Taliban
UN seeks $606 million for Afghanistan after Taliban takeover
The United Nations is hosting a high-level donors conference on Monday to drum up emergency funds for Afghanistan after last month’s Taliban takeover of the country that stunned the world.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was leading the world body’s call for more than $600 million for the rest of this year in a “flash appeal” for Afghans after their country’s government was toppled by the Taliban and U.S. and NATO forces exited the 20-year war in a chaotic departure.
There are concerns that instability and upended humanitarian efforts, compounded by an ongoing drought, could further endanger lives and plunge Afghanistan toward famine.
Also read: Afghanistan on brink of universal poverty: UN
The conference will put to the test some Western governments and other big traditional U.N. donors who want to help everyday Afghans without handing a public relations victory or cash to the Taliban, who ousted the internationally backed government in a lightning sweep.
The U.N. says “recent developments” have increased the vulnerability of Afghans who have already been facing decades of deprivation and violence. A severe drought is jeopardizing the upcoming harvest, and hunger has been rising. The U.N.’s World Food Program is to be a major beneficiary of any funds collected during Monday’s conference.
Along with its partners, the U.N. is seeking $606 million for the rest of the year to help 11 million people.
Coinciding with Monday’s conference in Geneva, the head of the U.N. refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, made a previously unannounced visit to Kabul. He wrote on Twitter that he would assess humanitarian needs and the situation of 3.5 million displaced Afghans — including over 500,000 who have been displaced this year alone.
Also read: Taliban guard airport as most NATO troops leave Afghanistan
Officials at UNHCR have expressed concerns that some people could try to seek refuge in what have been traditional havens for fleeing Afghans in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, which both have large populations of Afghans who had fled their country earlier to escape war and violence.
The Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, the day they overran Kabul after capturing outlying provinces in the blitz campaign. They initially promised inclusiveness and a general amnesty for former opponents, but many Afghans remain deeply fearful of the new rulers. Taliban police officials have beaten Afghan journalists, violently dispersed women’s protests and formed an all-male government despite saying initially they would invite broader representation.
The world has been watching closely to see how Afghanistan under a Taliban government might be different from the first time the Islamic militants were in power, in the late 1990s. During that era, the Taliban imposed a harsh rule of their interpretation of Islamic law. Girls and women were denied an education, and were excluded from public life.
Also on Monday, a Pakistan International Airlines plane charted by the World Bank landed at Kabul’s airport to evacuate more people, according to Abullah Hafeez Khan, a spokesman for the airline. Pakistan has halted commercial flights to Kabul because of security reasons, and the airline has no plans so far to resume commercial flights.
Last Thursday, an estimated 200 foreigners, including Americans, left Afghanistan on a Qatar Airways flight out of Kabul with the cooperation of the Taliban — the first such large-scale departure since U.S. forces completed their frantic withdrawal on Aug. 30.
Many thousands of Afghans remain desperate to get out, too, afraid of what Taliban rule might hold. The Taliban have repeatedly said foreigners and Afghans with proper travel documents could leave. But their assurances have been met with skepticism, and many Afghans have been unable to obtain certain paperwork.
Abdul Hadi Hamdani, head of Kabul’s airport, said Monday that all domestic flights were back to their regular schedule but that “some technical problems need to be solved” before international flights can resume. Members of the border police who previously worked at the airport have been called back to resume their duties.
Taliban flag rises over seat of power on fateful anniversary
The Taliban raised their flag over the Afghan presidential palace Saturday, a spokesman said, as the U.S. and the world marked the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The white banner, emblazoned with a Quranic verse, was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the Taliban interim government, in a low-key ceremony, said Ahmadullah Muttaqi, multimedia branch chief of the Taliban’s cultural commission.
The flag-raising marked the official start of the work of the new government, he said. The composition of the all-male, all-Taliban government was announced earlier this week and was met with disappointment by the international community which had hoped the Taliban would make good on an earlier promise of an inclusive lineup.
In a tweet, Afghanistan’s first president to follow the 2001 collapse of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, called for “peace and stability” and expressed the hope that the new caretaker Cabinet that included no women and no non-Taliban would become an “inclusive government that can be the real face of the whole Afghanistan.”
Read: Taliban name caretaker Cabinet
He marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America with a meeting of tribal elders on his high-walled compound in the Afghan capital where he has remained with his family since the August return of the Taliban to Kabul.
Two decades ago, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan with a heavy hand. Television was banned, and on Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the horrific attacks on America, the news spread from crackling radios across the darkened streets of the Afghan capital of Kabul.
The city rarely had electricity and barely a million people lived in Kabul at the time. It took the U.S.-led coalition just two months to drive the Taliban from the capital and by Dec. 7, 2001, they were defeated, driven from their last holdout in southern Kandahar, their spiritual heartland.
