted, spurious or downright false
  • A person identified only as a senior National Security Council official said there was constant pressure from the Obama White House and Pentagon to produce figures to show the troop surge of 2009 to 2011 was working, despite hard evidence to the contrary.
  • Even when casualty counts and other figures looked bad, the senior NSC official said, the White House and Pentagon would spin them to the point of absurdity. Suicide bombings in Kabul were portrayed as a sign of the Taliban’s desperation, that the insurgents were too weak to engage in direct combat. Meanwhile, a rise in U.S. troop deaths was cited as proof that American forces were taking the fight to the enemy.
  • “And this went on and on for two reasons,” the senior NSC official said, “to make everyone involved look good, and to make it look like the troops and resources were having the kind of effect where removing them would cause the country to deteriorate.”
julia rhodes

Karzai Arranged Secret Contacts With the Taliban - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...contacts-with-the-taliban.html

US history politics crisis policy taliban obama afghanistan karzai

shared by julia rhodes on 04 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has been engaged in secret contacts with the Taliban about reaching a peace agreement without the involvement of his American and Western allies, further corroding already strained relations with the United States.
  • The secret contacts appear to help explain a string of actions by Mr. Karzai that seem intended to antagonize his American backers, Western and Afghan officials said.
  • The clandestine contacts with the Taliban have borne little fruit, according to people who have been told about them. But they have helped undermine the remaining confidence between the United States and Mr. Karzai, making the already messy endgame of the Afghan conflict even more volatile.
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  • Mr. Karzai seemed to jump at what he believed was a chance to achieve what the Americans were unwilling or unable to do, and reach a deal to end the conflict — a belief that few in his camp shared.
  • Afghan officials have struggled in recent years to find genuine Taliban representatives, and have flitted among a variety of current and former insurgent leaders, most of whom had only tenuous connections to Mullah Omar and his inner circle, American and Afghan officials have said.
  • . The continued presence of American troops after 2014, not to mention billions of dollars in aid, depended on the president’s signature. But Mr. Karzai repeatedly balked, perplexing Americans and many Afghans alike.
  • But other Afghan and Western officials said that the contacts had fizzled, and that whatever the Taliban may have intended at the outset, they no longer had any intention of negotiating with the Afghan government. They said that top Afghan officials had met with influential Taliban leaders in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in recent weeks, and were told that any prospects of a peace deal were now gone.
  • And it is not clear whether the Taliban ever intended to seriously pursue negotiations, or were simply trying to derail the security agreement by distracting Mr. Karzai and leading him on, as many of the officials said they suspected.
  • The diplomats repeatedly found themselves incurring the wrath of Mr. Karzai, who saw the effort as an attempt to circumvent him; he tried behind the scenes to undercut it.
  • American forces are turning over their combat role to Afghan forces and preparing to leave Afghanistan this year, and the campaigning for the Afghan national election in April has begun. An orderly transition of power in an Afghanistan that can contain the insurgency on its own would be the culmination of everything that the United States has tried to achieve in the country.
  • Mr. Karzai has been increasingly concerned with his legacy, officials say. When discussing the impasse with the Americans, he has repeatedly alluded to his country’s troubled history as a lesson in dealing with foreign powers. He recently likened the security agreement to the Treaty of Gandamak, a one-sided 1879 agreement that ceded frontier lands to the British administration in India and gave it tacit control over Afghan foreign policy. He has publicly assailed American policies as the behavior of a “colonial power,” though diplomats and military officials say he has been more cordial in private.
  • In some respects, Mr. Karzai’s outbursts have been an effort to speak to Afghans who want him to take a hard line against the Americans, including many ethnic Pashtuns, who make up nearly all of the Taliban. With the American-led coalition on its way out and American influence waning, Mr. Karzai is more concerned with bridging the chasms of Afghan domestic politics than with his foreign allies’ interests.
  • Mr. Karzai has insisted that he will not sign the agreement unless the Americans help bring the Taliban to the table for peace talks. Some diplomats worry that making such a demand allows the Taliban to dictate the terms of America’s long-term presence in Afghanistan. Others question Mr. Karzai’s logic: Why would the insurgency agree to talks if doing so would ensure the presence of the foreign troops it is determined to expel?
sgardner35

