Comment by Riaz Haq on August 23, 2021 at 10:48am

Did the War in #Afghanistan Have to Happen? “One mistake was that we turned down the Taliban’s attempt to negotiate (in 2001)” said Carter Malkasian, a former senior adviser to Gen. Joseph Dunford, who was chairman of #US Joint Chiefs of Staff. #Taliban https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanistan-tal...

“We were hugely overconfident in 2001, and we thought the Taliban had gone away and weren’t going to come back,” he said. “We also wanted revenge, and so we made a lot of mistakes that we shouldn’t have made," said Malkasian

Almost 20 years later, the United States did negotiate a deal to end the Afghan war, but the balance of power was entirely different by then — it favored the Taliban.

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Taliban fighters brandished Kalashnikovs and shook their fists in the air after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, defying American warnings that if they did not hand over Osama Bin Laden, their country would be bombed to smithereens.

The bravado faded once American bombs began to fall. Within a few weeks, many of the Taliban had fled the Afghan capital, terrified by the low whine of approaching B-52 aircraft. Soon, they were a spent force, on the run across the arid mountain-scape of Afghanistan. As one of the journalists who covered them in the early days of the war, I saw their uncertainty and loss of control firsthand.

It was in the waning days of November 2001 that Taliban leaders began to reach out to Hamid Karzai, who would soon become the interim president of Afghanistan: They wanted to make a deal.

“The Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.

Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.

But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.

“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead.


Almost 20 years later, the United States did negotiate a deal to end the Afghan war, but the balance of power was entirely different by then — it favored the Taliban.

For diplomats who had spent years trying to shore up the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan, the deal that President Donald J. Trump struck with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw American troops — an agreement President Biden decided to uphold shortly after taking office this year — felt like a betrayal.


Now, with the Taliban back in power, some of those diplomats are looking back at a missed chance by the United States, all those years ago, to pursue a Taliban surrender that could have halted America’s longest war in its infancy, or shortened it considerably, sparing many lives.

For some veterans of America’s entanglement in Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine that talks with the Taliban in 2001 would have yielded a worse outcome than what the United States ultimately got.

“One mistake was that we turned down the Taliban’s attempt to negotiate,” Carter Malkasian, a former senior adviser to Gen. Joseph Dunford, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during parts of the Obama and Trump administrations, said of the American decision not to discuss a Taliban surrender nearly 20 years ago.

“We were hugely overconfident in 2001, and we thought the Taliban had gone away and weren’t going to come back,” he said. “We also wanted revenge, and so we made a lot of mistakes that we shouldn’t have made.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 23, 2021 at 2:05pm

Ambassador Ryan Crocker on #US exit from #Afghanistan:"We have again validated their (#Pakistanis) skepticism". Pakistanis "knew we (US) will go home but they aren’t going anywhere--this is where they live".They'd not "turn the Taliban into a mortal enemy" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/opinion/us-afghanistan-pakistan-...


I recall the comment attributed to a captured Taliban fighter from a number of years ago: You Americans have the watches, but we have the time. Sadly that view proved accurate — the Taliban outlasted us and our impatience. After the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of U.S.-trained and armed mujahedeen in 1989, training that was facilitated by Pakistan, we decided we were done. We could see the Afghan civil war coming — the only thing holding the disparate Afghan groups together was a common enemy. But that was not our problem — we were leaving. On the way out, we stopped helping Pakistan in a key way: We ended security and economic assistance because of its nuclear weapons program, something we’d exempted before. So Pakistan, in its own narrative, went from being the most allied of allies to the most sanctioned of adversaries. That is why Pakistan threw its support to the Taliban when they started gaining ground in the 1990s: It could end a dangerous conflict along Pakistan’s own unstable borders.

