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By Pepe Escobar

27 Aug 2021 – The horrific Kabul suicide bombing introduces an extra vector in an already incandescent situation: It aims to prove, to Afghans and to the outside world, that the nascent Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is incapable of securing the capital.As it stands, at least 103 people – 90 Afghans (including at least 28 Taliban) and 13 American servicemen – were killed and at least 1,300 injured, according to the Afghan Health Ministry.

Responsibility for the bombing came via a statement on the Telegram channel of Amaq Media, the official Islamic State (ISIS) news agency. This means it came from centralized ISIS command, even as the perpetrators were members of ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K.

Presuming to inherit the historical and cultural weight of ancient Central Asian lands that from the time of imperial Persia stretched all the way to the western Himalayas, that spin-off defiles the name of Khorasan.

The suicide bomber who carried out “the martyrdom operation near Kabul airport” was identified as one Abdul Rahman al-Logari. That would suggest he’s an Afghan, from nearby Logar province. And that would also suggest that the bombing may have been organized by an ISIS-Khorasan sleeper cell. Sophisticated electronic analysis of their communications would be able to prove it – tools that the Taliban don’t have.

The way social media-savvy ISIS chose to spin the carnage deserves careful scrutiny. The statement on Amaq Media blasts the Taliban for being “in a partnership” with the US military in the evacuation of “spies.”

It mocks the “security measures imposed by the American forces and the Taliban militia in the capital Kabul,” as its “martyr” was able to reach “a distance of no less than five meters from the American forces, who were supervising the procedures.”

So it’s clear that the newly reborn Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the former occupying power are facing the same enemy. ISIS-Khorasan comprises a bunch of fanatics, termed takfiris because they define fellow Muslims – in this case the Taliban – as “apostates.”

Founded in 2015 by emigré jihadis dispatched to southwest Pakistan, ISIS-K is a dodgy beast. Its current head is one Shahab al-Mujahir, who was a mid-level commander of the Haqqani network headquartered in North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal areas, itself a collection of disparate mujahideen and would-be jihadis under the family umbrella.

Washington branded the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization way back in 2010, and treats several members as global terrorists, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the family after the death of the founder Jalaluddin.

Up to now, Sirajuddin was the Taliban deputy leader for the eastern provinces – on the same level with Mullah Baradar, the head of the political office in Doha, who was actually released from Guantanamo in 2014.

Crucially, Sirajuddin’s uncle, Khalil Haqqani, formerly in charge of the network’s foreign financing, is now in charge of Kabul security and working as a diplomat 24/7.

The previous ISIS-K leaders were snuffed out by US airstrikes in 2015 and 2016. ISIS-K started to become a real destabilizing force in 2020 when the regrouped band attacked Kabul University, a Doctor Without Borders maternity ward, the Presidential palace and the airport.

NATO intel picked up by a UN report attributes a maximum of 2,200 jihadis to ISIS-K, split into small cells. Significantly, the absolute majority are non-Afghans: Iraqis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs.

The real danger is that ISIS-K works as a sort of magnet for all manners of disgruntled former Taliban or discombobulated regional warlords with nowhere to go.

The perfect soft target

The civilian commotion these past few days around Kabul airport was the perfect soft target for trademark ISIS carnage.

Zabihullah Mujahid – the new Taliban minister of information in Kabul, who in that capacity talks to global media every day – is the one who actually warned NATO members about an imminent ISIS-K suicide bombing. Brussels diplomats confirmed it.

In parallel, it’s no secret among intel circles in Eurasia that ISIS-K has become disproportionally more powerful since 2020 because of a transportation ratline from Idlib, in Syria, to eastern Afghanistan, informally known in spook talk as Daesh Airlines.

Moscow and Tehran, even at very high diplomatic levels, have squarely blamed the US-UK axis as the key facilitators. Even the BBC reported in late 2017 on hundreds of ISIS jihadis given safe passage out of Raqqa, and out of Syria, right in front of the Americans.

The Kabul bombing took place after two very significant events.

The first one was Mujahid’s claim during an American NBC News interview earlier this week that there is “no proof” Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11 – an argument that I had already hinted was coming in this podcast the previous week.

This means the Taliban have already started a campaign to disconnect themselves from the “terrorist” label associated with 9/11. The next step may involve arguing that the execution of 9/11 was set up in Hamburg, the operational details coordinated from two apartments in New Jersey.

Nothing to do with Afghans. And everything staying within the parameters of the official narrative – but that’s another immensely complicated story.

The Taliban will need to show that “terrorism” has been all about their lethal enemy, ISIS, and way beyond old school al-Qaeda, which they harbored up to 2001. But why should they be shy about making such claims? After all, the United States rehabilitated Jabhat Al-Nusra – or al-Qaeda in Syria – as “moderate rebels.”

The origin of ISIS is incandescent material. ISIS was spawned in Iraq prison camps, its core made of Iraqis, their military skills derived from ex-officers in Saddam’s army, a wild bunch fired way back in 2003 by Paul Bremmer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

ISIS-K duly carries the work of ISIS from Southwest Asia to the crossroads of Central and South Asia in Afghanistan. There’s no credible evidence that ISIS-K has ties with Pakistani military intel.

On the contrary: ISIS-K is loosely aligned with the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, Islamabad’s mortal enemy. TTP’s agenda has nothing to do with the moderate Mullah Baradar-led Afghan Taliban who participated in the Doha process.

SCO to the rescue

The other significant event tied to the Kabul bombing was that it took place only one day after yet another phone call between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

The Kremlin stressed the pair’s “readiness to step up efforts to combat threats of terrorism and drug trafficking coming from the territory of Afghanistan”; the “importance of establishing peace”; and “preventing the spread of instability to adjacent regions.”

And that led to the clincher: They jointly committed to “make the most of the potential” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was founded 20 years ago as the “Shanghai Five”, even before 9/11, to fight “terrorism, separatism and extremism.”

The SCO summit is next month in Dushanbe – when Iran, most certainly, will be admitted as a full member. The Kabul bombing offers the SCO the opportunity to forcefully step up.

Whichever complex tribal coalition is formed to govern the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, it will be intertwined with the full apparatus of regional economic and security cooperation, led by the three main actors of Eurasia integration: Russia, China and Iran.

The record shows Moscow has all that it takes to help the Islamic Emirate against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. After all, the Russians flushed ISIS out of all significant parts of Syria and confined them to the Idlib cauldron.

In the end, no one aside from ISIS wants a terrorized Afghanistan, just as no one wants a civil war in Afghanistan. So the order of business indicates not only an SCO-led frontal fight against existing ISIS-K terror cells in Afghanistan but also an integrated campaign to drain any potential social base for the takfiris in Central and South Asia.

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

30 August 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By M K Bhadrakumar

The Indian establishment media hyped up Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 24 in a desperate attempt to distract attention from Delhi’s abject isolation over the Afghanistan situation.

The desperation to clutch at any straw stems out of the complete breakdown of India’s Afghan policy. The government’s narrative on Afghanistan stands exposed as deeply flawed.

Putin has acceded to Modi’s request for establishing “a two-way channel for permanent consultations” on the Afghan issue. (here) Russia has always been open to such cooperation with India but Modi government prioritised India’s partnership with the US.

The spin doctors in Delhi have planted a story in the media that Putin will accord recognition to a Taliban government only in tandem with Modi. Putin also agreed, apparently, with Modi’s assessment that Pakistan will exploit the Taliban’s ascendance in Kabul to fuel terrorism in the region. read more

This is clearly a case of spin going overboard. Indian officials may have seriously embarrassed the Kremlin by spreading canards even if the motive might have been to impress an all-party meeting with the opposition on Friday.

