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criscimagnael

Afghanistan Tries to Stamp Out Opium Again - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...afghanistan-opium-taliban.html

shared by criscimagnael on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • For years, opium has been the monster too big to slay. One Afghan government after another has pledged to stamp out opium production and trafficking, only to prove unable to resist billions of dollars in illicit profits.
  • But after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, opium taxes and smuggling helped fuel the Taliban’s own 20-year insurgency.
  • The Taliban announced on April 3 that poppy cultivation had been outlawed, with violators to be punished under Shariah law.
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  • Water pumps powered by cheap and highly efficient solar panels are able to drill deep down into rapidly dwindling desert aquifers. The solar panels have helped generate bumper opium harvests year after year since farmers in southern Afghanistan’s poppy-growing belt began installing them around 2014.
  • The opium trade earned about $1.8 billion to $2.7 billion last year, the United Nations has estimated. Opium sales have provided 9 to 14 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, compared with 9 percent provided by legal exports of goods and services.
  • The solar arrays have been central to ensuring Afghanistan’s status as the global leader in opium.
  • The Taliban, for their part, have condemned opium as anti-Islamic, as Afghanistan’s poppy crop sustains addicts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as a huge number inside Afghanistan. But given their own deep ties to opium smuggling during the insurgency, Taliban leaders are walking a fine line between hypocrisy and holiness.
  • Now, solar power is a defining feature of southern Afghan life. Tiny solar panels power light bulbs in mud huts, and solar-driven pumps irrigate cash crops like wheat and pomegranates, as well as subsistence farmers’ vegetable plots.
  • Opium farmers now rely on at least 67,000 solar-power-fed water reservoirs across Afghanistan’s desert southwest, according to a European Union-funded research project by David Mansfield, a consultant who has studied illicit economies and rural livelihoods in Afghanistan for two decades.
  • The panels, which supplanted more expensive and less reliable diesel to run water pumps, have helped turn the desert green.
  • “For many opium farmers, abundant water is now a given,” he said. “No one perceives it to have a cost.”
  • “Do not destroy the fields, but make the fields dry out,” Gov. Maulave Talib Akhund said in a statement. He added, “We are committed to fulfilling the opium decree.”
  • The opium ban was met with a collective shrug this spring by southern farmers, many of whom were already harvesting their spring crops. Opium prices surged almost immediately, several farmers said, to roughly $180 per kilogram from $60 per kilogram.
  • But the Taliban have vowed to crack down on farmers who try to cultivate any new crops.
  • Dr. Mansfield said that determining how long the aquifers could continue to supply water was uncharted territory because no one had been able to conduct a rigorous scientific study of the desert groundwater.
  • “We have to continue to dig our wells deeper and deeper,” Mr. Armani said.
  • Even when prices are high, many poppy farmers say, they earn only about $2 a day for each family member. They are at the very bottom of a narcotic trafficking system in which profits increase exponentially from growers to middlemen to processing labs to major cross-border traffickers.
  • Farmers whose poppy fields were plowed under by the previous government could send their sons to paying jobs as soldiers or police officers — or to the constellation of unskilled jobs provided by the United States and NATO. But those options are gone, and unemployment has soared under the Taliban.
  • “Growing poppies is the only option to survive right now,” he said.
Grace Gannon

Taliban Are Rising Again in Afghanistan's North - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ain-in-afghanistans-north.html

Taliban Afghanistan terrorist

shared by Grace Gannon on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Grace Gannon on 23 Oct 14
     
    Afghans last felt threatened by Taliban forces in 2009, shortly before President Obama sent in troops to push the members of the Taliban out of the province's capital. This fear has resurfaced in the Afghan people, as Taliban forces have returned, controlling two districts almost entirely. Many Afghans say that the Taliban should either stop attacking innocent people, or simply kill them to end the constant fear and misery that their lives have become.
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.
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  • 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.
anonymous

