Why Attack Afghan Civilians? Creating Chaos Rewards Taliban
They were hardly the first Taliban attacks in the capital. Still, there was something particularly alarming in their scale and implication about the pair of episodes, just a week apart, that rocked Afghanistan: a hotel siege that killed 22, then a car bomb, loaded into an ambulance, that killed 103.
But the question of why — why target bystanders, and in such numbers — is perhaps best answered not by peering into the minds of the attackers but by examining the structure of a war that increasingly pulls its participants toward the senseless.
Whether the week’s events will translate into a long-term gain for the Taliban or serve only as a terrible but temporary show of force, the attacks embody the trends toward violence and disintegration that appear to be only worsening in Afghanistan.
A War Engineered for Chaos
The war’s participants embarked on what they thought was a traditional battle for control of Afghanistan’s territory and for the allegiance of its people. But over more than 16 years, without setting out to do so, they have remade it into a war over one issue: whether or not the country can have a central, functioning state.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/worl ... d=45305309
Afghanistan
Most Afghans Can’t Read, but Their Book Trade Is Booming
KABUL, Afghanistan — Nuts come in from Iran and fresh fruit from Pakistan, even though Afghanistan grows both in abundance. Years of bloated foreign aid budgets have produced high salaries, destroying local industries. As a result, about the only thing the country does not import is opium.
And books.
At a time when book publishers in many countries are struggling, over the last three years those in Afghanistan have been flourishing — and that is despite the country’s chronically low literacy rates: Only two out of five Afghan adults can read. But those who can seem to be doing it with remarkable regularity, both in spite and because of the country’s cyclonic violence, especially recently.
In a turbulent, troubled society, curling up with a book has become the best tonic around.
“I think in any environment, but perhaps especially places at war, book reading creates a pause from day-to-day life and isolates a reader from their surroundings while they’re buried in a book,” said Jamshid Hashimi, who runs an online library and is a co-founder of the Book Club of Afghanistan. “This is powerful anywhere, but in a place like Afghanistan, it can be a means of emotional survival.”
Unsurprisingly, Afghanistan’s book publishers have capitalized on this. What is more noteworthy is that a major piece of Afghan socioeconomic development is happening without direct foreign aid or foreign advisers.
“It’s an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process,” said Safiullah Nasiri, one of the four brothers who run Aksos, a book publisher that also operates several bookstores in Kabul. His remark was a deliberate play on international community jargon about shifting to Afghan control of institutions dominated by Westerners.
“It’s really an exciting time in the book world here,” Mr. Nasiri said. “Publishers are all trying to find new books to publish, young people are trying to find new books to read, writers are looking for publishers. It’s a very dynamic atmosphere. And it’s something independent, with no foreign assistance.”
Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan with a rapidly growing population of more than five million, now has 22 book publishers, many with their own presses, or using the presses at local printing houses. Scores of others are scattered throughout the country’s 34 provinces, even in war-torn areas like Helmand and Kandahar.
In the past year, especially, many publishers have been expanding, opening up distribution centers across the country and underwriting either their own bookstores or providing consignments to independent bookstores. Kabul has 60 registered bookstores, according to the government.
It was not always so. During the Taliban reign from 1996 to 2001, only two publishers survived: the state publisher and a private company, Aazem Publishing. By the end of 2001, the only independent bookstore was in the Intercontinental Hotel, the site of a deadly attack last month.
Reading poems at a shop in Kabul. A hunger for both foreign and local viewpoints is driving a reading renaissance in the country. For the minority of Afghan adults who are literate, books can be an escape. Credit Mauricio
In the years after the American-led invasion, cheaply printed and brazenly pirated books from Pakistan were as dominant as that country’s fruits and vegetables in the markets of Kabul.
Afghanistan’s new government faced the enormous task of rebuilding the educational system, which had been savaged by decades of civil war, followed by five years of a Taliban regime that closed schools and destroyed foreign-language books. That meant millions of new textbooks, which initially were printed in Pakistan. But as relations with that country soured, the government steered those textbook contracts to a few major Afghan publishers.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/worl ... d=45305309
KABUL, Afghanistan — Nuts come in from Iran and fresh fruit from Pakistan, even though Afghanistan grows both in abundance. Years of bloated foreign aid budgets have produced high salaries, destroying local industries. As a result, about the only thing the country does not import is opium.
And books.
At a time when book publishers in many countries are struggling, over the last three years those in Afghanistan have been flourishing — and that is despite the country’s chronically low literacy rates: Only two out of five Afghan adults can read. But those who can seem to be doing it with remarkable regularity, both in spite and because of the country’s cyclonic violence, especially recently.
In a turbulent, troubled society, curling up with a book has become the best tonic around.
“I think in any environment, but perhaps especially places at war, book reading creates a pause from day-to-day life and isolates a reader from their surroundings while they’re buried in a book,” said Jamshid Hashimi, who runs an online library and is a co-founder of the Book Club of Afghanistan. “This is powerful anywhere, but in a place like Afghanistan, it can be a means of emotional survival.”
Unsurprisingly, Afghanistan’s book publishers have capitalized on this. What is more noteworthy is that a major piece of Afghan socioeconomic development is happening without direct foreign aid or foreign advisers.
“It’s an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process,” said Safiullah Nasiri, one of the four brothers who run Aksos, a book publisher that also operates several bookstores in Kabul. His remark was a deliberate play on international community jargon about shifting to Afghan control of institutions dominated by Westerners.
“It’s really an exciting time in the book world here,” Mr. Nasiri said. “Publishers are all trying to find new books to publish, young people are trying to find new books to read, writers are looking for publishers. It’s a very dynamic atmosphere. And it’s something independent, with no foreign assistance.”
Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan with a rapidly growing population of more than five million, now has 22 book publishers, many with their own presses, or using the presses at local printing houses. Scores of others are scattered throughout the country’s 34 provinces, even in war-torn areas like Helmand and Kandahar.
In the past year, especially, many publishers have been expanding, opening up distribution centers across the country and underwriting either their own bookstores or providing consignments to independent bookstores. Kabul has 60 registered bookstores, according to the government.
It was not always so. During the Taliban reign from 1996 to 2001, only two publishers survived: the state publisher and a private company, Aazem Publishing. By the end of 2001, the only independent bookstore was in the Intercontinental Hotel, the site of a deadly attack last month.
Reading poems at a shop in Kabul. A hunger for both foreign and local viewpoints is driving a reading renaissance in the country. For the minority of Afghan adults who are literate, books can be an escape. Credit Mauricio
In the years after the American-led invasion, cheaply printed and brazenly pirated books from Pakistan were as dominant as that country’s fruits and vegetables in the markets of Kabul.
Afghanistan’s new government faced the enormous task of rebuilding the educational system, which had been savaged by decades of civil war, followed by five years of a Taliban regime that closed schools and destroyed foreign-language books. That meant millions of new textbooks, which initially were printed in Pakistan. But as relations with that country soured, the government steered those textbook contracts to a few major Afghan publishers.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/worl ... d=45305309
An Unprecedented Peace Offer to the Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan — On Feb. 28, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan made the most comprehensive offer inviting the Taliban to join direct, formal peace talks with the Afghan government. The offer, made without preconditions, recognizes the role of the Taliban in Afghan politics and seeks to proceed toward a comprehensive peace agreement.
President Ghani’s offer is the result of the Kabul Process, which saw delegates from 30 countries and international organizations — including the United Nations, NATO and the European Union — gather and deliberate in Kabul.
The announcement of the peace initiative was preceded by months of national consensus building in Afghanistan. Members of the High Peace Council, the inclusive body of Afghan elders formed to steer efforts for peace and dialogue; the government’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah; and President Ghani had long deliberations and consultations with Afghan political figures, members of civil society, clergy, women and youth. They found overwhelming support for the initiative to reach a political settlement with the Taliban.
The peace offer is underpinned by our belief in the common equality of all Afghans and their right to live in peace and dignity. We believe that this offer will give the Taliban the opportunity to organize as a legitimate political force, pursue their goals through peaceful means and join the political process.
The Afghan government is firmly committed to addressing the core concerns and demands of the Taliban, including the future presence of the international military forces, amendments to our constitution and the release of Taliban prisoners.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/opin ... dline&te=1
KABUL, Afghanistan — On Feb. 28, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan made the most comprehensive offer inviting the Taliban to join direct, formal peace talks with the Afghan government. The offer, made without preconditions, recognizes the role of the Taliban in Afghan politics and seeks to proceed toward a comprehensive peace agreement.
President Ghani’s offer is the result of the Kabul Process, which saw delegates from 30 countries and international organizations — including the United Nations, NATO and the European Union — gather and deliberate in Kabul.
The announcement of the peace initiative was preceded by months of national consensus building in Afghanistan. Members of the High Peace Council, the inclusive body of Afghan elders formed to steer efforts for peace and dialogue; the government’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah; and President Ghani had long deliberations and consultations with Afghan political figures, members of civil society, clergy, women and youth. They found overwhelming support for the initiative to reach a political settlement with the Taliban.
The peace offer is underpinned by our belief in the common equality of all Afghans and their right to live in peace and dignity. We believe that this offer will give the Taliban the opportunity to organize as a legitimate political force, pursue their goals through peaceful means and join the political process.
The Afghan government is firmly committed to addressing the core concerns and demands of the Taliban, including the future presence of the international military forces, amendments to our constitution and the release of Taliban prisoners.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/opin ... dline&te=1
Drought Adds to Woes of Afghanistan, in Grips of a Raging War
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan, already torn by decades of intensifying violence, is grappling with a drought in two-thirds of the country that could lead to severe food shortages for up to two million more people, the United Nations has warned.
The United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan said in a report released last week that a “precipitation deficit” of 70 percent in most parts of the country had affected winter harvests, and resulted in grim prospects for the spring and summer.
Many farmers have seen their seeds dry out or have delayed planting crops, and there is little or no feed for livestock on pasturelands.
The drought has led to the displacement of thousands of people this spring, adding to the nearly two million who have been forced from their homes in recent years, largely because of violence.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/worl ... t-war.html
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan, already torn by decades of intensifying violence, is grappling with a drought in two-thirds of the country that could lead to severe food shortages for up to two million more people, the United Nations has warned.
The United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan said in a report released last week that a “precipitation deficit” of 70 percent in most parts of the country had affected winter harvests, and resulted in grim prospects for the spring and summer.
Many farmers have seen their seeds dry out or have delayed planting crops, and there is little or no feed for livestock on pasturelands.
The drought has led to the displacement of thousands of people this spring, adding to the nearly two million who have been forced from their homes in recent years, largely because of violence.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/worl ... t-war.html
A Grass-Roots Afghan Peace Movement Grows, Step by Step
GHAZNI, Afghanistan — As they march for peace through Afghan villages laced with roadside bombs and bottomless heartache, their numbers keep growing.
They come from all walks of life, ages 17 to 65. Among them is a high school student who went home to complete his final exams before rejoining the others; a poet who still carries in his chest one of the four bullets he was shot with; a bodybuilding champion who abandoned his gym and has lost 20 pounds of muscle on the journey. They are day laborers, farmers, retired army officers, a polio victim on crutches, a mechanic who was robbed of his sight by war.
Afghanistan’s most striking grass-roots movement for peace in recent years started with just eight people. I started watching their movement then, when it was a hunger strike born out of pain and outrage at a suicide bombing that killed and wounded dozens in Helmand Province. A group of young men pitched a protest tent next to the carnage. Their blood had become cheap — too cheap, they said. For too long, they had been dying in silence.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/worl ... arch-.html
GHAZNI, Afghanistan — As they march for peace through Afghan villages laced with roadside bombs and bottomless heartache, their numbers keep growing.
They come from all walks of life, ages 17 to 65. Among them is a high school student who went home to complete his final exams before rejoining the others; a poet who still carries in his chest one of the four bullets he was shot with; a bodybuilding champion who abandoned his gym and has lost 20 pounds of muscle on the journey. They are day laborers, farmers, retired army officers, a polio victim on crutches, a mechanic who was robbed of his sight by war.
Afghanistan’s most striking grass-roots movement for peace in recent years started with just eight people. I started watching their movement then, when it was a hunger strike born out of pain and outrage at a suicide bombing that killed and wounded dozens in Helmand Province. A group of young men pitched a protest tent next to the carnage. Their blood had become cheap — too cheap, they said. For too long, they had been dying in silence.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/worl ... arch-.html
Who Is Winning the War in Afghanistan? Depends on Which One
KABUL, Afghanistan — Two wars are convulsing Afghanistan, the war of blood and guts, and the war of truth and lies. Both have been amassing casualties at a remarkable rate recently.
The first is that messy war in which, just in the past week, more than 40 high school students were blown to pieces in their classroom, hundreds of bodies were left abandoned for a week in the streets of Ghazni city or dumped in a river, and two important Afghan Army units were destroyed, almost to the last soldier.