Moscow takes a ‘de-hyphenated’ approach toward relations with India and Pakistan. In the Russian calculus, Pakistan figures as a serious partner with the potential to help advance some of Russia’s core interests in the Eurasian region in a way that India never can or will, given its quasi-alliance with the US. This is one thing.

Second, India’s policies increasingly grate against Russia’s vital interests and core concerns. India is travelling in the Quad vehicle although that platform is a template of the US’ dual containment strategy toward China and Russia.

The Russian leadership at the highest level repeatedly cautioned Delhi that Moscow is unhappy with the US’ efforts to create a bloc of countries in the ‘Indo-Pacific’ to contain China and Russia. But Russia’s concerns not only fell on deaf ears but Modi government is openly ecstatic that the Quad is getting institutionalised with regular summit level meetings.

Now, despite the troubled history of Russia’s relations with Pakistan, Islamabad has been overly keen to foster close ties with Moscow. When it comes to Afghanistan, Pakistan unhesitatingly facilitated contacts between Russian and Taliban officials, which now stand Moscow in good stead.

Whereas Delhi remains transfixed on the dated notions that the Taliban is only a Pakistani proxy, Moscow sees the Taliban as an authentic Afghan entity with a legitimate role to play in that country’s mainstream politics. Thus, engagement with the Taliban is a centrepiece of Russia’s Afghan policy today.

Suffice to say, this contradiction cannot be glossed over even if Modi were to make half a dozen phone calls to Putin. Put differently, Russia will not be deterred on its tracks because Modi government has become a laggard on the Afghan question.

Interestingly, Putin had a call with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan regarding the Afghan situation only a day after his conversation with Modi. The Russian readout shows a high degree of convergence between Moscow and Islamabad on the way forward in Afghanistan.

The readout says both leaders “stressed the importance of maintaining peace and security” in Afghanistan, “preventing violence and establishing an inter-Afghan dialogue that would facilitate the formation of an inclusive government that takes into account the interests of all segments of the population.”

Putin and Imran Khan “agreed to coordinate approaches to the Afghan issue both in bilateral and multilateral formats” and to “use the capabilities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in ensuring regional stability and the fight against terrorism and the drug threat.”

The SCO being a code word of sorts for China’s regional role, this is a significant point of reference. (The readout on Modi-Putin conversation made no such reference to the SCO role in Afghanistan.)

The Russian readout concluded by underscoring that “Russian-Pakistani contacts at various levels will be intensified.” Clearly, the Kremlin attaches high importance to cooperation with Pakistan in the period ahead. Conceivably, Afghan reconstruction and the CPEC will open up huge opportunities for Russian business and industry.

Recent Chinese commentaries have flagged that “China’s close coordination and shared interests with Russia will also play a major role in potential rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan… In the Afghanistan situation, China and Russia have maintained close communication and have shared interests in peace and development in Afghanistan, which makes the two countries the main players and partners in Afghanistan’s rebuilding efforts, in stark contrast to the US’ intention to sow chaos in the country…”

“While China can play the leading role in carrying out specific projects with its building capabilities and funding sources, Russia can offer crucial support in such projects with its massive influence in both Afghanistan and the region in ensuring stability and security in the region. Experts said that China and Russia are among the countries that most sincerely want peace and development in Afghanistan, even as the US and some other Western countries continue to seek to undermine that.” read more

Yet another Chinese commentary this week entitled Afghan reconstruction may boost de-dollarization push wrote: “As the US seeks to impose sanctions against Afghanistan and stop much-needed global assistance to the country, the already-emerging global de-dollarization push could further accelerate with countries increasingly adopting alternatives to the US dollar… If Afghanistan’s reconstruction sets the stage for the increased presence and usage of other currencies like the euro and the yuan, the dollar’s status could be further diminished. In fact, the de-dollarization trend has already emerged in a number of countries and regions including Russia and Saudi Arabia.”

The flawed Indian policy toward Afghanistan is missing the woods for the trees. Modi government doesn’t have a “big picture”. Its zero-sum mindset is obsessed with rolling back the influence of China and Pakistan, its archetypal enemies, in Afghanistan. Whereas, all serious regional states are approaching the Afghan situation with a fulsome agenda of geoeconomics, especially Russia.

Delhi pinned high hopes on the US to rev up the great game in Afghanistan with an eye on Xinjiang and Pakistan, but, as it turned out, Washington dumped Delhi and began pursuing a renewed relationship with the Taliban.

Modi’s call with Putin was a desperate attempt to mitigate India’s regional isolation. Putin understood and played his part, while sequestering Russia’s deepening ties with Pakistan.

Posted in his blog, Indianpunchline

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar introduces about himself thus: “Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

28 August 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Patrick Martin

In what the US military described as a “complex attack,” several terrorists attacked a screening checkpoint at a gate into the Kabul airport and a nearby hotel on Thursday, inflicting a horrific toll of death and destruction.

Unnamed Afghan health officials told the media that at least 60 Afghan citizens were killed and another 140 wounded. The Pentagon said that 12 US Marines were killed and 15 wounded. Many of the wounded civilians and soldiers were in critical condition and the death toll could rise significantly.

At least two suicide bombers were believed to have detonated explosive-laden vests while awaiting or actually undergoing screening by US Marines at the Abbey Gate to the airport. Another suicide bomber, or perhaps a car bomb, exploded outside the Baron Hotel about 100 yards away. At the same time, gunmen opened fire on the crowd assembled outside the gate seeking to gain admittance to the airport and board evacuation flights.

US soldiers opened fire after the bombs were detonated, in order to clear the area in front of the gate. It was not clear whether any of the casualties were the result of that gunfire.

A group calling itself Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, released a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. Allegedly a regional branch of ISIS, the group takes its title from the ancient name for the region of Central Asia of which Afghanistan is part.

The Taliban, which the Biden administration calls a “bitter enemy” of the Islamic State, denounced the attack. “The Islamic Emirate strongly condemns the bombing of civilians at Kabul airport, which took place in an area where US forces are responsible for security,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Twitter.

A Taliban official told the Washington Post that the group has “launched an investigation to know the nature of the blasts and why it happened.”

The day before the attack, the US Embassy in Kabul, which has relocated to the airport, issued an official warning to Americans to stay away from the airport unless they had a scheduled flight to board, and calling on any US citizens near the airport gates to “leave immediately,” citing the imminent danger of a terrorist attack.

The 12 Marines were the first deaths among US troops in Afghanistan since February 2020, after the Trump administration signed a peace deal with the Taliban in which the Islamic group agreed to halt attacks on US forces in return for a commitment that US troops would be withdrawn by May 1, 2021.

President Biden has repeatedly cited that agreement as compelling him to choose between completing the pullout or tearing up the deal and resuming a full-scale war in Afghanistan.

This pullout was largely completed by late July, with a formal handover of Bagram airbase and other US facilities to the Afghan government, but the regime collapsed in the face of a Taliban offensive that culminated in the fall of Kabul on August 15. US troops were then rushed back into the country, using the Kabul airport as a point of entry and as a collection point for evacuations.

The bloodbath at the airport caused political shock waves throughout official Washington. Only 15 minutes before Biden was to meet with Naftali Bennett, the new prime minister of Israel, the White House announced the meeting had been delayed until Friday, and a series of other meetings were canceled as top US national security officials dealt with the crisis.

Biden finally appeared before television cameras at 5 p.m. Washington time. He denounced the attack and said that evacuation flights would continue undeterred. Just over 100,000 people have left Afghanistan since the flights began August 14, and 7,000 more flew out of the airport on Thursday, he said.

