Taliban take key Afghan district, adding to string of gains
Source: AP
By KATHY GANNON
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban fighters took control of a key district in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province Monday and encircled the provincial capital, police said, as the insurgent group added to its recent battlefield victories while peace talks have stalemated.
The Taliban’s gains came as the Pentagon reaffirmed the U.S. troop withdrawal was still on pace to conclude by early September.
Fighting around Imam Sahib district began late Sunday and by midday Monday the Taliban had overrun the district headquarters and were in control of police headquarters, said Inamuddin Rahmani, provincial police spokesman said.
Taliban militants were within a kilometer (.6 miles) of Kunduz, the provincial capital but had not entered into the city, he said, although there were reports of small bands of Taliban near the outskirts and residents trying to leave for Kabul.
US to keep about 650 troops in Afghanistan after withdrawal
Source: AP
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and ROBERT BURNS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Roughly 650 U.S. troops are expecte
d to remain in Afghanistan to provide security for diplomats after the main American military force completes its withdrawal, which is set to be largely done in the next two weeks, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
In addition, several hundred additional American forces will remain at the Kabul airport, potentially until September, to assist Turkish troops providing security, as a temporary move until a more formal Turkey-led security operation is in place, the officials said Thursday. Overall, officials said the U.S. expects to have American and coalition military command, its leadership and most troops out by July Fourth, or shortly after that, meeting an aspirational deadline that commanders developed months ago.
The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the withdrawal and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The departure of the bulk of the more than 4,000 troops that have been in the country in recent months is unfolding well before President Joe Biden’s Sept. 11 deadline for withdrawal. And it comes amid accelerating Taliban battlefield gains, fueling fears that the Afghan government and its military could collapse in a matter of months.
(The Drive) Some of the newest additions to the U.S. Department of State's Air Wing, ex-U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters of various types, are now flying in Afghanistan. Though the department has been conducting a variety of aviation operations there for more than a decade now, the Black Hawks provide support to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. This is a mission that could be even more important in the coming weeks and months as the withdrawal of American military forces from the country continues to move ahead at a brisk pace and if the security situation continues to deteriorate.
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Any past controversies notwithstanding, the Air Wing's Black Hawks in Afghanistan, and any other helicopters it operates there, could become very significant assets in the near future. After almost two decades of operations in the country, the U.S. military is on pace to meet President Joe Biden's deadline of having withdrawn almost entirely by September, a pullout that has already been moving ahead very quickly and that may well be complete as soon as August.
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Other members of the NATO-led coalition in the country are also steadily withdrawing. Just today, U.S. officials announced that there were no more American or other foreign military personnel at Bagram Airfield, a large base in Afghanistan Parwan Province just north of Kabul that had long served as one of the coalition's major operational hubs.
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What the exact U.S. military force posture will look like in the end is unclear, with reports suggesting that up to 1,000 personnel could remain to perform various missions. These could include advising and liaising with Afghan security forces and providing security for any remaining American facilities in the country, such as the Embassy.
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What other U.S. forces, such as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary personnel and specialized units from the State Department, to include elements of the Air Wing, will remain is also still unclear. The Embassy in Kabul itself has been operating at a reduced level since April, when non-essential staff made an "ordered departure" from the country.
A U.S. State Department HH-60L Black Hawk helicopter in Afghanistan during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit in April 2021. U.S. State Department
As the U.S. exits Afghanistan, Beijing is preparing to swoop into the war-torn country and fill the vacuum left by the departed U.S. and NATO troops.
China is poised to make an exclusive entry into post-U.S. Afghanistan with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source close to government officials in Afghanistan told The Daily Beast that Kabul authorities are growing more intensively engaged with China on an extension of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—the flagship project of BRI, which involves the construction of highways, railways and energy pipelines between Pakistan and China—to Afghanistan.
American troops exited the main and final U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Friday, and though the initial withdrawal date was slated for Sept. 11, security officials told Reuters that the majority of troops would be out by July 4.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.
Afghanistan’s army showed off the sprawling air base Monday, providing a rare first glimpse of what had been the epicenter of America’s war to unseat the Taliban and hunt down the al-Qaida perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on America.
