AFGHAN NEWS
Investors are worried years of war, waves of refugees will add pressure on neighbouring nations, especially Pakistan.
Years of war will take a toll on the finances of Afghanistan's neighbours [Stringer/Reuters]
16 Aug 2021
The Taliban’s rapid advance towards Kabul is causing concern not only about Afghanistan’s future but also about the impact on other countries in the region and their economies.
Iran and then Iraq lie to the west of Afghanistan. Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are to the north. But the immediate focus for financial markets and investors is eastern neighbour, Pakistan.
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Pakistan says ‘closely following’ situation in Afghanistan
Pakistan has a large public debt, a sizeable equity market and is dependent on a $6bn IMF programme. The prospect of years of violence and waves of refugees will add pressure to its fiscal repair plans.
“It is a very troubling situation and unfortunately has set the region back many years,” said Shamaila Khan, head of emerging market debt at AllianceBernstein. “I think the neighbouring countries will have to deal with an influx of refugees in the coming months/years”.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR estimates 400,000 Afghans have fled their homes this year. Only a few hundred of these displaced persons are known to have fled Afghanistan but the UNHCR estimates there are 2.6 million Afghan refugees worldwide, with 1.4 million in Pakistan and 1 million in Iran.
Pakistan’s bond prices have already fallen nearly 8 percent this year, though many financial analysts think this has probably had more to do with delays in it obtaining its latest tranche of IMF money than with the security situation.
Nearly 10,000 Pakistani civilians were killed in attacks between 2010 and 2015, South Asia Terrorism Portal figures show. Those numbers have fallen since then but there are concerns they will now rise again.
“Another influx of refugees and the spillover of violent groups motivated to destabilise urban areas and infrastructure, particularly, on the western side of Pakistan… could set Pakistan’s recovery and reform story back,” said Hasnain Malik, an analyst at research firm Tellimer.
He suggested risk might be reduced if the Taliban were included in the Afghan government.
Pakistan has a large public debt, a sizeable equity market and is dependent on a $6bn IMF programme. The prospect of years of violence and waves of refugees will add pressure to its fiscal repair plans.
“It is a very troubling situation and unfortunately has set the region back many years,” said Shamaila Khan, head of emerging market debt at AllianceBernstein. “I think the neighbouring countries will have to deal with an influx of refugees in the coming months/years”.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR estimates 400,000 Afghans have fled their homes this year. Only a few hundred of these displaced persons are known to have fled Afghanistan but the UNHCR estimates there are 2.6 million Afghan refugees worldwide, with 1.4 million in Pakistan and 1 million in Iran.
Pakistan’s bond prices have already fallen nearly 8 percent this year, though many financial analysts think this has probably had more to do with delays in it obtaining its latest tranche of IMF money than with the security situation.
Nearly 10,000 Pakistani civilians were killed in attacks between 2010 and 2015, South Asia Terrorism Portal figures show. Those numbers have fallen since then but there are concerns they will now rise again.
“Another influx of refugees and the spillover of violent groups motivated to destabilise urban areas and infrastructure, particularly, on the western side of Pakistan… could set Pakistan’s recovery and reform story back,” said Hasnain Malik, an analyst at research firm Tellimer.
He suggested risk might be reduced if the Taliban were included in the Afghan government.
Pakistan’s strategic importance
Pakistan’s IMF programme is its thirteenth in 30 years and is needed to help the government tackle a public debt of about 90 percent of GDP.
Any Taliban attacks inside Pakistan could raise security concerns and make it harder for Islamabad to meet targets set by the IMF. At the same time, some investors say, they could increase Pakistan’s strategic importance for the West.
“The IMF is carefully watching the fast-moving situation on the ground in Afghanistan,” an IMF spokesperson said on Friday, adding that it was premature to speculate about what impact the security situation could have on Pakistan.
“If the Taliban takes control (of Afghanistan), Pakistan becomes even more strategically important to the US,” said Kevin Daly, a portfolio manager at ABRDN.
This, he said, could help keep IMF money flowing.
Wider impact
Kay Van-Petersen, a global macro strategist at Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore, said the impact of the crisis in Afghanistan could ultimately spread far wider.
Many Afghan refugees could seek refuge in Europe, he said, following an earlier influx of asylum seekers, mostly fleeing war or persecution in Syria, other Middle Eastern countries and Afghanistan.
If the refugees travel via Turkey, he said, they could help Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan make political or financial demands of the European Union.
“Basically it’s a lever for Erdogan to pull with the European Union … ‘Pay us to take care of these refugees, or we are just going to let them through,'” he said.
This could weigh on the euro and lift Turkey’s lira, he said.
Emerging market watcher Tim Ash at BlueBay Asset Management said the Taliban’s advances as NATO troops withdrew had damaged US credibility and fed into the growing rivalry between Washington and China.
“Comparisons with Vietnam abound,” Ash said, recalling the evacuation of the last Americans and many South Vietnamese via from the roof of the US embassy as Saigon fell in 1975.
“With that feeling of a Saigon moment and the last US helicopter out.”