Obama's Afghanistan call: Sanity prevails (Opinion) - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by sgardner35 on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Earlier this year the administration had announced plans to draw down to a skeleton force of around 1,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of its term. That decision would have tied the hands of the next president as it is much easier to maintain an existing troop presence -- both from a logistical point of view as well as politically -- than it is to ramp one up substantially.
  • two-thirds of Afghans favored a long-term role for U.S. and other international forces, while the Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghana and CEO Abdullah Abdullah, have been imploring U.S. officials to maintain a substantial troop presence.
  • Amnesty writes: "Mass murder, gang rapes and house-to-house searches by Taliban death squads are just some of the harrowing civilian testimonies emerging from Kunduz. ...Women human rights defenders from Kunduz spoke of a 'hit list' being used by the Taliban to track down activists and others, and described how fighters had raped and killed numerous civilians."Third, an overwhelming 92% of Afghans prefer the current government to the Taliban, according to a poll taken earlier this year. In other words, not only is the United States on the right side of history in supporting the Afghan government against the Taliban, the Afghan people also overwhelmingly support this.
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  • Fourth, ISIS is establishing something of a foothold in areas of Afghanistan. ISIS has taken over portions of the eastern province of Nangarhar. ISIS executions there involve piling men alive into a mass grave and then using explosives to blow them up. ISIS fighters also torture their victims by thrusting their hands into boiling oil. ISIS' reign of terror even has ordinary Afghans pining for the Taliban!
  • Instead of constantly announcing new U.S. drawdowns from Afghanistan as the Obama administration has done repeatedly over the past few years, which has the unintended consequence of sapping Afghans' confidence, Americans should get used to the fact that the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan should be for the long term and U.S. politicians should say so publicly
julia rhodes

U.S. Aid to Afghans Flows On Despite Warnings of Misuse - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-prevent-misuse-of-us-aid.html

u s aid afghanistan karzai US politics crisis policy economics obama

shared by julia rhodes on 30 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • With billions of dollars in American aid increasingly flowing straight into Afghan government coffers, the United States hired two global auditing firms three years ago to determine whether Afghanistan could be trusted to safeguard the money.
  • The findings were so dire that American officials fought to keep them private.
  • But the money has continued to flow, despite warnings from the auditors that none of the 16 Afghan ministries could be counted on to keep the funds from being stolen or wasted.
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  • The findings raise new questions about the efficacy and wisdom of giving huge amounts of aid directly to a government known for corruption.
  • Aid from Western countries pays most of the Afghan government’s expenses.
  • The direct assistance, which now accounts for about half of all American aid to the government, was a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s strategy to build a credible national government that could capitalize on the battlefield gains made by the surge of American forces in 2009 and 2010.
  • The agency said that despite all the warnings about risks, the report outlined no specific instances of fraud.
  • The agency, which has grown accustomed to harsh reports on its work in Afghanistan from the inspector general, characterized the latest report as one with lots of smoke but no fire.
  • For instance, $236.5 million earmarked for the Afghan Ministry of Public Health was in danger of misappropriation “arising from payment of salaries in cash,” according to a United States Agency for International Development risk assessment cited by the inspector general. The Afghan Mines Ministry could be “paying higher prices for commodities and services to finance
  • American officials are displeased with the release of the inspector general’s report, saying it is likely to infuriate the Afghan officials who allowed the auditors from the two auditing firms, KPMG and Ernst & Young, to examine their operations.
  • The release will probably lead to “reduced cooperation from the Afghan government, and could undermine our ability to conduct proper oversight of direct assistance programs in the future,” the aid agency warned the inspector general in a letter.
  • The report accuses the agency and the State Department of not being forthright with Congress, saying the most dire assessments in the audits, which started in 2011, were withheld from lawmakers, including assessments that American officials had taken less than 10 percent of the measures they could have taken to reduce the risk that aid money would be lost to Afghan mismanagement or corruption.
  • U.S.A
Javier E

