Afghanistan
NATO chief says Afghan forces can cope alone
NATO has helped provide security in Afghanistan for almost two decades but the government and armed forces in the conflict-torn country are strong enough to stand on their own feet without international troops to back them, the head of the military organization said Thursday.
NATO took charge of security efforts in Afghanistan in 2003, two years after a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban for harboring former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Fewer than 9,000 troops remain, including up to 3,500 US personnel, and they are scheduled to leave by Sept. 11 at the latest.
“I think that the Afghans, they also realize that we have been there now for 20 years and we have invested heavily in blood and treasure in Afghanistan,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told The Associated Press, aboard a U.K. aircraft carrier involved in wargames off the coast of Portugal.
Also read: Afghan forces demoralized, rife with corruption
“Afghanistan has come a long way, both when it comes to building strong, capable security forces, but also when it comes to social and economic progress. At some stage, it has to be the Afghans that take full responsibility for peace and stability in their own country,” Stoltenberg said in an interview.
But as NATO troops leave, much of the country stands as contested ground. The government in Kabul holds hold sway in towns and cities, but the Taliban dominate the countryside. Some of the heaviest fighting this year took place just this week, in Laghman province in the east.
Stoltenberg said that NATO countries would continue to support Afghanistan through civilian experts who will help to advise government ministries, by funding the security forces and with support for slow-moving peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
He said that NATO is also “looking into the possibility of providing some training out of country for the Afghan security forces, but no final decision has been taken.”
U.S. military leaders are still grappling with how best to carry out President Joe Biden’s order to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by September while helping Afghan forces and monitoring the threat that prompted the U.S. invasion of the country 20 years ago.
Biden and Stoltenberg will meet with the other leaders of the 30-nation military alliance on June 14 to usher in a new era in trans-Atlantic ties after four tumultuous years of the former Trump administration. The other big issue will be Afghanistan, although no Afghan leaders are due to attend the Brussels summit.
Also read: Afghans who helped the US now fear being left behind
Asked about the impact of leaving Afghanistan without the security guarantee that has helped keep the Taliban at bay, Stoltenberg conceded that “there are risks entailed to the decision of ending NATO’s military mission in Afghanistan. We have been very transparent and clear-eyed about that.”
“At the same time, to continue to stay means that we will also have to take some risks; the risk of more fighting, the risk of being forced to increase the number of troops there, and the risk of remaining with a (military) mission,” he said.
Many of the international troops in Afghanistan will already have left by the time the leaders meet next month. America’s allies in Europe, plus Canada, rely on U.S. logistical and transport help to operate in Afghanistan and could only follow once Biden announced the withdrawal.
Many officials have expressed concern that once the U.S. leaves, the government and its armed forces will be quickly overrun by the Taliban. Violence has steadily mounted in recent months as the drawdown gathered pace.
It remains unclear what level of security might be needed, and who would provide it, to protect international embassies spread around the capital Kabul. The city’s airport, the main international gateway to Afghanistan, and the route to it must also be protected.
Stoltenberg said that NATO plans to provide financial support to keep Kabul airport up and running, but — just a few months before the alliance ends its biggest, costliest and most ambitious mission ever — the details of how all this might play out remained unclear.
Afghans who helped the US now fear being left behind
He served as an interpreter alongside U.S. soldiers on hundreds of patrols and dozens of firefights in eastern Afghanistan, earning a glowing letter of recommendation from an American platoon commander and a medal of commendation.
Still, Ayazudin Hilal was turned down when he applied for one of the scarce special visas that would allow him to relocate to the U.S. with his family. Now, as American and NATO forces prepare to leave the country, he and thousands of others who aided the war effort fear they will be left stranded, facing the prospect of Taliban reprisals.
“We are not safe,” the 41-year-old father of six said of Afghan civilians who worked for the U.S. or NATO. “The Taliban is calling us and telling us, ’Your stepbrother is leaving the country soon, and we will kill all of you guys.’”
The fate of interpreters after the troop withdrawal is one of the looming uncertainties surrounding the withdrawal, including a possible resurgence of terrorist threats and a reversal of fragile gains for women if chaos, whether from competing Kabul-based warlords or the Taliban, follows the end of America’s military engagement.
Read:Death toll soars to 50 in school bombing in Afghan capital
Interpreters and other civilians who worked for the U.S. government or NATO can get what is known as a special immigrant visa, or SIV, under a program created in 2009 and modeled after a similar program for Iraqis.
Both SIV programs have long been dogged by complaints about a lengthy and complicated application process for security vetting that grew more cumbersome with pandemic safety measures.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters last month that the U.S. is committed to helping interpreters and other Afghan civilians who aided the war effort, often at great personal risk. The Biden administration has also launched a review of the SIV programs, examining the delays and the ability of applicants to challenge a rejection. It will also be adding anti-fraud measures.
Amid the review, former interpreters, who typically seek to shield their identities and keep a low profile, are becoming increasingly public about what they fear will happen should the Taliban return to power.
“They absolutely are going to kill us,” Mohammad Shoaib Walizada, a former interpreter for the U.S. Army, said in an interview after joining others in a protest in Kabul.
At least 300 interpreters have been killed in Afghanistan since 2016, and the Taliban have made it clear they will continue to be targeted, said Matt Zeller, a co-founder of No One Left Behind, an organization that advocates on their behalf. He also served in the country as an Army officer.