SOURCE: REUTERS
Taliban Has "Broken Shackles of Slavery",
Says Pak PM Imran Khan
Imran Khan said, "It is harder to throw off the chains of cultural enslavement. What is happening in Afghanistan now, they have broken the shackles of slavery"
But after the USSR collapsed and Soviet aid ended in December 1991, there was very little fighting. Government commanders, starting with General Abdul Rashid Dostum (who since 2001 has been on the American side, illustrating the fluidity of Afghan allegiances), either took their men over to the mujahideen, fled or went home — and were allowed to do so by the victors. Kabul was captured intact by the mujahideen in 1992, as it is being captured by the Taliban now. In the later 1990s, while in some areas the Taliban faced strong resistance, elsewhere enemy garrisons also surrendered without a fight and in many cases joined the Taliban.
A government fighter pauses to read a book at a traffic roundabout in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 18, 1995. | Craig Fujii/AP Photo
Deals between Afghan and Taliban forces during the U.S. war have been detailed in works like War Comes to Garmser by Carter Malkasian and An Intimate War by British soldier Mike Martin. A report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) describes such an agreement in Pakhtia province in 2018:
“Haji Ali Baz, a local tribal elder, told AAN that it was agreed that the government’s presence would be limited to the district centre, and neither side would venture into the areas controlled by the other. This agreement resulted in all of the government security posts outside the district centre being dismantled. In the words of Haji Ali Baz, this led to the end of the fighting, which had ‘caused a lot of trouble for the people.’”
Most recently, as described in the Washington Post Sunday, after the Biden administration declared in April that U.S. forces were withdrawing, “the capitulations began to snowball.”
Afghan society has been described to me as a “permanent conversation.” Alliances shift, and people, families and tribes make rational calculations based on the risk they face. This is not to suggest that Afghans who made such decisions are to blame for doing what they felt to be in their self-interest. The point is that America’s commanders and officials either completely failed to understand these aspects of Afghan reality or failed to report them honestly to U.S. administrations, Congress and the general public.
A soldier (L) belonging to strict Moslem Taliban militia forces orders an elderly man to join the Friday noon prayer on October 25, 1996 at Kabul's main Pul-i-Khishti mosque. | SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images
We can draw a clear line between this lack of understanding and the horrible degree of surprise at the events of the past several days. America didn’t predict this sudden collapse, but it could have and should have — an unfortunately fitting coda to a war effort that has been undermined from the start by a failure to study Afghan realities.
Says Pak PM Imran Khan
Imran Khan said, "It is harder to throw off the chains of cultural enslavement. What is happening in Afghanistan now, they have broken the shackles of slavery"
Reported by Kadambini Sharma,
Edited by Anindita Sanyal
Updated: August 16, 2021
NDTV
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, according to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, is "breaking the chains of slavery". The Pakistan-backed group took over Kabul yesterday, setting off concerns about the return of the hardline system which deprived many sections, especially women, of civil rights in terms of education, jobs and marriage.
Talking about English as a medium of education and the subsequent absorption of culture, Imran Khan said, "You take over the other culture and become psychologically subservient. When that happens, please remember, it is worse than actual slavery. It is harder to throw off the chains of cultural enslavement. What is happening in Afghanistan now, they have broken the shackles of slavery".
Panic reigned in the war-torn nation as the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan in the space of 10 days and took control of Kabul on Sunday -- more than two weeks before the August 31 deadline for complete pullout of the US troops.
President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, conceding that the terrorists have won the 20-year war.
The astonishingly quick collapse of the government, with the Taliban taking over the presidential palace on Sunday night, had triggered panic in Kabul. Last evening, chaos reigned at the Kabul airport, where thousands of Afghans gathered, desperate to leave the country.
Gunshots were heard as the people jostled to get into the few remaining aircraft. The Afghan airspace has been closed.
While most fear retaliation by Taliban, especially in cases of support to the US invasion and occupation, there are concerns about the loss of hard-won civic rights over the last 20 year
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged Taliban and all other parties "to exercise utmost restraint in order to protect lives and ensure that humanitarian needs can be addressed," the UN said in a statement.
He was "particularly concerned about the future of women and girls, whose hard-won rights must be protected," the statement added.
NDTV
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, according to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, is "breaking the chains of slavery". The Pakistan-backed group took over Kabul yesterday, setting off concerns about the return of the hardline system which deprived many sections, especially women, of civil rights in terms of education, jobs and marriage.
Talking about English as a medium of education and the subsequent absorption of culture, Imran Khan said, "You take over the other culture and become psychologically subservient. When that happens, please remember, it is worse than actual slavery. It is harder to throw off the chains of cultural enslavement. What is happening in Afghanistan now, they have broken the shackles of slavery".
Panic reigned in the war-torn nation as the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan in the space of 10 days and took control of Kabul on Sunday -- more than two weeks before the August 31 deadline for complete pullout of the US troops.
President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, conceding that the terrorists have won the 20-year war.