The other is the war in which most of that, according to official accounts, did not happen — or at least was not as bad as it sounded. Not until late on the third day of the Taliban’s assault on Ghazni did President Ashraf Ghani’s aides even inform him of the desperation level there, two government officials said privately; Mr. Ghani himself later confirmed that publicly. By then the Taliban had control of nearly every neighborhood.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/worl ... 3053090819
KABUL, Afghanistan — Two wars are convulsing Afghanistan, the war of blood and guts, and the war of truth and lies. Both have been amassing casualties at a remarkable rate recently.
The first is that messy war in which, just in the past week, more than 40 high school students were blown to pieces in their classroom, hundreds of bodies were left abandoned for a week in the streets of Ghazni city or dumped in a river, and two important Afghan Army units were destroyed, almost to the last soldier.
The other is the war in which most of that, according to official accounts, did not happen — or at least was not as bad as it sounded. Not until late on the third day of the Taliban’s assault on Ghazni did President Ashraf Ghani’s aides even inform him of the desperation level there, two government officials said privately; Mr. Ghani himself later confirmed that publicly. By then the Taliban had control of nearly every neighborhood.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/worl ... 3053090819
In Afghanistan’s Season of Crisis, ‘Words Do Not Have the Strength’
KABUL, Afghanistan — In the past 17 years of war and crisis in Afghanistan, no one remembers a season quite like this one, with peril and hopelessness at every turn. People here struggle for words to explain how it feels.
A former minister, fit with healthy habits and hardened by years of battle and politics, said he could barely force himself out of bed in the morning. A young professional, after years of dedicated work in civil society and government jobs, teared up as she tried to explain why she was losing hope, her usual clarity choked by emotion. A poet in the country’s east said his verse had dried up.
“Every time something bad happened, I would turn to poetry — it would give me calm,” said the poet, Sajid Bahar, 26, who lives in the city of Khost. “It’s been seven months that I can’t write. It no longer gives me calm. When I sit down to focus on one incident for a poem, 30 others flash through my head. My words do not have the strength for all of them.”
If there is a common theme in this upswell of alarm and worry that seems so widespread, it is a sense that no one sees any clear path through a minefield of crises.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/worl ... 3053091018
KABUL, Afghanistan — In the past 17 years of war and crisis in Afghanistan, no one remembers a season quite like this one, with peril and hopelessness at every turn. People here struggle for words to explain how it feels.
A former minister, fit with healthy habits and hardened by years of battle and politics, said he could barely force himself out of bed in the morning. A young professional, after years of dedicated work in civil society and government jobs, teared up as she tried to explain why she was losing hope, her usual clarity choked by emotion. A poet in the country’s east said his verse had dried up.
“Every time something bad happened, I would turn to poetry — it would give me calm,” said the poet, Sajid Bahar, 26, who lives in the city of Khost. “It’s been seven months that I can’t write. It no longer gives me calm. When I sit down to focus on one incident for a poem, 30 others flash through my head. My words do not have the strength for all of them.”
If there is a common theme in this upswell of alarm and worry that seems so widespread, it is a sense that no one sees any clear path through a minefield of crises.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/worl ... 3053091018
Taliban Slaughter Elite Afghan Troops, and a ‘Safe’ District Is Falling
SANG-E-MASHA, Afghanistan — One pickup truck after another arrived at the government compound in a district capital in Afghanistan on Sunday, pulling around to the back of the governor’s office to unload the dead, out of sight of panicked residents.
Soldiers and police officers, many in tears, heaved bodies of their comrades from the trucks and laid them on sheets on the ground, side by side on their backs, until there were 20 of them.
The dead all wore the desert-brown boots of Afghanistan’s finest troops, the Special Forces commandos trained by the United States. Four days earlier, the soldiers had been airlifted in to rescue what is widely considered Afghanistan’s safest rural district, Jaghori, from a determined assault by Taliban insurgents.
Early on Sunday, their company of 50 soldiers was almost entirely destroyed on the front line. And suddenly, Jaghori — a haven for an ethnic Hazara Shiite minority that has been persecuted by extremists — appeared at risk of being completely overrun by the Taliban.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/worl ... 3053091113
SANG-E-MASHA, Afghanistan — One pickup truck after another arrived at the government compound in a district capital in Afghanistan on Sunday, pulling around to the back of the governor’s office to unload the dead, out of sight of panicked residents.
Soldiers and police officers, many in tears, heaved bodies of their comrades from the trucks and laid them on sheets on the ground, side by side on their backs, until there were 20 of them.
The dead all wore the desert-brown boots of Afghanistan’s finest troops, the Special Forces commandos trained by the United States. Four days earlier, the soldiers had been airlifted in to rescue what is widely considered Afghanistan’s safest rural district, Jaghori, from a determined assault by Taliban insurgents.
Early on Sunday, their company of 50 soldiers was almost entirely destroyed on the front line. And suddenly, Jaghori — a haven for an ethnic Hazara Shiite minority that has been persecuted by extremists — appeared at risk of being completely overrun by the Taliban.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/worl ... 3053091113
A Generation of Widows, Raising Children Who Will Be Forged by Loss
Excerpt:
The war in Afghanistan is disproportionately killing young men, and it is leaving behind a generation defined by that loss. Children like Benyamin will have only early memories of their fathers, and the deaths will shape their lives even as true recollections fade. Babies like Sarfarz will have even less, with death taking fathers they will never know.
Carrying it all are the tens of thousands of widows the war has created since 2001. Like Mrs. Kakar, they are left to raise families in a country with a dearth of economic opportunity and plagued by a war that kills 50 people a day.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/worl ... 3053091202
Excerpt:
The war in Afghanistan is disproportionately killing young men, and it is leaving behind a generation defined by that loss. Children like Benyamin will have only early memories of their fathers, and the deaths will shape their lives even as true recollections fade. Babies like Sarfarz will have even less, with death taking fathers they will never know.
Carrying it all are the tens of thousands of widows the war has created since 2001. Like Mrs. Kakar, they are left to raise families in a country with a dearth of economic opportunity and plagued by a war that kills 50 people a day.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/worl ... 3053091202
How Afghans Have Adapted to Life After Losing a Limb
Photographs of prosthetics made by Afghans who had to
rely on their own ingenuity when they were wounded in war.
In Kabul, where I lived on and off as a journalist for eight years, disabled men are a ubiquitous sight in the streets, begging alongside women and children at busy intersections, where traffic slows to a crawl. With sleeves or pant legs rolled up to show naked stumps or withered limbs, they weave between the cars on crutches or hand-cranked wheelchairs, navigating the unpaved streets and open gutters that, when rain or snow comes, turn into rivers of mud and sewage. Warlords and Taliban commanders sometimes have noms de guerre (which tend to be things like Mullah Rauf or Commander Ibrahim) with a peculiar suffix: “lang,” or “the Lame,” a testament to the injuries accumulated over decades of war. Whenever I visited a trauma hospital, the sight of patients resting quietly with their white-bandaged stumps — many of them children — made me think that what is most difficult for us to imagine is not tragedy but the prospect of living in its aftermath. Life after suffering a permanent injury is particularly harsh for people in Afghanistan, where agriculture still employs nearly two-thirds of the working population and many of the few jobs available in the cities involve manual labor.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ogin-email
Photographs of prosthetics made by Afghans who had to
rely on their own ingenuity when they were wounded in war.
In Kabul, where I lived on and off as a journalist for eight years, disabled men are a ubiquitous sight in the streets, begging alongside women and children at busy intersections, where traffic slows to a crawl. With sleeves or pant legs rolled up to show naked stumps or withered limbs, they weave between the cars on crutches or hand-cranked wheelchairs, navigating the unpaved streets and open gutters that, when rain or snow comes, turn into rivers of mud and sewage. Warlords and Taliban commanders sometimes have noms de guerre (which tend to be things like Mullah Rauf or Commander Ibrahim) with a peculiar suffix: “lang,” or “the Lame,” a testament to the injuries accumulated over decades of war. Whenever I visited a trauma hospital, the sight of patients resting quietly with their white-bandaged stumps — many of them children — made me think that what is most difficult for us to imagine is not tragedy but the prospect of living in its aftermath. Life after suffering a permanent injury is particularly harsh for people in Afghanistan, where agriculture still employs nearly two-thirds of the working population and many of the few jobs available in the cities involve manual labor.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ogin-email
A School With No Heat or Computers but Many College-Bound Students. Mostly Girls.
Excerpt:
Rustam may seem an unlikely place to encourage collegiate dreams. With seven crude stone classrooms, supplemented by six big tents, there are so many students that they are divided into morning and afternoon sessions only four hours long.
There is no electricity, heat, working computers or copy machines. Many school materials are written out in longhand by teachers. Foreign aid once helped but has dried up. One teacher said she has fewer books than students.
Only 5 percent of the students have parents who can read and write, Mr. Nasiri said. Most are the children of subsistence farmers.
Yet Rustam’s 2017 graduating class saw 60 of 65 graduates accepted to Afghanistan’s public universities, a 92 percent college entrance rate. Two-thirds of those accepted were girls. A couple of years earlier, 97 percent of the graduates went to college.
Unlike most Afghan schools, Rustam mixes boys and girls in its classrooms. “Men and women are equal,” the principal said. “They have the same brains and the same bodies.”
He added, “We tell these boys and girls, there is no difference between you guys, and you will all be together when you go to college, so you need to learn how to respect one another.”
One day late in the spring term, Badan Joya, one of five female teachers among the school’s 12, was teaching a fourth-grade math class in one of the overflow tents. A piece of cardboard painted black served as a chalkboard, with simple algebra formulas scribbled on it. She asked her students, nearly all girls, to name their favorite subject. They chorused: “Math.”
That is not surprising at Rustam; 40 percent of questions on the college entrance exams cover mathematics, more than any other subject. And the girls excel.
The head student in 11th-grade math, based on test scores, is Shahrbano Hakimi, 17. Ms. Hakimi is also head student in her computer class, where, on that recent day, the girls were studying the Windows operating system, from books. Only one of the 60 students had a computer at home.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/worl ... 3053090628
Excerpt:
Rustam may seem an unlikely place to encourage collegiate dreams. With seven crude stone classrooms, supplemented by six big tents, there are so many students that they are divided into morning and afternoon sessions only four hours long.
There is no electricity, heat, working computers or copy machines. Many school materials are written out in longhand by teachers. Foreign aid once helped but has dried up. One teacher said she has fewer books than students.
Only 5 percent of the students have parents who can read and write, Mr. Nasiri said. Most are the children of subsistence farmers.
Yet Rustam’s 2017 graduating class saw 60 of 65 graduates accepted to Afghanistan’s public universities, a 92 percent college entrance rate. Two-thirds of those accepted were girls. A couple of years earlier, 97 percent of the graduates went to college.
Unlike most Afghan schools, Rustam mixes boys and girls in its classrooms. “Men and women are equal,” the principal said. “They have the same brains and the same bodies.”
He added, “We tell these boys and girls, there is no difference between you guys, and you will all be together when you go to college, so you need to learn how to respect one another.”
One day late in the spring term, Badan Joya, one of five female teachers among the school’s 12, was teaching a fourth-grade math class in one of the overflow tents. A piece of cardboard painted black served as a chalkboard, with simple algebra formulas scribbled on it. She asked her students, nearly all girls, to name their favorite subject. They chorused: “Math.”
That is not surprising at Rustam; 40 percent of questions on the college entrance exams cover mathematics, more than any other subject. And the girls excel.
The head student in 11th-grade math, based on test scores, is Shahrbano Hakimi, 17. Ms. Hakimi is also head student in her computer class, where, on that recent day, the girls were studying the Windows operating system, from books. Only one of the 60 students had a computer at home.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/worl ... 3053090628
Book
Afghanistan’s Islam
From Conversion to the Taliban
This book is about the historical development of the diversity of religious practices and institutions in Afghanistan. The contents and the introduction can be accessed at:
https://www.academia.edu/31491156/Islam ... n_Khan.pdf
Afghanistan’s Islam
From Conversion to the Taliban
This book is about the historical development of the diversity of religious practices and institutions in Afghanistan. The contents and the introduction can be accessed at:
https://www.academia.edu/31491156/Islam ... n_Khan.pdf
What We, the Taliban, Want
I am convinced that the killing and the maiming must stop, the deputy leader of the Taliban writes.
When our representatives started negotiating with the United States in 2018, our confidence that the talks would yield results was close to zero. We did not trust American intentions after 18 years of war and several previous attempts at negotiation that had proved futile.
Nevertheless, we decided to try once more. The long war has exacted a terrible cost from everyone. We thought it unwise to dismiss any potential opportunity for peace no matter how meager the prospects of its success. For more than four decades, precious Afghan lives have been lost every day. Everyone has lost somebody they loved. Everyone is tired of war. I am convinced that the killing and the maiming must stop.
We did not choose our war with the foreign coalition led by the United States. We were forced to defend ourselves. The withdrawal of foreign forces has been our first and foremost demand. That we today stand at the threshold of a peace agreement with the United States is no small milestone.
Our negotiation team, led by my colleagues Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Sher Mohammed Abas Stanekzai, has worked tirelessly for the past 18 months with the American negotiators to make an agreement possible. We stuck with the talks despite recurring disquiet and upset within our ranks over the intensified bombing campaign against our villages by the United States and the flip-flopping and ever-moving goal posts of the American side.