“The Taliban considers them to be literally enemies of Islam,” said Zeller, now a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. “There’s no mercy for them.”
Members of Congress and former service members have also urged the U.S. government to expedite the application process, which now typically takes more than three years. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said May 10 that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul had temporarily increased staff to help process the visas.
In December, Congress added 4,000 visas, bringing the total number of Afghans who can come with their immediate family members to 26,500, with about half the allotted amount already used and about 18,000 applications pending.
Critics and refugee advocates said the need to relocate could swell dramatically if Afghanistan tumbles further into disarray. As it is, competing warlords financed and empowered by U.S. and NATO forces threaten the future along with a resurgent Taliban, which have been able to make substantive territorial gains against a poorly trained and poorly equipped Afghan security force largely financed by U.S. taxpayers.
“While I applaud the Biden administration’s review of the process, if they are not willing to sort of rethink the entire thing, they are not going to actually start helping those Afghans who are most at need,” said Noah Coburn, a political anthropologist whose research focuses on Afghanistan.
Coburn estimates there could be as many as 300,000 Afghan civilians who worked for the U.S. or NATO in some form over the past two decades.
“There is a wide range of Afghans who would not be tolerated under the Taliban’s conception of what society should look like,” said Adam Bates, policy counsel for the International Refugee Assistance Project.
Read:Bomb kills at least 30 near girls’ school in Afghan capital
Those fears have been heightened by recent targeted killings of journalists and other civilians as well as government workers. The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan has claimed responsibility for several, while the Taliban and government blame each other.
Biden raised the nation’s overall cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this month, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record low ceiling set by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
The U.S. is not planning to move civilians out en masse, for now at least. “We are processing SIVs in Kabul and have no plans for evacuations at this time,” a senior administration official said.
The White House is in the beginning stages of discussing its review with Congress and will work with lawmakers if changes in the SIV program are needed “in order to process applications as quickly and efficiently as possible, while also ensuring the integrity of the program and safeguarding national security,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Former interpreters have support in Congress, in part because many also have former American troops vouching for them.
Walizada, for example, submitted a letter of support from an Army sergeant who supervised him in dozens of patrols, including one where the interpreter was wounded by Taliban gunfire. “I cannot recall a linguist who had a greater dedication to his country or the coalition cause,” the sergeant wrote.
Walizada was initially approved for a visa, but it was later revoked, with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services telling him that it had “adverse information you may be unaware of,” in a letter he provided to The Associated Press. Walizada said he has appealed the decision and hasn’t received a response.
Hilal, who translated from Dari and Pashto to English for the Army from June 2009 to December 2012, was rejected by the U.S. Embassy, which said he did not meet the requirement for “faithful and valuable service,” because he was fired by the contracting firm that hired him after 3 1/2 years of service.
It was a stinging response, considering the dangers he faced. “If I haven’t done faithful and good service for the U.S. Army, why have they given me this medal?” he says, holding the commendation, in an AP interview at an office in Kabul used by the former interpreters to meet with journalists.
Why he was fired by the U.S.-based contractor, Mission Essential, is unclear. Hilal said he had a conflict with supervisors that started with a dispute over a work assignment. The company says it does not discuss current or former employees and declined to comment.
But whatever happened eventually, a November 2019 letter of support from his platoon commander was highly complimentary of “stellar” service that “rivals that of most deployed service members.”
Hilal was by his side on hundreds of patrols and dozens of firefights, monitoring enemy radio traffic and interpreting during encounters with locals, Army Maj. Thomas Goodman said in the letter.
“He was dependable and performed admirably,” Goodman wrote. “Even in firefights that lasted hours on end, he never lost his nerve, and I could always count him to be by my side.”
As it happens, an AP journalist was embedded with the unit for a time, amid intense fighting in eastern Afghanistan, and captured images of Hilal and Goodman, surrounded by villagers as American forces competed with the Taliban for the support of the people.
Read:US general: Afghan forces could face ‘bad possible outcomes’
Goodman said he stands by his recommendation but declined to comment further.
Coburn, who interviewed more than 150 special immigrant visa recipients and applicants for a recently released study of the program, said Hilal’s denial reflects a rigid evaluation process. “There is no nuance to the definition of service,” he said. “You either served or you didn’t serve.”
The special immigration visa program allows applicants to make one appeal, and many are successful. Nearly 80% of 243 Afghans who appealed in the first quarter of 2021 were subsequently approved after providing additional information, according to the State Department. Hilal says his appeal was rejected.
Bates, of the International Refugee Assistance Project, says the fact that there is a U.S. Army officer willing to support should count for something. “Even if he doesn’t qualify for the SIV program, this plainly seems like someone who is in need of protection,” he said.
Death toll soars to 50 in school bombing in Afghan capital
The death toll in a horrific bombing at a girls’ school in the Afghan capital has soared to 50, many of them pupils between 11 and 15 years old, the Interior Ministry said Sunday.
The number of wounded in Saturday’s attack has also climbed to more than 100, said Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian.
Three explosions outside the school entrance struck as students were leaving for the day, he said. The blasts occurred in a mostly Shiite neighborhood in the west of the capital. The Taliban denied responsibility, condemning the attack.