The astonishingly quick collapse of the government, with the Taliban taking over the presidential palace on Sunday night, had triggered panic in Kabul. Last evening, chaos reigned at the Kabul airport, where thousands of Afghans gathered, desperate to leave the country.
Gunshots were heard as the people jostled to get into the few remaining aircraft. The Afghan airspace has been closed.
While most fear retaliation by Taliban, especially in cases of support to the US invasion and occupation, there are concerns about the loss of hard-won civic rights over the last 20 year
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged Taliban and all other parties "to exercise utmost restraint in order to protect lives and ensure that humanitarian needs can be addressed," the UN said in a statement.
He was "particularly concerned about the future of women and girls, whose hard-won rights must be protected," the statement added.
Opinion | Why the U.S. Should Have Predicted the Speed of Afghanistan’s Collapse
Opposing Afghan factions have long negotiated arrangements to stop fighting — something the U.S. either failed to understand or chose to ignore.
Members of the Taliban move toward the front line on a tank captured outside of Kabul on Feb. 18, 1995.
POLITICO
Magazine
FOREIGN POLICY
Opinion by ANATOL LIEVEN
08/16/2021 04:30 AM EDT
Anatol Lieven is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country. From 1985 to 1998, he worked as a journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and covered the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the southern Caucasus.
In the winter of 1989, as a journalist for the Times of London, I accompanied a group of mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. At one point, a fortified military post became visible on the other side of a valley. As we got closer, the flag flying above it also became visible — the flag of the Afghan Communist state, which the mujahideen were fighting to overthrow.
“Isn’t that a government post?” I asked my interpreter. “Yes,” he replied. “Can’t they see us?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. “Shouldn’t we hide?” I squeaked. “No, no, don’t worry,” he replied reassuringly. “We have an arrangement.”
I remembered this episode three years later, when the Communist state eventually fell to the mujahedin; six years later, as the Taliban swept across much of Afghanistan; and again this week, as the country collapses in the face of another Taliban assault. Such “arrangements” — in which opposing factions agree not to fight, or even to trade soldiers in exchange for safe passage — are critical to understanding why the Afghan army today has collapsed so quickly (and, for the most part, without violence). The same was true when the Communist state collapsed in 1992, and the practice persisted in many places as the Taliban advanced later in the 1990s.
Taliban fighters huddle in a frontline shelter during a lull in fighting south of Kabul, March 22, 1995. | Craig Fujii/AP Photo
This dense web of relationships and negotiated arrangements between forces on opposite sides is often opaque to outsiders. Over the past 20 years, U.S. military and intelligence services have generally either not understood or chosen to ignore this dynamic as they sought to paint an optimistic picture of American efforts to build a strong, loyal Afghan army. Hence the Biden administration’s expectation that there would be what during the Vietnam War was called a “decent interval” between U.S. departure and the state’s collapse.
While the coming months and years will reveal what the U.S. government did and didn’t know about the state of Afghan security forces prior to U.S. withdrawal, the speed of the collapse was predictable. That the U.S. government could not foresee — or, perhaps, refused to admit — that beleaguered Afghan forces would continue a longstanding practice of cutting deals with the Taliban illustrates precisely the same naivete with which America has prosecuted the Afghanistan war for years.
The central feature of the past several weeks in Afghanistan has not been fighting. It has been negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan forces, sometimes brokered by local elders. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported “a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces” that resulted from more than a year of deal-making between the Taliban and rural leaders.
Taliban fighters sit on a vehicle along the street in Jalalabad province on Aug. 15, 2021. | AFP via Getty Images
In Afghanistan, kinship and tribal connections often take precedence over formal political loyalties, or at least create neutral spaces where people from opposite sides can meet and talk. Over the years, I have spoken with tribal leaders from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region who have regularly presided over meetings of tribal notables, including commanders on opposite sides.
One of the key things discussed at such meetings is business, and the business very often involves heroin. When I was traveling in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, it was an open secret that local mujahideen groups and government units had deals to share the local heroin trade. By all accounts, the same has held between Taliban and government forces since 2001.
An Afghan farmer works on a poppy field collecting the green bulbs swollen with raw opium, the main ingredient in heroin, in the Khogyani district of Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan. | Rahmat Gul/AP Photo
The power of kinship led to a common arrangement whereby extended families have protected themselves by sending one son to fight with the government army or police (for pay) and another son to fight with the Taliban. This has been a strategy in many civil wars, for example, among English noble families in the 15th-century Wars of the Roses. It means that at a given point, one of the sons can desert and return home without fearing persecution by the winning side.
These arrangements also serve practical purposes. It is often not possible for guerrilla forces to hold any significant number of prisoners of war. Small numbers might be held for ransom, but most ordinary soldiers are let go, enlisted in the guerrillas’ own ranks or killed.
Thus, as in medieval Europe, Afghanistan has a tradition to which the Taliban have adhered closely — and which helps explain the speed of their success. The Taliban will summon an enemy garrison to surrender, either at once or after the first assaults. If it does so, the men can either join the besiegers or return home with their personal weapons. To kill them would be seen as shameful. On the other hand, a garrison that fought it out could expect no quarter, a very strong incentive to surrender in good time.
