With the dramatic sweep of the Taliban across Afghanistan in the face of crumbling resistance from the Ashraf Ghani regime, the wheel of history has turned full circle.
In the end, the 180,000 Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, and a police force with 150,000 personnel, besides an air force and other security wings armed with technology and trained by the US and NATO, proved unequal to a motley force of Taliban.
Pakistan is establishing interfaith harmony councils at the local, provincial and national level to promote dialogue and resolve sectarian conflicts, Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, special representative of the prime minister on religious harmony, has revealed.
In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, Ashrafi, who is also the chairman of Pakistan Ulema Council, a top body of religious scholars, said Prime Minister Imran Khan is striving for unity among Muslim countries.
US had asked to use its military bases in South Korea to house Afghan refugees, says Seoul
The Taliban said Afghanistan and South Korea can mutually benefit from the war-torn country’s untapped mineral fields as the group seeks to strengthen economic ties with the East Asian nation reputed for its electronics industry.
The Taliban stunned the world with the speed of their blitz through Afghanistan and capture of Kabul on August 15. As they surged to victory, the group tried to create an image of themselves as a more moderate “Taliban 2.0” – savvy on social media and keen for good diplomatic relations with other countries. But the profiles of the figures at the top of the Taliban’s hierarchy show their violent past is their violent present. FRANCE 24 looks at Afghanistan’s new rulers.
Atop a craggy mountain that has withstood foreign invaders for decades, anti-Taliban fighters fire a mounted heavy machine gun into a deep valley.
They are members of the National Resistance Front (NRF) — the most prominent Afghan opposition group to emerge since the Taliban captured Kabul nine days ago.
With militia fighters and former government soldiers in its ranks, the NRF has set up machine gun nests, mortars and surveillance posts fortified with sandbags in anticipation of a Taliban assault on their bastion, the Panjshir Valley.
Its fighters, many of them in military camouflage fatigues, patrol the area in US-made Humvees and technicals — pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on the back.
Many carry assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and walkie-talkies. Some pose on their vehicles with a dramatic background of snow-covered peaks in the valley, which begins around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Kabul.
“We are going to rub their faces in the ground,” said one fighter at a position in the Panjshir heights, listing past victories against the Taliban.
His comrades then raise their fists and chanted “Allah-u Akbar” (God is great).
The strategic valley — populated primarily by ethnic Tajiks — offers natural defence points, with narrow entrances in the shadow of high mountains.
“If Taliban warlords launch an assault, they will of course face staunch resistance from us,” Ahmad Massoud, one of the NRF leaders, said in a Washington Post op-ed last week.
He is the son of the late guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, revered for turning the Panjshir Valley into an anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban bastion.
The defensive preparations are familiar for Panjshir residents who saw Massoud thwart multiple Soviet assaults in the 1980s and Taliban attempts to take the area in the late 1990s.
An NRF spokesman told AFP on the weekend that it is ready to resist any Taliban aggression but wants to negotiate with the Islamists about an inclusive government.
The Taliban have also said they want to handle the situation peacefully, but they have bared their teeth by sending hundreds of fighters to the area.
Panjshir was surrounded from three sides, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Monday.
Former vice president Amrullah Saleh, who headed to the valley after the fall of Kabul, said a humanitarian disaster was brewing.
“Talibs aren’t allowing food & fuel to get into Andarab valley,” he tweeted, referring to an area under Taliban control that abuts Panjshir from the northwest.
“Thousands of women & children have fled to mountains.”
There have been scattered reports of clashes around Panjshir in recent days, with conflicting claims from both sides that have been impossible to independently verify.
The NRF has said it is ready for battle, but it remains unclear if the force has the supplies and equipment to withstand a long siege by the Taliban.
Ahmad Massoud said in his op-ed that they have arms and ammunition stores, as well as the weapons brought to Panjshir by former Afghan forces.
But he added that without help from the outside world, his fighters would not be able to withstand the Taliban’s siege for long.
“We know that our military forces and logistics will not be sufficient,” he wrote.
Elders from the Panjshir Valley have reportedly been speaking with Taliban officials in the Afghan capital, but there has been no breakthrough yet.
„Vorbim de oameni care vor fi executați în foarte scurt timp”, spune politologul Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, în timp ce fostul ministru de externe, Teodor Baconschi subliniază că „nu ne permitem o politică a porților deschise”, însă admite obligația morală și legală pe care o avem față de refugiații afgani. Un motiv îndeajuns de puternic la care aderă toți cei cinci specialiști contactați de Libertatea.
The scene was a familiar one as warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum jetted into northern Afghanistan this week — a promise of bloodshed and vengeance, and no apology for his vicious past.
Despite a series of war crimes linked to his forces, the Afghan government is hoping Dostum’s military acumen and seething hatred of the Taliban can help beat back the current insurgent offensive.
Massoud’s father may be a household name, but that’s no guarantee Macron will arm guerrillas in the Panjshir Valley.
America may have abandoned Afghanistan, but the most prominent anti-Taliban rebel in the country is pinning his hopes on support from France.
For Ahmad Massoud, France is the most natural place to turn as he tries to marshal a resistance army in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. After all, his father, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “Lion of the Panjshir” is close to a household name in France and lives on (after his assassination in 2001) as the country’s epitome of a freedom fighter thanks to his battles against the Soviets and Taliban in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Panjshir Valley north of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul is the final major centre of resistance to the Taliban, but analysts say the fighters gathered there will struggle if the Islamist hardliners launch a full-scale attack.
Surrounded by the high peaks of the Hindu Kush north of Kabul, the Panjshir has long had a reputation as a bastion of resistance — legendary military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud successfully defended it during the Soviet-Afghan War and the civil war with the Taliban up to his death in 2001.
With desperate Afghans clinging to departing American airplanes, the fall of Afghanistan is being compared to the American evacuation of Saigon in 1975. The Taliban takeover may also preview how President Joe Biden would handle a military confrontation with China, perhaps over Taiwan.
As vice president, Biden got control of China policy through the work of longtime Democrat activist Thomas Donilon. Despite a questionable record as a lobbyist with Fannie Mae, then President Obama picked Donilon for national security adviser, which even troubled leftist writers such as Robert Scheer of Truthdig.