As the United States continues its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, disputed reports indicate a rising number of asylum seekers of Afghan origin are crossing Turkey’s eastern border.
Videos posted on social media this weekend reportedly showed a stream of asylum seekers entering Turkey through its eastern border with Iran, raising concerns among local officials and humanitarian agencies.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has warned of a looming humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as the escalating conflict brings increased human suffering and civilian displacement.
An estimated 270,000 Afghans have been newly displaced inside the country since January 2021 – primarily due to insecurity and violence – bringing the total uprooted population to over 3.5 million, the UNHCR said in a statement Tuesday.
Turkey is allegedly planning to use Syrian fighters in its proposed mission to guard and run Kabul’s airport, but this time recruitment is expected to proceed via private security firms.
Turkey’s government appears to have learned little from the troubles it has faced for deploying Syrian fighters in the wars in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, as media reports suggest it is now out to recruit mercenaries for its planned mission to secure Kabul’s airport after the US-led NATO mission completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
State Ministry for Natural Disaster Management said Thursday that at least five million Afghans have been displaced due to conflict in the country in the past two years.
According to the ministry, amid escalating violence by the Taliban in the past two months alone, 32,384 families have been displaced in 25 provinces, of which 20,000 have been assisted so far.
Worse still, US diplomats continued to mumble about a “peace accord” with an outfit that has no notion of peace, while US military commanders publicly warned that withdrawing without a sober step-by-step plan could persuade the Taliban that they could secure all power without a deal that, at best, would give them only a slice of it.
Forgetting years of denial that Iran had any relations with Al-Qaeda and Taliban, the IRGC analyst now says “Iran has succeeded in persuading them to cooperate in securing Iran’s interests.”
Kabul by Christmas.
Which is where we were, Kabul at Christmas, 2001, when the Taliban had just been toppled, ousted by an intense bombing campaign led by American and British forces, with the brutal regime’s Al Qaeda “guests’’ in disarray and on the run.
With U.S. and coalition combat troops all but gone from Afghanistan, Western officials are preparing to face down terrorist threats with the promise of “over-the-horizon” capabilities that may be ill-suited to the danger that groups such as al-Qaida and Islamic State currently pose.
On June 27, 2021, Syria-based Saudi jihadi cleric Abdallah Al-Muhaysini tweeted [1] a call to bolster ties between Turkey and Afghanistan’s Taliban. Commenting briefly on a potentially closer relationship, Al-Muhaysini wrote: “It is proper for Muslim Turkey, which supported people and provided refuge to the oppressed, to be supportive of the Taliban. Likewise, it is proper for the Taliban to take their Turkish brothers as loyal allies. It is vital to build bridges of trust and strengthen the relationship, for that is in the interest of Muslims in general.”
On June 6, 2021, a bipartisan team of U.S. senators visited Taiwan, arriving aboard a C-17 U.S. military transport plane. Netizens from Mainland China were surprised that Beijing did not react strongly to the presence of a U.S. military airplane in Taiwan, since in the past Chinese diplomats and media persons had repeatedly stated that “the day U.S. troops appear in Taiwan will be the day we reunify Taiwan by force.”
The two-decade war in Afghanistan has given U.S. spies a perch for keeping tabs on terrorist groups that might once again use the beleaguered nation to plan attacks against the U.S. homeland. But that will end soon.
The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is leaving intelligence agencies scrambling for other ways to monitor and stop terrorists. They’ll have to depend more on technology and their allies in the Afghan government — even as it faces an increasingly uncertain future once U.S. and NATO forces depart.