Three Taliban militiamen dance alongside one of their tanks at a position some 15 kms north of Kabul Saturday November 9, 1996 on their way to the front line. | Santiago Lyon/AP Photo
The Soviet-backed Afghan state survived for three years after the Soviet withdrawal, and in fact outlasted the USSR itself — a telling commentary on the comparative decrepitude of the “state” that the United States and its partners have attempted to create since 2001. During my travels with the mujahideen, I was present at a hard-fought battle at Jalalabad in March 1989, in the immediate wake of the Soviet withdrawal, when Afghan government forces beat off a massive mujahedin assault.
Opposing Afghan factions have long negotiated arrangements to stop fighting — something the U.S. either failed to understand or chose to ignore.
Members of the Taliban move toward the front line on a tank captured outside of Kabul on Feb. 18, 1995.
POLITICO
Magazine
FOREIGN POLICY
Opinion by ANATOL LIEVEN
08/16/2021 04:30 AM EDT
Anatol Lieven is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country. From 1985 to 1998, he worked as a journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and covered the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the southern Caucasus.
In the winter of 1989, as a journalist for the Times of London, I accompanied a group of mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province. At one point, a fortified military post became visible on the other side of a valley. As we got closer, the flag flying above it also became visible — the flag of the Afghan Communist state, which the mujahideen were fighting to overthrow.
“Isn’t that a government post?” I asked my interpreter. “Yes,” he replied. “Can’t they see us?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. “Shouldn’t we hide?” I squeaked. “No, no, don’t worry,” he replied reassuringly. “We have an arrangement.”
I remembered this episode three years later, when the Communist state eventually fell to the mujahedin; six years later, as the Taliban swept across much of Afghanistan; and again this week, as the country collapses in the face of another Taliban assault. Such “arrangements” — in which opposing factions agree not to fight, or even to trade soldiers in exchange for safe passage — are critical to understanding why the Afghan army today has collapsed so quickly (and, for the most part, without violence). The same was true when the Communist state collapsed in 1992, and the practice persisted in many places as the Taliban advanced later in the 1990s.
Taliban fighters huddle in a frontline shelter during a lull in fighting south of Kabul, March 22, 1995. | Craig Fujii/AP Photo
This dense web of relationships and negotiated arrangements between forces on opposite sides is often opaque to outsiders. Over the past 20 years, U.S. military and intelligence services have generally either not understood or chosen to ignore this dynamic as they sought to paint an optimistic picture of American efforts to build a strong, loyal Afghan army. Hence the Biden administration’s expectation that there would be what during the Vietnam War was called a “decent interval” between U.S. departure and the state’s collapse.
While the coming months and years will reveal what the U.S. government did and didn’t know about the state of Afghan security forces prior to U.S. withdrawal, the speed of the collapse was predictable. That the U.S. government could not foresee — or, perhaps, refused to admit — that beleaguered Afghan forces would continue a longstanding practice of cutting deals with the Taliban illustrates precisely the same naivete with which America has prosecuted the Afghanistan war for years.
The central feature of the past several weeks in Afghanistan has not been fighting. It has been negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan forces, sometimes brokered by local elders. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported “a breathtaking series of negotiated surrenders by government forces” that resulted from more than a year of deal-making between the Taliban and rural leaders.
Taliban fighters sit on a vehicle along the street in Jalalabad province on Aug. 15, 2021. | AFP via Getty Images
In Afghanistan, kinship and tribal connections often take precedence over formal political loyalties, or at least create neutral spaces where people from opposite sides can meet and talk. Over the years, I have spoken with tribal leaders from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region who have regularly presided over meetings of tribal notables, including commanders on opposite sides.
One of the key things discussed at such meetings is business, and the business very often involves heroin. When I was traveling in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, it was an open secret that local mujahideen groups and government units had deals to share the local heroin trade. By all accounts, the same has held between Taliban and government forces since 2001.
An Afghan farmer works on a poppy field collecting the green bulbs swollen with raw opium, the main ingredient in heroin, in the Khogyani district of Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan. | Rahmat Gul/AP Photo
The power of kinship led to a common arrangement whereby extended families have protected themselves by sending one son to fight with the government army or police (for pay) and another son to fight with the Taliban. This has been a strategy in many civil wars, for example, among English noble families in the 15th-century Wars of the Roses. It means that at a given point, one of the sons can desert and return home without fearing persecution by the winning side.
These arrangements also serve practical purposes. It is often not possible for guerrilla forces to hold any significant number of prisoners of war. Small numbers might be held for ransom, but most ordinary soldiers are let go, enlisted in the guerrillas’ own ranks or killed.
Thus, as in medieval Europe, Afghanistan has a tradition to which the Taliban have adhered closely — and which helps explain the speed of their success. The Taliban will summon an enemy garrison to surrender, either at once or after the first assaults. If it does so, the men can either join the besiegers or return home with their personal weapons. To kill them would be seen as shameful. On the other hand, a garrison that fought it out could expect no quarter, a very strong incentive to surrender in good time.