And that is why a decade later after 9/11, Pakistan welcomed the return of the United States — and U.S. assistance. It would work with us against Al Qaeda. But we soon learned that the Taliban were a sticky matter. I was ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007. I pushed Pakistani officials repeatedly on the need to deny the Taliban safe havens. The answer I got back over time went like this: “We know you. We know you don’t have patience for the long fight. We know the day will come when you just get tired and go home — it’s what you do. But we aren’t going anywhere — this is where we live. So if you think we are going to turn the Taliban into a mortal enemy, you are completely crazy.”

We have again validated their skepticism.

The Washington Post notes that “as the Taliban swept across neighboring Afghanistan, some Pakistanis saw it as a reason to celebrate.” Yet I doubt there are many high fives being exchanged in Islamabad today. The American disaster in Afghanistan that Mr. Biden’s impatience brought about is not a disaster just for us. It has also been a huge boost for the Taliban, whose narrative now is that the believers, clad in the armor of the one true faith, have vanquished the infidels. That is resonating around the world, and certainly next door in Pakistan where the T.T.P. — the Pakistani Taliban, which seeks the overthrow of their government — has certainly been emboldened, as have Kashmiri militant groups created by Pakistan but that threaten Pakistan itself as well as India. Mr. Biden’s strategic impatience has given a huge boost to militant Islam everywhere.

We need to be engaged with Pakistan on ways to assess and deal with this enhanced threat. The prospect of violent destabilization of a country with about 210 million people and nuclear weapons is not a pretty one. The same is true in Iran. It’s always good to see the Great Satan take a kick in the face, and it’s worth a little gloating, but the Islamic Republic and the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate almost went to war in 1998. A region is worried, and it is right to be so.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 23, 2021 at 4:54pm

Current #Afghan exodus is being blamed entirely on #Taliban victory. But lots of people in many #poor countries want to leave for rich nations. For decades, Afghans have been migrating to Europe. In 2015-2016, 300,000 arrived in #Europe from #Afghanistan. https://theconversation.com/where-do-afghanistans-refugees-go-166316

Afghan refugees in Pakistan
The vast majority of Afghan refugees do not settle in the West.

Pakistan, which shares a 1,640-mile land border with Afghanistan, has long absorbed the largest number of Afghan refugees even though it is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol. Within two years of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, following the conflict ignited by the rise of the Mujahideen, 1.5 million Afghans had become refugees. By 1986, nearly five million Afghans had fled to Pakistan and Iran.

Since March 2002, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, had repatriated nearly 3.2 million Afghans, but in April 2021, the United Nations reported that more than 1.4 million Afghan refugees remained in Pakistan due to ongoing violence, unemployment and political turbulence in Afghanistan.

Iran also remains a significant host for Afghans, with nearly 800,000 registered refugees and at least two million more who are unregistered. Smaller numbers of Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers are in India (15,689), Indonesia (7,692) and Malaysia (2,478).

Turkey – the world’s largest refugee host, with over 3.8 million registered Syrian refugees – has 980 registered Afghan refugees and 116,000 Afghan asylum-seekers.

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A muted US role
The U.S. Refugee Act of 1980 standardized the procedures for admitting refugees – people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution – and put in place a rigorous vetting process. But over the past 40 years, U.S. acceptance rates for refugees worldwide have fallen significantly – from 200,000 admitted in 1980 to less than 50,000 in 2019.

Over the past 20 years, the U.S. admitted more than 20,000 Afghan refugees – an average of roughly 1,000 per year. But during the 2020-2021 fiscal year, just 11,800 refugees from around the world settled in the U.S. – among them were only 495 Afghan Special Immigrant Visa recipients. That number seems tiny compared to the approximately 20,000 Afghans who are currently in the pipeline waiting for a SIV and the additional 70,000 Afghans — including applicants and their immediate family members — who are eligible to apply.

Europe hosts few Afghan refugees
For decades, Afghans have also migrated or fled to Europe. Between 2015-2016, 300,000 of them arrived on the continent. They were the second-largest group of refugees and asylum-seekers after Syrians. Asylum seekers are people seeking refugee status, but whose claim has yet to be evaluated.