Also Read:Bomb kills at least 30 near girls’ school in Afghan capital
The first explosion came from a vehicle packed with explosives, followed by two others, said Arian, adding that the casualty figures could still rise.
In the capital rattled by relentless bombings, Saturday’s attack was among the worst. Criticism has mounted over lack of security and growing fears of even more violence as the U.S. and NATO complete their final military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The attack targeted Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras who dominate the western Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, where the bombings occurred. Most Hazaras are Shiite Muslims
The area has been hit by violence against minority Shiites and most often claimed by the Islamic State affiliate operating in the country. No one has yet claimed Saturday’s bombings.
Bomb kills at least 30 near girls’ school in Afghan capital
A bomb exploded near a girls’ school in a majority Shiite district of west Kabul on Saturday, killing at least 30 people, many of them young pupils between 11 and 15 years old. The Taliban condemned the attack and denied any responsibility.
Ambulances evacuated the wounded as relatives and residents screamed at authorities near the scene of the blast at Syed Al-Shahda school, in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said. The death toll was expected to rise further.
The bombing, apparently aimed to cause maximum civilian carnage, adds to fears that violence in the war-wrecked country could escalate as the U.S. and NATO end nearly 20 years of military engagement.
Residents in the area said the explosion was deafening. One, Naser Rahimi, told The Associated Press he heard three separate explosions, although there was no official confirmation of multiple blasts. Rahimi also said he believed that the sheer power of the explosion meant the death toll would almost certainly climb.
Rahimi said the explosion went off as the girls were streaming out of the school at around 4:30 p.m. local time. Authorities were investigating the attack but have yet to confirm any details.
One of the students fleeing the school recalled the attack. the screaming of the girls, the blood.
“I was with my classmate, we were leaving the school, when suddenly an explosion happened, “ said 15-year-old Zahra, whose arm had been broken by a piece of shrapnel.
“Ten minutes later there was another explosion and just a couple of minutes later another explosion,” she said. “Everyone was yelling and there was blood everywhere, and I couldn’t see anything clearly.” Her friend died.
While no one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, the Afghan Islamic State affiliate has targeted the Shiite neighborhood before.
The radical Sunni Muslim group has declared war on Afghanistan’s minority Shiite Muslims. Washington blamed IS for a vicious attack last year in a maternity hospital in the same area that killed pregnant women and newborn babies.
In Dasht-e-Barchi, angry crowds attacked the ambulances and even beat health workers as they tried to evacuate the wounded, Health Ministry spokesman Ghulam Dastigar Nazari said. He implored residents to cooperate and allow ambulances free access to the site.
Images circulating on social media purportedly showed bloodied school backpacks and books strewn across the street in front if the school, and smoke rising above the neighborhood.
At one nearby hospital, Associated Press journalists saw at least 20 dead bodies lined up in hallways and rooms, with dozens of wounded people and families of victims pressing through the facility.
Outside the Muhammad Ali Jinnah Hospital, dozens of people lined up to donate blood, while family members checked casualty posted lists on the walls.
Both Arian and Nazari said that at least 50 people were also wounded, and that the casualty toll could rise. The attack occurred just as the fasting day came to an end.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, and Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters in a message that only the Islamic State group could be responsible for such a heinous crime. Mujahid also accused Afghanistan’s intelligence agency of being complicit with IS, although he offered no evidence.
The Taliban and the Afghan government have traded accusations over a series of targeted killings of civil society workers, journalists and Afghan professionals. While IS has taken responsibility for some of those killings, many have gone unclaimed.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a statement condemning the attack, blaming the Taliban even as they denied it. He offered no proof.
IS has previously claimed attacks against minority Shiites in the same area, last year claiming two brutal attacks on education facilities that killed 50 people, most of them students.
Even as the IS has been degraded in Afghanistan, according to government and US officials, it has stepped-up its attacks particularly against Shiite Muslims and women workers.
Earlier the group took responsibility for the targeted killing of three women media personnel in eastern Afghanistan.
The attack comes days after the remaining 2,500 to 3,500 American troops officially began leaving the country. They will be out by Sept. 11 at the latest. The pullout comes amid a resurgent Taliban, who control or hold sway over half of Afghanistan.
The top U.S. military officer said Sunday that Afghan government forces face an uncertain future and possibly some “bad possible outcomes” against Taliban insurgents as the withdrawal accelerates in the coming weeks.
Formal start of final phase of Afghan pullout by US, NATO
The final phase of ending America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan after 20 years formally began Saturday, with the withdrawal of the last U.S. and NATO troops by the end of summer.
President Joe Biden had set May 1 as the official start of the withdrawal of the remaining forces — about 2,500-3,500 U.S. troops and about 7,000 NATO soldiers.
Even before Saturday, the herculean task of packing up had begun.
The military has been taking inventory, deciding what is shipped back to the U.S., what is handed to the Afghan security forces and what is sold as junk in Afghanistan’s markets. In recent weeks, the military has been flying out equipment on massive C-17 cargo planes.
The U.S. is estimated to have spent more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan in the past two decades, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University, which documents the hidden costs of the U.S. military engagement.
Defense department officials and diplomats told The Associated Press the withdrawal has involved closing smaller bases over the last year. They said that since Biden announced the end-of-summer withdrawal date in mid-April, only roughly 60 military personnel had left the country.