Three Taliban militiamen dance alongside one of their tanks at a position some 15 kms north of Kabul Saturday November 9, 1996 on their way to the front line. | Santiago Lyon/AP Photo
The Soviet-backed Afghan state survived for three years after the Soviet withdrawal, and in fact outlasted the USSR itself — a telling commentary on the comparative decrepitude of the “state” that the United States and its partners have attempted to create since 2001. During my travels with the mujahideen, I was present at a hard-fought battle at Jalalabad in March 1989, in the immediate wake of the Soviet withdrawal, when Afghan government forces beat off a massive mujahedin assault.
But after the USSR collapsed and Soviet aid ended in December 1991, there was very little fighting. Government commanders, starting with General Abdul Rashid Dostum (who since 2001 has been on the American side, illustrating the fluidity of Afghan allegiances), either took their men over to the mujahideen, fled or went home — and were allowed to do so by the victors. Kabul was captured intact by the mujahideen in 1992, as it is being captured by the Taliban now. In the later 1990s, while in some areas the Taliban faced strong resistance, elsewhere enemy garrisons also surrendered without a fight and in many cases joined the Taliban.
A government fighter pauses to read a book at a traffic roundabout in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 18, 1995. | Craig Fujii/AP Photo
Deals between Afghan and Taliban forces during the U.S. war have been detailed in works like War Comes to Garmser by Carter Malkasian and An Intimate War by British soldier Mike Martin. A report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) describes such an agreement in Pakhtia province in 2018:
“Haji Ali Baz, a local tribal elder, told AAN that it was agreed that the government’s presence would be limited to the district centre, and neither side would venture into the areas controlled by the other. This agreement resulted in all of the government security posts outside the district centre being dismantled. In the words of Haji Ali Baz, this led to the end of the fighting, which had ‘caused a lot of trouble for the people.’”
Most recently, as described in the Washington Post Sunday, after the Biden administration declared in April that U.S. forces were withdrawing, “the capitulations began to snowball.”
Afghan society has been described to me as a “permanent conversation.” Alliances shift, and people, families and tribes make rational calculations based on the risk they face. This is not to suggest that Afghans who made such decisions are to blame for doing what they felt to be in their self-interest. The point is that America’s commanders and officials either completely failed to understand these aspects of Afghan reality or failed to report them honestly to U.S. administrations, Congress and the general public.
A soldier (L) belonging to strict Moslem Taliban militia forces orders an elderly man to join the Friday noon prayer on October 25, 1996 at Kabul's main Pul-i-Khishti mosque. | SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images
We can draw a clear line between this lack of understanding and the horrible degree of surprise at the events of the past several days. America didn’t predict this sudden collapse, but it could have and should have — an unfortunately fitting coda to a war effort that has been undermined from the start by a failure to study Afghan realities.
Lawyer 'begging' Canada to help save girls' robotics team in Afghanistan
Aug 15, 2021
CBC News
U.S.-based human rights lawyer Kimberley Motley says the all-girls robotics team In Afghanistan watched in horror as their city, Herat, fell to the Taliban. They want to come to Canada and continue their education.
Aug 15, 2021
CBC News
U.S.-based human rights lawyer Kimberley Motley says the all-girls robotics team In Afghanistan watched in horror as their city, Herat, fell to the Taliban. They want to come to Canada and continue their education.
Kabul safe houses set up by Canadians for Afghan interpreters under threat of collapse
MENAKA RAMAN-WILMS
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED AUGUST 15, 2021
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tgam/JK65IURA5BE3RL7ILTEXNSLLE4.JPG)
MENAKA RAMAN-WILMS
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED AUGUST 15, 2021
Taliban fighters on a Humvee in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 15.
JIM HUYLEBROEK/THE NEW YORK TIMES
A volunteer humanitarian effort to bring former interpreters to safe houses in Kabul while they wait for flights to Canada is collapsing as Taliban forces take over the Afghan capital.
A group of Canadian veterans and volunteers have been working for weeks to bring Afghans, who worked with the Canadian military in the past, into the relative safety of Kabul before being evacuated from the country. With the city now falling to the Taliban, the veterans say the situation is desperate and they’re appealing for help from Ottawa.
“We cannot let a thousand people, who have submitted all the paperwork that was demanded, who have been waiting for biometric tests, to languish,” retired major Paul Carroll, the operation’s co-ordinator, told The Globe and Mail on Sunday.
“The folks on the ground are hanging onto very slender threads of hope that the government of Canada is going to come through here.”
The safe houses, which provide security, food and basic needs for the interpreters and their families, cost US$500,000 to run per month. Without increased funding or government assistance, Mr. Carroll said, the facilities can only run for a few more days, and if people don’t get on a flight fast enough, they’ll be left vulnerable.
“We’ve got a small window of opportunity to do the right thing, and I don’t think our government has the risk appetite or the moral fortitude to do anything about that,” Mr. Carroll said. “I hope I’m wrong.”
