The Taliban has seized an unprecedented amount of U.S. and Western weaponry, representing a significant expansion in the organization’s military capacity and combat capabilities.
For over two decades, the United States has provided the Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces with over $20 billion in weaponry, hardware, and equipment. However, the U.S. failed to produce a sustainable and effective Afghan military.
Recent political developments in Jammu and Kashmir have opened a debate that some kind of democratic recovery has started in this conflict-ridden part of India and perhaps even the whole country. Yet a closer look shows that it is too early for such optimism.
In an article published in the Taliban’s monthly magazine, Al-Somood, which was released[1] on August 31, 2021, writer Karim Al-Nakadi argued that the views held by the Taliban today are consistent with the Taliban of the past, and responded to several accusations made against the Taliban, including the claim that they fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) on behalf of the West.
After the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan, Arab countries are wondering whether Syria – which has hundreds of American soldiers – will be the next country to witness a U.S. withdrawal. This was already stated in an analytical article in the Foreign Policy magazine.
The piece says that given current U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy toward Afghanistan, which is based on a declaration similar to one by former U.S. President Donald Trump, Arab leaders are likely to prepare for Washington’s exit from Syria, where the U.S. has no vital interests.
The possible U.S. withdrawal from northeastern Syria reminds us of Trump’s announcement of the “U.S. victory over Daesh” in December 2018, when the U.S. declared its intervention in Syria was aimed at eliminating the terrorist group.
In October 2019, Trump said that it was time for the U.S. to “get out of the ridiculous endless wars in Syria.” Trump also added in connected tweets that “The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago. We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight,” noting that U.S. forces arrived in Syria when Daesh was spreading in the region.
After the Taliban takeover, Biden said that the U.S. would not have settled in Afghanistan forever and that he was following the agreement concluded by Trump with the Taliban to withdraw American forces. Biden also stressed that he does not regret implementing the decision to withdraw, underlining that “the mission in Afghanistan was never to build a state.”
In his speech, Biden noted that China and Russia would have liked the U.S. to plunge into the Afghan quagmire indefinitely, and said that “our two true strategic competitors, China and Russia, would like the United States to continue to devote indefinitely billions of dollars of resources and attention to achieving stability in Afghanistan.”
Whether the Americans and the international coalition with them did a bad job training the Afghan army, or whether that gathering was even qualified for training, does not matter now. It is certain that Washington is tired of sitting in Afghanistan and everything that happens there today and going forward will be with the tacit approval of the international community. Now, the basic principle for everyone will be to reduce negative consequences, not prevent them.
Bagram base
It is worth noting what the new commander of the Afghan Bagram Airfield said that the U.S. forces left the base weeks ago, without informing the Afghan side. He told international media that the U.S. forces left the base at night, and the Afghan army only learned about the exit later. The U.S. Department of Defense justified its decision not to announce the date of the withdrawal from the base, citing “security reasons,” especially after Afghan officials expressed their disapproval about not being informed of the date of the U.S. withdrawal.
In the same context, an article by the former U.S. ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, earlier this year in the Foreign Affairs magazine, stated that the Biden administration needs to cooperate with Turkey and Russia to solve the region’s problems and combat Daesh. The article said the U.S. must recognize its inability to create a new statelet within Syrian territory.
Ford said, “under American supervision, the region (northeast of the Syrian Arab Republic) was transformed into a semi-state with its own army consisting of the Syrian Democratic Forces and PKK/YPG elements.” The American diplomat added that “this statelet will not be able to support itself and will continue to rely on American resources for the foreseeable future, and Syria has never been a major issue for American national security.”
In his article, Ford notes that achieving U.S. interests does not require ensuring the administration of eastern Syria, but rather containing terrorist threats there, which is very similar to the policy toward Afghanistan today. The big question currently circulating is whether Washington will withdraw from eastern Syria in the same way it “secretly” withdrew from Afghanistan’s Bagram?
Celebratory gunfire erupted in Kabul on Friday night as rumours circulated that the Taliban had captured the Panjshir Valley, a last holdout against the Taliban sweep.
Heavy clashes have been reported in recent days between the Taliban and the Panjshir Valley-based National Resistance Forces (NRF), headed by former vice president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the British-educated son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed in a suicide bombing two days before the 9/11 attacks in the US.
A close senior aide to Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden has returned to Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan two weeks after the Taliban seized control of the country.
A video verified by the The National shows Amin ul-Haq being driven through a checkpoint in the passenger seat of a white four-wheel-drive to a rapturous welcome by supporters.
The calamitous scenes at Kabul’s airport, where thousands of people are scrambling to escape the Taliban before an August 31 deadline, prove the US is not concerned with the fate of ordinary Afghans, Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told The National.
With days before the US ends its 20-year presence in Afghanistan and with tens of thousands of Afghans soon to be left stranded, Mr Hekmatyer said the facts speak for themselves.
Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, the humanitarian emergency there has become even more dire. This briefing note outlines the most pressing issues and steps to help relieve the suffering.
Dramatic scenes at the Kabul airport of Afghans desperate to leave the country, and horrific bombings there, captured the world’s attention in the weeks after the Taliban took power. The focus is now shifting to a much larger, multi-faceted humanitarian crisis throughout the country. Violence, displacement, drought and the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Afghan population with accelerating force in recent years, and the humanitarian disaster gathered pace in May as the final withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces began. Afghans teemed across borders seeking refuge after the government collapsed on 15 August.
Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country – and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.
Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has frozen nearly all of the Afghan Central Bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government of funds that it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services.
In the wake of intense fighting and the rapid transfer of power to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (also known as the Taliban), people are facing widespread instability, mass displacement, and the disruption of basic services, including health care. Despite the challenges, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams continue to provide essential medical care across all five of our projects in Afghanistan—in Herat, Helmand, Kandahar, Khost, and Kunduz provinces. Here, two medical staff members working in Lashkar Gah (Helmand province) and Khost city describe the recent changes they have witnessed, and how they have affected patients and health care providers alike.