The Afghan population across the European continent remains small and unevenly distributed. Up until the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021, many Afghans were facing deportations. Germany is the largest European host, followed by Austria, France and Sweden.

For the first three months of 2021 about 7,000 Afghans were granted permanent or temporary legal status in the European Union. They are distributed between Greece, France, Germany and Italy, with smaller Afghan contingents in other EU states.

Australia – based on its 2016 census – has approximately 47,000 Afghans who are permanent residents, some of whom began arriving as early as 1979. Approximately another 4,200 Afghans have received temporary protected status.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 24, 2021 at 4:21pm

Why so much poppy grows in Afghanistan?

1. Poppy plant is very hardy. It grows easily in Afghan soil where other crops are much harder to grow.

2. Harvesting poppy is labor intensive and uses a lot of people in a place like Afghanistan where there's very little mechanization.

3. Poppy earns a lot of cash to support the economy.

Via APM Marketplace radio show https://www.marketplace.org/2021/08/24/how-the-economic-fundamental...

Despite the U.S. spending approximately $8.97 billion over the past two decades trying to eradicate Afghanistan’s illegal drug trade, it remains the world’s biggest supplier of illicit opium and the crop remains an important source of funding for the Taliban.

Jeffrey Clemens, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, spoke with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal about the economic fundamentals that helped doom the U.S. effort to suppress opium production in Afghanistan and what it means for the Taliban’s power. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: Can we do a little ground truth here before we dig in? Drug trafficking and the Afghan economy — contextualize that for me.

Jeffrey Clemens: Sure. According to the United Nations, in 2020, Afghan farmers would have received something on the order of $500 million associated with selling the opium that they’ve cultivated, and the estimated value of the heroin and other opiates as they cross the border out of Afghanistan and into other countries is somewhere on the order of $2 billion. So, that amount accounts for something like 10% of its overall [gross domestic product].

Ryssdal: OK, here’s the thing: The American government spent billions of dollars over the past 20 years trying to eradicate the opium trade. Obviously, it has failed. First of all, was that a fool’s errand?

Clemens: Yes. I think it was a fool’s errand, in large part because the cultivation of opium poppy by Afghan farmers and the trafficking of that opium and heroin out of the country is something that, unfortunately, just has made sense in terms of economic fundamentals within Afghanistan. Should I take a minute to unpack that?

Ryssdal: Yeah, that’d be great, actually.

Clemens: Sure. So you know, when we think about why Afghanistan has played such a major role in the global trade in opiates, there are a few, you know, in some ways, very mundane reasons why that’s the case. So for one, the agricultural land in Afghanistan is not that great, and opium poppy turns out to be a pretty hardy crop. The second issue is that the infrastructure in Afghanistan is quite bad, which means that there’s more risk than you might expect for cultivating relatively perishable crops. Opium tends to be relatively nonperishable, and it’s also pretty lightweight for the cash value. And then finally, opium poppy is incredibly labor-intensive to harvest. And so an economy like Afghanistan’s, where there, you know, isn’t a lot of high-tech capital associated with the agricultural sector, ends up being a place where opium poppy tends to thrive. And so the U.S. and international effort to suppress the opium trade is trying to push against all of these, you know, pretty basic economic fundamentals, making it, as you said, a fool’s errand.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 1, 2021 at 6:39am

The Islamic State in ‘Khorasan’: How it began and where it stands now in Nangarhar - Afghanistan Analysts Network

by Borhan Osman, Afghan Analysts Network

Gradually, the muhajerin turned out to be more than solely oppressed civilians in pursuit of humanitarian assistance. They carried weapons and displayed allegiance to Pakistani militant groups. Hoping to use them against Pakistan, the Afghan government started to woo some of these fighters, according to influential tribal elders involved in helping relation-building from the districts that sheltered the guest militants. Tribal elders feuding against their rivals over land or power also sought to get the support of one group or another. The most well-known case of these militants finding a welcoming home in Nangarhar is that of the Lashkar-e Islam group led by Mangal Bagh. (1) Local residents put the number of this group from the Khyber Agency differently, but a general estimation puts them at no fewer than 500 in the past three years.

https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/war-and-peace/the-i...