Opinion | I was a combat interpreter in Afghanistan, where cultural illiteracy led to U... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...h-ahadi-us-cultural-illiteracy

afghanistan Culture history us military policy cultural illiteracy failure

shared by Javier E on 01 Sep 21 - No Cached
  • I also know that many Americans have been asking: Why is this crazy scramble necessary? How could Afghanistan have collapsed so quickly?
  • As a former combat interpreter who served alongside U.S. and Afghan Special Operations forces, I can tell you part of the answer — one that’s been missing from the conversation: culture.
  • When comparing the Taliban with the United States and its Western allies, the vast majority of Afghans have always viewed the Taliban as the lesser of two evils. To many Americans, that may seem an outlandish claim. The coalition, after all, poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan. It built highways. It emancipated Afghan women. It gave millions of people the right to vote for the first time ever.
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  • All true. But the Americans also went straight to building roads, schools and governing institutions — in an effort to “win hearts and minds” — without first figuring out what values animate those hearts and what ideas fill those minds. We thus wound up acting in ways that would ultimately alienate everyday Afghans.
  • First, almost all representatives of Western governments — military and civilian — were required to stay “inside the wire,” meaning they were confined at all times to Kabul’s fortified Green Zone and well-guarded military bases across the country.
  • As it was, however, virtually the only contact most Afghans had with the West came via heavily armed and armored combat troops. Americans thus mistook the Afghan countryside for a mere theater of war, rather than as a place where people actually lived.
  • U.S. forces turned villages into battlegrounds, pulverizing mud homes and destroying livelihoods. One could almost hear the Taliban laughing as any sympathy for the West evaporated in bursts of gunfire.
  • From the point of view of many Afghans, Americans might as well have been extraterrestrials, descending out of the black sky every few weeks, looking and acting alien, and always bringing disruption, if not outright ruin.
  • The Marines I worked with were shocked, for example, to hear me exchanging favorite Koran verses with my fellow Afghans, mistaking this for extremism rather than shared piety
  • When talking to Afghan villagers, the Marines would not remove their sunglasses — a clear indication of untrustworthiness in a country that values eye contact.
  • In some cases, they would approach and directly address village women, violating one of rural Afghanistan’s strictest cultural norms.
  • Faux pas such as these sound almost comically basic, and they are. But multiplied over millions of interactions throughout the United States’ two decades of wheel-spinning in Afghanistan, they cost us dearly in terms of local support.
  • Sometimes, yes, we built good things — clinics, schools, wells. But when the building was done, we would simply leave. The Taliban would not only destroy those facilities, but also look upon the local community with greater suspicion for having received “gifts” from America.
  • This isn’t just about Afghanistan. When it comes to cultural illiteracy, America is a recidivist. We failed to understand Iraqi culture, too, so that now, many Iraqis see Iran as the lesser of two evils. Before that, we failed to understand Vietnam. And so on. Wherever our relentless military adventurism takes us next, we must do better.
clairemann

How US sanctions are fueling Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis - Vox - 0 views