Biden rejected calls from Republican congressmen that he drop the August 31 deadline for the removal of US troops, or that he send more troops to the airport and expand their scope of operations, either into Kabul or to seize Bagram airbase, the huge complex north of the capital city that was long the US military headquarters in Afghanistan.

He defended a policy of relying on the Taliban forces to provide security outside the US perimeter at the airfield, saying that there was no alternative, and that the Taliban and ISIS had a long history of conflict. He threatened military action against ISIS, declaring, “We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing.”

At an earlier press briefing, General Frank McKenzie, head of the US Central Command and in overall command of operations at the Kabul airport, said that terrorist attacks were expected in the remaining four days before all US forces are to be pulled out August 31.

He elaborated on the US military’s de facto alliance with the Taliban, saying US commanders were in regular contact with Islamic group, which was “actually providing the outer security of the airfield … and we will coordinate with them as they go forward.”

He said the face-to-face searches at the three gates to the airport were essential for the security of the airfield and especially of airplanes carrying out the evacuation flights. “You don’t want to let somebody on an airplane carrying a bomb, that could result in massive loss of life if an airplane were to get hit,” he explained.

Other dangers at the airport included rocket attacks, he said, noting that the US military forces “have pretty good protection against that, we have anti-rocket gun systems that have been out there, they are effective against—we feel we would be in good shape for that kind of attack to occur.”

Asked directly—by a reporter for the right-wing Wall Street Journal —whether the Taliban had allowed the bomber to go through to the US checkpoint, McKenzie replied flatly, “I don’t think there is anything to convince me that they let it happen.”

He also indicated that the evacuation flights would begin to include American troops as well and American and Afghan civilians, so that the August 31 withdrawal date would be met. The military planning was complex because it was “designed to maximize evacuees even as we begin to draw down the force on the ground. We recognize there is a need to balance the two.”

In a comment which underscored the precarious character of the US deployment at the airport, McKenzie said US military intelligence was focused on “any sign of something that might pose a threat to aircraft” because “aircraft is the only way we are going to get out of there.”

While the American media uncritically parrots the official claims that the attack was carried out by ISIS-K, the actual circumstances of the bombings are extremely murky. ISIS-K allegedly emerged in Afghanistan over the past few years as an avowed enemy of the Taliban, carrying out attacks that actually benefited the US-backed puppet government.

ISIS itself, initially a split-off from Al Qaeda, received assistance from US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar to fight against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, before it came into conflict with the US military after crossing the Iraq-Syria border and threatening the US-installed regime in Baghdad.

All of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist and militia organizations have their origins in the US-backed guerrilla war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1987, directed against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. That is where Osama bin Laden formed Al Qaeda, and, after the Soviet pullout, where the Taliban originated, backed by US ally Pakistan.

Because of these deep-rooted connections and switching alliances, it is impossible to say definitely who are the actual perpetrators of Thursday’s bombing and who are their paymasters and masterminds. But the atrocity is one more contribution to the geyser of blood and suffering produced by American imperialism in an oppressed country torn by war and foreign intervention for more than 40 years.

Originally published in WSWS.org

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27 August 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By M K Bhadrakumar

The horrific terrorist strikes in Kabul on Thursday which killed at least 12 US servicemen and dozens of civilians will lead to a higher level of cooperation between the US and the Taliban.

The commander of CENTCOM Gen. Kenneth McKenzie disclosed to journalists on Thursday that the US was already sharing information on terror threats in Afghanistan with Taliban. As he put it, “We share versions of this information with the Taliban so that they actually make searches… We think they’ve thwarted some.”

The US is finally coming round to the Russian view that the real terrorist threat in Afghanistan stems from the Islamic State and not the Taliban — and, more importantly, Taliban can be a useful partner in the fight against the ISIS.

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that a communications mechanism between Russia and the US on Afghanistan has been established, and contacts are likely to continue. This follows a phone conversation earlier this week between Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s victory march into Kabul stunned the Biden administration. The immediate task at hand was to launch the evacuation of American citizens and thousands of Afghan nationals out of Kabul airport. The daunting security operation necessitated a working relationship with the Taliban — even as, on a parallel track, the Biden Administration began turning the screws to punish the victorious insurgents by cutting off their access to funds.

On its part, the Taliban has remained largely cooperative. With the comfort level rising, President Biden deputed the CIA director William Burns to travel to Kabul on Monday to meet the Taliban’s political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. In retrospect, Burns’ mission would have been partly at least to sensitise Baradar about intelligence reports regarding an imminent terrorist threat to Kabul.

Indeed, President Biden himself said more than once in the recent days that the Taliban is an inveterate enemy of the ISIS — and vice versa. Biden probably signalled to the Taliban about a limited convergence of interests in working together.

Already, in remarks to the press in Washington on August 25, Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that when it came to dealing with the Taliban government, America’s self-interests came first. In Blinken’s words, “Going forward, we will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests, and does it help us advance them or not.”

Blinken added, “As a practical matter, it advances our interests” to engage with the Taliban, saying that an Afghan government that keeps its commitments to renouncing terrorism, protecting human rights, and allowing people to leave is “a government we can work with.”

Thus, it is to be expected that the terrorist attacks in Kabul will prompt a major rethink in Washington’s approach to the Taliban. What direction it will take remains to be seen. But at any rate, a deeper engagement with the Taliban has become a necessity for Washington for the simple reason that they are the compelling reality in Kabul and they control almost the entire Afghanistan — and happen to be implacably opposed to the ISIS and sundry other terrorist groups.

Biden’s message was loud and clear when he threatened the ISIS from the White House yesterday: “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” It means that ostracisation of the Taliban government in Kabul is no longer a viable option for the Biden Administration.

At issue will be the terms of engagement. To be sure, the US will need a strong intelligence presence in Kabul. Thus, the reopening of the US embassy in Kabul may become unavoidable sooner rather than later.

The Taliban are pragmatic. They’ll be positive toward the US overtures for engagement, as it can open the pathway for recognition of their government, enhanced international legitimacy, and, most important, access to blocked funds, and resumption of assistance by the international financial institutions such as World Bank and IMF as well as the UN agencies.

An enhanced level of relationship with the US will go a long way to help the Taliban to consolidate its government and focus on governance. Clearly, there isn’t going to be space for any anti-Taliban resistance movement within Afghanistan. The Panjshiris will be smart enough to sense this.

Suffice to say, the paradox is that the horrific events in Kabul on Thursday may turn out to be a political windfall for the Taliban. Afghanistan will remain a frontline state for Washington for a foreseeable future in terms of the potential threats to the US national security from terrorist groups.

And counterterrorism will be the leitmotif of the new relationship between the US and Taliban. Of course, the quality of that relationship will depend increasingly on how far the Taliban government is receptive to the US expectations and demands on the security front.

The human rights issues will inevitably get relegated to the back burner. Already, there is grudging acceptance in the West that a democratic transformation of Afghanistan is not to be expected and that prescriptive western values have few takers in that country.

The question henceforth will be not whether Taliban has changed from the 1990s but rather how much it is willing to change. Taliban’s strategic autonomy as a manifestation of political Islam will be bolstered. The best hope would be that as time passes, and Taliban gathers experience in statecraft, it may assume some characteristics of the Muslim Brotherhood with whose ideologues based in Doha it would have had chance encounters in the recent years.

