A few notes on Afghanistan

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 27, 2022 3:28 pm

Abandoning Afghanistan is Dangerous for its Neighbors
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 26, 2022
F.M. Shakil

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Despite the Taliban’s many shortcomings, only a unified, multilateral approach to negotiating with and recognizing the Islamic Emirate will safeguard the borders of neighboring states.

Following the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan in August last year, the Taliban-led schismatic government in Kabul appears to have reached a diplomatic impasse. It seems like its neighbors, who had previously been eager to restore normalcy to the turbulent region, have given up on the Islamic Emirate.

More than a year after the country was handed over to the Taliban, not a single Afghan neighbor has officially recognized the Taliban’s government. But they do not seek to undermine it either, primarily because a power vacuum brought on by proxy battles could be advantageous to both the US and the foreign terror outfits – the two major players that Afghanistan’s neighbors consider their greatest threats.

The main reason for the ongoing diplomatic impasse is that the Taliban has failed miserably in honoring its commitments to the international community, and continues to harbor foreign militants accused of attacking its neighbors from across the border.

Instability begets insecurity

The world, and in particular, Afghanistan’s neighbors did not want to recognize the Taliban government because it could not form a “government for all” that included representatives from all religions, sects, ethnicities, and social groups.

Today, Afghanistan’s socioeconomic development is at risk from instability and inept governance which has had devastating geoeconomic and geopolitical ramifications for the entire region.

A number of key investment projects that sought to improve economic connections, trade, and transit between South and Central Asia – and stabilize Afghanistan in the process – have been put on hold or slowed down.

Large-scale regional projects that have suffered due to security concerns include the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission Project, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Gas Pipeline, and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan Power Interconnection Project.

Failing to stop foreign terrorists

The Taliban leadership appears reluctant to abide by the international standards outlined in the Doha peace accord, despite the major security challenges facing Afghanistan’s bordering states. The Taliban were urged by the Doha deal, which was signed earlier in 2020, to stop “foreign terrorist groups or individuals” such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS-K from utilizing Afghan territory to pose a threat to the US, its allies, and other nations.

The Doha Accord also underlined the significance of securing a comprehensive and long-lasting ceasefire before starting intra-Afghan engagement and talks. The Taliban, however, broke their promise of a ceasefire to start negotiations and instead took over Afghanistan through a military offensive.

China, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and other surrounding nations have all encountered real challenges with the terrorist organizations that operate out of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda, Jamaat Ansarullah, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the Islamic State of Kurdistan (IS-K), the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have all established strongholds in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s dilemma

Mansur Khan Mehsud, executive director of the Islamabad-based FATA Research Centre (FRC), an independent think tank, told The Cradle that taking concrete action against the TTP, ETIM, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Baloch insurgents will cause problems for the Taliban government.

For this reason, Kabul is unable to uphold promises to the international community that Afghan territory will not be used to spread terrorism and host militant groups that attack neighboring states.

“The fact is that these groups have been fighting the Afghan war alongside the Taliban for more than ten years against NATO and the Afghan National Army, so if the Taliban took action against them, they would run into problems with their foot soldiers and commanders,” Mehsud explained. “The Taliban leaders would interpret this as a ruse to placate the US and other western nations.”

International Recognition

According to Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based geopolitical analyst, “no country recognizes the legitimacy of the Taliban’s leadership over Afghanistan, but all regional stakeholders still pragmatically engage with it.”

“Russia even signed a commodity deal with them in September, which the group agreed to due to its desire to have Moscow function as a key player in its envisaged geo-economic balancing act, especially vis-à-vis Islamabad,” he added.

The majority of Afghanistan’s neighbors have begun to form bilateral relationships with the Taliban for geostrategic, geoeconomic, and personal security assurances, despite using the umbrella of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Korybko explains that Russia’s present stance has been to express disappointment with the Taliban’s failure to assemble a truly ethnically and regionally inclusive government and meaningfully fight against the drug trade:

“Russia thinks that the US freezing of several billion dollars of Afghan assets has contributed to this regrettable outcome. At the same time, it has always praised the Taliban for doing its best to keep ISIS-K in check.”

Concerning Islamabad’s deteriorating relations with Kabul, which have resulted in several border clashes with casualties on both sides of the divide, Korybko warns that Afghanistan’s unofficial support for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is spiraling out of control and risks becoming the most significant source of regional instability.