www.vox.com/...-humanitarian-crisis-sanctions

afghanistan crisis politics sanctions

shared by clairemann on 22 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • More than five months after the fall of Kabul, the Afghan economy is on the brink of collapse, leaving millions of people at risk of extreme poverty or starvation. One major culprit: the US decision to halt aid to the country and freeze billions in Afghan government funds.
  • “virtually every man, woman and child in Afghanistan could face acute poverty”
  • The organization is requesting more than $5 billion in aid to help the Afghan people, both inside the country and in refugee camps in bordering nations like Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
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  • The US and the UN have made some concessions to allow humanitarian aid to operate outside the auspices of the Taliban; the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) granted some licenses to aid groups to operate in Afghanistan without running afoul of of financial restrictions on certain individuals and institutions in the country.
  • In the aftermath of the US withdrawal, many Afghans working as interpreters, aid workers, prosecutors, professors, and journalists suddenly lost their positions and their incomes, and many have been forced into hiding, further hampering their ability to provide even the most basic necessities — blankets, food, fuel, and medicine — for their families.
  • Many of Afghanistan’s current problems are intimately connected to the US withdrawal from the country last year, and the Taliban’s ensuing takeover of the central government. Since then, US sanctions and an abrupt end to international aid have wrecked Afghanistan’s economy and sent it spiraling into crisis.
  • Now, much of the country is facing poverty and starvation: In December, the World Food Program (WFP) found that 98 percent of Afghans aren’t getting enough to eat, and Guterres warned this month that “we are in a race against time to help the Afghan people.”
  • “Sanctions are intended to have a chilling effect, in that sanctions will always go beyond the face of the text,”
  • So far, however, no policy shift has been forthcoming. As of earlier this month, the US has pledged an additional $308 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, but the Afghan central bank reserves remain frozen.
  • And while Afghanistan’s current crisis isn’t wholly caused by external factors — even without sanctions by the US and its allies, the Taliban’s inability to manage the bureaucracy of government would have created issues, as would the pandemic and a severe drought that began in June last year — US actions do play a substantial role.
  • The chilling effect of sanctions is keeping businesses and banks from actually engaging with the economy. As House Democrats pointed out in their letter last month, relatively simple steps — like issuing letters to international businesses assuring them that they are not violating US sanctions — could help alleviate the crisis and shore up the Afghan private sector, but Treasury has yet to do so.
  • In the meantime, however, the Taliban will hold talks this coming week with Western nations, including Norway, Britain, the US, Italy, France, and Germany, about humanitarian aid. The talks should not be seen as a legitimization of Taliban rule, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt stressed to AFP on Friday, “but we must talk to the de facto authorities in the country. We cannot allow the political situation to lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster.”
katyshannon

Taliban Fighters Capture Kunduz City as Afghan Forces Retreat - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...z-in-northern-afghanistan.html

taliban capture afghan city new york times crisis

shared by katyshannon on 29 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • ABUL, Afghanistan — After months of besieging the northern Afghan provincial capital of Kunduz, Taliban fighters took over the city on Monday just hours after advancing, officials said, as government security forces fully retreated to the city’s outlying airport.
  • The Taliban’s sudden victory, after what had appeared to be a stalemate through the summer, gave the insurgents a military and political prize — the capture of a major Afghan city — that had eluded them since 2001.
  • Afghan officials vowed that a counterattack was coming, as commando forces were said to be flowing by air and road to Kunduz. But by nightfall, the city itself belonged to the Taliban. Their white flag was flying over several public areas of Kunduz, residents said.
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  • the Taliban issued a statement saying that the group “has no intention” of looting or carrying out extrajudicial killings.
  • But witness accounts and videos posted to social media showed some scenes of chaos. The insurgents had set fire to police buildings, and witnesses reported that jewelry shops were being looted, though by whom was unclear.
  • The Taliban also appeared to have freed hundreds of inmates from the city’s prison
  • One video showed a crowd gathered around the city’s main traffic circle, responding to the chants of a Taliban fighter. “Death to America! Death to the slaves of America!” the fighter shouted into a megaphone, as the crowd responded: “Death to Mir Alam! Death to Nabi Gechi!” Both of those men are local militia commanders fighting on the side of the government
  • katyshannon on 29 Sep 15
     
    Taliban capture major Afghan city
anonymous

Taliban officials 'in talks with Afghan government', US says - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-44313474