The U.S. and its NATO allies went into Afghanistan together on Oct. 7, 2001 to hunt the al-Qaida perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks who lived under the protection of the country’s Taliban rulers. Two months later, the Taliban had been defeated and al-Qaida fighters and their leader, Osama bin Laden, were on the run.
In his withdrawal announcement last month, Biden said the initial mission was accomplished a decade ago when U.S. Navy SEALS killed bin Laden in his hideout in neighboring Pakistan. Since then, al-Qaida has been degraded, while the terrorist threat has “metastasized” into a global phenomenon that is not contained by keeping thousands of troops in one country, he said.
Until now the U.S. and NATO have received no promises from the Taliban that they won’t attack troops during the pullout. In a response to AP questions, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said the Taliban leadership was still mulling over its strategy.
U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett tweeted late Saturday that there was some ineffective firing in the area of southern Kandahar air base, one of the U.S. military’s largest bases.
“Kandahar Airfield received ineffective indirect fire this afternoon; no injury to personnel or damage to equipment,” he tweeted, without attaching blame.
However, he also posted a video clip of Gen. Austin Miller, head of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, speaking to an Afghan journalist in which he said “a return to violence would be one senseless and tragic,” but that coalition troops “have the military means to respond forcefully to any type of attacks.”
The insurgent group continues to accuse Washington of breaching the deal it signed with Biden’s predecessor more than a year ago. In that agreement, the U.S. said it would have all troops out by May 1.
In a statement Saturday, Taliban military spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the passing of the May 1 deadline for a complete withdrawal “opened the way for (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) mujahidin to take every counteraction it deems appropriate against the occupying forces.”
However, he said fighters on the battlefield will wait for a decision from the leadership before launching any attacks and that decision will be based on “the sovereignty, values and higher interests of the country.”
Violence has spiked in Afghanistan since the February 2020 deal was signed. Peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government, which were part of the agreement, quickly bogged down. On Friday, a truck bomb in eastern Logar province killed 21 people, many of them police and students.
Afghans have paid the highest price since 2001, with 47,245 civilians killed, according to the Costs of War project. Millions more have been displaced inside Afghanistan or have fled to Pakistan, Iran and Europe.
Afghanistan’s security forces are expected to come under increasing pressure from the Taliban after the withdrawal if no peace agreement is reached in the interim, according to Afghan watchers.
Since the start of the war they have taken heavy losses, with estimates ranging from 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan troops killed. The Afghan military has been battered by corruption. The U.S. and NATO pay $4 billion a year to sustain the force.
Some 300,000 Afghan troops are on the books, although the actual number is believed to be lower. Commanders have been found to inflate the numbers to collect paychecks of so-called “ghost soldiers,” according to the U.S. watchdog monitoring Washington’s spending in Afghanistan.
Still, the Afghan defense ministry and presidential palace in separate statements have said that Afghanistan’s security forces are in good shape to defend against Taliban advances.
Last year was the only year U.S. and NATO troops did not suffer a loss. The Defense Department says 2,442 U.S. troops have been killed and 20,666 wounded since 2001. It is estimated that over 3,800 U.S. private security contractors have been killed. The Pentagon does not track their deaths.
The conflict also has killed 1,144 personnel from NATO countries.
The Taliban, meanwhile, are at their strongest since being ousted in 2001. While mapping their gains and territorial holds is difficult, they are believed to hold sway or outright control over nearly half of Afghanistan.
“We are telling the departing Americans ... you fought a meaningless war and paid a cost for that and we also offered huge sacrifices for our liberation,” Shaheen told the AP on Friday.
Striking a more conciliatory tone, he added: “If you ... open a new chapter of helping Afghans in reconstruction and rehabilitation of the country, the Afghans will appreciate that.”
In announcing the departure, Biden said waiting for ideal conditions to leave would consign America to an indefinite stay.
In the Afghan capital and throughout the country, there is a growing fear that chaos will follow the departure of the last foreign troops. After billions of dollars and decades of war, many Afghans wonder at whether it was worth it.
Islamic State degraded in Afghanistan but still poses threat
Tribal elder Dawlat Khan still has nightmares about fighters from the local affiliate of the global Islamic State terror network who swept across his and other villages in eastern Afghanistan five years ago.
The extremists, including Afghans, Pakistanis, Arabs and men from Central Asia, quickly imposed a reign of terror. They kidnapped some locals who worked for the Afghan government, later dropping off their decapitated corpses in public places. In one instance, villagers were summoned to a beheading where some fainted while others froze as they watched in horror.
Militants of the Islamic State group have since been driven back into the mountains by blistering U.S. and Afghan bombing raids and a fierce ground campaign by the Taliban, Afghanistan’s homegrown insurgents. The Taliban, eager to expand their domestic political power, pledged to the Trump administration last year they would prevent any attacks on the West from Afghan soil after foreign troops leave.
Also read: As Biden improves with vets, Afghanistan plan a plus to some
Recent success in containing IS is central to the calculus of President Joe Biden, who decided earlier this month to pull all remaining U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the summer. Biden argues that threats to the West, whether by IS or remnants of the al-Qaida network, can be defused from a distance.
