Speculation has been rife American forces would withdrawal from Syria after the Afghanistan pullout in an effort to end ‘forever wars’.
The United States will not be withdrawing its roughly 900 troops from northeast Syria any time soon, despite mounting speculation it would do so following its much-maligned August pull-out from Afghanistan, according to officials with knowledge of the Biden administration’s plans.
At another level, for two dissimilar reasons, Afghanistan and AUKUS will reshape the strategic landscape of Asia and the US’s Indo-Pacific.
First, the US’s policy towards Afghanistan and South, South-west and Central Asia has been poorly conceived. Unable to influence the hard-line Taliban regime, Washington now suddenly hopes that regional powers, including India, Russia, Turkey and Afghanistan’s neighbours – Pakistan, Iran, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – will sort out the strategic mess created by its decision to quit Afghanistan. All these countries fear that Afghanistan-based terrorists will destabilise their territories and regional backyards.
When Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States formed the AUKUS on 15 September 2021, many countries in the world have raised serious concerns that this trilateral arrangement can further heighten existing security tensions in the Indo-Pacific because of AUKUS’ expressed intention to assertively counter China’s growing political power in the region. Like the QUAD or the Quadrilateral Agreement of US, Australia, India and Japan, AUKUS can be viewed as another containment approach by Western powers and their allies in the Indo-Pacific to strategically gang-up against China in their attempt to prevent Beijing from expanding its political influence in Asia and beyond.
On October 20, 2021, two soldiers and two Police officers were killed when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in the Bajaur District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.
On September 30, 2021, two persons, including a Pakistan Army Captain and a TTP ‘commander’ Khawaza Din aka Sher Khan were killed during an Intelligence-Based Operation (IBO) in the Tank District of KP. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), after receiving information about the presence of TTP terrorists in the area, the Security Forces (SFs) were conducting an operation.
While concerns of a terrorist resurgence in Afghanistan are front and center, we need to remember that there are thousands of ISIS fighters waging a low-level insurgency in Iraq and Syria. Containing that threat is critical, and doing so over the long term requires an international relations moonshot: creating an independent Kurdish state.
Based on past efforts to create an independent Kurdistan, it would seem unlikely and Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Russia would oppose such a move. However, the status quo is untenable, and no other solution likely would be as effective and durable in containing the terrorist threat in the region.
Abstract: Six themes emerge from a close examination of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ (ANDSF) collapse in 2021: the ANDSF collapse was months—if not years—in the making; the United States did not give the ANDSF everything they needed to be independently successful; the ANDSF did put up a fierce fight in many areas; the ANDSF were poorly served by Afghan political leaders; the ANDSF were poorly served by their own commanders; and the Taliban strategy overwhelmed and demoralized the ANDSF. From these themes, there are three key lessons: the ANDSF’s failure had many fathers; the U.S. model of security assistance requires reform; and greater emphasis on non-material factors (e.g., morale) is needed in future security force assessments.
Association for Human Rights in Central Asia (AHRCA), International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) are concerned about the fates of a group of Afghan refugees comprised of journalists, human rights defenders, parliamentary deputies, musicians and artists and their families from Afghanistan who face the threat of forcible return from Uzbekistan to their native country, in violation of the principle of non-refoulement under international human rights law. The group of people, over 70 in total, are currently in Uzbekistan on temporary visas, which expire on 11 November 2021, after which they might be sent back to Afghanistan unless they succeed in legalizing their status in Uzbekistan or are resettled to a safe third country prior to this. The group of refugees fled to Uzbekistan in August 2021, as part of a wave of refugees who left Afghanistan for Uzbekistan after the Taliban came to power in their native country.
In Kamdesh, Nuristan, where U.S. forces withdrew more than a decade ago, the American presence is a distant – and negative – memory for many locals.
In the dead of night on August 30, 2021, the last U.S. forces stepped off the tarmac of Kabul Airport onto a plane and left Afghanistan. It was almost 20 years after the first U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, to go after al-Qaida and topple the Emirate of the Taliban that sheltered them. In a twist that would have been unimaginable back in late 2001, by the time the U.S. left the Taliban again held sway in the capital Kabul and practically in the whole of Afghanistan – a feat that they did not even achieve at the prior height of their power in September 2001.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the Islamic State (IS) militant group has thousands of fighters in northern Afghanistan, as Moscow prepares to host international talks next week on the situation in the country.
“According to our intelligence, the number of (IS) members alone in northern Afghanistan is about 2,000 people,” Putin said on October 15 during a video address to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit of ex-Soviet states.
China wants to invest billions of dollars in Afghanistan if the Taliban guarantee security for their workers and their assets. This, according to the Taliban’s acting Deputy Minister of Information and Culture Zabihullah Mujahid, who also said his government is ready to deliver.