Taliban attacks Afghan soldiers in Farah, killing at least 24 - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-43358148

politics crisis taliban terrorism death afghanistan

shared by anonymous on 11 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • At least 24 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in a Taliban attack in the western province of Farah, officials said.
  • The attack in Bala Buluk district comes two weeks after a similar assault by the Taliban on an army base in the same province.
  • At least 22 members of the security forces died in the attack.
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  • A Taliban spokesman claimed on social media that 53 soldiers had been killed or wounded in the militant group's attack.A recent BBC study found that the Taliban now control or threaten much more territory than when foreign combat troops left in 2014.Taliban fighters are openly active in 70% of Afghanistan
katherineharron

Biden announces troops will leave Afghanistan by September 11: 'It's time to end Americ... - 0 views

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

biden

shared by katherineharron on 14 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • President Joe Biden formally announced his decision to end America's longest war on Wednesday
  • Biden said he would withdraw US troops from Afghanistan before September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that launched the war in the first place.
  • Biden declared Wednesday that no amount of time or money could solve the problems his three predecessors had tried and failed to fix.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • The deadline Biden has set is absolute, with no potential for extension based on worsening conditions on the ground.
  • "We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives," Biden went on. "Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it's time to end the forever war."
  • It was a decisive moment for a President not yet 100 days into the job. Biden has spent months weighing his decision, and he determined a war in Afghanistan that has killed some 2,300 US troops and cost more than $2 trillion no longer fit within the pressing foreign policy concerns of 2021.
  • "I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats," he went on. "I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth."
  • "After nearly two decades of putting our troops in harm's way, it is time to recognize that we have accomplished all that we can militarily, and that it's time to bring our remaining troops home," he wrote.
  • Biden said the withdrawal will begin on May 1, in line with an agreement President Donald Trump's administration made with the Taliban.
  • Biden said American diplomatic and humanitarian efforts would continue in Afghanistan and that the US would support peace efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But he was unequivocal that two decades after it began, the Afghanistan War is ending."It is time to end America's longest war. It is time for American troops to come home," he said in his speech.
  • Both of Biden's most recent predecessors sought to end the war in Afghanistan, only to be drawn back in by devolving security and attempts to prop up the government. Biden made a different calculation that the US and the world must simply move on.
  • "While he and I have had many disagreements over policy throughout the years, we are absolutely united in our respect and support for the valor, courage and integrity of the women and men of the United States forces who've served," Biden said.
  • He also spoke with Obama, with whom he sometimes disagreed over Afghanistan policy when serving as vice president.
  • "War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking," Biden said during his remarks from the White House Treaty Room,
  • "We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021," Biden said. "Rather than return to war with the Taliban, we have to focus on the challenges that are in front of us."
  • Deliberations stretched longer than some US officials had expected, even as Biden signaled repeatedly that a May 1 deadline for full withdrawal was nearly impossible to meet. Hoping to provide space for him to make an informed final decision that he wouldn't come to regret, officials sought to avoid pressuring a President known for blowing past deadlines. Top-level meetings were convened at an unusually high rate.
  • There was not unanimous consent among his team. Among those advocating against a withdrawal, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been among the most ardent, suggesting earlier in the deliberations that pulling American troops from Afghanistan could cause the government in Kabul to collapse and prompt backsliding in women's rights, according to people familiar with the conversations.
  • "The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support," the assessment said.On Wednesday, Biden offered his rebuttal to the "many who will loudly insist that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust US military presence to stand as leverage."
  • In reality, Biden has been thinking about this issue for nearly as long as the war itself, having traveled to the region as a leader on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as an internal advocate -- at first ignored -- of drawing down troops during the Obama administration.
  • On the day in 2001 that Bush addressed the nation from the Treaty Room, Biden appeared on CNN a few hours later from his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
  • "There is no doubt in my mind the Taliban is done and the American people are going to learn about that and the world is going to learn about that in a matter of weeks, I predict," he said in the interview -- a projection that, 20 years later, appears misguided as his administration works to urge peace talks between the Taliban, who control large swaths of Afghanistan, and the Afghan government.
  • Over the ensuing years, Biden would travel to Afghanistan as part of congressional delegations and grill military leaders appearing before his committee.
  • By the time he became vice president, Biden had adopted a skeptical view toward a continued large presence in the country
  • "I'm the first president in 40 years who knows what it means to have a child serving in a war zone, and throughout this process, my North Star has been remembering what it was like when my late son, Beau, was deployed to Iraq, how proud he was to serve his country, how insistent he was to deploy with his unit and the impact it had on him and all of us at home," he said.
peterconnelly