Twenty years later, the Taliban are back in Kabul. America has departed, ending its ‘forever war’ two weeks before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and two weeks after the Taliban returned to the Afghan capital on Aug. 15.
Some things have changed since the first period of Taliban rule in the 1990s.
This time, the gun-toting fighters don’t race through the city streets in their pickups. Instead, they inch through chaotic, clogged traffic in the city of more than 5 million. In Taliban-controlled Kabul in the 1990s, barber shops were banned. Now Taliban fighters get the latest haircuts, even if their beards remain untouched in line with their religious beliefs.
But the Taliban have begun issuing harsh edits that have hit women hardest, such as banning women’s sports. They have also used violence to stop women demanding equal rights from protesting.
Read: US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression
Inside a high-end women’s store in the city’s Karte Se neighborhood Saturday, Marzia Hamidi, a Taekwondo competitor with ambitions of being a national champion, said the return of the Taliban has crushed her dreams.
She was among the women attacked by the Taliban and called “agents of the West” during one of the recent protests. She said she’s not surprised about America’s withdrawal.
“This year or next year, they had to leave eventually,” she said. “They came for their own interest and they left for their interest.”
Hamidi is hoping the Taliban will relent and ease their restrictions, but with a glance toward the store owner, Faisal Naziri, she said “most men in Afghanistan agree with what the Taliban say about women and their rules against them.”
Naziri nodded, saying preserving the rights of women is not a cause that will bring Afghan men on the streets.
On Saturday, the Taliban even orchestrated a women’s march of their own. This one involved dozens of women obscured from head to toe, hidden behind layers of black veils. They filled an auditorium at Kabul University’s education center in a well-choreographed snub to the past 20 years of Western efforts to empower women.
Speakers read from scripted speeches celebrating the Taliban victory over a West they charged was anti-Islam. The women marched briefly outside the center grounds, waving placards saying “the women who left don’t represent us,” referring to the many thousands who fled in fear of a Taliban crackdown on women’s rights. “We don’t want co-education,” read another banner.
Read: Taliban say they took Panjshir, last holdout Afghan province
Outside the hall, the Taliban director of higher education, Maulvi Mohammad Daoud Haqqani, said 9/11 was the day “the world started their propaganda against us calling us terrorists and blaming us” for the attacks in the United States.
At a dusty book store in Kabul’s Karte Sangi neighborhood, Atta Zakiri, a self-declared civil society activist said America was wrong to attack Afghanistan after 9/11.
He blamed the invasion that followed the 9/11 attacks for creating another generation of hardline Taliban fighters.
“The Taliban should have been allowed to stay. Why didn’t we work with them? Instead they went to fight,” he said.” And now we are back to where we were 20 years ago.”
9/11 : Did Al-Qaeda accelerate the West's decline?
The consequences of the 9/11 attack were clear. The US would go on to wage a “War against Terror” and end up in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Al-Qadea was confronted, the Taliban ousted and Osama was put on the run. The world was split between “Us and Them “and the US infantry looked more intent than ever before. Bin Laden ultimately was killed in Pakistan, the faithless ally of the US and the supposed revenge was had. But now, 2 decades later, a lot of analysts including Western experts are also asking if the West won in full or did Osama Bin Laden inflict a wound from which it has not recovered.
Read: ‘Don’t focus on hate’: World marks 20th anniversary of 9/11
9/11 forced the West into unwinnable wars both in Afghanistan and later in Iraq and Syria. As events show, both were disasters for them. The recent departure of the US from Afg in a shambolic way is a grim symbol of the fall since its peak in 2001. The invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction that could cause a second 9/11 is probably an even worse departure waiting to happen.
And in both Afghanistan and Iraq, NATO forces travelled with their US fellows into a hole in which all were stuck. Never has the West looked more inept.
An expiring power
The West was weakening from much earlier though, as the financial crisis of 2008 showed. Its economy had become linked to the deregulation of the 1980s and the mortgage boom of the 1990s. However, its brand was at its shiniest in 2001, even if the product was edging towards an expiry date. The Berlin Wall and Russian socialism had both died and the West was chirping loudly. But the world had changed neither democracy nor regime changes could no longer be ordered off the menu. The West got involved in war after war and chased a phantom called “ Islamic” terrorism which the West including Russia didn’t see was a reaction to its own policies and wars.
At least 6,000 British and American servicemen, as well as perhaps 200,000 Afghans and a similar number of Iraqis have died in the most futile wars on earth. The consequence is that “democracy” is no longer available on the shelf and the White Knight image that the West sold of itself is today a figure of scorn, nothing more or less.