However, for Biden himself, the Afghan debacle has seen a dramatic decrease in his approval rating from voters. As of now, polls show that a majority of Americans would prefer Biden to sit out the 2024 White House run. Meanwhile, any serious reverse in the mid-term elections next year would mean loss of control over Congress, which could cripple the presidency.

There is a serious political crisis at home that Biden has to grapple with. To be sure, the recent events in Afghanistan will seriously affect the Biden administration’s attention span and capability to counter the challenge from China and Russia on the global stage. In fact, the Iran nuclear issue looms large as a huge challenge in immediate terms.

America’s credentials to lead its transatlantic allies are already under questioning. The G7 Leaders meeting on Tuesday exposed the fault lines. Two days later, the limits to US power were on full display in Kabul.

Originally published in Indian Punchline

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar introduces about himself thus: “Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

27 August 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By M Adil Khan

After 20 years of US/NATO/Afghan Puppet Army’s brutal and illegal occupation of Afghanistan, Kabul, the capital city finally fell on August 15, 2021, at the hands of the reclusive but a defiant new Taliban.

The Fall has turned all military calculus upside down – world’s mightiest have been defeated by the world’s smallest, a jungle army, the new Taliban!

Pundits have put down the cause of the defeat to – new Taliban’s undeterred fighting spirit and their superior local level battle tactic, which reported to been bolstered further by the support of the ordinary Afghans who were angry with the US/NATO/Afghan Puppet Army’s indiscriminate bombings, murder of civilians, kidnappings and rapes and corruption which also contributed to their low morale and depleted occupying Army’s willingness to fight, triggering collapse.

However, soon the US/NATO/Afghan Puppet Army retreated, scenes of chaos at the Kabul’s Hamid Karzai airport of fleeing troops, expatriates and their local collaborators filled the TV screens and the print media. At the same time, hegemon’s corporate media worked overtime and went into their usual troves, predicting dooms day scenario – dangers of imminent “terrorism”, “human rights violence”, “loss of democracy and freedom”, “erosion of rights of women” etc. etc. in the ensuing new Taliban-run Afghanistan, while conveniently forgetting that “in 2019, the U.S. and Afghan forces killed more civilians than the Taliban. Or that U.S. and Afghan forces are under investigation by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including rape and torture. Or that a staggering number of deaths and injuries have been inflicted by U.S. drone operations and airstrikes throughout the region. Or that the National Security Agency had been spying on virtually every Afghan with a cell phone.”

Let us not waste our time on West’s morality depraved corporate media rants. Instead, let us pay attention to the new Taliban and their thoughts and ideas for a new Afghanistan.

‘Inclusive Islamic Governance System’

The new Taliban have declared general amnesty and announced that inclusion and rebuilding Afghanistan and not revenge is their main mission. These ideas are a welcome shift. However, the new Taliban leadership are yet to ensure that these ideas have reached the rank-and-file Taliban, as well.

The new Taliban have also indicated that they would be guided by Shariah and at the same time they have also explicitly rejected ‘democracy’ especially West’s representative democracy as their governing model.

They have announced that they would govern through some sort of an Inclusive Islamic Governance System (IIGS).

However, at this stage, the new Taliban have not quite defined in concrete terms the key tenets of the proposed IIGS nor have they explained whether their notion of ‘inclusion’ is limited to ethnic minorities only; or whether the proposed system would go beyond ethnicity and include religious, class and gender dimensions of inclusion and furthermore, whether the Sharia Law, their guiding tenet of governance would be conducive to and/or compatible with the internationally agreed human rights stipulations especially the rights of women?

These are important questions and soon the new Taliban clarify these better it is.

Furthermore, as the new Taliban is not trained in legislative processes of governance, situating the proposed IIGS within the legislative processes both at central and at local levels would be challenging but not insurmountable.

Why, no ‘democracy’?

As mentioned before, the new Taliban have been quite explicit in rejecting ‘representative democracy’. Their aversion to the representative democracy seems to have come from the US/NATO’s application of the system in Afghanistan during 2001-2020 occupation period – the experience has been anything but inspiring.

The model deepened divisions among different ethnic groups, made election fraud a routine affair and in the process, institutionalised, in the name of democracy, a system that consistently produced governments that were outright plunderers, looters and killers.

Indeed, West’s model of democracy, the representative democracy, does not seem to have worked in many parts of the world, either. For example, in countries that are ethnically, and religiously diverse, the model: (i) has promoted if not legitimised majoritarian sectarianism and racism, contributing to suppression, oppression, marginalization and brutalization of the minorities (as in India, Israel); (ii) in countries where election fraud occur with impunity, and where governments pass laws to legalise suppression and repression of dissents, has produced ‘electoral autocracy’ (as in several Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American and African countries) and (iii) yet in others, the representative multi-party democracy has divided people along ethnic/tribal affiliations, fomenting conflict, deprivations and tensions in these countries (as in many African countries).

Therefore, representative democracy’s claim that it enhances representation, empowers citizens, and ensures their participation in decision-making processes of the state equitably is not true, not in every situation.

This is not to say that democracy is not important. On the contrary, democracy is important, but the concept should be treated more as a means and not an end, meaning that operational arrangements of democracy should be linked to the social and cultural context of a society and secondly, designed to suit a country’s desired outcomes and not the other way round. For example, China, a country that has lifted 1.0 billion people out of poverty in just three decades, has designed their governance and decision-making processes such that it is tied to the fixed objective of guaranteeing basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, health, education, jobs etc.) of all its citizens, equitably and accountably and the processes of decision-making have been designed accordingly – voices of cross-section of citizens have been incorporated into the policy and budgetary processes of the state. Chinese call their system, ‘participatory democracy’.

In other words, when it comes to democracy, goals must drive the processes and each country must choose its own model of democracy to suit its own situation. Just the way one-size shoes do not fit all, one model of democracy may not suit all conditions – after all, “democracy is not Coco Cola that it must taste same everywhere”.

Afghanistan which is a multi-ethnic country where majoritarian representative democracy has the risk of excluding the minorities from the legislative processes is certainly not the best model of democracy to adopt.

Inclusive democracy is key to Afghanistan’s equitable and accountable development and more importantly, in promoting unity and stability.

Therefore, new Taliban’s idea of an inclusive governance process where citizens would be empowered to engage cross-sectionally in shaping policies is indeed innovative. Hopefully, they would also incorporate within the IIGS, Islam’s key underpinning in governance, “Insaaf” (justness), to guide the processes.

However, implementation of the IIGS in a half literate country like Afghanistan where ethnic relations are dictated more by rivalry than by mutual trust may not be easy. The new Talban must use great deal of patience, empathy, and organizational skills to implement their proposed new system.

Women

Another issue that worries the West is Taliban’s misogynist treatment of women and given its past record, the concern is legitimate.

The old Taliban confined women in homes, curtailed their rights and treated them with disrespect and cruelty and stifled their access to education and jobs.

The new Taliban seems to harbour a different attitude towards women. They have announced that women would be allowed to pursue education and jobs but “they would have to conduct themselves within the tenets of Sharia”. However, the new Taliban have not specified what this means though Mr. Balkhi, foreign spokesperson of current Taliban has stated that “Islamic law is known to everyone and there are no ambiguities about the rights of women…. hopefully during the consultations there will be clarifications about what those rights are.”

It is important that the proposed ‘open consultations’ take place soon and rights of women are articulated and upheld fully.

Economy

Afghanistan’s economy is in shambles. It is worse than what it used to be in mid-eighties. Currently, close to 50% Afghans live in poverty and its GDP growth rate stands at -0.48% and with “…the US refusing to hand over Kabul’s dollar reserves, the Afghan currency is likely to collapse in value, sparking a price spiral”.