taliban politics US crisis

shared by anonymous on 31 May 18 - No Cached
  • The Taliban have held secret meetings with Afghan officials to discuss a ceasefire, the US military says.
  • However, the Taliban rejected the claims, saying the group did not "want to waste time in the name of talks" with the Afghan government "in the presence of the occupying forces".Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has previously proposed negotiations with the Taliban, saying they could be recognised as a political party if they accepted a ceasefire and recognised the country's constitution.
  • The Taliban have shown an openness to talks in the past, suggesting that, in addition to the armed struggle, negotiations were a "legitimate" way of achieving their main objective: an end to what they call the "occupation by foreign forces".
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  • On the other hand, the US insists that the Taliban must talk to the Afghan government. US officials say that the war in Afghanistan is primarily between the two Afghan sides, and that the US cannot substitute for direct negotiations between the ruling government in Kabul and the Taliban.
  • It is estimated that about 15 million people - half the population - are living in areas that are either controlled by the Taliban or where the Taliban are openly present and regularly mount attacks.
  • The hardline Islamic Taliban movement swept to power in Afghanistan in 1996 after the civil war that followed the Soviet-Afghan war, and were ousted by the US-led invasion five years later.
  • In 2016, Afghan civilian casualties hit a new high - a rise attributed by the UN largely to the Taliban.
maddieireland334

Taliban Say They Won't Attend Peace Talks, but Officials Aren't Convinced - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...officials-arent-convinced.html

Taliban policy peace talks Pakistan US international

shared by maddieireland334 on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • he Taliban said on Saturday that they would not participate in international peace talks, citing what they claimed were increased American airstrikes and Afghan government military operations.
  • The talks, convened by the United States, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were expected to start this month in Pakistan.
  • Afghan and Pakistani government officials said the talks would continue despite the Taliban statement, but pushed the start date back to sometime later this month.
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  • In a statement posted on the insurgents’ website, the Taliban denied that a representative would attend the talks.
  • Previous talks have taken place without Taliban representatives present, but Afghan and Pakistani officials had expressed confidence that direct talks between the Afghan government and the militants would resume in March, and they maintained that position on Saturday.
  • The official said the Pakistan military leader, Gen. Raheel Sharif, who visited Kabul last week, had assured Afghan leaders that talks would go ahead.
  • Direct talks began last summer in Pakistan, but quickly fell apart after Afghan officials concerned about the authority of the insurgent delegation leaked word that the Taliban’s longtime leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had been dead for two years.
  • The leader who took over, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, had been known to favor participation in the negotiations. Since Mullah Mansour took power, the group has been riven by dissension over the leadership change, and fighting off challenges in some areas from insurgents allied with the Islamic State group.
  • The request does not seem to have gone over well with Taliban leaders, who have insisted that their political office in Qatar is the only address for peace talks.
  • While there are no confirmed reports that the United States has increased troop levels in Afghanistan — there are now about 10,000 American service members in the country — the United States military is carrying out airstrikes in support of Afghan government operations and secret American Special Operations missions.
  • Pakistan has leverage over the Taliban because the group enjoys sanctuary in Pakistani territory, and many of its fighters receive medical treatment there.
jongardner04

Afghan president: ISIS being wiped out in Afghanistan - 0 views

www.militarytimes.com/...81402504

Afghan ISIS

shared by jongardner04 on 07 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday that the Islamic State group has been defeated in the eastern parts of the country, where it took over some remote districts.
  • ISIS has had a presence in Afghanistan for more than a year. Officials have said most militants calling themselves IS are disaffected Taliban fighters.
  • Afghan forces have claimed victory following a 21-day operation in the Achin and Shinwar districts of Nangarhar, claiming at least 200 militants killed, a provincial official told The Associated Press.
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  • "The aim of the operation in Nangarhar was to root out IS from the area," said Afghan Army Lt. Col Sharin Aqa, a spokesman for the 201 Corps.
  • The operation was aided by local residents who set up checkpoints to help maintain security in their villages. These so-called "local uprisings" had supplemented the Afghan forces, which have been stretched since the drawdown in 2014 of the international combat mission, he said.
  • The Afghan government is attempting to end the war on its territory with hopes of drawing the Taliban into a dialogue and eventual peace talks. The ISIS presence has been principally in the east, where they have also fought the Taliban for territory.
redavistinnell