The lies of the US to attack Iraq, the prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have been stamped deeply into the global memory.
Read: From 9/11′s ashes, a new world took shape. It did not last.
After all the killing and wars the Taliban is back, the US wants to depart from Iraq knowing it may mean a takeover by the IS, Iran suffers due to sanctions but is a major player in the Middle East and US leadership is not visible anywhere.
China’s rise was perhaps inevitable but it took every advantage and every mistake the West did. Today, it has become the “strongest” power without waging any wars and is near-about the Taliban’s best friend.
The West is a shadow of what it was 20 years ago. It just isn’t smart enough to cope with the new world. And sadly for the West many of the causes can be traced to the events of 9/11. That was a hit which Al-Qaeda certainly intended, and in that they succeeded.
As flights resume, plight of Afghan allies tests Biden’s vow
Evacuation flights have resumed for Westerners, but thousands of at-risk Afghans who had helped the United States are still stranded in their homeland with the U.S. Embassy shuttered, all American diplomats and troops gone and the Taliban now in charge.
With the United States and Taliban both insisting on travel documents that may no longer be possible to get in Afghanistan, the plight of those Afghans is testing President Joe Biden’s promises not to leave America’s allies behind.
An evacuation flight out of Kabul on Thursday, run by the Gulf state of Qatar and the first of its kind since U.S.-led military evacuations ended Aug. 30, focused on U.S. passport and green card holders and other foreigners.
For the U.S. lawmakers, veterans groups and other Americans who’ve been scrambling to get former U.S. military interpreters and other at-risk Afghans on charter flights out, the relaunch of evacuation flights did little to soothe fears that the U.S. might abandon countless Afghan allies.
A particular worry are those whose U.S. special immigrant visas — meant for Afghans who helped Americans during the 20-year war — still were in the works when the Taliban took Kabul in a lightning offensive on Aug. 15. The U.S. abandoned its embassy building that same weekend.
Read: Biden defends departure from ‘forever war,’ praises airlift
“For all intents and purposes, these people’s chances of escaping the Taliban ended the day we left them behind,” said Afghanistan war veteran Matt Zeller, founder of No One Left Behind. It’s among dozens of grassroots U.S. groups working to get out Afghan translators and others who supported Americans.
An estimated 200 foreigners, including Americans, left Afghanistan on the commercial flight out of Kabul on Thursday with the cooperation of the Taliban. Ten U.S. citizens and 11 green-card holders made Thursday’s flight, State Department spokesman Ned Price said. Americans organizing charter evacuation flights said they knew of more U.S. passport and green-card holders in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and elsewhere awaiting flights out.
In the U.S., National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said Thursday’s flight was the result of “careful and hard diplomacy and engagement” and said the Taliban “have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort.”
But many doubt the Taliban will be as accommodating for Afghans who supported the U.S. In Mazar-e-Sharif, a more than weeklong standoff over charter planes at the airport there has left hundreds of people — mostly Afghans, but some with American passports and green cards — stranded, waiting for Taliban permission to leave.
Afghans and their American supporters say the Taliban are blocking all passengers in Mazar-e-Sharif from boarding the waiting charter flights, including those with proper travel papers.
Zeller pointed to the Taliban appointment this week of a hard-line government. It includes Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a $5 million bounty for alleged attacks and kidnappings, as interior minister, a position putting him in charge of granting passports.
The Trump administration all but stopped approval of the Afghan special immigrant visas, or SIVs, in its final months. The Biden administration, too, was criticized for failing to move faster on evacuating Afghans before Kabul fell to the Taliban.
The U.S. had also required some visa-seekers to go outside the country to apply, a requirement that became far more dangerous with the Taliban takeover last month.
“There are all of these major logistical obstacles,” said Betsy Fisher of the International Refugee Assistance Project, which provides legal services to SIV applicants. “How will people leave Afghanistan?”
Read: War is over but not Biden’s Afghanistan challenges
She said with no clear plan in place, the U.S. government could wind up encouraging people to go on risky journeys.
In July, after Biden welcomed home the first airlift, he made clear the U.S. would help even those Afghans with pending visa applications get out of Afghanistan “so that they can wait in safety while they finish their visa applications.”
Since the military airlifts ended on Aug. 30, however, the Biden administration and Taliban have emphasized that Afghans needed passports and visas. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday the administration was looking at steps like electronic visas.
Hundreds of Afghans who say they are in danger of Taliban reprisals have gathered for more than a week in Mazar-e-Sharif, waiting for permission to board evacuation flights chartered by U.S. supporters.