In other words, the situation is dire, a scenario that no one let alone the cash-strapped inexperienced new Taliban would like to be confronted with.

Furthermore, threats of rebellion and international meddling and fomenting of factional strife within Afghanistan loom large. Recent IS bombing in Kabul airport that killed and injured many is a reminder that violence in Afghanistan is far from over. On the contrary, the United States, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Russia, and Uzbekistan have their own agenda in Afghanistan, and each wants their own slice of the cake and therefore, chances of Afghanistan returning to peace remains as elusive as ever.

Hopefully good sense would prevail, and all parties would appreciate that a violent Afghanistan is bad for everyone.

Going forward

Although the new Taliban looks different and that their ideas are noble, neither time nor experience is on their side.

Moreover, the new Taliban would have to appreciate that if they are to function as a part of the international community and not as a pariah state, they will need to incorporate within the proposed Inclusive Islamic Governance System the universally agreed human rights stipulations including the rights of women meaning that the new administration would have to do great deal of consensus building within its own ranks and the good news is that the new Taliban leadership are aware of this and taking necessary steps to build consensus, within.

Clearly, the path ahead is challenging and if the recent rise of IS and their suicide attacks in Kabul airport and for that matter the US/NATO coalition’s 20-year long fight are any guide, bringing peace and abating violence in this fractious and violent nation is anything but easy.

Therefore, the new Taliban need to be patient and cautious and given the cultural sensitivities and mutual suspicion that dictate this war-torn country’s social relations, they would need to invest huge in trust building and more importantly, initiate changes incrementally and not hurry.

The international community especially US and Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours need to be aware of these difficulties and be sensitive. Alarmingly, there are war mongers in the US who argue that Mr. Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces “…destroyed an affordable status quo that could have lasted indefinitely at a minimum cost in blood and treasure” without explaining to what effect. This is imperialistic arrogance at its worst.

Let this be known that it is in the best interest of all parties that the international community deal with the new Taliban with respect and come forward and provide economic, security and humanitarian assistance urgently and help building institutions to operationalize the new Taliban’s proposed inclusive Islamic governance system and, in the process, bring peace and prosperity in the new Afghanistan for, the alternative is too horrific to fathom.

Afghans have suffered much too long, they deserve better!

M Adil Khan is an academic and former senior policy manager of the UN

27 August 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

The decision by the African Union Commission, on July 22, to grant Israel observer status membership in the AU was the culmination of years of relentless Israeli efforts aimed at co-opting Africa’s largest political institution. Why is Israel so keen on penetrating Africa? What made African countries finally succumb to Israeli pressure and lobbying?

To answer the above questions, one has to appreciate the new Great Game under way in many parts of the world, especially in Africa, which has always been significant to Israel’s geopolitical designs. Starting in the early 1950s to the mid-70s, Israel’s Africa network was in constant expansion. The 1973 war, however, brought that affinity to an abrupt end.

What Changed Africa

Ghana, in West Africa, officially recognized Israel in 1956, just eight years after Israel was established atop the ruins of historic Palestine. What seemed like an odd decision at the time – considering Africa’s history of western colonialism and anti-colonial struggles – ushered in a new era of African-Israeli relations. By the early 1970s, Israel had established a strong position for itself on the continent. On the eve of the 1973 Israeli-Arab war, Israel had full diplomatic ties with 33 African countries.

“The October War”, however, presented many African countries with a stark choice: siding with Israel – a country born out of Western colonial intrigues – or the Arabs, who are connected to Africa through historical, political, economic, cultural and religious bonds. Most African countries opted for the latter choice. One after the other, African countries began severing their ties with Israel. Soon enough, no African state, other than Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland, had official diplomatic relations with Israel.

Then, the continent’s solidarity with Palestine went even further. The Organization of African Unity – the precursor to the African Union – in its 12th ordinary session held in Kampala in 1975, became the first international body to recognize, on a large scale, the inherent racism in Israel’s Zionist ideology by adopting Resolution 77 (XII). This very Resolution was cited in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted in November of that same year, which determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. Resolution 3379 remained in effect until it was revoked by the Assembly under intense American pressure in 1991.

Since Israel remained committed to that same Zionist, racist ideology of yesteryears, the only rational conclusion is that it was Africa, not Israel, that changed. But why?

First, the collapse of the Soviet Union. That seismic event resulted in the subsequent isolation of pro-Soviet African countries which, for years, stood as the vanguard against American, Western and, by extension, Israeli expansionism and interests on the continent.

Second, the collapse of the unified Arab front on Palestine. That front has historically served as the moral and political frame of reference for the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel sentiments in Africa. This started with the Egyptian government’s signing of the Camp David Agreement, in 1978-79 and, later, the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian leadership and Israel, in 1993.

Covert and overt normalization between Arab countries and Israel continued unabated over the last three decades, resulting in the extension of diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab countries, including African-Arab countries, like Sudan and Morocco. Other Muslim-majority African countries also joined the normalization efforts. They include Chad, Mali and others.

Third, the ‘scramble for Africa’ was renewed with a vengeance. The neocolonial return to Africa brought back many of the same usual suspects – Western countries, which are, once more, realizing the untapped potential of Africa in terms of markets, cheap labor and resources. A driving force for Western re-involvement in Africa is the rise of China as a global superpower with keen interests in investing in Africa’s dilapidated infrastructure. Whenever economic competition is found, military hardware is sure to follow. Now several Western militaries are openly operating in Africa under various guises – France in Mali and the Sahel region, the US’ many operations through US Africa Command (AFRICOM), and others.

Tellingly, Washington does not only serve as Israel’s benefactor in Palestine and the Middle East, but worldwide as well, and Israel is willing to go to any length to exploit the massive leverage it holds over the US government. This stifling paradigm, which has been at work in the Middle East region for decades, is also at work throughout Africa. For example, last year the US administration agreed to remove Sudan from the state-sponsored terror list in exchange for Khartoum’s normalization with Israel. In truth, Sudan is not the only country that understands – and is willing to engage in – this kind of ‘pragmatic’ – read under-handed – political barter. Others also have learned to play the game well. Indeed, by voting to admit Israel to the AU, some African governments expect a return on their political investment, a return that will be exacted from Washington, not from Tel Aviv.

Unfortunately, albeit expectedly, as Africa’s normalization with Israel grew, Palestine became increasingly a marginal issue on the agendas of many African governments, who are far more invested in realpolitik – or simply remaining on Washington’s good side – than honoring the anti-colonial legacies of their nations.

Netanyahu the Conqueror

However, there was another driving force behind Israel’s decision to ‘return’ to Africa than just political opportunism and economic exploitation. Successive events have made it clear that Washington is retreating from the Middle East and that the region was no longer a top priority for the dwindling American empire. For the US, China’s decisive moves to assert its power and influence in Asia are largely responsible for the American rethink. The 2012 US withdrawal from Iraq, its ‘leadership from behind’ in Libya, its non-committal policy in Syria, among others, were all indicators pointing to the inescapable fact that Israel could no longer count on the blind and unconditional American support alone. Thus, the constant search for new allies began.

For the first time in decades, Israel began confronting its prolonged isolation at the UNGA. America’s vetoes at the UN Security Council may have shielded Israel from accountability to its military occupation and war crimes; but US vetoes were hardly enough to give Israel the legitimacy that it has long coveted. In a recent conversation with former UN human rights envoy, Richard Falk, the Princeton Professor Emeritus explained to me that, despite Israel’s ability to escape punishment, it is rapidly losing what he refers to as the ‘legitimacy war’.