“As it stands, the Pakistani-Taliban security dilemma is brought about by Islamabad’s rapprochement with Washington, especially in its military dimension, and given the dearth of trust between Pakistan and the Taliban, there is little hope that it will be resolved anytime soon,” he said.

Carnegie Corporation, a US think tank, revealed in a recent study that Afghanistan’s neighbors are concerned about several issues, the foremost being the influx of foreign terrorist groups into the country.

Among other concerns are the Taliban’s weak and unstable power base, the country’s regressive social policies, the economic and humanitarian crisis brought on by the suspension of aid, the freezing of Afghanistan’s foreign assets, sanctions against Taliban leaders, and the government’s inability or unwillingness to deal with these issues.

Dushanbe Declaration

In mid-September 2021, just a month after the US pullout from Afghanistan, the SCO rushed to hold a summit meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan to discuss the Taliban’s ascension to power and the regional implications for the neighboring countries.

The Dushanbe Declaration observed that the security and stability of SCO space hinged on the earliest possible settlement of the situation in Afghanistan. Chief among its requests was for the Taliban to form a government that included people from all of the country’s ethnic, religious, and political groups. The SCO also stressed that Afghanistan needed to be free of terrorism, war, and drugs to become an independent, neutral, united, democratic, and peaceful state.

The primary objective of the Eurasian alliance’s geopolitical initiatives was to take over the watchdog function from the US-led NATO forces so that Afghanistan would not once again serve as a refuge for terrorist organizations. However, the SCO’s own internal differences, and its members’ efforts to negotiate with the Taliban on a bilateral basis, seem to have emboldened terrorist groups to regroup in Afghanistan.

The institutional strength of the SCO was weakened by some divisions within its purview, and attention was diverted from the imbroglio in Afghanistan to geoeconomic and geopolitical self-interests.

Overlooking differences

India, for instance, planned a regional meeting in 2020 to discuss the Afghan issue with SCO members. China and Pakistan did not attend the meeting and instead met in Islamabad with the US and Russian representatives of the “Troika Plus” group.

Similarly, in December 2021, Pakistan invited Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, as well as representatives from the US, EU, China, and Russia to a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Afghanistan held in Islamabad. India was not issued an invitation to the conference.

The third India-Central Asia Dialogue was held on the same day, and it brought together the foreign ministers of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Uzbekistan to discuss the evolving security situation in Afghanistan.

The summit’s attendees stressed the importance of “the creation of a truly representative and inclusive government, combating terrorism and drug trafficking, and ensuring that Afghan land is not used for sheltering, planning, or funding terrorist activities.”

In order to secure their own respective internal borders, Afghanistan’s neighbors must collaborate effectively to address their mutual security concerns.

Their inability to work together to develop a coordinated plan and push the Taliban to negotiate will worsen an already dangerous situation. Afghanistan will continue to bleed until its neighbors abandon their conflicting policies and objectives and establish a common framework to deal with the Taliban.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/12/ ... neighbors/

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Taliban bans women from attending universities in Afghanistan
Girls in Afghanistan have already been barred from secondary schools. Since the Taliban took power last year, they have gradually limited the access of women and girls to public spaces

December 22, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: UNICE/Mohammad Haya Burhan via UN News)
On Tuesday, December 20, the Taliban government in Afghanistan barred all women in the country from attending any institution of higher education. The decision has led to angry reactions from Afghans and international rights organizations.

The official order, signed by the Taliban’s minister of higher education Neda Mohammad Nadeem on Tuesday, asked both public and private universities to “immediately implement the order of suspending the education of females until further notice.”


The decision provoked strong reactions from Afghans. A small number of women organized a protest in Kabul on Wednesday after the decision was made public. Taliban forces quickly dispersed the protesters. Several other protests were also organized around Afghanistan.

Reacting to the news, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric called this policy “another broken promise from the Taliban” and “another troubling move.” He said that the Taliban has been gradually “lessening the space for women not only in education but access to public areas, their non-participation in public debate.” Dujarric openly wondered “how a country can develop, can deal with all of the challenges that it has, without the active participation of women and the education of women.”

The UN secretary general António Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” by the news, saying that the move violated women’s right to equality and would have a devastating impact on the country’s future.

The decision has also led to angry responses from other sections in Afghanistan, including male university students. Some male students have been boycotting their classes in protest on Wednesday.


Several Afghan women have taken to social media to condemn the decision, with some calling it self-destructive and suicidal.