The effort by Mr. Carroll’s group, funded by donors, filled a gap in the process of evacuating vulnerable Afghans, because people who were living in various parts of the country had to travel to Kabul to get on a plane.
The group has used helicopters at times to get people from remote regions to the capital, according to Mr. Carroll. But as the Taliban rapidly advanced across the country in recent days, 1,200 of those they were trying to evacuate are now stuck in Kandahar, and an additional 800 to 900 are waiting in safe houses in Kabul for evacuation by the Canadian government.
In late July, the government announced a special immigration program to bring Afghans who worked with Canadian troops and diplomatic staff in Afghanistan, as well as their families, to safety in Canada. Since the Taliban resurgence, their work with foreign forces now makes them a target.
Canada ended its military operation in 2011, and left Afghanistan in 2014.
“All of us who served in Afghanistan have an emotional connection to the mission,” said retired major-general David Fraser, who served in the country and is now also part of this effort to help Afghan interpreters. “Without these people, there would have been nothing.”
Mr. Fraser said they constantly hear from people who are trying to get out of the country. “Every day, the messages become more emotive and dire,” he said. “It’s unimaginable what they’re feeling right now in Kabul.”
He said it’s been “hugely frustrating” that the government hasn’t communicated with the volunteer group about when planes will arrive, which means they can’t relay any information to those waiting to be evacuated.
Three Afghan nationals who helped Canada and its military describe via audio recordings the situation in Kabul. One says they are in hiding as they hear gunfire in the city, while another says they made it to the airport but were unable to get inside to find a flight out. The Taliban took control of Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the government collapsed.THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Retired major-general Denis Thompson, also part of this effort, said it’s “ridiculous” the government hasn’t communicated basic information to veterans working to get people out, not even the number of Afghans already brought to Canada.
The Immigration Department has declined to provide details on how many people have been evacuated, citing security reasons.
“There is no group that’s more cognizant of the requirement to have operational security than the veterans who are handling all of these people overseas,” Mr. Thompson said.
Even if the government doesn’t want to publicly share the information, he added, “share it with the people that are trying to organize them in Kabul.” To not do so is hampering their ability to keep people safe; they don’t know if they should wait for a plane or attempt to leave the country another way.
Much of the effort to bring those who worked with the Canadian military to safety is being done by veterans, which is also taking a toll on the well-being of the volunteers.
“A lot of the people on our team have some kind of varying degrees of PTSD after all of this,” said Wendy Long, the founder of Afghan-Canadian Interpreters (ACI), a group of veterans and other volunteers who help identify people to be resettled and assist with the application process.
She said they’ve been overwhelmed with thousands of e-mails from people desperate for help, and some times those messages contain “horrifying images” of what’s happening to people being targeted.
She also said it’s disappointing that they can’t get basic co-operation from Immigration. ACI helped identify many of the people for resettlement who are waiting in safe houses in Kabul for flights. However, without communication from the government, she said, they don’t know how many people have already gotten out, or how long others will have to wait.
“It’s almost guaranteed that some of them will not be with us within the next few weeks,” she said.
JIM HUYLEBROEK/THE NEW YORK TIMES
A volunteer humanitarian effort to bring former interpreters to safe houses in Kabul while they wait for flights to Canada is collapsing as Taliban forces take over the Afghan capital.
A group of Canadian veterans and volunteers have been working for weeks to bring Afghans, who worked with the Canadian military in the past, into the relative safety of Kabul before being evacuated from the country. With the city now falling to the Taliban, the veterans say the situation is desperate and they’re appealing for help from Ottawa.
“We cannot let a thousand people, who have submitted all the paperwork that was demanded, who have been waiting for biometric tests, to languish,” retired major Paul Carroll, the operation’s co-ordinator, told The Globe and Mail on Sunday.
“The folks on the ground are hanging onto very slender threads of hope that the government of Canada is going to come through here.”
The safe houses, which provide security, food and basic needs for the interpreters and their families, cost US$500,000 to run per month. Without increased funding or government assistance, Mr. Carroll said, the facilities can only run for a few more days, and if people don’t get on a flight fast enough, they’ll be left vulnerable.
“We’ve got a small window of opportunity to do the right thing, and I don’t think our government has the risk appetite or the moral fortitude to do anything about that,” Mr. Carroll said. “I hope I’m wrong.”
The effort by Mr. Carroll’s group, funded by donors, filled a gap in the process of evacuating vulnerable Afghans, because people who were living in various parts of the country had to travel to Kabul to get on a plane.
The group has used helicopters at times to get people from remote regions to the capital, according to Mr. Carroll. But as the Taliban rapidly advanced across the country in recent days, 1,200 of those they were trying to evacuate are now stuck in Kandahar, and an additional 800 to 900 are waiting in safe houses in Kabul for evacuation by the Canadian government.
In late July, the government announced a special immigration program to bring Afghans who worked with Canadian troops and diplomatic staff in Afghanistan, as well as their families, to safety in Canada. Since the Taliban resurgence, their work with foreign forces now makes them a target.