Pakistani Taliban militants announce indefinite ceasefire with Islamabad - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-61681128

taliban bbc

shared by peterconnelly on 04 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The Pakistani Taliban has announced an indefinite ceasefire with Pakistan's government after talks brokered by the Afghan Taliban government.
  • The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) said substantial progress had been made at the talks in Kabul, and the truce extended until further notice.
  • The group has enjoyed a close but ambiguous relationship with the Afghan Taliban, reports the BBC's Secunder Kermani in Islamabad.
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  • Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year, the TTP has stepped up its attacks in Pakistan, killing dozens of government soldiers in 2021.
  • The TTP was founded in 2007 in response to a Pakistani military operation clearing the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad where a radical preacher held sway. The group's founder, Baitullah Mehsud, was once considered close to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.
katyshannon

Bowe Bergdahl to Face Court-Martial on Desertion Charges - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tial-on-desertion-charges.html

bowe bergdahl desertion charges new york times US

shared by katyshannon on 15 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity.
  • According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.
  • Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.
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  • Sergeant Bergdahl has been the focus of attacks by Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign
  • Donald J. Trump, for one, has called the sergeant a “traitor” who should be executed, while Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has vowed to hold hearings if the sergeant is not punished.
  • No date has been set for Sergeant Bergdahl’s next court hearing, which will be held at Fort Bragg, the Army said. He is currently assigned to the Army’s Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, the site of his preliminary hearing in September.
  • In the interviews, he told the same story that he had described to the Army’s investigating officer, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, about why he left the outpost: He wanted to cause a crisis by hiking to another base 18 miles away that would allow him to have an audience with a senior Army commander where he could outline what he felt were serious leadership problems endangering his unit.
  • In the interviews, which were recorded by Mark Boal, the screenwriter and producer, Sergeant Bergdahl said that he realized within 20 minutes of leaving that he had done “something serious.”
  • General Abrams’s decision came just days after Sergeant Bergdahl was heard for the first time publicly explaining why he left his base, in taped interviews that were broadcast by the podcast “Serial” last week.
  • Sergeant Bergdahl told Mr. Boal that during his hike he had also decided to surveil Taliban fighters emplacing improvised explosive devices that could be used to kill American soldiers, and to turn that information over to commanders when he arrived at the other base. He said that he “was trying to prove to the world” that he was a top soldier, and that in some sense he even wanted to emulate someone like Jason Bourne, the spy-movie character.
  • Republicans have asserted that the swap would embolden the Taliban to kidnap other Americans and that it was done without the required notification of Congress. Some Republicans and members of Sergeant Bergdahl’s unit have also asserted that a half-dozen or more American troops died searching for him.
  • But in his testimony, General Dahl — who was recently promoted from major general to lieutenant general — said that no troops had died specifically searching for Sergeant Bergdahl and that no evidence was found to support claims that he intended to walk to China or India or that he was a Taliban sympathizer.
anniina03

Latest talks between Taliban and U.S. expected to last for days - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-bf30-ad313e4ec754_story.html

politics US Trump Policy

shared by anniina03 on 17 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Taliban and American negotiators are meeting in Qatar for what a Taliban spokesman called “fruitful discussions” that are expected to continue for “several days.”
  • Negotiators reached a draft deal in September that was abruptly scrapped by President Trump. That agreement would have required the withdrawal of thousands of American troops from Afghanistan in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to harbor terrorists.
  • In the years before he ran for president, Trump called for ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. Reducing American troop levels now would increase pressure on Afghan government forces, which continue to struggle to carry out operations without close U.S. support.
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  • Earlier this month a Taliban attack claimed the lives of two U.S. service members when a roadside bomb exploded as their vehicle passed.
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.
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  • 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.
rachelramirez