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However, efforts by the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS, the Afghan intelligence), to woo Pakistani militants in Nangarhar have not been confined to Lashkar-e Islam or to militants from Khyber. Tribal elders and ordinary residents of Achin, Nazian and Kot testify that fighters from Orakzai and Mohmand agencies belonging to different factions of the TTP have been allowed free movement across the province, as well as treatment in government hospitals. When moving outside their hub in Nangarhar’s southern districts, they would go unarmed. In off-the-record conversations with AAN, government officials have verified this type of relationship between segments of the Pakistani militants and the NDS, as have pro-government tribal elders and politicians in Jalalabad. They described this state of affairs as a small-scale tit-for-tat

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 1, 2021 at 1:08pm

#British General Nick Carter's response to BBC's Yalda Hakim's charge of #Taliban "safe havens" in #Pakistan: Pakistanis have hosted millions of #Afghan refugees for years & "they end up with all sorts of people"....they can't "heartlessly" kick them out https://youtu.be/aTAz9p9uv6E

Responding to the familiar charge of "safe havens" for Taliban in Pakistan, General Nick Carter told BBC's Yalda Hakim that Pakistanis have hosted millions of Afghan refugees for many years and "they end up with all sorts of people". "We would be very worried if they heartlessly kicked out" the Afghans from Pakistan. He said that Pakistan's Army Chief General Bajwa genuinely wants to see a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 2, 2021 at 8:09am

Did #Pakistan Help #Taliban Retake #Afghanistan? Ex #US #military advisor Sara Chayes alleges the it was the #Pakistani #ISI that helped the "rag-tag" Taliban militia plan & execute their recent military campaign to swiftly retake Afghanistan https://youtu.be/AJxfj8kuZlA via @YouTube

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 7, 2021 at 7:24am

#US sees "critical" Afghanistan role for #Pakistan despite #Taliban ties. On Tuesday, #Afghan women and men marched to the Pakistani embassy in #Kabul condemning the offensive in #PanjshirValley. "Support Panjshir, death to Pakistan," they shouted. https://www.newsweek.com/us-sees-critical-afghanistan-role-pakistan...

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has denied that his country is taking sides in Afghanistan.

One week before the Taliban swept into Kabul, Khan told journalists: "Pakistan is just considered only to be useful in the context of somehow settling this mess which has been left behind after 20 years of trying to find a military solution when there was not one."

Khan added: "I think that the Americans have decided that India is their strategic partner now, and I think that's why there's a different way of treating Pakistan now."

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"Pakistan has frequently and publicly advocated for an inclusive government with broad support in Afghanistan and we look to Pakistan to play a critical role in enabling that outcome," the (US) spokesperson added.

"The entire international community has a stake in ensuring the Taliban live up to their public commitments and obligations.

"It's critical that the members of the international community with the most influence in Afghanistan use all the means at their disposal to ensure that Afghanistan lives up to its obligations under the UN Charter."

With the fall of the U.S.-backed civilian government in Kabul last month, the Taliban has seized control of most of the country and is now defeating the last resistance groups in the Panjshir Valley as it prepares to announce the makeup of its new government.

National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) leader Ahmad Massoud claimed this week that Pakistan facilitated his forces' defeat in Panjshir.

Massoud alleged that his forces had been under "bombardment by Pakistan and Taliban," and that "foreign mercenaries supporting the Taliban have always existed, they did so in the past, and will continue to do in the future."

The NRF has been posting propaganda posters online framing the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as subservient to Pakistan.

Some Afghans were also outraged by a photograph of ISI chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed visiting Kabul last week as the Taliban discussed the formation of their new government. His presence was taken as a sign of Pakistani and ISI influence over the incoming government.