Afghan Taliban kill dozens at Kandahar airport - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-35043938

afghan taliban airport

shared by redavistinnell on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Dozens of people have been killed in a Taliban attack on a heavily fortified civilian and military airfield in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
  • At least 37 people, including many children,
  • The Taliban briefly seized the northern city of Kunduz in September.
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  • were killed in the clashes, along with at least nine militants, the defence ministry said.
  • Correspondents say the attack is a huge security failure because the attackers were able to smuggle weapons into an area supposed to have been made secure by the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
  • Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani, speaking at the conference, called on Pakistan to help restart stalled peace talks with the Taliban.
  • The statement by the Taliban claimed that they had killed up to 80 soldiers. This figure could not be verified.
  • Separately, the Taliban claimed to have captured Khanashin district in southern Helmand province. A local official confirmed the district had fallen.
  • Militant violence has increased across Afghanistan since the departure of most Nato and US forces last year.
  • Witnesses reported that some of the militants took families hostage and used them as human shields. They said they could hear Afghan soldiers calling on the fighters to let the women and children go.
  • Afghan Taliban kill dozens at Kandahar airport
  • The attack continued until one gunman who had out on his own for several hours was killed late on Wednesday.
B Mannke

BBC News - Afghan 'suicide vest girl' reveals family ordeal - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-25708023

shared by B Mannke on 13 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 12 January 2014 Last updated at 22:01 ET Share this page Email Print Share this pageShareFacebookTwitter Afghan 'suicide vest girl' reveals family ordeal The girl is thought to be the sister of a prominent Taliban commander Continue reading the main story Taliban Conflict Loya Jirga: Q&A Pakistan's interests Who are the Taliban? Q&A: Foreign forces An Afghan girl has told the BBC that her family forced her to a
  • The girl, known as Spozhmai, said her brother and father had beaten her, ordering her to put on a suicide vest.
  • she has appealed to Afghan President Hamid Karzai to put her in a new home
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • She told the BBC's Newsday programme that she had been scared to carry out the attack, but that her brother had promised only her targets would die
  • "I said: 'No, I will kill myself rather than go with you'," she said.
  • 'If you don't do it this time, we will make you do it again
  • "I won't go back there. God didn't make me to become a suicide bomber. I ask the president to put me in a good place."
annabelteague02

Taliban Peace Deal: U.S. Signs Agreement With Islamist Group In Afghanistan : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-decades-of-war-in-afghanistan

taliban peace deal u s agreement afghanistan

shared by annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • The drawdown process will begin with the U.S. reducing its troop levels to 8,600 in the first 135 days and pulling its forces from five bases.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      i do hope this leads to peace, and i am not edcuated on the history of this issue, but from what I have heard the Taliban are very dangerous and radical, and pulling back from them might be a good idea, but it is a scary thought
  • The Afghan government also will release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners as a gesture of goodwill, in exchange for 1,000 Afghan security forces held by the Taliban.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      what is the taliban doing in return?
  • The Afghan government will also begin negotiations with the Taliban to map out a political settlement which would establish the role the Taliban would play in a future Afghanistan. These negotiations are expected to start next month. One of the first tasks in these intra-Afghan talks will be to achieve a lasting ceasefire in Afghanistan.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      this seems like a constructive way to find peace, but i feel like the taliban is not giving anything up in this agreement, while the U.S. and the Afghan government are.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • President Trump walked away from those talks after a U.S. service member was killed in a September car bombing in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
  • The Taliban's rule in Afghanistan, which lasted just five years, ended abruptly with the invasion of a U.S.-led military coalition shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Their overthrow was a reprisal for having harbored Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, whose militants hijacked and crashed four American airliners in those attacks.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      I did not know this before reading this article! It shows how little I really know about politics and foreign affairs.
  • Trump added 4,000 U.S. troops to the 8,900 American forces already deployed there.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      that is undeniably making America's involvement in the war in Afghanistan stronger, as opposed to ending it
  • A commitment by the Taliban to end support for U.S.-deemed "terrorist organizations"
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      this is good! i wonder how they will do this, though
B Mannke