Taliban Gun Down 10-Year-Old Militia Hero in Afghanistan - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...an-taliban-child-soldiers.html

taliban afghanistan crisis

shared by rachelramirez on 04 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Taliban Gun Down 10-Year-Old Militia Hero in Afghanistan
  • Wasil Ahmad was 10 years old.
  • enrolling in school as a fourth grader.
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  • his commission continues to receive reports of child soldiers in the Afghan forces, particularly in the Afghan Local Police militias
  • But he also condemned the Taliban’s killing of Wasil because the boy had moved to a civilian life.
  • The Taliban claimed responsibility on their website, saying they had killed a stooge militiaman.
cjlee29

Kabul blast rocks embassy area; Taliban claims 'suicide attacks' - CNN.com - 0 views

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

shared by cjlee29 on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Taliban have claimed they had begun "suicide attacks" in the same area.
  • Meanwhile, the Taliban -- the Islamist militant group that controlled much of the country before a 2001 U.S.-led invasion -- claimed responsibility for "suicide attacks" in Kabul's Sherpoor area Friday
  • Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said "suicide attacks started on a guesthouse of invaders in the Sherpoor area of Kabul in the evening.
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
millerco

A Newly Assertive C.I.A. Expands Its Taliban Hunt in Afghanistan - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...taliban-fight-afghanistan.html

CIA history politics Us Afghanistan Mike Pompeo Taliban

shared by millerco on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The C.I.A. is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country, according to two senior American officials, the latest sign of the agency’s increasingly integral role in President Trump’s counterterrorism strategy.
  • The assignment marks a shift for the C.I.A. in the country, where it had primarily been focused on defeating Al Qaeda and helping the Afghan intelligence service.
  • The C.I.A. has traditionally been resistant to an open-ended campaign against the Taliban, the primary militant group in Afghanistan, believing it was a waste of the agency’s time and money and would put officers at greater risk as they embark more frequently on missions.
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  • Former agency officials assert that the military, with its vast resources and manpower, is better suited to conducting large-scale counterinsurgencies.
  • The C.I.A.’s paramilitary division, which is taking on the assignment, numbers only in the hundreds and is deployed all over the world.
  • In Afghanistan, the fight against the Islamic State has also diverted C.I.A. assets.
  • The expansion reflects the C.I.A.’s assertive role under its new director, Mike Pompeo, to combat insurgents around the world.
  • The agency is already poised to broaden its program of covert drone strikes into Afghanistan; it had largely been centered on the tribal regions of Pakistan, with occasional strikes in Syria and Yemen.
leilamulveny

Opinion | Leaving Afghanistan Now Would Be a Mistake - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...afghanistan-united-states.html

opinion afghanistan new york times Culture Politics US

shared by leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • William Ruger’s argument for a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan works only if we forget what we’ve learned and pretend that there will be no consequences for us and our Afghan partners.
  • A year ago, the Taliban promised the United States that it would prevent terror groups from regrouping in Afghanistan, pursue peace with the Afghan government and others, and contribute to a more stable and secure country. But the Taliban is failing to deliver on all of these, and other, promises.
  • A broad cross-section of military leaders, allies and other experienced U.S. observers agree that abandoning Afghanistan now will almost certainly undermine our security interests and allow the Taliban to accelerate political violence and spawn a civil war that will needlessly kill, shatter and displace large numbers of Afghans. United Nations reports confirm that the Taliban continues to maintain ties with Al Qaeda.
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  • And if the Taliban prevails militarily, it will surely unwind the substantial social, political and economic gains that have allowed Afghans to advance over the last 20 years.
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.
martinelligi

Opinion | On Afghanistan, Biden Ditches the Generals - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-afghanistan-war.html

afghanistan conflict

shared by martinelligi on 18 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Awash in grief and anger, we invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 to hunt down Osama bin Laden and punish the Taliban for letting him turn a maze of caves into a launching pad to attack America.
  • Even then, it was clear that our attempt to turn Afghanistan and Iraq into model democracies was not going well. Touring those countries, Gates could barely leave the small secured zones.
  • Gates told reporters he had only just learned the “eye-opener” that the Taliban were attracting so many fighters because they paid more. Generals in Afghanistan said the Taliban were giving fighters $250 to $300 a month, while the Afghan Army was paying about $120. So Gates, employing the American way of throwing more money at a problem, got the recruits a raise to $240.
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  • As vice president, Biden was a lone voice in the Oval Office objecting to the surge in Afghanistan. He told Obama, if you let them, the generals will box you in and string it ou
  • Trump was shooting from the hip but his instinct to withdraw was right. And Biden was right to ignore dire warnings about what will happen when we leave. The Taliban cannot be trusted; they’re true believers in a medieval ideology. A power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban was never going to work.
Javier E