Among them was an Afghan who worked for 15 years as a U.S. military interpreter. He has been moving from hotel to hotel in Mazar-e-Sharif and running out of money as he, his eight children and his wife waited for the OK from the Taliban to leave.
“I’m frightened I will be left behind,” said the man, whose name was withheld by The Associated Press for his safety. “I don’t know what the issue is — is it a political issue, or they don’t care about us?”
The interpreter’s visa was approved weeks before the last U.S. troops left the country, but he could not get it stamped into his passport because the U.S. Embassy shut down.
He said Thursday that he doesn’t trust Taliban assurances that they will not take revenge against Afghans who worked for the Americans.
Read:Biden: Another attack likely, pledges more strikes on IS
Biden, already criticized for his handling of the evacuation, is being pushed by Democrats and also on both sides by Republicans, with some saying he’s not doing enough to help America’s former allies and others that he’s not doing enough to keep potential threats out of the U.S.
Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Mike Waltz, both Republicans, said in a statement that hundreds of those at-risk Afghans and U.S. residents remain “trapped behind enemy lines.” The Biden administration “must provide Congress and the American people ... with a plan to get them safely out of Afghanistan.”
The Association of War Time Allies estimates tens of thousands of special immigrant visa applicants remain in Afghanistan.
An American citizen in New York is trying to get two cousins out of the country who applied for SIVs late last year and were still waiting for approval when the U.S. Embassy shut down. She said both cousins worked for a U.S. aid group for a combined eight years and are frightened the Taliban will find them.
“They’re scared, they feel abandoned. They put their entire lives at risk, and when the U.S. was exiting, they were told they would get out,” said the American, Fahima, whose last name and the name of the aid group are being withheld to protect her cousins. “Where is the helping hand?”
Taliban name caretaker Cabinet
The Taliban on Tuesday announced a caretaker Cabinet that paid homage to the old guard of the group, giving top posts to Taliban personalities who dominated the 20-year battle against the U.S.-led coalition and its Afghan government allies.
Interim Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund headed the Taliban government in Kabul during the last years of its rule. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who had led talks with the United States and signed the deal that led to America’s final withdrawal from Afghanistan, will be one of two deputies to Akhund.
There was no evidence of non-Taliban in the lineup, a big demand of the international community.
The announcement of Cabinet appointments by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid came hours after Taliban fired into the air to disperse protesters and arrested several journalists, the second time in less than a week the group used heavy-handed tactics to break up a demonstration in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
The demonstrators had gathered outside the Pakistan Embassy to accuse Islamabad of aiding the Taliban’s assault on northern Panjshir province. The Taliban said Monday they seized the province — the last not in their control — after their blitz through Afghanistan last month.
Afghanistan’s previous government routinely accused Pakistan of aiding the Taliban, a charge Islamabad has denied. Former vice president Amrullah Saleh, one of the leaders of the anti-Taliban forces, has long been an outspoken critic of neighboring Pakistan.
Dozens of women were among the protesters Tuesday. Some of them carried signs bemoaning the killing of their sons by Taliban fighters they say were aided by Pakistan. One sign read: “I am a mother when you kill my son you kill a part of me.”
On Saturday, Taliban special forces troops in camouflage fired their weapons into the air to end a protest march in the capital by Afghan women demanding equal rights from the new rulers.
The Taliban again moved quickly and harshly to end Tuesday’s protest when it arrived near the presidential palace. They fired their weapons into the air and arrested several journalists covering the demonstration. In one case, Taliban waving Kalashnikov rifles took a microphone from a journalist and began beating him with it, breaking the microphone. The journalist was later handcuffed and detained for several hours.
“This is the third time i have been beaten by the Taliban covering protests,” he told The Associated Press on condition he not be identified because he was afraid of retaliation. “I won’t go again to cover a demonstration. It’s too difficult for me.”
Read: Taliban say they took Panjshir, last holdout Afghan province
A journalist from Afghanistan’s popular TOLO News was detained for three hours by the Taliban before being freed along with his equipment and the video of the demonstration still intact.
There was no immediate comment from the Taliban.
Meanwhile, in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, four aircraft chartered to evacuate about 2,000 Afghans fleeing Taliban rule were still at the airport.
Mawlawi Abdullah Mansour, the Taliban official in charge of the city’s airport, said any passenger, Afghan or foreigner, with a passport and valid visa would be allowed to leave. Most of the passengers are believed to be Afghans without proper travel documents.
None of the passengers had arrived at the airport. Instead, organizers apparently told evacuees to travel to Mazar-e-Sharif and find accommodation until they were called to come to the airport.
The Taliban say they are trying to find out who among the estimated 2,000 have valid travel documents.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Qatar on Tuesday the Taliban have given assurances of safe passage for all seeking to leave Afghanistan with proper travel documents.