Even when President Trump called off the talks, we kept the door to peace open because we Afghans suffer the most from the continuation of the war. No peace agreement, following on the heels of such intensive talks, comes without mutual compromises. That we stuck with such turbulent talks with the enemy we have fought bitterly for two decades, even as death rained from the sky, testifies to our commitment to ending the hostilities and bringing peace to our country.
We are aware of the concerns and questions in and outside Afghanistan about the kind of government we would have after the foreign troops withdraw. My response to such concerns is that it will depend on a consensus among Afghans. We should not let our worries get in the way of a process of genuine discussion and deliberation free for the first time from foreign domination and interference.
It is important that no one front-loads this process with predetermined outcomes and preconditions. We are committed to working with other parties in a consultative manner of genuine respect to agree on a new, inclusive political system in which the voice of every Afghan is reflected and where no Afghan feels excluded.
I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights, where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity.
We are also aware of concerns about the potential of Afghanistan being used by disruptive groups to threaten regional and world security. But these concerns are inflated: Reports about foreign groups in Afghanistan are politically motivated exaggerations by the warmongering players on all sides of the war.
It is not in the interest of any Afghan to allow such groups to hijack our country and turn it into a battleground. We have already suffered enough from foreign interventions. We will take all measures in partnership with other Afghans to make sure the new Afghanistan is a bastion of stability and that nobody feels threatened on our soil.
We are conscious of the immense challenges ahead. Perhaps our biggest challenge is to ensure that various Afghan groups work hard and sincerely toward defining our common future. I am confident that it is possible. If we can reach an agreement with a foreign enemy, we must be able to resolve intra-Afghan disagreements through talks.
Another challenge will be keeping the international community interested and positively engaged during the transition to peace and after the withdrawal of foreign troops. The support of the international community will be crucial to stabilizing and developing Afghanistan.
We are ready to work on the basis of mutual respect with our international partners on long-term peace-building and reconstruction. After the United States withdraws its troops, it can play a constructive role in the postwar development and reconstruction of Afghanistan.
We acknowledge the importance of maintaining friendly relations with all countries and take their concerns seriously. Afghanistan cannot afford to live in isolation. The new Afghanistan will be a responsible member of the international community.
We will remain committed to all international conventions as long as they are compatible with Islamic principles. And we expect other countries to respect the sovereignty and stability of our country and consider it as a ground for cooperation rather than competition and conflict.
More immediately, there will be the challenge of putting into effect our agreement with the United States. A degree of trust has been built through our talks with the American negotiators in Doha, Qatar, but just as the United States does not trust us completely, we too are very far from fully trusting it.
We are about to sign an agreement with the United States and we are fully committed to carrying out its every single provision, in letter and spirit. Achieving the potential of the agreement, ensuring its success and earning lasting peace will depend on an equally scrupulous observance by the United States of each of its commitments. Only then can we have complete trust and lay the foundation for cooperation — or even a partnership — in the future.
My fellow Afghans will soon celebrate this historic agreement. Once it is entirely fulfilled, Afghans will see the departure of all foreign troops. As we arrive at this milestone, I believe it is not a distant dream that we will soon see the day when we will come together with all our Afghan brothers and sisters, start moving toward lasting peace and lay the foundation of a new Afghanistan.
We would then celebrate a new beginning that invites all our compatriots to return from their exile to our country — to our shared home where everybody would have the right to live with dignity, in peace.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is the deputy leader of the Taliban.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opin ... 0920200220
I am convinced that the killing and the maiming must stop, the deputy leader of the Taliban writes.
When our representatives started negotiating with the United States in 2018, our confidence that the talks would yield results was close to zero. We did not trust American intentions after 18 years of war and several previous attempts at negotiation that had proved futile.
Nevertheless, we decided to try once more. The long war has exacted a terrible cost from everyone. We thought it unwise to dismiss any potential opportunity for peace no matter how meager the prospects of its success. For more than four decades, precious Afghan lives have been lost every day. Everyone has lost somebody they loved. Everyone is tired of war. I am convinced that the killing and the maiming must stop.
We did not choose our war with the foreign coalition led by the United States. We were forced to defend ourselves. The withdrawal of foreign forces has been our first and foremost demand. That we today stand at the threshold of a peace agreement with the United States is no small milestone.
Our negotiation team, led by my colleagues Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Sher Mohammed Abas Stanekzai, has worked tirelessly for the past 18 months with the American negotiators to make an agreement possible. We stuck with the talks despite recurring disquiet and upset within our ranks over the intensified bombing campaign against our villages by the United States and the flip-flopping and ever-moving goal posts of the American side.
Even when President Trump called off the talks, we kept the door to peace open because we Afghans suffer the most from the continuation of the war. No peace agreement, following on the heels of such intensive talks, comes without mutual compromises. That we stuck with such turbulent talks with the enemy we have fought bitterly for two decades, even as death rained from the sky, testifies to our commitment to ending the hostilities and bringing peace to our country.
We are aware of the concerns and questions in and outside Afghanistan about the kind of government we would have after the foreign troops withdraw. My response to such concerns is that it will depend on a consensus among Afghans. We should not let our worries get in the way of a process of genuine discussion and deliberation free for the first time from foreign domination and interference.
It is important that no one front-loads this process with predetermined outcomes and preconditions. We are committed to working with other parties in a consultative manner of genuine respect to agree on a new, inclusive political system in which the voice of every Afghan is reflected and where no Afghan feels excluded.
I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights, where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity.
We are also aware of concerns about the potential of Afghanistan being used by disruptive groups to threaten regional and world security. But these concerns are inflated: Reports about foreign groups in Afghanistan are politically motivated exaggerations by the warmongering players on all sides of the war.
It is not in the interest of any Afghan to allow such groups to hijack our country and turn it into a battleground. We have already suffered enough from foreign interventions. We will take all measures in partnership with other Afghans to make sure the new Afghanistan is a bastion of stability and that nobody feels threatened on our soil.
We are conscious of the immense challenges ahead. Perhaps our biggest challenge is to ensure that various Afghan groups work hard and sincerely toward defining our common future. I am confident that it is possible. If we can reach an agreement with a foreign enemy, we must be able to resolve intra-Afghan disagreements through talks.
Another challenge will be keeping the international community interested and positively engaged during the transition to peace and after the withdrawal of foreign troops. The support of the international community will be crucial to stabilizing and developing Afghanistan.
We are ready to work on the basis of mutual respect with our international partners on long-term peace-building and reconstruction. After the United States withdraws its troops, it can play a constructive role in the postwar development and reconstruction of Afghanistan.
We acknowledge the importance of maintaining friendly relations with all countries and take their concerns seriously. Afghanistan cannot afford to live in isolation. The new Afghanistan will be a responsible member of the international community.
We will remain committed to all international conventions as long as they are compatible with Islamic principles. And we expect other countries to respect the sovereignty and stability of our country and consider it as a ground for cooperation rather than competition and conflict.
More immediately, there will be the challenge of putting into effect our agreement with the United States. A degree of trust has been built through our talks with the American negotiators in Doha, Qatar, but just as the United States does not trust us completely, we too are very far from fully trusting it.
We are about to sign an agreement with the United States and we are fully committed to carrying out its every single provision, in letter and spirit. Achieving the potential of the agreement, ensuring its success and earning lasting peace will depend on an equally scrupulous observance by the United States of each of its commitments. Only then can we have complete trust and lay the foundation for cooperation — or even a partnership — in the future.
My fellow Afghans will soon celebrate this historic agreement. Once it is entirely fulfilled, Afghans will see the departure of all foreign troops. As we arrive at this milestone, I believe it is not a distant dream that we will soon see the day when we will come together with all our Afghan brothers and sisters, start moving toward lasting peace and lay the foundation of a new Afghanistan.
We would then celebrate a new beginning that invites all our compatriots to return from their exile to our country — to our shared home where everybody would have the right to live with dignity, in peace.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is the deputy leader of the Taliban.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opin ... 0920200220
U.S.-Taliban sign landmark agreement in bid to end America's longest war
DOHA, Qatar — The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan started nearly 7,000 miles away on a sunny September morning that saw hijacked planes slam into the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
On Saturday, more than 18 years after it was triggered by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. made a bid to end America's longest war.
Hundreds of miles from the battlefields of Afghanistan in a glitzy banquet hall in a five-star hotel in Qatar, the United States and the Taliban signed a landmark agreement that paves the way for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from the desperately poor and war-torn Central Asian country.
U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban’s chief negotiator and one of its founders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, signed the agreement in Doha after more than a year of on-off formal talks.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also attended the ceremony, but did not sign the document, which stipulates that the U.S. will withdraw all forces within 14 months and pull out of five bases in 135 days.
The Taliban agreed to enter into peace talks with Afghan government officials, representatives of the opposition, and members of civil society on March 10. The group also promised that the country would not be used as a base for Al Qaeda or for terrorist attacks, and that its members would not support terrorist groups that seek to attack U.S. and its allies.
The U.S. also committed to work with both sides in upcoming talks to secure the release of up to 5,000 prisoners held by Afghan government and 1,000 prisoners held by Taliban by start of intra-Afghan peace talks.
Some in the room broke out in whoops, cheers and shouts of "God is Great" at the signing. The several dozen members of the group exited the room after the ceremony beaming.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was in Kabul Saturday to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and leaders of NATO and the resolute support mission which trains, advises and assists Afghan national defence and security forces. His aim there was to “further engage with the Afghan peace process,” he wrote in a tweet.
The deadliest terror attack on American soil, which killed nearly 3,000 people, prompted President George W. Bush to send the first of many waves of U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a country most Americans could not then spot on a map, in October 2001.
Their mission was to topple the Taliban regime after it sheltered Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. While the invasion swiftly overthrew the militants, it also embroiled America in a deadly quagmire that has cost the lives of around 2,300 U.S. troops and wounded thousands of others.
After 18 years, there are currently between 12,000 to 13,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, who advise Afghan forces and carry out counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State militant group.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly railed against America’s “endless wars” abroad and Saturday’s deal will give him a talking point in his bid for re-election.
America’s war in Afghanistan has spanned three U.S. administrations and Trump’s predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama, had tried to extricate U.S. troops from the country and even outlined a plan for a final exit. But Obama held off in the end amid concerns about the staying power of the Afghan security forces against a resilient insurgency.
The war has taken a devastating toll — Afghanistan currently tops the list of the world’s deadliest conflicts.
Since 2016, children have accounted for nearly one-third of the estimated 11,000 civilian casualties every year in the conflict, according to Human Rights Watch. Since the United Nations began systematically documenting the impact of the war on civilians in 2009, it has recorded more than 100,000 civilian casualties, including more than 35,000 killed and 65,000 injured.
Between 2001 and October 2018, more than 58,000 Afghan security forces were also killed, according to a study by Brown University.
Click to expand
And nearly two decades after the U.S. invaded and billions of American taxpayer dollars later, the Taliban control, influence or contest nearly half of the country, according to the last reported numbers released by the Department of Defense in January 2019.
The Afghan government is perceived to be one of the world’s most corrupt and is currently facing its own political crisis as its rivals refute the results of September’s presidential elections, claiming that the polling was riddled with fraud.
And the status of women in Afghanistan — like so many other parts of Afghan life — is once again up in the air as a return to Taliban rule in the country could potentially jeopardize nearly two decades of progress for Afghan women.
Saphora Smith and Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Doha, Dan De Luce from Washington and Ahmed Mengli from Kabul.
Video photos at:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/us ... ailsignout
******
How Afghans Can Work Together to End the War
Negotiators from the Taliban and the Afghan government must build on the achievements of the past two decades.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Momentum is building toward peace in Afghanistan.
On Saturday, the United States and the Taliban will sign an agreement that will pave the way for talks between the Taliban and a team of negotiators led by the Afghan government in March. There is hope, at last, of respite from the long war.
The Afghan government deserves credit for planting the seeds of peace two years ago by offering unconditional talks to the Taliban and announcing a unilateral cease-fire that blossomed into a three-day pause in hostilities in June 2018.
Kabul continued to reach out to the Taliban and sent some officials in July to an informal peace dialogue in Doha that brought together the warring sides for the first time. In February, the government of Afghanistan agreed to stop its operations against the Taliban for seven days to facilitate the first formal negotiations between Kabul and the insurgents. The Afghan government and the American forces abided by the agreement. There were reports of several attacks by the Taliban on the Afghan civilians and security forces, but violence certainly decreased during this period.
Negotiations between an inclusive Afghan government-led team with the Taliban offer us a historic opportunity to end the war. If these talks are going to deliver peace, both the Afghan government and the Taliban urgently need to think more clearly about their coming talks and what they envision as the potential outcomes.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/opin ... ogin-email
DOHA, Qatar — The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan started nearly 7,000 miles away on a sunny September morning that saw hijacked planes slam into the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
On Saturday, more than 18 years after it was triggered by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. made a bid to end America's longest war.
Hundreds of miles from the battlefields of Afghanistan in a glitzy banquet hall in a five-star hotel in Qatar, the United States and the Taliban signed a landmark agreement that paves the way for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from the desperately poor and war-torn Central Asian country.