The Taliban are showing us the dangers of personal data falling into the wrong hands | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...a-falling-into-the-wrong-hands

politics history cybersecurity privacy surveillance policy Culture

shared by Javier E on 07 Sep 21 - No Cached
  • he Taliban have openly talked about using US-made digital identity technology to hunt down Afghans who have worked with the international coalition – posing a huge threat to everyone recorded in the system. In addition, the extremists now also have access to – and control over – the digital identification systems and technologies built through international aid support.
  • These include the e-Tazkira, a biometric identity card used by Afghanistan’s National Statistics and Information Authority, which includes fingerprints, iris scans and a photograph, as well as voter registration databases. It also includes the Afghan personnel and pay system, used by the interior and defence ministries to pay the army and police.
  • This is yet another wake-up call illustrating the risks that new digital technologies can pose when they end up in the wrong hands, and for the development community.
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  • For Afghans, and for the wider community working on digital identification for development, this means that the Taliban have sensitive personal information that they have said will be used to target those they consider enemies or threats. While some Afghans are frantically trying to erase any trace of digital activity, on official databases, user deletion is not an option.
  • It reminds those working on digital identity and digital public infrastructure for development, that the benefits of ID systems – enshrined in the sustainable development goal 16.9, right to legal identity – should never be at the expense of individual safety.
  • For example, we must embrace the “data minimisation principle” – the idea that only necessary personal data should be collected and retained. We also need an approach that minimises centralised data collection, and gives more control to individuals.
  • Countries such as Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are developing digital wallet-based ID systems – that decentralise data storage and control – while the EU’s Covid vaccine passport uses a similar model.
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.
Javier E

Biden Deserves Credit, Not Blame, for Afghanistan - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...619925

biden afghanistan credit history crisis policy politics trump

shared by Javier E on 01 Sep 21 - No Cached
  • Joe Biden doesn’t “own” the mayhem on the ground right now. What we’re seeing is the culmination of 20 years of bad decisions by U.S. political and military leaders. If anything, Americans should feel proud of what the U.S. government and military have accomplished in these past two weeks. President Biden deserves credit, not blame.
  • Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan
  • Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us.
  • Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul.
  • Despite years of fighting, the administration and the military spoke with the Taliban many times to coordinate passage of those seeking to depart to the airport, to mitigate risks as best as possible, to discuss their shared interest in meeting the August 31 deadline.
lucieperloff

U.N. Seats Denied, for Now, to Afghanistan's Taliban and Myanmar's Junta - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...d-nations-taliban-myanmar.html

politics un policy

shared by lucieperloff on 02 Dec 21 - No Cached
  • U.N. Seats Denied,
  • A bid by the new Taliban government in Afghanistan and the junta ruling Myanmar to gain international recognition
  • The deferral by a powerful U.N. committee effectively denied, for now and possibly through much of 2022, attempts by the ruling authorities of Afghanistan and Myanmar, which are widely considered pariahs, to occupy seats at the United Nations.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • held a closed meeting on the applications by the Taliban and Myanmar junta to replace the ambassadors of the governments they had deposed.
  • The United States and many other nations in the 193-member organization, along with a wide array of human rights groups, have denounced the repressive actions of the Taliban and the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw.
  • The Tatmadaw overthrew the civilian government in a coup last February and imprisoned its leaders, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate.
  • That could mean the question of who represents both Afghanistan and Myanmar at the United Nations may not be resolved before the next annual General Assembly gathering in September 2022.
  • Many powerful U.N. members, including Russia and the United States, have said the militant group should be judged by its actions before any decision on recognition.
  • “make it harder for both to establish themselves as legitimate governments” abroad, but that “ultimately both are focused on securing power at home.”
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