Gradual erasure of women from public spaces
The ban comes as a new blow to women’s rights in Afghanistan after the Taliban government recently barred women from public parks, gyms, and public bathing places, and has ordered them to cover their faces when in public.

Girls in Afghanistan have already been barred from secondary schools. The Taliban government went back on its promises to reopen the schools in March this year. It had shut them immediately after taking control of the country in August 2021 but claimed that the closures were temporary, until the necessary logistical arrangements had been made.

Ever since the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021, women’s participation in universities has only been permitted with strict segregation. Women would have to sit separately from men and only women or older male professors were allowed to teach them.

Even before Tuesday’s ban on higher education, several universities in Afghanistan had barred women from attending classes, leading to protests.

The decision on Tuesday comes despite the fact that the government had allowed women to give university entrance exams just a few weeks earlier, albeit with limited options. This had raised hopes that university education for women might continue.

After assuming power for the second time last year, the Taliban had promised that it would respect women’s rights. It had also promised that restrictions related to education and jobs were temporary in nature. However, as Obaidullah Baheer, an assistant professor at the American University of Afghanistan, writes, “there is little reason to take Taliban at their word on the temporary nature of the bans.” Now that the Taliban has gone back on all the promises it made when it took power, he says that the people of Afghanistan must show that they stand against this decision.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/22/ ... ghanistan/

Several NGOs suspend work in Afghanistan following Taliban order banning female employees
The Taliban also banned women from attending universities and higher educational institutes last week, inviting widespread protests and condemnation

December 26, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

Image
(Photo: WFP/ Massoud Hossaini )

A number of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in Afghanistan have announced the suspension of their work in the country after the Taliban government ordered them to fire their female employees or face consequences.

Three such organizations – Save the Children, Norwegian Refugee Council, and CARE International – issued a joint statement on Sunday, December 25, announcing the suspension of their work in Afghanistan, claiming that the nature of their work in the country made it impossible for them to continue without women workers.

“We cannot effectively reach children, women and men in desperate need in Afghanistan without our female staff… We are suspending our programmes, demanding that men and women can equally continue our lifesaving assistance” in the country, the statement read.

Another NGO, International Rescue Committee (IRC), working in Afghanistan since 1988, also announced suspension of its activities on Sunday. It claimed that it heavily depends on female employees to deliver its services and cannot function without them. It said that out of its approximately 8,000 Afghan employees, 3,000 are women.

Afghanaid, another NGO, also suspended its work saying that it was “forced” to do so following the government’s decision to disallow women employees. It demanded the “immediate revocation” of the decision.

The Taliban government, in a notice sent to all NGOs working in the country on Saturday, December 24, imposed an indefinite ban on women working in local and international NGOs. This is days after the Taliban banned women from attending universities. In its order, Taliban’s Ministry of Economy cited female employees’ “failure” to observe the dress code issued by the government for its decision. It said that those NGOs who refuse to comply with the order would face action and have their licenses canceled.

Global condemnation
Several other NGOs have issued statements raising concerns about the future of their work in Afghanistan. Various human rights groups have also issued condemnations of the decision. The UN called it a disturbing decision. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson of UN General Secretary António Guterres, said that the decision will hamper humanitarian work in the country. “The effective delivery of humanitarian assistance requires full, safe and unhindered access for all aid workers, including women,” he said.

The UN humanitarian coordinator’s office issued a statement saying that the decision “would violate the most fundamental rights of women, as well as be a clear breach of humanitarian principle,” adding that it has sought a meeting with Afghan officials to seek further clarification on the matter.


According to the UN, over 90% of Afghanistan’s population of nearly 40 million lives in poverty, and around 28 million depend on humanitarian aid.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid called the criticisms “foreign interventions” in Afghanistan’s internal matters. He said that all institutions “wanting to operate in Afghanistan are obliged to comply with the rules and regulations of our country.”

The Taliban government issued a ban on women attending universities and higher educational institutions in the country last week on Tuesday, December 20. The decision has invited global condemnation and led to protests across the country, with male students also having been seen boycotting classes in solidarity with their female colleagues. The Taliban has not responded to the condemnations and protests so far.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/12/26/ ... employees/

The above Russian commentator nailed it, ' the Taliban's hostile acts towards women's rights is directly related to the US withholding billions in Afghani government assets and the suspension of ongoing aid. Perhaps self-defeating as it hands the US a big propaganda stick to beat them with but maybe to only course of action they can see other than capitulation.