U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban’s chief negotiator and one of its founders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, signed the agreement in Doha after more than a year of on-off formal talks.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also attended the ceremony, but did not sign the document, which stipulates that the U.S. will withdraw all forces within 14 months and pull out of five bases in 135 days.
The Taliban agreed to enter into peace talks with Afghan government officials, representatives of the opposition, and members of civil society on March 10. The group also promised that the country would not be used as a base for Al Qaeda or for terrorist attacks, and that its members would not support terrorist groups that seek to attack U.S. and its allies.
The U.S. also committed to work with both sides in upcoming talks to secure the release of up to 5,000 prisoners held by Afghan government and 1,000 prisoners held by Taliban by start of intra-Afghan peace talks.
Some in the room broke out in whoops, cheers and shouts of "God is Great" at the signing. The several dozen members of the group exited the room after the ceremony beaming.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was in Kabul Saturday to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and leaders of NATO and the resolute support mission which trains, advises and assists Afghan national defence and security forces. His aim there was to “further engage with the Afghan peace process,” he wrote in a tweet.
The deadliest terror attack on American soil, which killed nearly 3,000 people, prompted President George W. Bush to send the first of many waves of U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a country most Americans could not then spot on a map, in October 2001.
Their mission was to topple the Taliban regime after it sheltered Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. While the invasion swiftly overthrew the militants, it also embroiled America in a deadly quagmire that has cost the lives of around 2,300 U.S. troops and wounded thousands of others.
After 18 years, there are currently between 12,000 to 13,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, who advise Afghan forces and carry out counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State militant group.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly railed against America’s “endless wars” abroad and Saturday’s deal will give him a talking point in his bid for re-election.
America’s war in Afghanistan has spanned three U.S. administrations and Trump’s predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama, had tried to extricate U.S. troops from the country and even outlined a plan for a final exit. But Obama held off in the end amid concerns about the staying power of the Afghan security forces against a resilient insurgency.
The war has taken a devastating toll — Afghanistan currently tops the list of the world’s deadliest conflicts.
Since 2016, children have accounted for nearly one-third of the estimated 11,000 civilian casualties every year in the conflict, according to Human Rights Watch. Since the United Nations began systematically documenting the impact of the war on civilians in 2009, it has recorded more than 100,000 civilian casualties, including more than 35,000 killed and 65,000 injured.
Between 2001 and October 2018, more than 58,000 Afghan security forces were also killed, according to a study by Brown University.
Click to expand
And nearly two decades after the U.S. invaded and billions of American taxpayer dollars later, the Taliban control, influence or contest nearly half of the country, according to the last reported numbers released by the Department of Defense in January 2019.
The Afghan government is perceived to be one of the world’s most corrupt and is currently facing its own political crisis as its rivals refute the results of September’s presidential elections, claiming that the polling was riddled with fraud.
And the status of women in Afghanistan — like so many other parts of Afghan life — is once again up in the air as a return to Taliban rule in the country could potentially jeopardize nearly two decades of progress for Afghan women.
Saphora Smith and Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Doha, Dan De Luce from Washington and Ahmed Mengli from Kabul.
Video photos at:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/us ... ailsignout
******
How Afghans Can Work Together to End the War
Negotiators from the Taliban and the Afghan government must build on the achievements of the past two decades.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Momentum is building toward peace in Afghanistan.
On Saturday, the United States and the Taliban will sign an agreement that will pave the way for talks between the Taliban and a team of negotiators led by the Afghan government in March. There is hope, at last, of respite from the long war.
The Afghan government deserves credit for planting the seeds of peace two years ago by offering unconditional talks to the Taliban and announcing a unilateral cease-fire that blossomed into a three-day pause in hostilities in June 2018.
Kabul continued to reach out to the Taliban and sent some officials in July to an informal peace dialogue in Doha that brought together the warring sides for the first time. In February, the government of Afghanistan agreed to stop its operations against the Taliban for seven days to facilitate the first formal negotiations between Kabul and the insurgents. The Afghan government and the American forces abided by the agreement. There were reports of several attacks by the Taliban on the Afghan civilians and security forces, but violence certainly decreased during this period.
Negotiations between an inclusive Afghan government-led team with the Taliban offer us a historic opportunity to end the war. If these talks are going to deliver peace, both the Afghan government and the Taliban urgently need to think more clearly about their coming talks and what they envision as the potential outcomes.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/opin ... ogin-email
Afghan Rivals Sign Power-Sharing Deal as Political Crisis Subsides
President Ashraf Ghani gave Abdullah Abdullah the leading role in seeking peace with the Taliban and the ability to name half the cabinet.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s monthslong election dispute, which resulted in the bizarre reality of two men taking the oath of office as president, reached a resolution on Sunday when President Ashraf Ghani gave his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, the leading role in the country’s peace process with the Taliban and the right to appoint half the cabinet.
The deal ends a political crisis that cast a major shadow over efforts to end the country’s long war with the Taliban. The standoff complicated Afghan negotiations with the insurgents after the United States agreed with the Taliban to begin a phased troop withdrawal.
All but one of Afghanistan’s presidential elections since the 2001 American invasion have ended in dispute, and the most recent two brought the country to the verge of more bloodshed even as war with the Taliban raged. In 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated a power-sharing arrangement that kept Mr. Ghani as president and Mr. Abdullah as the government’s chief executive with half of the power.
After Mr. Abdullah disputed Mr. Ghani’s victory in clinching a second term in last September’s elections, both sides dug in. They refused to come together in one government even after the United States chided both leaders and cut $1 billion in aid.
As international pressure grew and the Taliban appeared to be benefiting from the political disarray, the two sides began talks to find a way out.
The new deal — whose negotiations were mediated by Afghan political leaders including former President Hamid Karzai — strips Mr. Abdullah of an executive role in the government but gives his coalition half the cabinet appointments. In return, Mr. Abdullah takes charge of the peace efforts with the Taliban in a new role as chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation.
Mr. Ghani also agreed to the formation of a High Council of Governance, which will give major political leaders a role in advising the president in hopes of shaping a united front as Afghanistan seeks an endgame with the Taliban. Mr. Ghani struggled to create political consensus in his first five years in office, alienating many influential political figures.
“I am proud that today the ranks of the republic are united in reaching the sacred goal of peace and stability,” Mr. Ghani after signing the deal.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/worl ... 778d3e6de3
President Ashraf Ghani gave Abdullah Abdullah the leading role in seeking peace with the Taliban and the ability to name half the cabinet.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s monthslong election dispute, which resulted in the bizarre reality of two men taking the oath of office as president, reached a resolution on Sunday when President Ashraf Ghani gave his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, the leading role in the country’s peace process with the Taliban and the right to appoint half the cabinet.
The deal ends a political crisis that cast a major shadow over efforts to end the country’s long war with the Taliban. The standoff complicated Afghan negotiations with the insurgents after the United States agreed with the Taliban to begin a phased troop withdrawal.
All but one of Afghanistan’s presidential elections since the 2001 American invasion have ended in dispute, and the most recent two brought the country to the verge of more bloodshed even as war with the Taliban raged. In 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated a power-sharing arrangement that kept Mr. Ghani as president and Mr. Abdullah as the government’s chief executive with half of the power.
After Mr. Abdullah disputed Mr. Ghani’s victory in clinching a second term in last September’s elections, both sides dug in. They refused to come together in one government even after the United States chided both leaders and cut $1 billion in aid.
As international pressure grew and the Taliban appeared to be benefiting from the political disarray, the two sides began talks to find a way out.
The new deal — whose negotiations were mediated by Afghan political leaders including former President Hamid Karzai — strips Mr. Abdullah of an executive role in the government but gives his coalition half the cabinet appointments. In return, Mr. Abdullah takes charge of the peace efforts with the Taliban in a new role as chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation.
Mr. Ghani also agreed to the formation of a High Council of Governance, which will give major political leaders a role in advising the president in hopes of shaping a united front as Afghanistan seeks an endgame with the Taliban. Mr. Ghani struggled to create political consensus in his first five years in office, alienating many influential political figures.
“I am proud that today the ranks of the republic are united in reaching the sacred goal of peace and stability,” Mr. Ghani after signing the deal.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/worl ... 778d3e6de3
A Girl’s Heroic Battle Against the Taliban Was Also a Family Feud
A teenage Afghan girl was celebrated for killing Taliban who attacked her home. But the story of her heroism is steeped in pain, and reveals the complicated crosscurrents of the Afghan War.
The teenage girl was the hero of a night of carnage that left her family’s hillside home in western Afghanistan strewn with bodies. Qamar Gul, 15, fought to her last bullet, gunning down Taliban attackers who raided the house and killed her father and mother.
In the days after the attack last week, Afghan social media was full of slick posters celebrating her as “My Hero.” Some users compared her to the Kurdish women of Kobani, Syria, who fought the Islamic State. Local officials put out pictures of Qamar Gul posing with her rifle. Afghanistan’s vice president praised her for defending against “the enemies of the nation."
But the story of her heroism is steeped in pain, in a culture that often treats women as property, and in the confusion of an Afghan war that has twisted families into knots of complex loyalties and feuds.
One of the attackers she killed was her own husband, who was fighting on the Taliban’s side and apparently seeking her forcible return after a falling out with Ms. Gul’s family, according to relatives and local officials.
As the war in Afghanistan drags on, the violence has increasingly become local. Beyond the headlines of the major clashes between government forces and Taliban militants often lies a more complicated reality of local power rivalries, of a tug of war between mafia groups and drug-dealing rings, and of communities and families torn apart.
Increasingly, both the pro-government and Taliban side are drawing on the same pools of local fighters.
In villages and rural districts, the Taliban are not an unknown force — they are mostly the sons and brothers and husbands everyone there knows. And the Afghan government has in large stretches of the country found itself relying on tens of thousands of local militiamen, called the Public Uprising, to try to hold territory. They often bear the brunt of the fighting, but their casualties rarely make it to official records of the toll of the war on Afghan forces.
Ghor Province, where the incident happened, has remained restive in recent years and proved particularly brutal for women. In government-controlled areas, girls have been bartered for dowries at a young age. Graphic videos of stoning and flogging have repeatedly come out of the Taliban-controlled areas.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/worl ... 778d3e6de3
A teenage Afghan girl was celebrated for killing Taliban who attacked her home. But the story of her heroism is steeped in pain, and reveals the complicated crosscurrents of the Afghan War.
The teenage girl was the hero of a night of carnage that left her family’s hillside home in western Afghanistan strewn with bodies. Qamar Gul, 15, fought to her last bullet, gunning down Taliban attackers who raided the house and killed her father and mother.
In the days after the attack last week, Afghan social media was full of slick posters celebrating her as “My Hero.” Some users compared her to the Kurdish women of Kobani, Syria, who fought the Islamic State. Local officials put out pictures of Qamar Gul posing with her rifle. Afghanistan’s vice president praised her for defending against “the enemies of the nation."
But the story of her heroism is steeped in pain, in a culture that often treats women as property, and in the confusion of an Afghan war that has twisted families into knots of complex loyalties and feuds.
One of the attackers she killed was her own husband, who was fighting on the Taliban’s side and apparently seeking her forcible return after a falling out with Ms. Gul’s family, according to relatives and local officials.
As the war in Afghanistan drags on, the violence has increasingly become local. Beyond the headlines of the major clashes between government forces and Taliban militants often lies a more complicated reality of local power rivalries, of a tug of war between mafia groups and drug-dealing rings, and of communities and families torn apart.
Increasingly, both the pro-government and Taliban side are drawing on the same pools of local fighters.
In villages and rural districts, the Taliban are not an unknown force — they are mostly the sons and brothers and husbands everyone there knows. And the Afghan government has in large stretches of the country found itself relying on tens of thousands of local militiamen, called the Public Uprising, to try to hold territory. They often bear the brunt of the fighting, but their casualties rarely make it to official records of the toll of the war on Afghan forces.
Ghor Province, where the incident happened, has remained restive in recent years and proved particularly brutal for women. In government-controlled areas, girls have been bartered for dowries at a young age. Graphic videos of stoning and flogging have repeatedly come out of the Taliban-controlled areas.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/worl ... 778d3e6de3
At Afghan Peace Talks, Hoping to End Their Fathers’ War
The children of the war against the Soviets carry legacies of loss and determination — and their own generation’s crimes — as they meet to try to break a cycle of devastation.
DOHA, Qatar — They are here to end their fathers’ war.
On both sides of the negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban are nearly a dozen children of men who played key roles in the Soviet conflict in the 1980s that set off four decades of violence and loss.
Some of their fathers have since died of old age, insurgents to the end. Some faced more violent deaths, blown up in suicide bombings that have become a trademark of the war’s brutality. Many of the ones who have survived, their chests decked out in the medals and insignia of a conflict that has inflicted misery on millions, grew rich — enjoying palaces, political fortune, massive wealth. But they still play hide and seek with death.
Those fathers fought alongside each other to drive out the Soviets, then turned their guns on each other in the power vacuum that followed, waging an atrocity-filled civil war.