Canada ended its military operation in 2011, and left Afghanistan in 2014.
“All of us who served in Afghanistan have an emotional connection to the mission,” said retired major-general David Fraser, who served in the country and is now also part of this effort to help Afghan interpreters. “Without these people, there would have been nothing.”
Mr. Fraser said they constantly hear from people who are trying to get out of the country. “Every day, the messages become more emotive and dire,” he said. “It’s unimaginable what they’re feeling right now in Kabul.”
He said it’s been “hugely frustrating” that the government hasn’t communicated with the volunteer group about when planes will arrive, which means they can’t relay any information to those waiting to be evacuated.
Three Afghan nationals who helped Canada and its military describe via audio recordings the situation in Kabul. One says they are in hiding as they hear gunfire in the city, while another says they made it to the airport but were unable to get inside to find a flight out. The Taliban took control of Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the government collapsed.THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Retired major-general Denis Thompson, also part of this effort, said it’s “ridiculous” the government hasn’t communicated basic information to veterans working to get people out, not even the number of Afghans already brought to Canada.
The Immigration Department has declined to provide details on how many people have been evacuated, citing security reasons.
“There is no group that’s more cognizant of the requirement to have operational security than the veterans who are handling all of these people overseas,” Mr. Thompson said.
Even if the government doesn’t want to publicly share the information, he added, “share it with the people that are trying to organize them in Kabul.” To not do so is hampering their ability to keep people safe; they don’t know if they should wait for a plane or attempt to leave the country another way.
Much of the effort to bring those who worked with the Canadian military to safety is being done by veterans, which is also taking a toll on the well-being of the volunteers.
“A lot of the people on our team have some kind of varying degrees of PTSD after all of this,” said Wendy Long, the founder of Afghan-Canadian Interpreters (ACI), a group of veterans and other volunteers who help identify people to be resettled and assist with the application process.
She said they’ve been overwhelmed with thousands of e-mails from people desperate for help, and some times those messages contain “horrifying images” of what’s happening to people being targeted.
She also said it’s disappointing that they can’t get basic co-operation from Immigration. ACI helped identify many of the people for resettlement who are waiting in safe houses in Kabul for flights. However, without communication from the government, she said, they don’t know how many people have already gotten out, or how long others will have to wait.
“It’s almost guaranteed that some of them will not be with us within the next few weeks,” she said.
The Pentagon mistakes behind the rout of the Afghan army
Issued on: 15/08/2021
Issued on: 15/08/2021
A wall mural painted on the wall of US embassy in Kabul on July 30, 2021
SAJJAD HUSSAIN AFP/File
Washington (AFP)
The collapse of the Afghan army that allowed Taliban fighters to take control of Kabul cast a stark light on errors committed over 20 years by the Pentagon as it spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan.
- The wrong equipment -
Washington spent $83 billion in its effort to create a modern army mirroring its own. In practical terms, that meant huge dependence on air support and a high-tech communications network in a country where only 30 percent of the population can count on a reliable electricity supply.
Airplanes, helicopters, drones, armored vehicles, night-vision goggles: the United States spared no expense in equipping the Afghan army. It recently even provided the Afghans with the latest Black Hawk attack helicopters.
But the Afghans -- many of them illiterate young men in a country lacking the infrastructure to support cutting-edge military equipment -- were unable to mount a serious resistance against a less-equipped and ostensibly badly outnumbered foe.
Their capabilities were seriously overestimated, according to John Sopko, the US special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR).
Each time he tried to evaluate the Afghan army, he said, "the US military changed the goalposts, and made it easier to show success. And then finally, when they couldn't even do that, they classified the assessment tool.
"So they knew how bad the Afghan military was."
His office's latest report to Congress, filed last week, said that "advanced weapons systems, vehicles and logistics used by Western militaries were beyond the capabilities of the largely illiterate and uneducated Afghan force."
- Exaggerated numbers -
For months, Pentagon officials have insisted on what they said was the numerical advantage held by the Afghan forces -- supposedly with 300,000 men in the army and the police -- over the Taliban, estimated to number some 70,000.
But those army numbers were greatly inflated, according to the Combating Terrorism Center at the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point, New York.
As of July 2020, by its own estimate, the 300,000 included only 185,000 army troops or special operations forces under Defense Ministry control, with police and other security personnel making up the rest.
And barely 60 percent of the Afghan army troops were trained fighters, the West Point analysts said.
A more accurate estimate of the army's fighting strength -- once the 8,000 air force personnel are taken out of the equation -- is 96,000, they concluded.
The SIGAR report said desertions have always been a problem for the Afghan army.
It found that in 2020, the Afghan army had to replace 25 percent of its force each year -- largely because of desertions -- and that American soldiers working with the Afghans came to see this rate as "normal."
- Half-hearted promises -
American officials have repeatedly vowed that they would continue to support the Afghan army after August 31 -- the date announced for completing the withdrawal of US troops -- but they have never explained how this would be done logistically.
During his last visit to Kabul, in May, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the possibility of helping the Afghans maintain their air force -- from afar -- through an approach he called "over the horizon" logistics.