Yet there are concerns that in the potential chaos of a post-withdrawal Afghanistan, IS “will be able to find additional space to operate,” said Seth Jones, senior vice-president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Some note that it took more than three years to dislodge and degrade IS fighters, many of them ethnic Pashtuns from Pakistan’s tribal regions and Afghans from the northeastern Nangarhar and Kunar provinces. The retreating militants left behind mined roads and fields.
Khan, the tribal leader, fled his village of Pananzai with his six brothers and their families at the height of the battles against IS. They’re not rushing home, even though the family of 63 people is crammed into nine small rooms in Nangarhar’s provincial capital of Jalalabad.
“We are afraid they will return,” Khan, a father of 12, said of IS fighters.
Biden has said he will hold the Taliban accountable for their commitment not to allow terror threats against the U.S. or its allies from Afghan soil. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan 20 years ago after al-Qaida militants, hosted by the Taliban, staged the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In recent years, Washington has come to see the Taliban as a national force, with no ambitions beyond their borders, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The Taliban, familiar with mountain caves and dirt paths in remote terrain, are a useful ally against IS, which is viewed by the U.S. as the greatest threat emanating from Afghanistan, the official said.
In justifying his withdrawal decision, Biden noted that terror threats are “metastasizing around the globe” and that “keeping thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country, at the cost of billions each year, makes little sense to me and our leaders.”
The withdrawal is under way, with the final phase starting Saturday. By Sept. 11, America will have withdrawn its last 2,500 to 3,500 troops, and about 7,000 allied forces from NATO are following the same timetable.
But there are concerns about IS re-emerging, particularly if the Taliban and the Afghan government can’t reach a power-sharing deal. Intra-Afghan peace talks remain stalled, despite U.S. efforts to jump start them.
Ongoing fighting between the Taliban and the government could further erode the morale of Afghanistan’s 300,000-plus security forces who sustain heavy casualties daily and are plagued by widespread corruption. It’s unclear how the troops can be a bulwark against new terrorist threats.
At the same time, IS continues to recruit among radicalized university students and disgruntled Taliban, said a former Afghan security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
Also read: US to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11
IS has also resumed a campaign of targeted killings of minority Shiite Muslims, many of them ethnic Hazaras, as well as women’s rights activists and media workers. They claimed attacks last year on two educational facilities, including Kabul University, that killed more than 50 students. Washington blamed IS for a brutal assault last year on a maternity hospital in a largely Hazara neighborhood of Kabul. Infants and pregnant women were killed.
In March, seven Hazaras who worked in a stucco factory in the eastern city of Jalalabad were killed in an attack claimed by IS. The assailants tied their victims’ hands behind their backs and shot each with a single bullet to the back of the head.
Some residents there are afraid to point the finger at IS, fearing they might be targeted next.
IS operatives are said to occupy an entire neighborhood near the central Talashi roundabout. They have infiltrated the motorized rickshaw business and use the vehicles for targeted killings, said taxi driver Saida Jan.
Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant, said for a while it appeared the IS presence in Afghanistan and surrounding regions “was all but dead,” but the group’s operations “have since resumed in earnest.”
“They represent a significant terrorist threat, but their tactics remain in the realm of assassination and sabotage,” said Kohlmann, who has worked with the FBI and the Nine Eleven Finding Answers Foundation that emerged following the assaults on America.
“They don’t seem to be in a strong position of conquering and holding territory,” or of threatening the U.S., he said.
The Taliban say they have made good on promises to the U.S. by ordering fighters to keep non-Afghans from their ranks, and telling al-Qaida to leave the region. Some analysts say they’re not convinced the Taliban have distanced themselves from groups like al-Qaida.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, acknowledge the withdrawal will reduce Washington’s intelligence gathering capacities, even if IS and al-Qaida aren’t in a position to attack U.S. targets from Afghanistan.
Asfandyar Mir at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation said the U.S. will be able to continue technical eaves-dropping from a distance, while on-the-ground intelligence gathering will weaken further.
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“The U.S. campaign in Afghanistan has been notoriously poor at getting good information and being played by rent-seeking actors, the cost of which is borne by innocent civilians in raids and strikes gone wrong,” said Mir.
“With U.S. forces out, and unable to provide security to potential informers, existing sources will dwindle and opportunities for bad actors to dupe the U.S. will grow,” he said.
As Biden improves with vets, Afghanistan plan a plus to some
Patrick Proctor Brown says the war in Afghanistan was lost within a year of its start. The suburban Milwaukee lawyer, who was an infantry captain in Iraq, said the trillions of dollars spent and the thousands of lives lost, including a lieutenant he trained with, make it “a tragedy.”
“And the Taliban will be back in power in a year,” said Brown, 35, who also studied diplomacy at Norwich, a military university in Vermont. “It’s insane.”
Brown supports President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, and by voting for the Democrat, he represents a subtle but potent shift in the voting behavior of some in the military.
Voters who served in the military have long leaned toward Republicans. But there are signs that Biden may have cut into that advantage last year. Biden carried several counties with large military communities — as well as the most concentrated military congressional district last year — that former President Donald Trump and previous Republican presidential nominees counted on for decades.
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Veteran groups and pollsters attribute Biden’s gains to a handful of factors, including an increase in female, Black, Latino and college-educated service members, all keys to the Democratic coalition.