Now, their children know all too well what is at stake as the United States military continues its withdrawal with the peace talks in Qatar still up in the air: If the Afghan warring sides fail to agree on a formula of power-sharing, Afghanistan could break into another civil war, the conflict dragging on for another generation, with new enemies and new patrons.
“If we lose this opportunity, we have lost Afghanistan,” said Fatima Gailani, whose father was one of the leaders of the mujahedeen resistance to the Soviets at the dawn of Afghanistan’s descent into chaos. “If we lose this opportunity, we have betrayed the people of Afghanistan — we have betrayed every child, every woman, above all we have betrayed the people who died in this war.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/worl ... ldren.html
The children of the war against the Soviets carry legacies of loss and determination — and their own generation’s crimes — as they meet to try to break a cycle of devastation.
DOHA, Qatar — They are here to end their fathers’ war.
On both sides of the negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban are nearly a dozen children of men who played key roles in the Soviet conflict in the 1980s that set off four decades of violence and loss.
Some of their fathers have since died of old age, insurgents to the end. Some faced more violent deaths, blown up in suicide bombings that have become a trademark of the war’s brutality. Many of the ones who have survived, their chests decked out in the medals and insignia of a conflict that has inflicted misery on millions, grew rich — enjoying palaces, political fortune, massive wealth. But they still play hide and seek with death.
Those fathers fought alongside each other to drive out the Soviets, then turned their guns on each other in the power vacuum that followed, waging an atrocity-filled civil war.
Now, their children know all too well what is at stake as the United States military continues its withdrawal with the peace talks in Qatar still up in the air: If the Afghan warring sides fail to agree on a formula of power-sharing, Afghanistan could break into another civil war, the conflict dragging on for another generation, with new enemies and new patrons.
“If we lose this opportunity, we have lost Afghanistan,” said Fatima Gailani, whose father was one of the leaders of the mujahedeen resistance to the Soviets at the dawn of Afghanistan’s descent into chaos. “If we lose this opportunity, we have betrayed the people of Afghanistan — we have betrayed every child, every woman, above all we have betrayed the people who died in this war.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/worl ... ldren.html
Where the Pomegranate Harvest Is Life, the Taliban Brought Ruin
An incursion that devastated a prized crop shows the loss and uncertainty that many Afghans endure.
ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — Crack a pomegranate in half and its blood-red seed-filled chambers make it look almost like a broken heart. In Arghandab district, which in Afghanistan is almost synonymous with the fruit, a Taliban offensive has cut the heart out of the harvest season, leaving farming families desperate.
The offensive here in southern Afghanistan came at the end of October, the prime month for a pomegranate harvest that goes from September to November. On a recent day this month, Gulalay Amiri and 10 of his workers gathered whatever was left in fear. Several farmers in an orchard nearby had recently been killed by buried Taliban explosives.
“When the fighting started we couldn’t come here,” said Mr. Amiri, kneeling among his workers with pink earmuffs framing his tanned and aging face. He and his men were disappointed at how few bags and boxes they were able to fill. “Most of the pomegranates were destroyed.”
Arghandab was at the center of some of the most intense fighting at the height of the war 10 years ago, when Americans came to Kandahar Province to drive the Taliban out during President Barack Obama’s troop surge. But in recent years, locals said, things had stayed relatively quiet, and Arghandab had experienced a streak of good harvests.
But even in the midst of peace negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government, residents described the recent fighting as the worst they had seen since the Soviets came in the 1980s, bulldozing their fields and scorching the earth.
Video and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/worl ... 778d3e6de3
An incursion that devastated a prized crop shows the loss and uncertainty that many Afghans endure.
ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — Crack a pomegranate in half and its blood-red seed-filled chambers make it look almost like a broken heart. In Arghandab district, which in Afghanistan is almost synonymous with the fruit, a Taliban offensive has cut the heart out of the harvest season, leaving farming families desperate.
The offensive here in southern Afghanistan came at the end of October, the prime month for a pomegranate harvest that goes from September to November. On a recent day this month, Gulalay Amiri and 10 of his workers gathered whatever was left in fear. Several farmers in an orchard nearby had recently been killed by buried Taliban explosives.
“When the fighting started we couldn’t come here,” said Mr. Amiri, kneeling among his workers with pink earmuffs framing his tanned and aging face. He and his men were disappointed at how few bags and boxes they were able to fill. “Most of the pomegranates were destroyed.”
Arghandab was at the center of some of the most intense fighting at the height of the war 10 years ago, when Americans came to Kandahar Province to drive the Taliban out during President Barack Obama’s troop surge. But in recent years, locals said, things had stayed relatively quiet, and Arghandab had experienced a streak of good harvests.
But even in the midst of peace negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government, residents described the recent fighting as the worst they had seen since the Soviets came in the 1980s, bulldozing their fields and scorching the earth.
Video and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/worl ... 778d3e6de3
In Afghanistan, a Booming Kidney Trade Preys on the Poor
Widespread poverty and an ambitious private hospital are helping to fuel an illegal market — a portal to new misery for the country’s most vulnerable.
HERAT, Afghanistan — Amid the bustle of beggars and patients outside the crowded hospital here, there are sellers and buyers, casting wary eyes at one another: The poor, seeking cash for their vital organs, and the gravely ill or their surrogates, looking to buy.
The illegal kidney business is booming in the western city of Herat, fueled by sprawling slums, the surrounding land’s poverty and unending war, an entrepreneurial hospital that advertises itself as the country’s first kidney transplantation center, and officials and doctors who turn a blind eye to organ trafficking.
In Afghanistan, as in most countries, the sale and purchase of organs is illegal, and so is the implanting of purchased organs by physicians. But the practice remains a worldwide problem, particularly when it comes to kidneys, since most donors can live with just one.
“These people, they need the money,” said Ahmed Zain Faqiri, a teacher seeking a kidney for his gravely ill father outside Loqman Hakim Hospital. He was eyed uneasily by a strapping young farmer, Haleem Ahmad, 21, who had heard of the kidney market and was looking to sell after his harvest had failed.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/06/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Widespread poverty and an ambitious private hospital are helping to fuel an illegal market — a portal to new misery for the country’s most vulnerable.
HERAT, Afghanistan — Amid the bustle of beggars and patients outside the crowded hospital here, there are sellers and buyers, casting wary eyes at one another: The poor, seeking cash for their vital organs, and the gravely ill or their surrogates, looking to buy.
The illegal kidney business is booming in the western city of Herat, fueled by sprawling slums, the surrounding land’s poverty and unending war, an entrepreneurial hospital that advertises itself as the country’s first kidney transplantation center, and officials and doctors who turn a blind eye to organ trafficking.
In Afghanistan, as in most countries, the sale and purchase of organs is illegal, and so is the implanting of purchased organs by physicians. But the practice remains a worldwide problem, particularly when it comes to kidneys, since most donors can live with just one.
“These people, they need the money,” said Ahmed Zain Faqiri, a teacher seeking a kidney for his gravely ill father outside Loqman Hakim Hospital. He was eyed uneasily by a strapping young farmer, Haleem Ahmad, 21, who had heard of the kidney market and was looking to sell after his harvest had failed.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/06/worl ... 778d3e6de3
How One Looted Artifact Tells the Story of Modern Afghanistan
Many of the country’s finest antiquities were stolen under cover of war, ending up in elite museums all over the globe. Should they be returned?
Listen to the podcast at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/maga ... 778d3e6de3
In November 2013, Nora von Achenbach, curator at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, Germany, examined the catalog for an upcoming auction by the Paris-based dealer Boisgirard-Antonini. The glossy pages offered a bevy of antiquities for sale: bronze figurines, jewelry and a statue from ancient Egypt estimated at more than 300,000 euros, or almost half a million dollars. But von Achenbach was interested in a pale marble tablet, carved with arabesques, vines and Persian script. Lot 104, an “important epigraphic panel with interlacings from the palace of Mas’ud III,” was dated to the 12th century, from the capital of the Ghaznavid Empire, in what is today Afghanistan.
Curators must be wary of buying fake or stolen art, particularly when it comes to ancient artifacts, which may have been illegally excavated in countries plagued by war and corruption. Boisgirard-Antonini’s catalog simply stated that the marble’s provenance was “a private French collection.” But von Achenbach — who did not respond to requests for an interview — may have been reassured by the lengthy description of the archaeological site where the marble was originally found, the royal palace in Ghazni, where a legal Italian-led excavation broke ground in the 1950s. Moreover, as the catalog noted, three panels from the same site were held by the Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Von Achenbach decided that the marble could form part of her museum’s collection in Hamburg. She sent in a bid, the equivalent of around $50,000, and won.
Photographs and more at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/maga ... 778d3e6de3
Many of the country’s finest antiquities were stolen under cover of war, ending up in elite museums all over the globe. Should they be returned?
Listen to the podcast at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/maga ... 778d3e6de3
In November 2013, Nora von Achenbach, curator at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, Germany, examined the catalog for an upcoming auction by the Paris-based dealer Boisgirard-Antonini. The glossy pages offered a bevy of antiquities for sale: bronze figurines, jewelry and a statue from ancient Egypt estimated at more than 300,000 euros, or almost half a million dollars. But von Achenbach was interested in a pale marble tablet, carved with arabesques, vines and Persian script. Lot 104, an “important epigraphic panel with interlacings from the palace of Mas’ud III,” was dated to the 12th century, from the capital of the Ghaznavid Empire, in what is today Afghanistan.
Curators must be wary of buying fake or stolen art, particularly when it comes to ancient artifacts, which may have been illegally excavated in countries plagued by war and corruption. Boisgirard-Antonini’s catalog simply stated that the marble’s provenance was “a private French collection.” But von Achenbach — who did not respond to requests for an interview — may have been reassured by the lengthy description of the archaeological site where the marble was originally found, the royal palace in Ghazni, where a legal Italian-led excavation broke ground in the 1950s. Moreover, as the catalog noted, three panels from the same site were held by the Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Von Achenbach decided that the marble could form part of her museum’s collection in Hamburg. She sent in a bid, the equivalent of around $50,000, and won.
Photographs and more at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/maga ... 778d3e6de3
Risking Death, Hazara Students Pursue Education at Bombed Academies
A group of young Afghans studying for college entrance exams must risk suicide attacks by the Islamic State and the looming threat of a Taliban return.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Two and a half years ago, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest during an algebra class at the Mawoud Academy tutoring center. At least 40 students, most from Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic minority, died as they studied for college entrance exams.
Najibullah Yousefi, a teacher who survived the August 2018 blast, moved with his students to a new location. He has a plan for the next suicide bomber.
“I’m in front of the class and will get killed anyway,” Mr. Yousefi, 38, said. “So to protect my students, I will go and hug the attacker” to absorb the blast.
Perhaps no other minority group faces a more harrowing future if the Taliban return to power as a result of negotiations with the Afghan government — especially if they don’t honor a pledge under a February 2020 agreement with the United States to cut ties with terror organizations such as the Islamic State.
But even as the violence deters some students, many young Hazaras keep returning to classrooms. They have swept aside their fears and dread to pursue dreams of higher education in a country where attending class is an expression of faith amid a climate of terror.
“This is very unfair, but this is Afghanistan and this is how people suffer here,” Mr. Yousefi said.
Hazaras, who make up roughly 10 to 20 percent of Afghanistan’s estimated 35 million people, are predominately Shiite Muslim and have been persecuted since Afghanistan’s Pashtun emir targeted them for mass killings and forced removals in the late 19th century. Some were enslaved and sold.
Under the Taliban’s rule, thousands of Hazaras were massacred in pogroms. But since the American invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban government, Hazaras have carved out thriving communities, businesses, schools and mosques in western Kabul and in Hazarajat, in the highlands of central Afghanistan.
Yet the targeted violence hasn’t stopped.
In recent years, hundreds have died in attacks on tutoring centers, mosques, hospitals, voting sites and even a wrestling club. More than 80 people perished in a double suicide bombing at a Hazara protest in Kabul in 2016. At least 31 died in a suicide bombing in a Hazara area during a 2018 celebration for Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Most of these attacks have been claimed by Sunni Muslim extremists of the Islamic State, who consider Shiites apostates and heretics.
What progress has been made by the ethnic minority is threatened by such attacks, and now a possible return of the Taliban to government. As recently as 2018, Hazara civilians were killed and forced from their homes during a Taliban offensive in Hazarajat.
Taliban negotiators have said the rights of minorities, including Hazaras, would be protected under Islamic law. In some Hazara areas, local militias have formed to protect communities from attacks.
Marzia Mohseni, 18, a Hazara student, said she feared losing her rights to education and to the workplace if the Taliban returned to power. She said she wants to be a lawyer “and provide equal rights to all people in this country.”
But a Taliban return could mean that “all my gains and all my hard work would be wasted,” she said.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/worl ... 778d3e6de3
A group of young Afghans studying for college entrance exams must risk suicide attacks by the Islamic State and the looming threat of a Taliban return.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Two and a half years ago, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest during an algebra class at the Mawoud Academy tutoring center. At least 40 students, most from Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic minority, died as they studied for college entrance exams.
Najibullah Yousefi, a teacher who survived the August 2018 blast, moved with his students to a new location. He has a plan for the next suicide bomber.