Palestine, according to Falk, continues to win that war, one that can only be achieved through real, grassroots global solidarity. It is precisely this factor that explains Israel’s keen interest in transferring the battlefield to Africa and other parts of the Global South.

On July 5, 2016, then Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, kick-started Israel’s own ‘scramble for Africa’ with a visit to Kenya, which was described as historic by the Israeli media. Indeed, it was the first visit by an Israeli prime minister in the last 50 years. After spending some time in Nairobi, where he attended the Israel-Kenya Economic Forum alongside hundreds of Israeli and Kenyan business leaders, he moved on to Uganda, where he met leaders from other African countries including South Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Within the same month, Israel announced the renewal of diplomatic ties between Israel and Guinea.

The new Israeli strategy flowed from there. More high-level visits to Africa and triumphant announcements about new joint economic ventures and investments followed. In June 2017, Netanyahu took part in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), held in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. There, he went as far as rewriting history.

“Africa and Israel share a natural affinity,” Netanyahu claimed in his speech. “We have, in many ways, similar histories. Your nations toiled under foreign rule. You experienced horrific wars and slaughters. This is very much our history.” With these words, Netanyahu attempted, not only to hide Israel’s colonial intentions, but also rob Palestinians of their own history.

Moreover, the Israeli leader had hoped to crown his political and economic achievements with the Israel-Africa Summit, an event that was meant to officially welcome Israel, not to a specific African regional alliance, but to the whole of Africa. However, in September 2017, the organizers of the event decided to indefinitely postpone it, after it was confirmed to be taking place in Lome, capital of Togo, on October 23-27 of that same year. What was seen by Israeli leaders as a temporary setback was the result of intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying of several African and Arab countries, including South Africa and Algeria.

Premature ‘Victory’

Ultimately, it was a mere temporary setback. The admission of Israel into the 55-member African bloc in July is considered by Israeli officials and media pundits as a major political victory, especially as Tel Aviv has been laboring to achieve this status since 2002. At the time, many obstacles stood in the way, like the strong objection raised by Libya under the leadership of Muammar Ghaddafi and the insistence of Algeria that Africa must remain committed to its anti-Zionist ideals, and so on. However, one after the other, these obstacles were removed or marginalized.

In a recent statement, Israel’s new Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid, celebrated Israel’s Africa membership as an “important part of strengthening the fabric of Israel’s foreign relations”. According to Lapid, the exclusion of Israel from the AU was an “anomaly that existed for almost two decades”. Of course, not all African countries agree with Lapid’s convenient logic.

According to TRT news, citing Algerian media, 17 African countries, including Zimbabwe, Algeria and Liberia, have objected to Israel’s admission to the Union. In a separate statement, South Africa expressed outrage at the decision, describing the “unjust and unwarranted decision of the AU Commission to grant Israel observer status in the African Union” as “appalling”. For his part, Algerian Foreign Minister, Ramtane Lamamra, said that his country will “not stand idly by in front of this step taken by Israel and the African Union without consulting the member states.”

Despite Israel’s sense of triumphalism, it seems that the fight for Africa is still raging, a battle of politics, ideology and economic interests that is likely to continue unabated for years to come. However, for Palestinians and their supporters to have a chance at winning this battle, they must understand the nature of the Israeli strategy through which Israel depicts itself to various African countries as the savior, bestowing favors and introducing new technologies to combat real, tangible problems. Being more technologically advanced as compared to many African countries, Israel is able to offer its superior ‘security’, IT and irrigation technologies to African states in exchange for diplomatic ties, support at the UNGA and lucrative investments.

Consequently, Palestine’s Africa dichotomy rests partly on the fact that African solidarity with Palestine has historically been placed within the larger political framework of mutual African-Arab solidarity. Yet, with official Arab solidarity with Palestine now weakening, Palestinians are forced to think outside this traditional box, so that they may build direct solidarity with African nations as Palestinians, without necessarily merging their national aspirations with the larger, now fragmented, Arab body politic.

While such a task is daunting, it is also promising, as Palestinians now have the opportunity to build bridges of support and mutual solidarity in Africa through direct contacts, where they serve as their own ambassadors. Obviously, Palestine has much to gain, but also much to offer Africa. Palestinian doctors, engineers, civil defense and frontline workers, educationists, intellectuals and artists are some of the most highly qualified and accomplished in the Middle East. True, they have much to learn from their African peers, but also have much to give.

Unlike persisting stereotypes, many African universities, organizations and cultural centers serve as vibrant intellectual hubs. African thinkers, philosophers, writers, journalists, artists and athletes are some of the most articulate, empowered and accomplished in the world. Any pro-Palestine strategy in Africa should keep these African treasures in mind as a way of engaging, not only with individuals but with whole societies.

Israeli media reported extensively and proudly about Israel’s admission to the AU. The celebrations, however, might also be premature, for Africa is not a group of self-seeking leaders bestowing political favors in exchange for meager returns. Africa is also the heart of the most powerful anti-colonial trends the world has ever known. A continent of this size, complexity, and proud history cannot be written off as if a mere ‘prize’ to be won or lost by Israel and its neocolonial friends.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

24 August 2021

Source: countercurrents.org

By John Pilger

As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.

In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.

Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup”. The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honour the new flag …the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”

The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned”. Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a programme of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

Under the monarchy, life expectancy was thirty-five; one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.

For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants.

So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:

“Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.”

For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the “puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy “Soviet backed”, as the American and British press claimed at the time.

President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: “We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”

In the same administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, a Polish émigré and fanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on American presidents expired only with his death in 2017.

On 3 July 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorised a $500 million “covert action” programme to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.

The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history,Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as “Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:

“Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.”

Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.

The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilise and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.

In August, 1979, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”

Read again the words above I have italicised. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly. The US was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.

Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as “freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin eventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.

Calling themselves the Northern Alliance, the mujahedin were dominated by war lords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorised rural women. The Taliban were an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.

In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. “Marina” of RAWA told me, “We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”

In 1996, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The President, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.

“I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, “upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”

The Viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.

“This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”

On Afghanistan, he added this:

“We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”

Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office:

“The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering … “

Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery “we” in the West rarely recognise as such.

In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.

Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.

In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.

An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped a Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.

Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with fifteen notes: a total of 15 dollars. “Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distance themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a US oil company consortium.

In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the US and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s Vice-President.

In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.

“Do you have any regrets?” I asked.

“Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”

When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of “our protection”, isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?

*

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John Pilger’s 2003 film, Breaking the Silence, is available to view at http://johnpilger.com/videos/breaking-the-silence-truth-and-lies-in-the-war-on-terror.

25 August 2021

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Ahmad Mustakim Zulkifli

A prominent Malaysia-based Afghan Muslim scholar has advised Putrajaya to practise cautious optimism amid mixed signals from the recent return of the Taliban in Kabul, some 20 years after the ulta-purist religious movement was ousted in the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

“Malaysia will be interested in trade relations but political developments will take time. However, an early show of interest in recognition will make a big favourable impact on the Taliban,” Hashim Kamali, who heads the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Kuala Lumpur, told MalaysiaNow.

He was asked for a response on the return of what many have called the Taliban 2.0, as speeches from the group’s top leaders suggest that they are shedding some of the controversial interpretations of Islam that characterised their rule in the late 1990s.

At the peak of their power, the Taliban imposed tough restrictions on women including a ban on their formal education.

In 2001, months before they were ousted by US forces who accused them of protecting Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban regime earned international condemnation for destroying the historic Buddhas of Bamiyan, the sixth-century statues in central Afghanistan, on the assertion that retaining the monuments was a form of idol worship and un-Islamic.