Taliban Attack Kills G.I. at an Afghan-U.S. Base - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-attack-on-afghan-us-base.html

shared by B Mannke on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Afghan officials said an American soldier was killed in the attack, which took place a few miles from where the Taliban movement was founded nearly 20 years ago
  • since the insurgents killed 21 civilians, 13 of them foreigners, at a popular Lebanese restaurant here in Kabul on Friday
  • nd American and Afghan soldiers “quickly engaged with the attackers and killed all eight bombers before they could enter the base,” said Mr. Agha, whose compound is near the main entrance of Pasab.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • A suicide bomber went in first to clear the way for gunmen.
  • The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, claiming to have inflicted heavy casualties at what Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, an insurgent spokesman, described as a “huge American base.”
  • At the height of the surge, from 2010 to 2012, an entire American brigade of roughly 4,500 soldiers was based at Pasab and at dozens of other small combat outposts in Zhare.
  • Only a few hundred American soldiers are still based in Zhare, and most are focused on advising Afghan forces, not fighting the Taliban.
Javier E

An Afghan Interpreter Seeks a Visa That Is Unlikely to Come - NYTimes.com - 0 views

atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/...-visa-that-is-unlikely-to-come

US mideast allies interpreter

shared by Javier E on 31 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • on the Facebook page for applicants to a special American visa program. In this case, however, the man in the photograph couldn’t be described that way because his head had been cut off and placed on the small of his back so that his lifeless eyes stared at the camera. He had been an interpreter for United States Marines advising the Afghan Border Police in 2010, which is presumably why insurgents made an example of him. I don’t know his story, but I can tell you Amin’s.
  • Amin didn’t simply assist my platoon; he was central to our effort. In a complex political environment that Marine battalions rotated through every six months, he was the constant — the face that local leaders remembered each time new Marines arrived, and the expert on a complicated web of interpersonal relationships among Afghan soldiers, police, politicians and elders.
  • Today, a year and four months after I sent the first e-mail, Amin is still waiting to schedule medical exams and a final security interview at the United States Embassy in Kabul. He continues to work in the relative safety of an American military base, but as the draw-down continues, he will eventually be left to fend for himself.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • On Sept. 30, Congress passed legislation extending a special visa program for Iraqis. That a Congress seemingly incapable of accomplishing anything unanimously passed this bill just before the government shutdown is encouraging, but legislation meant to improve the special visa system for Afghans remains up in the air.
  • Amin was probably as indispensable to those other Marines as he was to me. And if our leaders would apply the same sort of focus and industriousness to the special visa program that Amin applies every day to the war effort they oversee, perhaps they could prevent any more of our linguists from being dishonored on Facebook.
julia rhodes

Despite Joy Over Vote in Afghan District, Reports of Fraud - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...district-reports-of-fraud.html

vote afghan fraud history politics crisis

shared by julia rhodes on 22 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The turbulent district of Andar has been caught in one kind of crossfire or another for years: between American forces and insurgent leaders, between warring militant factions, between those hostile to the national government and those courting it.
  • Government officials hailed the news as a triumph for Afghan democracy in a place where only three valid votes were recorded across the whole district in the 2010 parliamentary elections.To a degree, that judgment was justified.
  • But as always in Andar, there is another side. A review by The New York Times found that polling centers in more than half of the host villages were either closed or saw little to no activity on Election Day, even though they submitted thousands of votes.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The residents of some villages woke to find that ballot boxes had been moved to different locations — or were not available at all. In Shamshai, another area of Taliban control, election officials decided at the last minute to send boxes to a village a few miles away. In Taliban-held Alizai, the ballot boxes never turned up.
  • Representatives of observer organizations, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of disrupting the official tabulation process, said evidence of fraud was widespread. Though polls were open across the district, it was unsafe for monitors to reach many places, raising the likelihood of vote manipulation.
  • Still, some said they did not mind living under Taliban rule, especially in recent years. They said that after the uprising, some of the insurgents had started treating people better, aware that there was now an alternative.
Javier E

Data From Seized Computer Fuels a Surge in U.S. Raids on Al Qaeda - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-in-us-raids-on-al-qaeda.html