He said the United States would hold the Taliban to that pledge. “It’s my understanding that the Taliban has not denied exit to anyone holding a valid document, but they have said those without valid documents, at this point, can’t leave,” he said.
“Because all of these people are grouped together, that’s meant that flights have not been allowed to go,” he added.
The State Department is also working with the Taliban to facilitate additional charter flights from Kabul for people seeking to leave Afghanistan after the American military and diplomatic departure, Blinken told a joint news conference with Qatar’s top diplomatic and defense officials.
“In recent hours” the U.S. has been in contact with Taliban officials to work out arrangements for additional charter flights from the Afghan capital, he said.
Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were in Qatar to thank the Gulf state for its help with the transit of tens of thousands of people evacuated from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of Kabul on Aug. 15.
Panjshir : Pakistan does it on Taliban’s behalf ?
As was expected the rag tag band of Taliban warriors are not much of a match for a determined resistance made by the Northern Alliance in Panjshir. Taliban did poorly on its own and had to be reinforced by Pakistan's Northern Light Infantry NLI) to do the job who defeated the fighters led by NA leader Masoud.
There is a certain irony in the fall of the North because the CIA Had been backing tem for long and had held great hopes on providing a trouble-making resistance for some more time at least. And they were defeated by a force which has been supporting the CIA backed “war on Terror” for long. Both probably used US weapons. However, it does signal the end of the war phase of the Taliban take over and the next round of government formation and administration can now begin which looks to be much more difficult than taking Panjshir.
Different states are present in Afghanistan with widely varying agenda and none have anything to do with the best interest of Afghanistan. China and Russia are there to ensure that Islamists and insurgencies are ended in Central Asia and China’s Uighur people. But Pakistan is there to make life difficult for India.
India batted in Afghanistan for two decades but with Biden’s shambolic departure, it’s been cut off. Now Pakistan as expected will jump in to take advantage. Not that it has any choice since China is there and telling it much of what to do including being Taliban's proxy army. But Pakistan is hoping for big gains under the new Taliban regime too.
Read: Taliban say they took Panjshir, last holdout Afghan province
ISI is back ?
Indian media has reported that Lt. Gen. Hamid Foyez, chief of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI was personally supervising the Panjshir operations fought by the Northern Light Infantry (NLI) and commandos of the Special Services Group(SSG). These fighters were also active in the Kargil war with India.
The Taliban’s lack of capacity, resources and support among the non-Pashtuns is no secret. Hence to survive, they will have to be more dependent on the three allies. Clearly, China has confidence in the Pak army who may well play the mainstay of the Taliban military. And in return Pakistan will want to produce well trained insurgents to send to Kashmir.
India and Pakistan continue to play an ancient unwinnable game and common sense doesn’t say why this is so. However, production and sustaining an enemy that is historically hated and which continues to be can be excellent glue for management of internal public opinion. India’s Kashmir policy was partly based on the proximity of the US forces in Afghanistan which is now gone and life will not be as smooth as before. Pakistan will take advantage of that and in return for help to the Taliban seek payment as well.
More trouble around Kashmir can be expected just as problems will emerge inside Afghanistan. The future certainly doesn’t look peaceful.
US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression
Over two decades, the United States and its allies spent hundreds of millions of dollars building databases for the Afghan people. The nobly stated goal: Promote law and order and government accountability and modernize a war-ravaged land.
But in the Taliban’s lightning seizure of power, most of that digital apparatus — including biometrics for verifying identities — apparently fell into Taliban hands. Built with few data-protection safeguards, it risks becoming the high-tech jackboots of a surveillance state. As the Taliban get their governing feet, there are worries it will be used for social control and to punish perceived foes.
Putting such data to work constructively — boosting education, empowering women, battling corruption — requires democratic stability, and these systems were not architected for the prospect of defeat.
“It is a terrible irony,” said Frank Pasquale, Brooklyn Law School scholar of surveillance technologies. “It’s a real object lesson in ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’”
Read: Taliban say they took Panjshir, last holdout Afghan province
Since Kabul fell Aug. 15, indications have emerged that government data may have been used in Taliban efforts to identify and intimidate Afghans who worked with the U.S. forces.
People are getting ominous and threatening phone calls, texts and WhatsApp messages, said Neesha Suarez, constituent services director for Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, an Iraq War veteran whose office is trying to help stranded Afghans who worked with the U.S. find a way out.
A 27-year-old U.S. contractor in Kabul told The Associated Press he and co-workers who developed a U.S.-funded database used to manage army and police payrolls got phone calls summoning them to the Defense Ministry. He is in hiding, changing his location daily, he said, asking not to be identified for his safety.