“I’m in front of the class and will get killed anyway,” Mr. Yousefi, 38, said. “So to protect my students, I will go and hug the attacker” to absorb the blast.
Perhaps no other minority group faces a more harrowing future if the Taliban return to power as a result of negotiations with the Afghan government — especially if they don’t honor a pledge under a February 2020 agreement with the United States to cut ties with terror organizations such as the Islamic State.
But even as the violence deters some students, many young Hazaras keep returning to classrooms. They have swept aside their fears and dread to pursue dreams of higher education in a country where attending class is an expression of faith amid a climate of terror.
“This is very unfair, but this is Afghanistan and this is how people suffer here,” Mr. Yousefi said.
Hazaras, who make up roughly 10 to 20 percent of Afghanistan’s estimated 35 million people, are predominately Shiite Muslim and have been persecuted since Afghanistan’s Pashtun emir targeted them for mass killings and forced removals in the late 19th century. Some were enslaved and sold.
Under the Taliban’s rule, thousands of Hazaras were massacred in pogroms. But since the American invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban government, Hazaras have carved out thriving communities, businesses, schools and mosques in western Kabul and in Hazarajat, in the highlands of central Afghanistan.
Yet the targeted violence hasn’t stopped.
In recent years, hundreds have died in attacks on tutoring centers, mosques, hospitals, voting sites and even a wrestling club. More than 80 people perished in a double suicide bombing at a Hazara protest in Kabul in 2016. At least 31 died in a suicide bombing in a Hazara area during a 2018 celebration for Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Most of these attacks have been claimed by Sunni Muslim extremists of the Islamic State, who consider Shiites apostates and heretics.
What progress has been made by the ethnic minority is threatened by such attacks, and now a possible return of the Taliban to government. As recently as 2018, Hazara civilians were killed and forced from their homes during a Taliban offensive in Hazarajat.
Taliban negotiators have said the rights of minorities, including Hazaras, would be protected under Islamic law. In some Hazara areas, local militias have formed to protect communities from attacks.
Marzia Mohseni, 18, a Hazara student, said she feared losing her rights to education and to the workplace if the Taliban returned to power. She said she wants to be a lawyer “and provide equal rights to all people in this country.”
But a Taliban return could mean that “all my gains and all my hard work would be wasted,” she said.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/worl ... 778d3e6de3
In Kabul’s Streets, Dogs Rule the Night
Almost every city in the world has to deal with street crime, and some with dog packs. But few, if any, have to navigate such an underworld while also confronting unrelenting war.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Civilians in Afghanistan’s capital live in constant fear of being killed in a targeted attack as the war with the Taliban and other extremist groups drags on. But at night, a different war is being fought — against criminals, and packs of stray dogs stalking the streets.
The shop owners in one Kabul neighborhood speak of a shadow government.
“There are dogs and armed thieves who make people’s lives here hell,” said Fahim Sultani, a local elder who works from the empty dusty hulk of the run-down Aryub Cinema in the northwest part of the city, which he has converted into a makeshift office.
As Afghanistan’s economy has been battered by the coronavirus, crime has flourished in Kabul. Just after the lockdown last year, the dogs on Mr. Sultani's street, and a handful of security guards, watched what has become a staple in the city: An ice cream vendor in front of the theater was shot at and robbed, he said.
The stray dogs roam throughout the city and are a strange and sad fixture of Kabul, known for snapping, snarling and attacking people passing by, mostly those just trying to eke out a living. By day, the animals rest, conserving their energy until twilight, when they, along with the criminals, command the streets.
Almost every city in the world has to deal with street crime, and some with dog packs. Few, if any, have to navigate those threats while also confronting daily bomb attacks, targeted assassinations and 40 years of unrelenting war.
Certain streets and intersections almost demarcate thief and dog territory, where groups of a dozen or so strays led by a pack leader that residents have come to easily recognize prowl between the shadows and the pitch black strips of road where people dare not walk.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Almost every city in the world has to deal with street crime, and some with dog packs. But few, if any, have to navigate such an underworld while also confronting unrelenting war.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Civilians in Afghanistan’s capital live in constant fear of being killed in a targeted attack as the war with the Taliban and other extremist groups drags on. But at night, a different war is being fought — against criminals, and packs of stray dogs stalking the streets.
The shop owners in one Kabul neighborhood speak of a shadow government.
“There are dogs and armed thieves who make people’s lives here hell,” said Fahim Sultani, a local elder who works from the empty dusty hulk of the run-down Aryub Cinema in the northwest part of the city, which he has converted into a makeshift office.
As Afghanistan’s economy has been battered by the coronavirus, crime has flourished in Kabul. Just after the lockdown last year, the dogs on Mr. Sultani's street, and a handful of security guards, watched what has become a staple in the city: An ice cream vendor in front of the theater was shot at and robbed, he said.
The stray dogs roam throughout the city and are a strange and sad fixture of Kabul, known for snapping, snarling and attacking people passing by, mostly those just trying to eke out a living. By day, the animals rest, conserving their energy until twilight, when they, along with the criminals, command the streets.
Almost every city in the world has to deal with street crime, and some with dog packs. Few, if any, have to navigate those threats while also confronting daily bomb attacks, targeted assassinations and 40 years of unrelenting war.
Certain streets and intersections almost demarcate thief and dog territory, where groups of a dozen or so strays led by a pack leader that residents have come to easily recognize prowl between the shadows and the pitch black strips of road where people dare not walk.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The Taliban Think They Have Already Won, Peace Deal or Not
“We have defeated the enemy.” The international community is scrambling to secure peace in Afghanistan, but the Taliban believe they have the upper hand — and are saying as much.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s swagger is unmistakable. From the recent bellicose speech of their deputy leader, boasting of “conquests,” to sneering references to the “foreign masters” of the “illegitimate” Kabul government, to the Taliban’s own website tally of “puppets” killed — Afghan soldiers — they are promoting a bold message:
We have already won the war.
And that belief, grounded in military and political reality, is shaping Afghanistan’s volatile present. On the eve of talks in Turkey next month over the country’s future, it is the elephant in the room: the half-acknowledged truth that the Taliban have the upper hand and are thus showing little outward interest in compromise, or of going along with the dominant American idea, power-sharing.
While the Taliban’s current rhetoric is also propaganda, the grim sense of Taliban supremacy is dictating the response of a desperate Afghan government and influencing Afghanistan’s anxious foreign interlocutors. It contributes to the abandonment of dozens of checkpoints and falling morale among the Afghan security forces, already hammered by a “not sustainable” casualty rate of perhaps 3,000 a month, a senior Western diplomat in Kabul said.
The group doesn’t hide its pride at having compelled its principal adversary for 20 years, the United States, to negotiate with the Taliban and, last year, to sign an agreement to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. In exchange, the Taliban agreed to stop attacking foreign forces and to sever ties with international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/worl ... 778d3e6de3
“We have defeated the enemy.” The international community is scrambling to secure peace in Afghanistan, but the Taliban believe they have the upper hand — and are saying as much.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s swagger is unmistakable. From the recent bellicose speech of their deputy leader, boasting of “conquests,” to sneering references to the “foreign masters” of the “illegitimate” Kabul government, to the Taliban’s own website tally of “puppets” killed — Afghan soldiers — they are promoting a bold message:
We have already won the war.
And that belief, grounded in military and political reality, is shaping Afghanistan’s volatile present. On the eve of talks in Turkey next month over the country’s future, it is the elephant in the room: the half-acknowledged truth that the Taliban have the upper hand and are thus showing little outward interest in compromise, or of going along with the dominant American idea, power-sharing.
While the Taliban’s current rhetoric is also propaganda, the grim sense of Taliban supremacy is dictating the response of a desperate Afghan government and influencing Afghanistan’s anxious foreign interlocutors. It contributes to the abandonment of dozens of checkpoints and falling morale among the Afghan security forces, already hammered by a “not sustainable” casualty rate of perhaps 3,000 a month, a senior Western diplomat in Kabul said.
The group doesn’t hide its pride at having compelled its principal adversary for 20 years, the United States, to negotiate with the Taliban and, last year, to sign an agreement to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. In exchange, the Taliban agreed to stop attacking foreign forces and to sever ties with international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/worl ... 778d3e6de3
‘Why Do We Deserve to Die?’ Kabul’s Hazaras Bury Their Daughters.
A bomb attack that killed scores of schoolgirls, members of a long-persecuted minority, offered still more evidence that Afghanistan may be on the verge of unraveling.
KABUL, Afghanistan — One by one they brought the girls up the steep hill, shrouded bodies covered in a ceremonial prayer cloth, the pallbearers staring into the distance. Shouted prayers for the dead broke the silence.
The bodies kept coming and the gravediggers stayed busy, straining in the hot sun. The ceaseless rhythm was grim proof of the preceding day’s news: Saturday afternoon’s triple bombing at a local school had been an absolute massacre, targeting girls. There was barely room atop the steeply pitched hill for all the new graves.
The scale of the killing and the innocence of the victims seemed further unnerving proof of the country’s violent unraveling, as the Taliban make daily gains and the government seems unable to halt their advances or protect its people from mass killings. On Sunday there were mourners everywhere in the neighborhood of the bombing, home to the persecuted Hazara ethnic minority, but hardly any security to protect them.
The death toll exceeded even previous massacres in this bustling neighborhood of a minority long singled out for persecution by the Taliban and the Islamic State. Afghanistan’s second vice president, Sarwar Danesh, himself a Hazara, said more than 80 people had been killed in the attack.
After the 2001 American invasion, the Hazaras were a minority that made the most of the country’s new educational and business opportunities, and they make up a large part of the country’s young technocrat generation.
They have grown increasingly angry at the government, accusing the security forces of standing by while they suffer horrific casualties in terrorist attacks. Now, on the edge of what many fear will become a return of Taliban rule in many areas with the planned American troop withdrawal, and a new civil war some see as inevitable, the Hazara are increasingly determined to take their security into their own hands.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/worl ... 778d3e6de3
A bomb attack that killed scores of schoolgirls, members of a long-persecuted minority, offered still more evidence that Afghanistan may be on the verge of unraveling.
KABUL, Afghanistan — One by one they brought the girls up the steep hill, shrouded bodies covered in a ceremonial prayer cloth, the pallbearers staring into the distance. Shouted prayers for the dead broke the silence.
The bodies kept coming and the gravediggers stayed busy, straining in the hot sun. The ceaseless rhythm was grim proof of the preceding day’s news: Saturday afternoon’s triple bombing at a local school had been an absolute massacre, targeting girls. There was barely room atop the steeply pitched hill for all the new graves.
The scale of the killing and the innocence of the victims seemed further unnerving proof of the country’s violent unraveling, as the Taliban make daily gains and the government seems unable to halt their advances or protect its people from mass killings. On Sunday there were mourners everywhere in the neighborhood of the bombing, home to the persecuted Hazara ethnic minority, but hardly any security to protect them.
The death toll exceeded even previous massacres in this bustling neighborhood of a minority long singled out for persecution by the Taliban and the Islamic State. Afghanistan’s second vice president, Sarwar Danesh, himself a Hazara, said more than 80 people had been killed in the attack.
After the 2001 American invasion, the Hazaras were a minority that made the most of the country’s new educational and business opportunities, and they make up a large part of the country’s young technocrat generation.
They have grown increasingly angry at the government, accusing the security forces of standing by while they suffer horrific casualties in terrorist attacks. Now, on the edge of what many fear will become a return of Taliban rule in many areas with the planned American troop withdrawal, and a new civil war some see as inevitable, the Hazara are increasingly determined to take their security into their own hands.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/worl ... 778d3e6de3
What We Can Learn From Fearless Girls
Lying in her hospital bed in Kabul, Afghanistan, having survived an extremist group’s bombing that killed more than 80 students at her school, a 17-year-old named Arifa was as determined as she was frightened.
“I will continue my education, even if I’m afraid,” Arifa, who hopes to become a doctor, vowed to Richard Engel of NBC News.
Afghan girls and boys may lack books, pens and laptops, but in their thirst for education, they have plenty to teach the world. Indeed, one of the few things the extremists and the students seem to agree on is the transformational power of education, especially girls’ education.
In some hideous way, perhaps it was rational for fundamentalists to blow up the school, because girls’ education poses an existential threat to extremism. That’s why the Pakistani Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai in the head. It’s why the Afghan Taliban threw acid in girls’ faces.
In the long run, a girl with a book is a greater threat to extremism than a drone overhead.
“The way to long-term change is education,” said Sakena Yacoobi, a hero of mine who has devoted her life to educating her fellow Afghans. “A nation is not built on temporary jobs and mining rights, contractors and political favors. A nation is built on culture and shared history, shared reality and community well-being. We pass these down with education.”
Since 9/11, we Americans have sought to defeat terrorism and extremism with the military toolbox. As we pull our forces out of Kabul and Kandahar, this is a moment to reflect on the limits of military power and the reasons to invest in more cost-effective tools to change the world, like schooling.
After almost 20 years and $2 trillion, the mightiest army in the history of the world couldn’t remake Afghanistan. Some Americans are critical of President Biden for withdrawing from Afghanistan, but I think he made the right decision. I’ve long argued that we were losing ground and that the war was unsustainable.