But strategists also point to the stark contrast in Biden’s and Trump’s approaches to the military. Biden, the father of an Iraq War veteran, often closes his speeches with a short prayer for U.S. troops. Trump, meanwhile, was quick to praise veterans in public, but also made Islamophobic attacks on the parents of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq — a Gold Star family — and made comments mocking American war dead.
The contrast raises the question of whether Democrats’ fledgling momentum with military voters is more than a momentary anti-Trump blip. It also heaps pressure on Biden to fulfill policy promises and perfect the political outreach to veterans getting underway.
“This president has got to end these wars,” said Jon Soltz, a former Army tank captain who formed the Democratic-leaning VoteVets.org in 2006. “He’s got to fulfill some of these promises. There’s a war-weariness in the military.”
Results from around the country last year suggest Biden has an edge with some military voters unlike his recent predecessors.
Among several military-leaning spots on the national map, Biden carried Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, which contains the most active duty and veteran service members in the country. It includes the world’s largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk, and is home to more than 110,000 active and retired service members. Trump won the district in 2016, as did Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.
Biden also flipped New Hampshire’s Rockingham County, home of Portsmouth and the U.S. Navy’s oldest continuously operating shipyard. He was also the first Democrat ever to carry Riley County, Kansas. It’s the home of Kansas State University, but also Fort Riley Army base, where the National Bio Defense research has drawn an educated and racially and ethnically diverse military workforce.
“In all of the data we saw, Biden was doing better with veterans and active duty,” than previous Democratic nominees going back decades, said Celinda Lake, one of the Biden campaign’s two main pollsters. “And the campaign was very active in targeting veterans, including talking about his son being a veteran of the current engagements, and that resonated with active military and veterans.”
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Early in the 2020 campaign, aides recognized the former vice president’s unique profile as a potential commander in chief. Having been to Iraq and Afghanistan dozens of times as vice president and, before that, a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he also is the father of an Iraq War veteran, his late son Beau.
“We ran commander in chief ads in Iowa because we thought the country needed it,” said Greg Schultz, Biden’s campaign manager through the early 2020 primaries and caucuses. “But it was also a signal to military veterans and their families that Biden gets it.”
The Afghanistan decision is a priority for many on active duty and especially post-9/11 veterans like Brown, though there are others who served there who may think the U.S. is abandoning Afghans they worked with or who feel the sacrifices of the more than 3,500 U.S. troops who died there were in vain.
The move is a longtime promise of Biden, who advocated it as vice president, though it never happened during the eight years of the Obama administration.
“It is the responsibility of the Afghans to take care of their own security,” Biden said during a 2012 vice presidential debate, pledging that the U.S. would be gone in two years. “We’ve been in this war for over a decade.”
There’s no sign that veterans’ views on the war differ dramatically from other Americans’. A July 2019 Pew Research Poll found 58% of veterans said the war in Afghanistan was not worth fighting, nearly identical to the general public’s view at 59%.
VoteVets is taking actions to keep Biden’s momentum from slowing. The group has hired Schultz, Biden’s former campaign manager, as a consultant to help build a veteran voter database to improve outreach.
Beyond Trump’s insensitive remarks about some troops and their families, his decisions to abruptly withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, which left Kurdish allies unprotected, angered some military leaders. In an extraordinary rebuke after the 2020 election, all 10 living former secretaries of defense cautioned against involving the military in pursuing Trump’s false claims of election fraud, calling any such move “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”
Likewise, the Trump administration’s Pentagon policy barred transgender people from joining the military, while Trump was seen as doing little to distance himself from far-right racist groups at a time when the military has become more diverse.
Unless Biden runs against Trump in 2024, Republicans could likely recoup some of those military voters, said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor and former special adviser to President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.
“From a military voter point of view, it is Trumpism more than Republicanism that is off-putting,” Feaver said. “The more Trump recedes from view, the greater the attention on the problems within the Democratic coalition on national security and defense issues will be.”
VoteVets’ Soltz sees the Afghanistan decision as one that his group can cite as it promotes support for Biden in the years leading up to the next presidential election, especially as the administration moves to confront Russia and China, considered more direct threats to U.S. security.
“There is an intellectual conversation at the highest level of the military about meeting tomorrow’s demands that aren’t yesterday’s,” Soltz said. “And Afghanistan is a yesterday.”
Biden’s gamble: Will pulling troops revive extremist threat?
At its start, America’s war in Afghanistan was about retribution for 9/11. Then it was about shoring up a weak government and its weak army so that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida could never again threaten the United States.
Now it’s about over. With bin Laden long since dead and the United States not suffering another major attack, President Joe Biden is promising to end America’s longest war and move on to what he believes are bigger, more consequential challenges posed by a resurgent Russia and a rising China.
Even so, by withdrawing the remaining few thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Biden is taking a calculated risk that extremists in Afghanistan can be countered by U.S. and partner forces elsewhere in the region — and that he won’t become the president who underestimated the resilience and reach of extremists who still aim to attack the United States.
Also read: US to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11
CIA Director William Burns told Congress on Wednesday the U.S. unavoidably will lose some intelligence leverage against the extremist threat, although he suggested the losses would be manageable.
“The U.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish. That’s simply a fact,” Burns said. “It is also a fact, however, that after withdrawal, whenever that time comes, the CIA and all of our partners in the U.S. government will retain a suite of capabilities, some of it remaining in place, some of them that we will generate, that can help us to anticipate and contest any rebuilding effort.”