In victory, the Taliban’s leaders say they are not interested in retribution. Restoring international aid and getting foreign-held assets unfrozen are a priority. There are few signs of the draconian restrictions – especially on women – they imposed when they ruled from 1996 to 2001. There are also no indications that Afghans who worked with Americans have been systematically persecuted.
Ali Karimi, a University of Pennsylvania scholar, is among Afghans unready to trust the Taliban. He worries the databases will give rigid fundamentalist theocrats, known during their insurgency for ruthlessly killing enemy collaborators, “the same capability as an average U.S. government agency when it comes to surveillance and interception.”
The Taliban are on notice that the world will be watching how they wield the data.
All Afghans — and their international partners — have an obligation together to ensure sensitive government data only be used for “development purposes” and not for policing or social control by the Taliban or to serve other governments in the region, said Nader Nadery, a peace negotiator and head of the civil service commission in the former government.
Uncertain for the moment is the fate of one of the most sensitive databases, the one used to pay soldiers and police.
The Afghan Personnel and Pay System has data on more than 700,000 security forces members dating back 40 years, said a senior security official from the fallen government. Its more than 40 data fields include birth dates, phone numbers, fathers’ and grandfathers’ names, fingerprints and iris and face scans, said two Afghan contractors who worked on it, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Only authorized users can access that system, so if the Taliban can’t find one, they can be expected to try to hack it, said the former official, who asked not to be identified for fear of the safety of relatives in Kabul. He expected Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, long the Taliban’s patron, to render technical assistance. U.S. analysts expect Chinese, Russian and Iranian intelligence also to offer such services.
Read: Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Taliban’s challenges
Originally conceived to fight payroll fraud, that system was supposed to interface eventually with a powerful database at the Defense and Interior ministries modeled on one the Pentagon created in 2004 to achieve “identity dominance” by collecting fingerprints and iris and face scans in combat areas.
But the homegrown Afghanistan Automated Biometric Identification Database grew from a tool to vet army and police recruits for loyalty to contain 8.5 million records, including on government foes and the civilian population. When Kabul fell it was being upgraded, along with a similar database in Iraq, under a $75 million contract signed in 2018.
U.S. officials say it was secured before the Taliban could access it.
Before the U.S. pullout, the entire database was erased with military-grade data-wiping software, said William Graves, chief engineer at the Pentagon’s biometrics project management office. Similarly, 20 years of data collected from telecommunications and internet intercepts since 2001 by Afghanistan’s intelligence agency were wiped clean, said the former Afghan security official.
Among crucial databases that remained are the Afghanistan Financial Management Information System, which held extensive details on foreign contractors, and an Economy Ministry database that compiled all international development and aid agency funding sources, the former security official said.
Then there is the data — with iris scans and fingerprints for about 9 million Afghans — controlled by the National Statistics and Information Agency. A biometric scan has been required in recent years to obtain a passport or a driver’s license and to take a civil service or university entrance exam.
Western aid organizations led by the World Bank, one of the funders, praised the data’s utility for empowering women, especially in registering land ownership and obtaining bank loans. The agency was working to create electronic national IDs, known as e-Tazkira, in an unfinished project somewhat modeled on India’s biometrically enabled Aadhaar national ID.
“That’s the treasure chest,” said a Western election assistance official, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize future missions.
It is unclear whether voter registration databases — records on more than 8 million Afghans — are in Taliban hands, the official said. Full printouts were made during the 2019 presidential elections, though the biometric records used then for anti-fraud voter verification were retained by the German technology provider. After 2018 parliamentary elections, 5,000 portable biometric handhelds used for verification went inexplicably missing.
Yet another database the Taliban inherit contains iris and face scans and fingerprints on 420,000 government employees — another anti-fraud measure — which Nadery oversaw as civil service commissioner. It was eventually to have been merged with the e-Tazkira database, he said.
Read: Taliban control now-quiet Kabul airport after US withdrawal
On Aug. 3, a government website touted the digital accomplishments of President Ashraf Ghani, who would soon flee into exile, saying biometric information on “all civil servants, from every corner of the country” would allow them to them to be linked “under one umbrella” with banks and cellphone carriers for electronic payment. U.N. agencies have also collected biometrics on Afghans for food distribution and refugee tracking.
The central agglomeration of such personal data is exactly what worries the 37 digital civil liberties groups who signed an Aug. 25 letter calling for the urgent shutdown and erasure, where possible, of Afghanistan’s “digital identity tool,” among other measures. The letter said authoritarian regimes have exploited such data “to target vulnerable people” and digitized, searchable databases amplify the risks. Disputes over including ethnicity and religion in the e-Tazkira database — for fear it could put digital bullseyes on minorities, as China has done in repressing its ethnic Uyghurs — delayed its creation for most of a decade.