That vague concept implied the use of virtual training sessions with video conferencing on the Zoom platform -- an approach that seems illusory given the need for the Afghans to have computers or smartphones with well-functioning wi-fi connections.
Ronald Neumann, a former US ambassador to Kabul, believes the American military "could have taken more time" to withdraw.
The agreement reached by the Trump administration with the Taliban called for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces by May 1.
Trump's successor Joe Biden pushed that date back, originally to September 11 before changing it again to August 31.
But he also decided to withdraw all American citizens from the country, including the contractors who play a key role in supporting US logistics there.
"We built an air force that depended on contractors for maintenance and then pulled the contractors," Neumann, who was ambassador under President George W. Bush, told NPR public radio.
- Unpaid and unfed -
Worse, the salaries of the Afghan army had been paid for years by the Pentagon. But from the moment the American army announced its planned withdrawal in April, responsibility for those payments fell on the Kabul government.
Numerous Afghan soldiers have complained on social media that they not only have not been paid in months, in many instances their units were no longer receiving food or supplies -- not even ammunition.
The rapid US withdrawal provided a final blow.
"We profoundly shocked the Afghan army and morale by pulling out and pulling our air cover," said Neumann.
© 2021 AFP
Washington (AFP)
The collapse of the Afghan army that allowed Taliban fighters to take control of Kabul cast a stark light on errors committed over 20 years by the Pentagon as it spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan.
- The wrong equipment -
Washington spent $83 billion in its effort to create a modern army mirroring its own. In practical terms, that meant huge dependence on air support and a high-tech communications network in a country where only 30 percent of the population can count on a reliable electricity supply.
Airplanes, helicopters, drones, armored vehicles, night-vision goggles: the United States spared no expense in equipping the Afghan army. It recently even provided the Afghans with the latest Black Hawk attack helicopters.
But the Afghans -- many of them illiterate young men in a country lacking the infrastructure to support cutting-edge military equipment -- were unable to mount a serious resistance against a less-equipped and ostensibly badly outnumbered foe.
Their capabilities were seriously overestimated, according to John Sopko, the US special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR).
Each time he tried to evaluate the Afghan army, he said, "the US military changed the goalposts, and made it easier to show success. And then finally, when they couldn't even do that, they classified the assessment tool.
"So they knew how bad the Afghan military was."
His office's latest report to Congress, filed last week, said that "advanced weapons systems, vehicles and logistics used by Western militaries were beyond the capabilities of the largely illiterate and uneducated Afghan force."
- Exaggerated numbers -
For months, Pentagon officials have insisted on what they said was the numerical advantage held by the Afghan forces -- supposedly with 300,000 men in the army and the police -- over the Taliban, estimated to number some 70,000.
But those army numbers were greatly inflated, according to the Combating Terrorism Center at the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point, New York.
As of July 2020, by its own estimate, the 300,000 included only 185,000 army troops or special operations forces under Defense Ministry control, with police and other security personnel making up the rest.
And barely 60 percent of the Afghan army troops were trained fighters, the West Point analysts said.
A more accurate estimate of the army's fighting strength -- once the 8,000 air force personnel are taken out of the equation -- is 96,000, they concluded.
The SIGAR report said desertions have always been a problem for the Afghan army.
It found that in 2020, the Afghan army had to replace 25 percent of its force each year -- largely because of desertions -- and that American soldiers working with the Afghans came to see this rate as "normal."
- Half-hearted promises -
American officials have repeatedly vowed that they would continue to support the Afghan army after August 31 -- the date announced for completing the withdrawal of US troops -- but they have never explained how this would be done logistically.
During his last visit to Kabul, in May, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the possibility of helping the Afghans maintain their air force -- from afar -- through an approach he called "over the horizon" logistics.
That vague concept implied the use of virtual training sessions with video conferencing on the Zoom platform -- an approach that seems illusory given the need for the Afghans to have computers or smartphones with well-functioning wi-fi connections.
Ronald Neumann, a former US ambassador to Kabul, believes the American military "could have taken more time" to withdraw.
The agreement reached by the Trump administration with the Taliban called for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces by May 1.
Trump's successor Joe Biden pushed that date back, originally to September 11 before changing it again to August 31.
But he also decided to withdraw all American citizens from the country, including the contractors who play a key role in supporting US logistics there.
"We built an air force that depended on contractors for maintenance and then pulled the contractors," Neumann, who was ambassador under President George W. Bush, told NPR public radio.
- Unpaid and unfed -
Worse, the salaries of the Afghan army had been paid for years by the Pentagon. But from the moment the American army announced its planned withdrawal in April, responsibility for those payments fell on the Kabul government.
Numerous Afghan soldiers have complained on social media that they not only have not been paid in months, in many instances their units were no longer receiving food or supplies -- not even ammunition.
The rapid US withdrawal provided a final blow.
"We profoundly shocked the Afghan army and morale by pulling out and pulling our air cover," said Neumann.
© 2021 AFP
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