The Taliban were the product of the post-Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, made up of students (talib) educated in traditional religious schools and whose pioneers were involved in the 10-year armed struggle against Soviet forces.

Despite statements indicating that the current group of Taliban leaders could be “gentler” and more moderate, there is little expectation that they have changed in their interpretation of the shariah.

Kamali, who was part of the Constitution Review Commission of Afghanistan in 2003 and a consultant appointed by the United Nations on constitutional reforms in the country, said while the world could expect differences in terms of approach and administration, the group’s basic ideology, especially on Islam and shariah, remained the same.

He said statements from top leaders only indicated that the group was out to seek international legitimacy of its rule.

“There are signs that the Taliban will put in place a civilian administration and not the mullas, so to speak,” he added, pointing to an assurance that all government functionaries would be retained as well as the Taliban’s offer of a general amnesty.

Kamali said while some semblance of normalcy and stability would be welcomed by Afghans, many were apprehensive at the memory of the Taliban’s past atrocities, especially their “killing sprees in recent months and years”, he added.

Herizal Hazri, who heads think tank Institute of Strategic and International Studies, agreed, saying the Taliban would need international recognition to remain in power.

“They must also realise that they need to join the world’s economy if they want to develop the country and maintain the image that they can uplift the living standard of Afghans.”

Kamali meanwhile does not think that the rise of the Taliban will have any effect on Malaysia’s Islamic movements, despite some voices seen as sympathetic towards the group.

“The Taliban do not seem to have had close ties with the Islamists groups of Malaysia. Malaysia is fairly secure with a strong government that is alert to such developments,” said Kamali, an expert on Islamic jurisprudence who has written close to 50 books.

For Herizal, the Covid-19 pandemic would minimise problems posed by extremist groups, although he said the possibility of radical ideologies gaining a foothold in the country should not be ruled out.

He said Malaysia should not rush into recognising the Taliban administration until all negotiations involving the group are over.

23 August 2021

Source: www.malaysianow.com

By Edward Snowden

18 Aug 2021 – The last week has been hard for me, and yet I can only imagine what this week has felt like, and what the future will bring, for the people—the peoples—of Afghanistan.

Nearly 20 years after it was launched in the wake of 9/11, the long war in Afghanistan, one of the great cruelties of my generation, has unexpectedly reached its expectedly tragic conclusion.

I am certainly not sad to see it go, but it’s difficult to avoid a profound sense of regret at the error of it all. When I recently spoke with Daniel Ellsberg, he pointed out that neither of us is entirely a pacifist. Dan and I agree, and are on-record agreeing, that certain wars are wrong, but if one can conceive of a “just” war—or at least a less-injust war—there are wrong ways to fight it, and particularly wrong ways to finish it. There are also, come to think of it, wrong ways to begin wars too—namely refusing to declare them.

The war in Afghanistan was not one of those wars—it was not justifiable. It was, is, and forever will be wrong, which means leaving is the right decision.

Yet there was a time when I felt like picking Afghanistan up by its ankles and shaking it until all the terrorists fell out, like scorpions from a boot. Most Americans felt that way, in the autumn of 2001, and I was no different. I was 18 years old and almost competitively wrong about everything. I actually believed most of what I heard on TV from “official sources”—not everything I heard, but enough. I trusted my government, at least I trusted it to know more about Afghanistan than I did, and the government told me this: that Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban were harboring al-Qaeda, and that both the Taliban and al-Qaeda hated us for our freedoms. My youthful righteousness was manipulated by collaborators in the media until it burned all the red, white, and blue of a flame—a flame that could scorch, but also a flame that could serve as a beacon of light in the darkness.

This was why I signed up: to defeat the “enemies of freedom,” or to make the enemy unto us… fair, equitable, democratic. The motto of the United States Army’s Special Forces was to my younger self a hook so perfectly baited as to be irresistable: De Oppresso Liber—“To Free the Oppressed.”

Shamefully, it took me a very long time, peering down from my technocratic perch at the CIA and later the NSA, to apprehend the nature of my work: transforming the internet—a liberating, democratizing tool—into an architecture of oppression. But before I took that step toward clarity, I struggled to apprehend the nature of our violence in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq.

“You are either with us or you are against us in the fight against terror,” said Bush the Younger. But he never defined who, exactly, was the enemy. If you look beyond the label, terrorists are just murderers with a political motive: mere criminals. So were our enemies states, or were they criminal groups within those states? And were those criminal groups subject to direction by the states in which they operated, or to other states, and how? And if we dealt with criminals in the way we dealt with states, does that not unduly elevate them to something close to a peer? In substituting a military action for a police action, are we not setting a dangerous precedent for the future? These questions spread like a net—a dragnet, and caught up everyone.

I’m not trying to say this realization was immediate. It was not. It was a process, beset by rationalization—the reflex of a mind desperate to escape an inevitably dark denouement. Precisely because I had intended to do good, it was difficult to accept the possibility that I had become involved in something bad—perhaps even evil.

Intentions are what paved the roads to Kabul, a hell of our own making.

But that might be the charitable explanation. Because for all the talk of democratizing Afghanistan, it was never clear that it was Afghanistan we were fighting. Weren’t we fighting the Taliban? Or Al-Qaeda? And weren’t they backed by Pakistan? And what about Saudi Arabia?

Ultimately, we Americans were fighting ourselves, or our own governance, as we came to understand how the agony of 9/11 had been politicized. Of all the great cliches to be revived by this new lost war—“Afghanistan: the grave of empires,” “never get involved in a land war in Asia”—the most banal was also the truest: We are our own worst enemies.

Just hours before I sat down to draft this, the President of the United States gave a speech in which he tried to defend the honor of this war—a defense that is frankly offensive, and that I think most offends the families of the injured and the dead. President Biden then went on to assert that our erstwhile ally, Osama bin Laden, had been brought to justice—our noble lie. He could have been brought to justice, but we shot him instead.

He wasn’t even in Afghanistan.

If there are any lessons to be learned from this tragic sequel to Saigon, you can be assured, we will not learn them. We will just sit by as the people of Afghanistan—many of whom were as deluded by American promises as Americans themselves—cling to hopes and cling to planes and fall, lost to the desert of theocratic rule. Some will say, they didn’t fight! They get what they deserve! To which I say, “And what do we deserve?”

A fractious country comprised of warring tribes, unable to form an inclusive whole; unable to wade beyond shallow differences in sect and identity in order to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, and so they perish—in the span of a breath—without ever reaching the promised shore.

Today, the country this describes is Afghanistan. Tomorrow, the country this describes might be my own.

Born in North Carolina in 1983 Edward Snowden, former CIA officer and whistleblower, worked for the National Security Agency through subcontractor Booz Allen in the NSA’s Oahu (Honolulu) office, where he began collecting top-secret documents regarding NSA surveillance practices that he found disturbing.

23 August 2021

Source: www.transcend.org

By Glenn Greenwald

16 Aug 2021 – “The Taliban regime is coming to an end,” announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today. Five months later, Bush vowed: “In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. . . . We will stay until the mission is done.” Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced: “Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. . . . The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan.”

For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country’s longest war was the same. America is winning. The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration. The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country.

President George W. Bush announces end of Taliban, Dec. 12, 2021

Just five weeks ago, on July 8, President Biden stood in the East Room of the White House and insisted that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not inevitable because, while their willingness to do so might be in doubt, “the Afghan government and leadership . . . clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place.” Biden then vehemently denied the accuracy of a reporter’s assertion that “your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.” Biden snapped: “That is not true. They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.”