John Woodward, a Boston University professor and former CIA officer who pioneered the Pentagon’s biometric collection, is worried about intelligence agencies hostile to the United States getting access to the data troves.
“ISI (Pakistani intelligence) would be interested to know who worked for the Americans,” said Woodward, and China, Russia and Iran have their own agendas. Their agents certainly have the technical chops to break into password-protected databases.
Taliban say they took Panjshir, last holdout Afghan province
The Taliban said on Monday they have taken control of Panjshir province north of Kabul, the last holdout of anti-Taliban forces in the country and the only province the Taliban had not seized during their blitz across Afghanistan last month.
Thousands of Taliban fighters overran eight districts of Panjshir overnight, according to witnesses from the area who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid issued a statement, saying Panjshir was now under the control of Taliban fighters.
“We tried our best to solve the problem through negotiations, and they rejected talks and then we had to send our forces to fight,” Mujahid later told a press conference in Kabul.
Read: Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Taliban’s challenges
The anti-Taliban forces had been led by the former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, and also the son of the iconic anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud who was killed just days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Meanwhile in northern Balkh province, at least four planes chartered to evacuate several hundred people seeking to escape the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan have been unable to leave the country for days, officials said Sunday, with conflicting accounts emerging about why the flights weren’t able to take off as pressure ramps up on the U.S. to help those left behind to flee.
An Afghan official at the airport in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the provincial capital, said that the would-be passengers were Afghans, many of whom did not have passports or visas, and thus were unable to leave the country. Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, he said they had left the airport while the situation was being sorted out.
The top Republican on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, however, said that the group included Americans and they were sitting on the planes, but the Taliban were not letting them take off, effectively “holding them hostage.” Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told “Fox News Sunday” that American citizens and Afghan interpreters were being kept on six planes.
McCaul did not say where that information came from and it was not immediately possible to reconcile the two accounts.
The final days of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan were marked by a harrowing airlift at Kabul’s airport to evacuate tens of thousands of people — Americans and their allies — who feared what the future would hold, given the Taliban’s history of repression, particularly of women. When the last American troops pulled out on Aug. 30, though, many were left behind.
The U.S. promised to continue working with the new Taliban rulers to get those who want to leave out, and the militants pledged to allow anyone with the proper legal documents to leave.
Experts had doubted that resistance to the Taliban in Panjshir, the last holdout province, could succeed long-term despite the area’s geographical advantage.
Read: India begins direct communication with Taliban
Nestled in the towering Hindu Kush mountains, the Panjshir Valley has a single narrow entrance. Local fighters held off the Soviets there in the 1980s and also the Taliban a decade later under the leadership of Massoud.
Massoud’s son Ahmad, in a statement Sunday called for an end to the fighting. The young British-schooled Massoud said his forces were ready to lay down their weapons but only if the Taliban agreed to end their assault. Late on Sunday dozens of vehicles loaded with Taliban fighters were seen swarming into Panjshir Valley.
There has been no statement from Saleh, Afghanistan’s former vice president who had declared himself the acting president after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Aug. 15 as the Taliban reached the gates of the capital. The Taliban subsequently entered the presidency building that day.
The Taliban’s lightning blitz across the country took less than a week to overrun some 300,000 Afghan government troops, most of whom surrendered or fled.
The whereabouts of Saleh and the young Massoud were not immediately known.
Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, sought to assure residents of Panjshir that they would be safe — even as scores of families reportedly fled into the mountains ahead of the Taliban’s arrival.
“We give full confidence to the honorable people of Panjshir that they will not be subjected to any discrimination, that all are our brothers, and that we will serve a country and a common goal,” Mujahid’s statement said.
“There is no need for any more fighting,” Mujahid said at the press conference. “All Panjshir people and those who live in Panjshir are our brothers and they are part of our country.”
Read: Taliban control now-quiet Kabul airport after US withdrawal
The Taliban had stepped up their assault on Panjshir on Sunday, tweeting that their forces had overrun Rokha district, one of the largest of eight districts in the province. Several Taliban delegations have attempted negotiations with the holdouts, but talks failed to gain traction.
Fahim Dashti, the spokesman for the anti-Taliban group, was killed in battle on Sunday, according to the group’s Twitter account. Dashti was the voice of the group and a prominent media personality during previous governments.
He was also the nephew of Abdullah Abdullah, a senior official of the former government who is involved in negotiations with the Taliban on the future of Afghanistan.
EU ministers meet to discuss Afghanistan, refugees
European Union justice and home affairs ministers were meeting Tuesday to discuss the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and how Europe will deal with the flow of refugees and migrants it is expected to produce.