The U.S. announced Friday it had completely vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal the Pentagon says will be completed by the end of August.
“We (heard) some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram ... and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander said.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
The Taliban sees China as a “friend” to Afghanistan and is hoping to talk to Beijing about investing in reconstruction work “as soon as possible”, the group’s spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Wednesday.
In an exclusive interview with This Week in Asia, Suhail said the Taliban now controlled 85 per cent of the country and that it would guarantee the safety of Chinese investors and workers if they were to return.
“We welcome them. If they have investments of course we ensure their safety. Their safety is very important for us,” he said by phone.
The
WAS IT ALL FOR
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
(Hindustan Times) Thousands of Pakistani terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and other groups are currently fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan in a clear violation of the 2020 peace deal signed by the Taliban and the US, according to reports from security agencies.
The assessments come at a time of growing alarm in the international community, including India, at the Taliban’s rapid resurgence in Afghanistan that some intelligence agencies fear is poised to wrest control of key parts of the country from the Afghan government.
A majority of the LeT and JeM fighters are active in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces in eastern Afghanistan and Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the country’s southeast, according to information gathered by Afghan and Indian security agencies, people aware of the matter said. All four Afghan provinces share borders with Pakistan – Kunar and Nangarhar with the erstwhile tribal areas and the other two with Balochistan.
Terrorist fighters from other Pakistan-based groups such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jamaat-ul-Arhar, Lashkar-e-Islam and al-Badr have also been spotted fighting alongside the Taliban in sizeable numbers, these people said on condition of anonymity.
Pakistani terrorists have also been sighted in Ghazni, Khost, Logar, Paktia and Paktika provinces in south and southeast Afghanistan, the people said, citing the latest reports from security agencies. In these regions alone, the number of Pakistani fighters from LeT has been estimated at 7,200, the people added.
Many Afghans who hoped the Taliban would reform their extreme views amid ongoing talks with the Afghan government and the U.S. troop withdrawal have been disappointed by the new severe restrictions imposed on the local population in some of the districts that they have recently captured.
Several residents of Balkh, a district in northern Balkh province that is located 20 kilometers north of the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif, confirmed to VOA that the Taliban have distributed leaflets, ordering locals to follow strict rules that are similar to those they imposed on Afghans when they last governed the country from 1996 to 2001.
“They want to impose the restrictions that were imposed on women under their rule,” said Nahida, a 34-year-old resident of Balkh district, adding that the restrictions targeting women include “not leaving our houses without a male companion and wearing hijab.”
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
The Taliban sees China as a “friend” to Afghanistan and is hoping to talk to Beijing about investing in reconstruction work “as soon as possible”, the group’s spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Wednesday.
In an exclusive interview with This Week in Asia, Suhail said the Taliban now controlled 85 per cent of the country and that it would guarantee the safety of Chinese investors and workers if they were to return.
“We welcome them. If they have investments of course we ensure their safety. Their safety is very important for us,” he said by phone.
The
WAS IT ALL FOR
Once again for nothing. America can't win a war and china would probably kick our asses if we ever got into a war with them.
To reach a peace deal, Taliban say Afghan president must go
Source: AP
By KATHY GANNON
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban say they don’t want to monopolize power, but they insist there won’t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, who is also a member of the group’s negotiating team, laid out the insurgents’ stance on what should come next in a country on the precipice.
The Taliban have swiftly captured territory in recent weeks, seized strategic border crossings and are threatening a number of provincial capitals, as the last U.S. and NATO soldiers leave Afghanistan. This week, the top U.S. military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, told a Pentagon press conference that the Taliban have “strategic momentum,” and he did not rule out a complete Taliban takeover. But he said it is not inevitable. “I don’t think the end game is yet written,” he said.
Memories of the Taliban’s last time in power some 20 years ago, when they enforced a harsh brand of Islam that denied girls an education and barred women from work, have stoked fears of their return among many. Afghans who can afford it are applying by the thousands for visas to leave Afghanistan, fearing a violent descent into chaos. The U.S.-NATO withdrawal is more than 95% complete and due to be finished by Aug. 31.