There were 2,500 to 3,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan when Biden took office, the smallest number since early in the war. The number peaked at 100,000 during President Barack Obama’s first term. As U.S. war casualties have declined, so has the American public’s attention. The war was barely mentioned during last year’s presidential contest, and pulling the plug may prove politically popular.
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Yet worries remain. Stephen Biddle, a Columbia University professor who has advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, says it’s possible al-Qaida could re-establish its base structure in Afghanistan once the Americans and their coalition partners leave. The Taliban in Afghanistan pledged in a February 2020 agreement with the Trump administration that they would not allow al-Qaida or other extremist groups to use Afghan territory to threaten the United States. But that deal may be imperiled by Biden’s decision not to complete the withdrawal of forces by May 1, as the Trump administration had promised.
The bigger peril, Biddle said in an email exchange, is that the withdrawal could lead to the collapse of Afghan security forces and multi-sided civil warfare involving Taliban factions and others “in a more-lethal version of the civil war of the 1990s.”
“This would be a humanitarian disaster for Afghans — far worse than today’s insurgency,” he said.
More broadly, the absence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan could lead to further instability in a region with two rival nuclear powers — Pakistan and India, which have insurgencies of their own to contend with.
“This is already a dangerous part of the world; making it worse by allowing the collapse of the Afghan government is the biggest risk here,” Biddle said.
At a previously pivotal moment in the war, Obama took a similar view. When he announced a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, he argued against trying to contain extremist threats in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region only with what the U.S. military calls “over-the-horizon” forces — troops and aircraft positioned beyond Afghan borders.
“To abandon this area now — and to rely only on efforts against al-Qaida from a distance — would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al-Qaida and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies,” Obama said.
So Obama went ahead with a troop buildup aimed at hitting the Taliban so hard that they would agree to negotiate a peace deal. It didn’t work. The Taliban kept fighting. Even after President Donald Trump authorized a more muscular military approach to the Taliban in 2017, the hard-hit militant group did not give up. It agreed to negotiate with the Afghan government, but those talks have stalled.
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It’s difficult to judge what has been gained in the 12 years since Obama escalated the war. Afghan security forces likely are stronger, although their resilience will be tested in the absence of U.S. support they grew to rely upon. The Afghan government has not strengthened its authority across the country, and the Pentagon argues that its intense focus on countering insurgents there and in the Middle East has been such a drain on resources that the U.S. is losing ground against China and Russia.
The war has cost more than 2,300 U.S. lives and immeasurable suffering among Afghans since the United States invaded in October 2001. Ten years into the war, in May 2011, U.S. forces killed bin Laden in Pakistan, and for a short time it seemed possible that Washington would see an opening for ending the war.
A few weeks after bin Laden’s death, a young American soldier at a dusty outpost in eastern Afghanistan asked visiting Defense Secretary Robert Gates what effect the al-Qaida leader’s demise would have on the war, suggesting hope that it would hasten its end and allow troops to go home.
“It is too early to tell,” Gates replied.
Ten years later, Biden has decided the time has come, although for Afghans the war may be far from over.
US to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11
President Joe Biden will withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America that were coordinated from that country, several U.S. officials said.
Biden will lay out his vision for the way forward in Afghanistan and the timeline for the withdrawal in remarks Wednesday afternoon, The White House said. Punctuating the nearly two decades U.S. troops have fought and died in Afghanistan, the president will then visit Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery to honor the sacrifice of those who died in recent American conflicts.
The decision to withdraw troops by fall defies a May 1 deadline for full withdrawal under a peace agreement the Trump administration reached with the Taliban last year, but leaves no room for additional extensions. A senior administration official on Tuesday called the September date an absolute deadline that won’t be affected by security conditions in the country.
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While Biden’s decision keeps U.S. troops in Afghanistan four months longer than initially planned, it sets a firm end to two decades of war that killed more than 2,200 U.S. troops, wounded 20,000, and cost as much as $1 trillion. The conflict largely crippled al-Qaida and led to the death of Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks. But an American withdrawal also risks many of the gains made in democracy, women’s rights and governance, while ensuring that the Taliban, who provided al-Qaida’s haven, remain strong and in control of large swaths of the country.
Biden has been hinting for weeks that he was going to let the May deadline lapse, and as the days went by it became clear that an orderly withdrawal of the roughly 2,500 remaining troops would be difficult and was unlikely. The administration official said the drawdown would begin by May 1.
Biden’s choice of the 9/11 date underscores the reason that American troops were in Afghanistan to begin with — to prevent extremist groups like al-Qaida from establishing a foothold again that could be used to launch attacks against the U.S.
The administration official said Biden decided that the withdrawal deadline had to be absolute, rather than based on conditions on the ground. “We’re committing today to going to zero” U.S. forces by Sept. 11, and possibly well before, the official said, adding that Biden concluded that a conditioned withdrawal would be “a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever.”
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Defense officials and commanders had argued against the May 1 deadline, saying the U.S. troop withdrawal should be based on security conditions in Afghanistan, including Taliban attacks and violence.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki didn’t provide details of Biden’s remarks planned for Wednesday, but she said during a White House briefing that Biden “has been consistent in his view that there is not a military solution to Afghanistan, that we have been there for far too long.”