The meeting comes the day after the last U.S. forces flew out of Kabul’s international airport, ending America’s longest war.
The 27-nation bloc is looking for ways to prevent a repeat of a 2015 refugee crisis fueled by Syria’s civil war. The arrival in Europe of well over a million migrants that year led to infighting among EU member nations over how best to manage the influx. A new wave of migrants from Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate tensions.
The EU is likely to provide funding to house refugees in countries bordering Afghanistan to prevent them heading for Europe.
“It’s important that we are in a position where we can avoid a humanitarian crisis, migratory crisis and a security threat from Afghanistan,” European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said before the ministers’ meeting.
“But then we need to act now and not wait until we have big flows of people at our external borders or until we have terrorist organizations being stronger,” she added. “So that’s why we need to act now to support people in Afghanistan, in the neighboring countries, and work together with international organizations.”
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz made clear that his country won’t back a system for distributing refugees from Afghanistan across the EU.
Asked about proposals for all EU countries to share the burden of taking in refugees, Kurz told reporters in Berlin that Austria had already taken in a “bigger than proportionate share” of migrants since 2015.
Read: Taliban guard airport as most NATO troops leave Afghanistan
Austria already has the fourth-largest Afghan community worldwide, he said before a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel said that, for her government, the focus now is on how to help between 10,000 and 40,000 Afghans who are entitled to come to Germany with their close family members because they had worked for the German military or aid organizations.
“We need to see how many actually want to leave the country and how many don’t,” she said. “That will depend very much on the circumstances the Taliban create in the country.”
Accommodating Afghans in countries close to their homeland will also be difficult.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi met his German counterpart, Heiko Maas, in Islamabad on Tuesday and said Pakistan has hosted more than 3 million Afghan refugees in previous decades and lacks the capacity to absorb more.
The EU’s focus on accommodating migrants close to Afghanistan will not please rights groups.
Amnesty International said in a letter to Johansson that the EU and its member nations “must refrain from extremely damaging responses that put emphasis on keeping the EU’s border ‘protected’ and proposing or adopting measures that shift the responsibility for the protection of refugees to third countries.”
The human rights group said the EU should give Afghans who reach Europe “access to the territory and to fair and effective asylum procedures and adequate reception conditions” and also consider all Afghan women and girls as “prima facie refugees” due to the risks they would face in Afghanistan.
Read: Bangladesh observing Afghanistan situation, in touch with stranded citizens
American forces helped evacuate over 120,000 U.S. citizens, foreigners and Afghans after the Taliban regained control of the country, according to the White House. Coalition forces also evacuated their citizens and Afghans. But foreign nations and the U.S. government acknowledged they didn’t evacuate all who wanted to go.
According to some EU estimates, around 570,000 Afghans have applied for asylum in Europe since 2015.
Asylum applications by Afghan nationals have climbed by a third since February as it became clear that the United States would pull troops out of Afghanistan. More than 4,648 applications were recorded in May, according to the EU’s asylum office. About half of the applications tend to be successful.
India begins direct communication with Taliban
India Tuesday began direct communication with the Taliban since the terrorist group's lightning takeover of Afghanistan two weeks back.
Indian envoy in Qatar Deepak Mittal held talks with Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban's Political Office in the Gulf state, at the country's Embassy in Doha, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
At the meeting, Ambassador Mittal raised India's concern that Afghanistan's soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities and terrorism in any manner, to which Stanekzai assured him that these issues would be positively addressed, according to the statement.
"Discussions focused on safety, security and early return of Indian nationals stranded in Afghanistan. The travel of Afghan nationals, especially minorities, who wish to visit India also came up," it added.
Read: Bangladesh observing Afghanistan situation, in touch with stranded citizens
The meeting comes days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi set up a high-level committee to keep a tab on the developments in Afghanistan. "A wait-and-watch approach has been adopted by the government," a top diplomat told the Indian media.
The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan on August 15, with the American troops ending their 20-year military presence in the South Asian country.
Last week, India's top military man -- Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat -- apparently issued a warning to the Taliban, saying the country "is ready to deal with any terrorism spilling out of Afghanistan".
Though Afghanistan has closed its airspace for all civilian flights, India has been evacuating its nationals from that country. In the past few weeks, the Indian Air Force has airlifted more than 600 of its nationals, including its Ambassador, from Kabul.
Read: Taliban guard airport as most NATO troops leave Afghanistan
Earlier, India had evacuated all its diplomatic staff and their family members from its three consulates in Afghanistan -- Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat.
India is particularly worried about the implications of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, given it has already infused over three billion USD worth development aid into that country and the horrific memories of the Taliban's role in the hijacking of an Indian airliner in 1999.