(Al Jazeera) The Taliban armed group has taken responsibility for the killing of a comic this week in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar, raising the spectre of revenge killings as the US-led foreign forces are about to complete their pullout from the war-torn country.
A video of two men slapping and abusing Nazar Mohammad, better known as Khasha Zwan, spread widely on social media. He was later killed, shot multiple times. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid acknowledged that the two men were Taliban.
The men have been arrested and will be tried, Mujahid said. He alleged that the comic, from the southern part of Kandahar province, was also a member of the Afghan National Police and had been implicated in the torture and killing of Taliban.
Mujahid said the Taliban should have arrested the comic and brought him before a Taliban court, instead of killing him.
Mohammad was not a TV personality but would post his routines on TikTok. He was known for crude jokes, funny songs, poking fun at himself, and often making fun of topics thrown at him from fans
caltrek's comment: One of the advantages of the U.S. pulling out is that it clarifies the issue of responsibility. It is harder to blame the U.S. for everything that goes wrong when there are no Americans in sight.
Here is an interesting excerpt from Robert Kaplan's book Soldiers of God. This book is a travelogue depicting his time as a foreign correspondent imbedded with various Pathan/Pashto militant groups during the Aghan - Soviet war. He describes their view on women in Chapter 2 - A World of Men:
Women are oppressed in all muslem societies. But among the rural Pathan, women simply don't exist...Here are three Pathan proverbs:
Women have no noses. They will eat shit
One's own mother and sister are disgusting.
Women belong in the house or in the grave
You rarely see women on the Northwest Frontier or in Afghanistan; you see moving tents with narrow holes for eyes. Photographers who walked through minefields and sneaked into Soviet bases were afraid to take close ups of Pathan women unless they were at least a hundred yards away and had a lens the size of a mortar - and provided not a single mujahid was looking. A close up of a Pathan woman was more prized and difficult to get than a photograph of the undercarriage of an MI-24 helicopter gunship
...
A Pathan won't even tell you the names of his wife and mother. To ask him is an insult. It would be like asking him to undress in front of a crowd.
....
It goes on and on like this. One thing to note. The end of the book describes the ascent of the Taliban, who came from the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan that were being 'educated' by extreme wahabi preachers. These exiles made their way back into Afghanistan and became the Taliban. Point is, the men who he is describing in the earlier passages were considered progressive with respect to the Taliban. So read that passage again, and figure the Taliban are even worse.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
As the Taliban continues to quickly conquer swaths of Afghanistan, reports of "harsh" restrictions on the movement of women in recently captured regions have surfaced, including accounts of forced marriage between unmarried women and fighters, writes The Wall Street Journal.
According to local residents, women in many Taliban-held areas are not allowed to leave the house without male relatives or without wearing burqas, reports the Journal. "Hampering a woman's ability to leave home without a male escort also inevitably leads to a cascade of other violations of the woman," added Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In late June, in the Rustaq district of the northern province of Takhar, a senior Taliban figure notified residents that "all girls over the age of 15 and widows younger than 40 should be married to the insurgent fighters," a local man told the Journal. The same man was "later summoned and ordered to hand over his 15-year-old daughter."
Experts note such a conspicuous demand for women illustrates how the militant group has been influenced by the Islamic State — who "enforced sexual slavery on women on a massive scale" — and has thus grown "even more extreme" since their reign in the 1990s. A Taliban spokesman denied the allegations of forced marriages, per the Journal.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
The Taliban insurgents continue their deadly war to seize control of Afghanistan after the departure of United States and NATO forces. As they close in on major cities that were once government strongholds, like Badakhshan and Kandahar, many Afghans – and the world – fear a total takeover.
Afghan women may have the most to fear from these Islamic militants.
We are academics who interviewed 15 Afghan women activists, community leaders and politicians over the past year as part of an international effort to ensure that women’s human rights are defended and constitutionally protected in Afghanistan. For the safety of our research participants, we use no names or first names only here.
“Reform of the Taliban is not really possible,” one 40-year-old women’s rights activist from Kabul told us. “Their core ideology is fundamentalist, particularly towards women.”
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