I reached that conclusion after Afghan contractors in Kabul who supplied U.S. forces told me that for every $1,000 America paid them, they gave $600 to the Taliban in bribes to pass through checkpoints. To support a single U.S. soldier in Helmand Province, contractors paid the Taliban enough in bribes to hire 10 men to fight against that American.
Yet while America’s longest war is unsustainable, we must remember our obligations. We should greatly accelerate visas for the roughly 17,000 Afghan translators, aides and others who have worked with the United States and will be in danger when our forces are gone. Otherwise, their blood will be on our hands.
So with a heightened appreciation of the limits of military power, let’s try to chip away at extremism with tools like education. It’s also much cheaper. For the cost of deploying a single soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we can establish and pay expenses of 20 rudimentary schools.
There’s a misperception that the Taliban will not allow girls to be educated. It’s not easy, but it can be done. The Taliban tolerates many girls’ schools, particularly primary schools and those with female teachers, but aid groups must negotiate with communities and win support. It doesn’t work to have a sign saying it’s donated by America.
“Most aid groups have been able to operate successfully on both sides of Taliban front lines,” noted Paul Barker, who has spent many years in the region as an aid worker.
Girls’ education is not a magic wand. Schools were built in all corners of Afghanistan over the last 20 years, yet this was not enough to stymie the Taliban.
“It’s not that you go to school and suddenly are empowered,” a young Afghan woman told me. Let’s be honest: Nothing works as well as we would like to overcome extremism.
Yet this young woman is an example of what’s at stake. She studied on her own in the Taliban heartland and then was able to come to the United States — where she is now doing research on quantum algorithms.
Education is an imperfect weapon against extremism, but it helps. It works through some combination of opening minds, building a middle class, giving women a greater voice in society and reducing population growth and thus a destabilizing “youth bulge” in the population.
So I hope that as we, chastened, pull military forces from Afghanistan, we will learn something from extremists and their victims alike: Promoting girls’ education isn’t about mushy idealism, but about employing an inexpensive tool that is frustratingly slow — but sometimes the best tool we’ve got.
“There is no other way to build a nation,” Yacoobi told me. “Maybe someday we will melt down some of these guns and trade them in for medicines and new Homeric epics. If we wish to get there, we must always start with education.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/opin ... iversified
Lying in her hospital bed in Kabul, Afghanistan, having survived an extremist group’s bombing that killed more than 80 students at her school, a 17-year-old named Arifa was as determined as she was frightened.
“I will continue my education, even if I’m afraid,” Arifa, who hopes to become a doctor, vowed to Richard Engel of NBC News.
Afghan girls and boys may lack books, pens and laptops, but in their thirst for education, they have plenty to teach the world. Indeed, one of the few things the extremists and the students seem to agree on is the transformational power of education, especially girls’ education.
In some hideous way, perhaps it was rational for fundamentalists to blow up the school, because girls’ education poses an existential threat to extremism. That’s why the Pakistani Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai in the head. It’s why the Afghan Taliban threw acid in girls’ faces.
In the long run, a girl with a book is a greater threat to extremism than a drone overhead.
“The way to long-term change is education,” said Sakena Yacoobi, a hero of mine who has devoted her life to educating her fellow Afghans. “A nation is not built on temporary jobs and mining rights, contractors and political favors. A nation is built on culture and shared history, shared reality and community well-being. We pass these down with education.”
Since 9/11, we Americans have sought to defeat terrorism and extremism with the military toolbox. As we pull our forces out of Kabul and Kandahar, this is a moment to reflect on the limits of military power and the reasons to invest in more cost-effective tools to change the world, like schooling.
After almost 20 years and $2 trillion, the mightiest army in the history of the world couldn’t remake Afghanistan. Some Americans are critical of President Biden for withdrawing from Afghanistan, but I think he made the right decision. I’ve long argued that we were losing ground and that the war was unsustainable.
I reached that conclusion after Afghan contractors in Kabul who supplied U.S. forces told me that for every $1,000 America paid them, they gave $600 to the Taliban in bribes to pass through checkpoints. To support a single U.S. soldier in Helmand Province, contractors paid the Taliban enough in bribes to hire 10 men to fight against that American.
Yet while America’s longest war is unsustainable, we must remember our obligations. We should greatly accelerate visas for the roughly 17,000 Afghan translators, aides and others who have worked with the United States and will be in danger when our forces are gone. Otherwise, their blood will be on our hands.
So with a heightened appreciation of the limits of military power, let’s try to chip away at extremism with tools like education. It’s also much cheaper. For the cost of deploying a single soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we can establish and pay expenses of 20 rudimentary schools.
There’s a misperception that the Taliban will not allow girls to be educated. It’s not easy, but it can be done. The Taliban tolerates many girls’ schools, particularly primary schools and those with female teachers, but aid groups must negotiate with communities and win support. It doesn’t work to have a sign saying it’s donated by America.
“Most aid groups have been able to operate successfully on both sides of Taliban front lines,” noted Paul Barker, who has spent many years in the region as an aid worker.
Girls’ education is not a magic wand. Schools were built in all corners of Afghanistan over the last 20 years, yet this was not enough to stymie the Taliban.
“It’s not that you go to school and suddenly are empowered,” a young Afghan woman told me. Let’s be honest: Nothing works as well as we would like to overcome extremism.
Yet this young woman is an example of what’s at stake. She studied on her own in the Taliban heartland and then was able to come to the United States — where she is now doing research on quantum algorithms.
Education is an imperfect weapon against extremism, but it helps. It works through some combination of opening minds, building a middle class, giving women a greater voice in society and reducing population growth and thus a destabilizing “youth bulge” in the population.
So I hope that as we, chastened, pull military forces from Afghanistan, we will learn something from extremists and their victims alike: Promoting girls’ education isn’t about mushy idealism, but about employing an inexpensive tool that is frustratingly slow — but sometimes the best tool we’ve got.
“There is no other way to build a nation,” Yacoobi told me. “Maybe someday we will melt down some of these guns and trade them in for medicines and new Homeric epics. If we wish to get there, we must always start with education.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/opin ... iversified
Attacked and Vulnerable, Some Afghans Are Forming Their Own Armies
With U.S. troops leaving, the Taliban advancing, and a steady collapse of security force bases and outposts, the Hazara and other ethnic groups in Afghanistan are raising militias.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The slaughter of students, mostly teenagers, at a tutoring center. The deaths of young athletes in a suicide bombing at a wrestling club. Mothers shot dead with newborns in their arms.
These relentless killings of Hazaras, a persecuted minority in Afghanistan, finally proved too much to bear for Zulfiqar Omid, a Hazara leader in the central part of the country.
In April, Mr. Omid began mobilizing armed men into militias to defend Hazara areas against the Taliban and the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan. He said he now commands 800 armed men at seven staging areas mustered into what he calls “self-protection groups.”
“Hazaras get killed in cities and on highways, but the government doesn’t protect them,” Mr. Omid said. “Enough is enough. We have to protect ourselves.”
As U.S. and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, and talks falter between the Taliban and the American-backed government, ethnic groups across the country have formed militias or say they plan to arm themselves. The rush to raise fighters and weapons evokes the mujahedeen wars of the early 1990s, when rival militias killed thousands of civilians and left sections of Kabul in ruins.
A concerted and determined militia movement, even if nominally aligned with Afghan security forces, could fracture the unsteady government of President Ashraf Ghani and once again divide the country into fiefs ruled by warlords. Yet these makeshift armies may eventually serve as the last line of defense as security force bases and outposts steadily collapse in the face of a fierce onslaught of attacks by the Taliban.
Since the U.S. troop withdrawal was announced in April, regional strongmen have posted videos on social media showing armed men hoisting assault rifles and vowing to fight the Taliban. Some militia leaders fear the flagging peace talks in Doha, Qatar, will collapse after foreign troops depart and the Taliban will intensify an all-out assault to capture provincial capitals and lay siege to Kabul.
“For the first time in 20 years, power brokers are speaking publicly about mobilizing armed men,” the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research group in Kabul, wrote in a June 4 report.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/worl ... 778d3e6de3
With U.S. troops leaving, the Taliban advancing, and a steady collapse of security force bases and outposts, the Hazara and other ethnic groups in Afghanistan are raising militias.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The slaughter of students, mostly teenagers, at a tutoring center. The deaths of young athletes in a suicide bombing at a wrestling club. Mothers shot dead with newborns in their arms.
These relentless killings of Hazaras, a persecuted minority in Afghanistan, finally proved too much to bear for Zulfiqar Omid, a Hazara leader in the central part of the country.
In April, Mr. Omid began mobilizing armed men into militias to defend Hazara areas against the Taliban and the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan. He said he now commands 800 armed men at seven staging areas mustered into what he calls “self-protection groups.”
“Hazaras get killed in cities and on highways, but the government doesn’t protect them,” Mr. Omid said. “Enough is enough. We have to protect ourselves.”
As U.S. and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, and talks falter between the Taliban and the American-backed government, ethnic groups across the country have formed militias or say they plan to arm themselves. The rush to raise fighters and weapons evokes the mujahedeen wars of the early 1990s, when rival militias killed thousands of civilians and left sections of Kabul in ruins.
A concerted and determined militia movement, even if nominally aligned with Afghan security forces, could fracture the unsteady government of President Ashraf Ghani and once again divide the country into fiefs ruled by warlords. Yet these makeshift armies may eventually serve as the last line of defense as security force bases and outposts steadily collapse in the face of a fierce onslaught of attacks by the Taliban.
Since the U.S. troop withdrawal was announced in April, regional strongmen have posted videos on social media showing armed men hoisting assault rifles and vowing to fight the Taliban. Some militia leaders fear the flagging peace talks in Doha, Qatar, will collapse after foreign troops depart and the Taliban will intensify an all-out assault to capture provincial capitals and lay siege to Kabul.
“For the first time in 20 years, power brokers are speaking publicly about mobilizing armed men,” the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research group in Kabul, wrote in a June 4 report.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/worl ... 778d3e6de3
As Afghan Forces Crumble, an Air of Unreality Grips the Capital
With the Taliban advancing and U.S. troops leaving, President Ashraf Ghani and his aides have become increasingly insular, and Kabul is slipping into shock.
KABUL, Afghanistan — With his military crumbling, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan fired a crucial part of his command structure and brought in a new one. He created a nebulous “supreme state council,” announced months ago, that has hardly met. And as districts fall to the Taliban across the country, he has installed a giant picture of himself outside the airport’s domestic terminal.
On Friday, U.S. officials announced the definitive closure of Bagram Air Base, the nerve center of 20 years of American military operations in Afghanistan, in the functional end of the American war here. As the last troops and equipment trickle out of Afghanistan, an atmosphere of unreality has settled over the government and Kabul, the capital.
Americans have not been a visible presence in the city for years, so the U.S. departure has not affected surface normality: Markets bustle and streets are jammed with homeward-bound civil servants by midafternoon. At night, the corner bakeries continue to be illuminated by a single bulb as vendors sell late into the evening.
But beneath the surface there is unease as the Taliban creep steadily toward Kabul.
“There’s no hope for the future,” said Zubair Ahmad, 23, who runs a grocery store on one of the Khair Khana neighborhood’s main boulevards. “Afghans are leaving the country. I don’t know whether I am going to be safe 10 minutes from now.”
The government passport office has been jam-packed in recent days, filled with a jostling mob, even though visa options for Afghans are severely limited. Some of the humanitarian organizations on which the beleaguered citizenry depend said they would begin limiting the number of expatriate employees kept in the country, anticipating a worsening of the security climate.
The security blanket that the United States provided for two decades haunts the Afghan government’s actions, inactions and policies, fostering an atrophying of any proactive planning, in the view of some analysts. If there is a plan to counter the Taliban advance, it is not evident as the government’s hold on the countryside shrinks.
Some intelligence assessments have said that the Afghan government could fall under pressure from the Taliban in from six months to two years. If that happens, the outlook is likely to be grim for Mr. Ghani and his circle, as recent Afghan history demonstrates. Several of his predecessors in the country’s top job have met violent ends.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/worl ... 778d3e6de3
With the Taliban advancing and U.S. troops leaving, President Ashraf Ghani and his aides have become increasingly insular, and Kabul is slipping into shock.
KABUL, Afghanistan — With his military crumbling, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan fired a crucial part of his command structure and brought in a new one. He created a nebulous “supreme state council,” announced months ago, that has hardly met. And as districts fall to the Taliban across the country, he has installed a giant picture of himself outside the airport’s domestic terminal.
On Friday, U.S. officials announced the definitive closure of Bagram Air Base, the nerve center of 20 years of American military operations in Afghanistan, in the functional end of the American war here. As the last troops and equipment trickle out of Afghanistan, an atmosphere of unreality has settled over the government and Kabul, the capital.
Americans have not been a visible presence in the city for years, so the U.S. departure has not affected surface normality: Markets bustle and streets are jammed with homeward-bound civil servants by midafternoon. At night, the corner bakeries continue to be illuminated by a single bulb as vendors sell late into the evening.