Afghanistan pakistan Special Ops covert intelligence policy

shared by Javier E on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • That night the Afghans and Americans got their man, Abu Bara al-Kuwaiti. They also came away with what officials from both countries say was an even bigger prize: a laptop computer and files detailing Qaeda operations on both sides of the border.
  • In the months since, the trove of intelligence has helped fuel a significant increase in night raids by American Special Operations forces and Afghan intelligence commandos, Afghan and American officials said.
  • The spike in raids is at odds with policy declarations in Washington, where the Obama administration has deemed the American role in the war essentially over. But the increase reflects the reality in Afghanistan, where fierce fighting in the past year killed record numbers of Afghan soldiers, police officers and civilians.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “We’ve been clear that counterterrorism operations remain a part of our mission in Afghanistan,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said on Thursday. “We’ve also been clear that we will conduct these operations in partnership with the Afghans to eliminate threats to our forces, our partners and our interests.”
jongardner04

Afghan suicide bomber targets Jalalabad elders, killing 13 - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-35337869

afghan taliban

shared by jongardner04 on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • A suicide bomber has killed at least 13 people at the Jalalabad home of a prominent local politician who backs President Ashraf Ghani's peace talks.
  • Tribal elders had gathered at the home of Obaiduallah Shinwari to celebrate his brother's release from months of captivity by the Taliban.
  • The Afghan government has been locked in a bloody conflict with Taliban militants for more than a decade.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • However, the Taliban, who are divided by factional infighting, did not attend that session.
  • Peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban collapsed last year, after news emerged that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had in fact died in 2013.
  • In December, the militant group launched an attack on the strategic district of Sangin. It later seized and blew up the police headquarters and governor's compound.
  • And in September, the Taliban briefly overran the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, in one of their biggest victories since 2001.
martinelligi

Can The Afghan Army Hold Off The Taliban Without The U.S.? : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ff-the-taliban-without-the-u-s

war US

shared by martinelligi on 16 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden stood in the Roosevelt Room at the White House and declared the end of U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan. He spoke from the same spot where former President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the war 20 years ago with a bombing campaign.
  • The president said the U.S. will "keep providing assistance" to the Afghan security forces, and reposition counterterrorism forces "over the horizon," to make sure Afghanistan does not once again become a haven for terrorists planning to attack the U.S.
  • The Taliban have yet to break with al-Qaida, a condition of the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020. U.S. officials in the Afghan city of Jalalabad told NPR two years ago that the Taliban continue to work with al-Qaida in eastern Afghanistan, while both U.S. and Afghan airstrikes have targeted al-Qaida militants in southeastern Helmand Province.
Javier E

Despite West's Efforts, Afghan Youths Cling to Traditional Ways - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cling-to-traditional-ways.html

Afghanistan women rights culture conservatism

shared by Javier E on 01 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • interviews with dozens of Afghan youth paint a picture of a new generation bound to their society’s conservative ways, especially when it comes to women’s rights, one of the West’s single most important efforts here.
  • “These young men grew up in a war environment. They don’t know about their own rights; how can we expect them to know about their sisters’ rights, their mothers’ rights or their wives’ rights? If they wear jeans and have Western haircuts, that doesn’t mean they are progressive.”
  • Censorship, particularly when it comes to religious offenses, summons little ire. Many consider democracy a tool of the West. And the vast majority of Afghans still rely on tribal justice, viewing the courts as little more than venues of extortion.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “Those who are pushing for the approval of the law, they are doing it to make Westerners happy,” Mr. Taib said. “Those with independent ideas are strictly against it.” His friend Mohammad Haroun, added: “I believe in women’s rights, but in strict accordance with Islam.”
  • In reality, a lot of what is thought to be Shariah law in Afghanistan is actually tribal tradition. Some of the most severe cultural practices, like the selling of young girls to pay off debt, are elements of Pashtun code that would be unacceptable in most other Islamic countries.
  • “Our traditions and conventions are telling us one thing, and the realities on the ground are telling us something else,” said Saad Mohseni, the founder of Tolonews. “People are actually acting in a very different way from how they are talking.”
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