There have also been reports that the ISI is fuelling Taliban infighting between those loyal to political leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and members of the powerful Haqqani network.

The U.S. is in the process of recalibrating its Afghanistan strategy, following the humiliating retreat from Kabul and the stunning failure of its costly two-decade nation-building effort.

American officials are still in touch with the Taliban as the U.S. tries to extract all remaining American citizens who wish to leave the country. The diplomatic effort is being run through a team in Doha, Qatar, following the abandonment of the U.S. embassy in Kabul during the withdrawal.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 7, 2021 at 9:50am

#Pakistan #Army Chief Gen Bajwa: “Our enemies are...using non-traditional means including propaganda and disinformation to achieve their nefarious objectives". We must deal “strictly with some internal elements spreading chaos.” #DefenceDay2021 #Disinfo https://www.newsweekpakistan.com/no-room-for-any-kind-of-extremism-...

“No individual or group will be allowed to blackmail the state on the basis of area, ethnicity, ideology or religion,” he said during an event commemorating Defense Day at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, adding that no individual or group aside from the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies would be allowed to display weapons or use them.

Urging the nation to unite to make Pakistan a “progressive, peaceful and a modern Islamic and welfare state,” he said the country’s strength and longevity lay with a democratic setup. “To make it more stable, we will have to follow the principles of following the Constitution, justice, tolerance and equality,” he said, adding that “negative attitudes like criticism for the sake of criticism, hatred and intolerance” should be discouraged.

“If Pakistan has to progress, we will have to bury our ego and self-interest … According to [former] U.S. president John F. Kennedy, ‘Do not ask what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country’,” he said. In light of the requirements of the 21st century, Gen. Bajwa said the state should strive for people’s progress and happiness, regional cooperation and acquiring modern technology instead of the negative traditional geopolitical thought against each other.” He said education, health, infrastructure development, population control and climate change should be national priorities.

The Pakistan Army chief also reiterated his concerns with the changing nature of warfare, stressing that modern technology and ways of communication had replaced large-scale conflict to weaken a nation’s unity and ideological boundaries, spread chaos in different sectors, and demoralize people. “Our enemies are also using non-traditional means including propaganda and disinformation to achieve their nefarious objectives,” he said, and warned that authorities also had to deal “strictly with some internal elements spreading chaos.”

Referring to hybrid, or fifth-generation, warfare, he said: “It is a moment of reflection for all of us that some people are being used by anti-state elements.” He warned that this was intended to “make Pakistan’s roots hollow and damage the country’s unity.” However, he added, such negative objectives would not be allowed to succeed.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 22, 2021 at 11:56am

#Taliban arrest four #Afghan border guards for defiling #Pakistan flags from aid truck carrying 300 tons of edibles — wheat flour, rice and edible oil. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said those involved would be dealt with severely.- Pakistan Today https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/09/22/taliban-arrest-four-bor...

Four Taliban border guards have been arrested for removing the Pakistan flag from the truck which had brought in aid on Sunday, along the Torkham border in Afghanistan, group spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said on Tuesday.

Mujahid said the Taliban condemn the incident which has happened and efforts are put to control the occurrence of such incidents in the future.

The truck from which Taliban border guards had removed the flags was carrying aid and relief sent by Pak-Afghan Cooperation Forum, a relief agency.

A footage that went viral on social media showed that as soon as the truck, part of a relief convoy of 17 trucks, entered the Afghanistan side of the Durand Line, the security guards started removing the flag from the vehicle.


The aid carried by truck included 300 tons of edibles — wheat flour, rice and edible oil.

Mujahid while expressing anger over the incident said that the whole Taliban leadership was angry about this incident and those involved would be dealt with severely.

Until the formal handing over ceremony, the environment was very friendly, said an office-bearer of the Pak-Afghan Cooperation Forum.

Prime Minister Imran Khan on September 17 informed his government has started negotiations with the Taliban to form an all-inclusive government in Afghanistan.

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