But beneath the surface there is unease as the Taliban creep steadily toward Kabul.
“There’s no hope for the future,” said Zubair Ahmad, 23, who runs a grocery store on one of the Khair Khana neighborhood’s main boulevards. “Afghans are leaving the country. I don’t know whether I am going to be safe 10 minutes from now.”
The government passport office has been jam-packed in recent days, filled with a jostling mob, even though visa options for Afghans are severely limited. Some of the humanitarian organizations on which the beleaguered citizenry depend said they would begin limiting the number of expatriate employees kept in the country, anticipating a worsening of the security climate.
The security blanket that the United States provided for two decades haunts the Afghan government’s actions, inactions and policies, fostering an atrophying of any proactive planning, in the view of some analysts. If there is a plan to counter the Taliban advance, it is not evident as the government’s hold on the countryside shrinks.
Some intelligence assessments have said that the Afghan government could fall under pressure from the Taliban in from six months to two years. If that happens, the outlook is likely to be grim for Mr. Ghani and his circle, as recent Afghan history demonstrates. Several of his predecessors in the country’s top job have met violent ends.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/worl ... 778d3e6de3
Taliban Try to Polish Their Image as They Push for Victory
The insurgents are trying to rebrand themselves as effective governors as they capture new territory. But there is more evidence that they are unreformed.
KABUL, Afghanistan — In June, when the Taliban took the district of Imam Sahib in Afghanistan’s north, the insurgent commander who now ruled the area had a message for his new constituents, including some government employees: Keep working, open your shops and keep the city clean.
The water was turned back on, the power grid was repaired, garbage trucks collected trash and a government vehicle’s flat tire was mended — all under the Taliban’s direction.
Imam Sahib is one of dozens of districts caught up in a Taliban military offensive that has swiftly captured more than a quarter of Afghanistan’s districts, many in the north, since the U.S. withdrawal began in May.
It is all part of the Taliban’s broader strategy of trying to rebrand themselves as capable governors while they press a ruthless, land-grabbing offensive across the country. The combination is a stark signal that the insurgents fully intend to try for all-out dominance of Afghanistan once the American pullout is finished.
“The situation is such that it is a testing period for us. Everything done in practice is being watched,” Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban deputy commander and the head of the group’s most violent wing, said in a recent radio broadcast to Taliban fighters. “Behave in a good way with the general public.”
But the signs that the Taliban have not reformed are increasingly clear: An assassination campaign against government workers, civil society leaders and security forces continues on pace. There is little effort to proceed with peace talks with the Afghan government, despite commitments made to the United States. And in areas the insurgents have seized, women are being forced out of public-facing roles, and girls out of schools, undoing many of the gains from the past 20 years of Western presence.
For much of the Afghan public, terrified and exhausted, the Taliban’s gains have been panic-inducing. And there is widespread fear that worse is in store, as the Taliban already have several crucial provincial capitals effectively under siege.
Regional groups have begun to muster militias to defend their home turf, skeptical that the Afghan security forces can hold out in the absence of their American backers, in a painful echo of the country’s devastating civil war breakdown in the 1990s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/worl ... sion_cut_1
The insurgents are trying to rebrand themselves as effective governors as they capture new territory. But there is more evidence that they are unreformed.
KABUL, Afghanistan — In June, when the Taliban took the district of Imam Sahib in Afghanistan’s north, the insurgent commander who now ruled the area had a message for his new constituents, including some government employees: Keep working, open your shops and keep the city clean.
The water was turned back on, the power grid was repaired, garbage trucks collected trash and a government vehicle’s flat tire was mended — all under the Taliban’s direction.
Imam Sahib is one of dozens of districts caught up in a Taliban military offensive that has swiftly captured more than a quarter of Afghanistan’s districts, many in the north, since the U.S. withdrawal began in May.
It is all part of the Taliban’s broader strategy of trying to rebrand themselves as capable governors while they press a ruthless, land-grabbing offensive across the country. The combination is a stark signal that the insurgents fully intend to try for all-out dominance of Afghanistan once the American pullout is finished.
“The situation is such that it is a testing period for us. Everything done in practice is being watched,” Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban deputy commander and the head of the group’s most violent wing, said in a recent radio broadcast to Taliban fighters. “Behave in a good way with the general public.”
But the signs that the Taliban have not reformed are increasingly clear: An assassination campaign against government workers, civil society leaders and security forces continues on pace. There is little effort to proceed with peace talks with the Afghan government, despite commitments made to the United States. And in areas the insurgents have seized, women are being forced out of public-facing roles, and girls out of schools, undoing many of the gains from the past 20 years of Western presence.
For much of the Afghan public, terrified and exhausted, the Taliban’s gains have been panic-inducing. And there is widespread fear that worse is in store, as the Taliban already have several crucial provincial capitals effectively under siege.
Regional groups have begun to muster militias to defend their home turf, skeptical that the Afghan security forces can hold out in the absence of their American backers, in a painful echo of the country’s devastating civil war breakdown in the 1990s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/worl ... sion_cut_1
Viral video of Taliban executing 22 Afghan commandos as they surrendered ignites more criticism of Biden's withdrawal
Viral video of Taliban executing 22 Afghan commandos as they surrendered ignites more criticism of Biden's withdrawal
John Haltiwanger
Tue, July 13, 2021, 10:39 AM
Afghan special force commando unit officers and soldiers attend a graduation ceremony at the military academy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 31, 2021.
Afghan special force commando unit officers and soldiers attended a graduation ceremony at the military academy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 31. Haroon Sabawoon/Getty Images
Twenty-two Afghan commandos were apparently massacred by the Taliban while surrendering in June.
CNN obtained video of the brutal incident, which raises more concerns about Afghanistan's future.
"This is horrible-yet it's the reality of announcing the U.S. withdrawal," Rep. Kinzinger tweeted.
A video obtained by CNN of the Taliban executing 22 Afghan commandos as they surrendered has exacerbated criticism of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan ordered by President Joe Biden.
The massacre, which human-rights groups have described as an apparent war crime, adds to the many questions being asked about the Afghan military's capacity to defeat or even contain the Taliban now that the US is pulling out.
Responding to the news of the executed Afghan commandos, GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a US Air Force veteran who flew missions in Afghanistan, tweeted, "This is horrible-yet it's the reality of announcing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Removing the peacekeepers and leaving the Afghan people without support is a grave mistake, Mr. President."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday called Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal a "global embarrassment."
The incident took place on June 16 in the town of Dawlat Abad in Faryab province, which is close to Afghanistan's border with Turkmenistan. The Taliban dismissed the video as a fabrication. But the Red Cross confirmed that 22 bodies were retrieved, and CNN spoke with witnesses and verified videos of the incident.
The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan - set to be complete by the end of August - marks an end to the longest conflict in US history. But the US pullout does not mean an end to violent conflict in Afghanistan, which has seen consistent fighting for about four decades. The Taliban last week said it's taken over 85% of the country, and with regional militias popping up across Afghanistan, there are worries that the war may escalate after the US departure.
"Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if it continues on the trajectory it's on," Gen. Austin S. Miller, who stepped down as the top US commander in Afghanistan on Monday, said earlier this month.
Biden announced the plan to withdraw troops in April, and has fervently defended the move amid escalating concerns about the future of Afghanistan with the US departure almost complete. Proponents of Biden's withdrawal contend that the pullout was long overdue, making the case that the costs of staying in Afghanistan far outweigh the benefits.
"Let me ask those who wanted us to stay: How many more - how many thousands more of America's daughters and sons are you willing to risk? How long would you have them stay?" Biden said in a speech last Thursday.
But critics have characterized the withdrawal as a hasty retreat that endangers local populations - especially women - and effectively hands the country over to the Taliban.
Biden has rejected the notion that it's "inevitable" the Taliban will fully regain control of Afghanistan. "I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war," the president said on Thursday.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/vi ... 25097.html
Viral video of Taliban executing 22 Afghan commandos as they surrendered ignites more criticism of Biden's withdrawal
John Haltiwanger
Tue, July 13, 2021, 10:39 AM
Afghan special force commando unit officers and soldiers attend a graduation ceremony at the military academy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 31, 2021.
Afghan special force commando unit officers and soldiers attended a graduation ceremony at the military academy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 31. Haroon Sabawoon/Getty Images
Twenty-two Afghan commandos were apparently massacred by the Taliban while surrendering in June.
CNN obtained video of the brutal incident, which raises more concerns about Afghanistan's future.
"This is horrible-yet it's the reality of announcing the U.S. withdrawal," Rep. Kinzinger tweeted.
A video obtained by CNN of the Taliban executing 22 Afghan commandos as they surrendered has exacerbated criticism of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan ordered by President Joe Biden.
The massacre, which human-rights groups have described as an apparent war crime, adds to the many questions being asked about the Afghan military's capacity to defeat or even contain the Taliban now that the US is pulling out.
Responding to the news of the executed Afghan commandos, GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a US Air Force veteran who flew missions in Afghanistan, tweeted, "This is horrible-yet it's the reality of announcing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Removing the peacekeepers and leaving the Afghan people without support is a grave mistake, Mr. President."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday called Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal a "global embarrassment."
The incident took place on June 16 in the town of Dawlat Abad in Faryab province, which is close to Afghanistan's border with Turkmenistan. The Taliban dismissed the video as a fabrication. But the Red Cross confirmed that 22 bodies were retrieved, and CNN spoke with witnesses and verified videos of the incident.
The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan - set to be complete by the end of August - marks an end to the longest conflict in US history. But the US pullout does not mean an end to violent conflict in Afghanistan, which has seen consistent fighting for about four decades. The Taliban last week said it's taken over 85% of the country, and with regional militias popping up across Afghanistan, there are worries that the war may escalate after the US departure.
"Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if it continues on the trajectory it's on," Gen. Austin S. Miller, who stepped down as the top US commander in Afghanistan on Monday, said earlier this month.
Biden announced the plan to withdraw troops in April, and has fervently defended the move amid escalating concerns about the future of Afghanistan with the US departure almost complete. Proponents of Biden's withdrawal contend that the pullout was long overdue, making the case that the costs of staying in Afghanistan far outweigh the benefits.
"Let me ask those who wanted us to stay: How many more - how many thousands more of America's daughters and sons are you willing to risk? How long would you have them stay?" Biden said in a speech last Thursday.
But critics have characterized the withdrawal as a hasty retreat that endangers local populations - especially women - and effectively hands the country over to the Taliban.
Biden has rejected the notion that it's "inevitable" the Taliban will fully regain control of Afghanistan. "I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war," the president said on Thursday.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/vi ... 25097.html
As Fears Grip Afghanistan, Hundreds of Thousands Flee
With the Taliban sweeping across much of the country, at least 30,000 Afghans are leaving each week. Many more have been displaced within Afghanistan’s borders.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Haji Sakhi decided to flee Afghanistan the night he saw two Taliban members drag a young woman from her home and lash her on the sidewalk. Terrified for his three daughters, he crammed his family into a car the next morning and barreled down winding dirt roads into Pakistan.
That was more than 20 years ago. They returned to Kabul, the capital, nearly a decade later after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. But now, with the Taliban sweeping across parts of the country as American forces withdraw, Mr. Sakhi, 68, fears a return of the violence he witnessed that night. This time, he says, his family is not waiting so long to leave.
“I’m not scared of leaving belongings behind, I’m not scared of starting everything from scratch,” said Mr. Sakhi, who recently applied for Turkish visas for himself, his wife, their three daughters and one son. “What I’m scared of is the Taliban.”
Across Afghanistan, a mass exodus is unfolding as the Taliban press on in their brutal military campaign, which has captured more than half the country’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. And with that, fears of a harsh return to extremist rule or a bloody civil war between ethnically aligned militias have taken hold.
So far this year around 330,000 Afghans have been displaced, more than half of them fleeing their homes since the United States began its withdrawal in May, according to the United Nations.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/worl ... 778d3e6de3
With the Taliban sweeping across much of the country, at least 30,000 Afghans are leaving each week. Many more have been displaced within Afghanistan’s borders.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Haji Sakhi decided to flee Afghanistan the night he saw two Taliban members drag a young woman from her home and lash her on the sidewalk. Terrified for his three daughters, he crammed his family into a car the next morning and barreled down winding dirt roads into Pakistan.
That was more than 20 years ago. They returned to Kabul, the capital, nearly a decade later after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. But now, with the Taliban sweeping across parts of the country as American forces withdraw, Mr. Sakhi, 68, fears a return of the violence he witnessed that night. This time, he says, his family is not waiting so long to leave.
“I’m not scared of leaving belongings behind, I’m not scared of starting everything from scratch,” said Mr. Sakhi, who recently applied for Turkish visas for himself, his wife, their three daughters and one son. “What I’m scared of is the Taliban.”
Across Afghanistan, a mass exodus is unfolding as the Taliban press on in their brutal military campaign, which has captured more than half the country’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. And with that, fears of a harsh return to extremist rule or a bloody civil war between ethnically aligned militias have taken hold.
So far this year around 330,000 Afghans have been displaced, more than half of them fleeing their homes since the United States began its withdrawal in May, according to the United Nations.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/worl ... 778d3e6de3