Psaki tweeted later Tuesday that Biden’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery was “to pay his respects to the brave men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan.”
Several U.S. officials confirmed Biden’s withdrawal decision to The Associated Press, and an administration official provided details to reporters on condition of anonymity, speaking ahead of the announcement.
According to the administration official, the only U.S. forces remaining in Afghanistan will be those needed to protect diplomats there. No exact number was provided, but American troop totals in Afghanistan have been understated by U.S. administrations for years. Officials have quietly acknowledged that there are hundreds more in Afghanistan than the official 2,500 number, and likely would include special operations forces conducting covert or counterterrorism missions, often working with intelligence agency personnel.
Biden’s new, extended timeline will allow a safe and orderly withdrawal of American troops in coordination with NATO allies, the administration official added.
The president’s decision, however, risks retaliation by the Taliban on U.S. and Afghan forces, possibly escalating the 20-year war. And it will reignite political division over America’s involvement in what many have called the endless war.
An intelligence community report issued Tuesday about global challenges for the next year said prospects for a peace deal in Afghanistan are “low” and warned that “the Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield. If the coalition withdraws support, the report says, the Afghan government will struggle to control the Taliban.
Congressional reaction to the new deadline was mixed.
“Precipitously withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan is a grave mistake,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “It is retreat in the face of an enemy that has not yet been vanquished and abdication of American leadership.”
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, slammed it as a “reckless and dangerous decision.” He said any withdrawal should be conditions-based, adding that arbitrary deadlines could put troops in danger, create a breeding ground for terrorists and lead to civil war in Afghanistan.
Democrats were generally more supportive. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said President Donald Trump’s May 1 deadline limited Biden’s options. “We still have vital interests in protecting against terrorist attacks that could be emanating from that part of the world, but there are other areas, too, we have to be conscious of,” Reed said.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said troops should come home, and the U.S. must refocus American national security on more pressing challenges.
But at least one senior Democrat expressed disappointment. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said in a tweet that the U.S. “has sacrificed too much to bring stability to Afghanistan to leave w/o verifiable assurances of a secure future.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told the AP that the religious militia is waiting for a formal announcement to issue its reaction. The Taliban previously warned the U.S. of “consequences” if it reneged on the May 1 deadline.
In a February 2020 agreement with the Trump administration, the Taliban agreed to halt attacks and hold peace talks with the Afghan government, in exchange for a U.S. commitment to a complete withdrawal by May 2021.
Over the past year, U.S. military commanders and defense officials have said that attacks on U.S. troops have largely paused, but that Taliban attacks on the Afghans increased. Commanders have argued that the Taliban have failed to meet the conditions of the peace agreement by continuing attacks on the Afghans and failing to totally cut ties with al-Qaida and other extremist groups.
When Biden entered the White House in January, he was keenly aware of the looming deadline and had time to meet it if he had chosen to do so. He began a review of the February 2020 agreement shortly after taking office, and has been consulting at length with his defense advisers and allies.
In recent weeks, it became increasingly clear that he was leaning toward defying the deadline.
“It’s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline,” Biden said in March. “Just in terms of tactical reasons, it’s hard to get those troops out.” He added, “And if we leave, we’re going to do so in a safe and orderly way.”
US to leave troops in Afghanistan beyond May, 9/11 new goal
President Joe Biden has decided to leave American troops in Afghanistan beyond the May 1 deadline negotiated with the Taliban by the Trump administration, and has set the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks as the new goal, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Biden has been hinting for weeks that he was going to let the deadline lapse, and as the days went by it became clear that an orderly withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 troops would be difficult and was unlikely. U.S. officials provided details on Biden’s decision on condition of anonymity, speaking ahead of the announcement. It was first reported by The Washington Post.
His decision risks retaliation by the Taliban on U.S. and Afghan forces, possibly escalating the 20-year war. And it will reignite political division over America’s involvement in what many have called the endless war.
Also read: US wasted billions on cars, buildings in Afghanistan
Setting the 9/11 date, however, underscores the reason that American troops were in Afghanistan to begin with — to prevent extremist groups from establishing a foothold in the country again that could be used to launch attacks against the U.S.
In a February 2020 agreement with the administration of President Donald Trump, the Taliban agreed to halt attacks and hold peace talks with the Afghan government, in exchange for a U.S. commitment to a complete withdrawal by May 2021.
Over the past year, U.S. military commanders and defense officials have said that attacks on U.S. troops have largely paused, but they say the Taliban have increased attacks on the Afghans. Commanders have argued that the Taliban have failed to meet the conditions of the peace agreement by continuing attacks on the Afghans and failing to totally cut ties with al-Qaida and other extremist groups.
Also read: US to cut troop levels to 2,500 in Iraq, Afghanistan
When Biden entered the White House in January, he was keenly aware of the looming deadline and had time to meet it if he had chosen to do so. He launched a review of the February 2020 agreement shortly after taking office, and has been consulting at length with his defense and military advisers as well as allies.
In recent weeks, it became increasingly clear that he was leaning toward defying the deadline.
“It’s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline,” Biden said in late March. “Just in terms of tactical reasons, it’s hard to get those troops out.” Tellingly, he added, “And if we leave, we’re going to do so in a safe and orderly way.”