Biden continued his assurances by insisting that “the likelihood there’s going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.” He went further: “the likelihood that there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” And then, in an exchange that will likely assume historic importance in terms of its sheer falsity from a presidential podium, Biden issued this decree:

Q. Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, with some people feeling —

THE PRESIDENT: None whatsoever. Zero. What you had is — you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken.

The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.

When asked about the Taliban being stronger than ever after twenty years of U.S. warfare there, Biden claimed: “Relative to the training and capacity of the [Afghan National Security Forces} and the training of the federal police, they’re not even close in terms of their capacity.” On July 21 — just three weeks ago — Gen. Mark Milley, Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that “there’s a possibility of a complete Taliban takeover, or the possibility of any number of other scenario,” yet insisted: “the Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country.”

President Biden dismissing likelihood of Taliban takeover, July 8, 2021

Similar assurances have been given by the U.S. Government and military leadership to the American people since the start of the war. “Are we losing this war?,” Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, asked rhetorically in a news briefing from Afghanistan in 2008, answering it this way: “Absolutely no way. Can the enemy win it? Absolutely no way.” On September 4, 2013, then-Lt. Gen. Milley — now Biden’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — complained that the media was not giving enough credit to the progress they had made in building up the Afghan national security forces: “This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day,” Gen. Milley insisted.

None of this was true. It was always a lie, designed first to justify the U.S’s endless occupation of that country and, then, once the U.S. was poised to withdraw, to concoct a pleasing fairy tale about why the prior twenty years were not, at best, an utter waste. That these claims were false cannot be reasonably disputed as the world watches the Taliban take over all of Afghanistan as if the vaunted “Afghan national security forces” were china dolls using paper weapons. But how do we know that these statements made over the course of two decades were actual lies rather than just wildly wrong claims delivered with sincerity?

To begin with, we have seen these tactics from U.S. officials — lying to the American public about wars to justify both their initiation and continuation — over and over. The Vietnam War, like the Iraq War, was begun with a complete fabrication disseminated by the intelligence community and endorsed by corporate media outlets: that the North Vietnamese had launched an unprovoked attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In 2011, President Obama, who ultimately ignored a Congressional vote against authorization of his involvement in the war in Libya to topple Muammar Qaddafi, justified the NATO war by denying that regime change was the goal: “our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives . . . broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” Even as Obama issued those false assurances, The New York Times reported that “the American military has been carrying out an expansive and increasingly potent air campaign to compel the Libyan Army to turn against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.”

Just as they did for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. political and military leaders lied for years to the American public about the prospects for winning in Vietnam. On June 13, 1971, The New York Times published reports about thousands of pages of top secret documents from military planners that came to be known as “The Pentagon Papers.” Provided by former RAND official Daniel Ellsberg, who said he could not in good conscience allow official lies about the Vietnam War to continue, the documents revealed that U.S. officials in secret were far more pessimistic about the prospects for defeating the North Vietnamese than their boastful public statements suggested. In 2021, The New York Times recalled some of the lies that were demonstrated by that archive on the 50th Anniversary of its publication:

Brandishing a captured Chinese machine gun, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara appeared at a televised news conference in the spring of 1965. The United States had just sent its first combat troops to South Vietnam, and the new push, he boasted, was further wearing down the beleaguered Vietcong.

“In the past four and one-half years, the Vietcong, the Communists, have lost 89,000 men,” he said. “You can see the heavy drain.”

That was a lie. From confidential reports, McNamara knew the situation was “bad and deteriorating” in the South. “The VC have the initiative,” the information said. “Defeatism is gaining among the rural population, somewhat in the cities, and even among the soldiers.”

Lies like McNamara’s were the rule, not the exception, throughout America’s involvement in Vietnam. The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press.

The real story might have remained unknown if, in 1967, McNamara had not commissioned a secret history based on classified documents — which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. By then, he knew that even with nearly 500,000 U.S. troops in theater, the war was at a stalemate.

The pattern of lying was virtually identical throughout several administrations when it came to Afghanistan. In 2019, The Washington Post — obviously with a nod to the Pentagon Papers — published a report about secret documents it dubbed “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war.” Under the headline “AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH,” The Post summarized its findings: “U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found.” They explained:

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 Afghan army and national police force that can defend the country without foreign help.

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.”

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.

As the Post explained, “the documents contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.” Those documents dispel any doubt about whether these falsehoods were intentional:

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.

“Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible,” Bob Crowley, an Army colonel who served as a senior counterinsurgency adviser to U.S. military commanders in 2013 and 2014, told government interviewers. “Surveys, for instance, were totally unreliable but reinforced that everything we were doing was right and we became a self-licking ice cream cone.”

John Sopko, the head of the federal agency that conducted the interviews, acknowledged to The Post that the documents show “the American people have constantly been lied to.”

Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack, interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan military, described in detail why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and takeover by the Taliban.

In light of all this, it is simply inconceivable that Biden’s false statements last month about the readiness of the Afghan military and police force were anything but intentional. That is particularly true given how heavily the U.S. had Afghanistan under every conceivable kind of electronic surveillance for more than a decade. A significant portion of the archive provided to me by Edward Snowden detailed the extensive surveillance the NSA had imposed on all of Afghanistan. In accordance with the guidelines he required, we never published most of those documents about U.S. surveillance in Afghanistan on the ground that it could endanger people without adding to the public interest, but some of the reporting gave a glimpse into just how comprehensively monitored the country was by U.S. security services.

In 2014, I reported along with Laura Poitras and another journalist that the NSA had developed the capacity, under the codenamed SOMALGET, that empowered them to be “secretly intercepting, recording, and archiving the audio of virtually every cell phone conversation” in at least five countries. At any time, they could listen to the stored conversations of any calls conducted by cell phone throughout the entire country. Though we published the names of four countries in which the program had been implemented, we withheld, after extensive internal debate at The Intercept, the identity of the fifth — Afghanistan — because the NSA had convinced some editors that publishing it would enable the Taliban to know where the program was located and it could endanger the lives of the military and private-sector employees working on it (in general, at Snowden’s request, we withheld publication of documents about NSA activities in active war zones unless they revealed illegality or other deceit). But WikiLeaks subsequently revealed, accurately, that the one country whose identity we withheld where this program was implemented was Afghanistan.

There was virtually nothing that could happen in Afghanistan without the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge. There is simply no way that they got everything so completely wrong while innocently and sincerely trying to tell Americans the truth about what was happening there.

In sum, U.S. political and military leaders have been lying to the American public for two decades about the prospects for success in Afghanistan generally, and the strength and capacity of the Afghan security forces in particular — up through five weeks ago when Biden angrily dismissed the notion that U.S. withdrawal would result in a quick and complete Taliban takeover. Numerous documents, largely ignored by the public, proved that U.S. officials knew what they were saying was false — just as happened so many times in prior wars — and even deliberately doctored information to enable their lies.

Any residual doubt about the falsity of those two decades of optimistic claims has been obliterated by the easy and lightning-fast blitzkrieg whereby the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan as if the vaunted Afghan military did not even exist, as if it were August, 2001 all over again. It is vital not just to take note of how easily and frequently U.S. leaders lie to the public about its wars once those lies are revealed at the end of those wars, but also to remember this vital lesson the next time U.S. leaders propose a new war using the same tactics of manipulation, lies, and deceit.

Glenn Greenwald – Journalist; co-founder, The Intercept; author, No Place to Hide and forthcoming book on Brazil; animal fanatic & founder of HOPE Shelter.

23 August 2021

Source: www.transcend.org