In order for a less 'fundamentalist' faction to lead they have got to have something to show for 'concessions', which the US is denying them, thus allowing the US to continue to punish the Afghani people for their rejection of Uncle Sam's 'love'.

The US does not take rejection lightly and as we see in the cases of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Nicaragua will punish people's rejection of US dominion remorselessly for decades.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 20, 2023 2:58 pm

What We Know About US-Backed Zero Units in Afghanistan
JANUARY 19, 2023

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Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Photo: Lynzy Billing for ProPublica.

By Lynzy Billing – Jan 13, 2023

Deadly Night Raids. Faulty U.S. Intelligence. A “Classified” War Loophole.

Reporter Lynzy Billing’s Investigation Offers An Unprecedented Insight Into The Civilian Casualties Of Afghanistan’s Zero Units.


In 2019, reporter Lynzy Billing returned to Afghanistan to research the murders of her mother and sister nearly 30 years earlier. Instead, in the country’s remote reaches, she stumbled upon the CIA-backed Zero Units, who conducted night raids — quick, brutal operations designed to have resounding psychological impacts while ostensibly removing high-priority enemy targets.

So, Billing attempted to catalog the scale of civilian deaths left behind by just one of four Zero Units, known as the 02, over a four year period. The resulting report represents an effort no one else has done or will ever be able to do again. Here is what she found:

• At least 452 civilians were killed in 107 raids. This number is almost certainly an undercount. While some raids did result in the capture or death of known militants, others killed bystanders or appeared to target people for no clear reason.
• A troubling number of raids appear to have relied on faulty intelligence by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence-gathering services. Two Afghan Zero Unit soldiers described raids they were sent on in which they said their targets were chosen by the United States.
• The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency acknowledged that the units were getting it wrong at times and killing civilians. He oversaw the Zero Units during a crucial period and agreed that no one paid a consequence for those botched raids. He went on to describe an operation that went wrong: “I went to the family myself and said: ‘We are sorry. … We want to be different from the Taliban.’ And I mean we did, we wanted to be different from the Taliban.”
• The Afghan soldiers weren’t alone on the raids; U.S. special operations forces soldiers working with the CIA often joined them. The Afghan soldiers Billing spoke to said they were typically accompanied on raids by at least 10 U.S. special operations forces soldiers. “These deaths happened at our hands. I have participated in many raids,” one of the Afghans said, “and there have been hundreds of raids where someone is killed and they are not Taliban or ISIS, and where no militants are present at all.”
• Military planners baked potential “collateral damage” into the pre-raid calculus — how many women/children/noncombatants were at risk if the raid went awry, according to one U.S. Army Ranger Billing spoke to. Those forecasts were often wildly off, he said, yet no one seemed to really care. He told Billing that night raids were a better option than airstrikes but acknowledged that the raids risked creating new insurgent recruits. “You go on night raids, make more enemies, then you gotta go on more night raids for the more enemies you now have to kill.”
• Because the Zero Units operated under a CIA program, their actions were part of a “classified” war, with the lines of accountability so obscured that no one had to answer for operations that went wrong. And U.S. responsibility for the raids was quietly muddied by a legal loophole that allows the CIA — and any U.S. soldiers lent to the agency for their operations — to act without the same level of oversight as the American military.
• Congressional aides and former intelligence committee staffers said they don’t believe Congress was getting a complete picture of the CIA’s overseas operations. Lawyers representing whistleblowers said there is ample motivation to downplay to Congress the number of civilians killed or injured in such operations. By the time reports get to congressional oversight committees, one lawyer said, they’re “undercounting deaths and overstating accuracy.”
• U.S. military and intelligence agencies have long relied on night raids by forces like the 02 unit to fight insurgencies around the globe. The strategy has, again and again, drawn outrage for its reliance on sometimes flawed intelligence and civilian death count. In 1967, the CIA’s Phoenix Program famously used kill-capture raids against the Viet Cong insurgency in south Vietnam, creating an intense public blowback. Despite the program’s ignominious reputation — a 1971 Pentagon study found only 3% of those killed or captured were full or probationary Viet Cong members above the district level — it appears to have served as a blueprint for future night raid operations.
• Eyewitnesses, survivors and family members described how Zero Unit soldiers had stormed into their homes at night, killing loved ones** at more than 30 raid sites Billing visited. No Afghan or U.S officials returned to investigate. In one instance, a 22-year-old named Batour witnessed a raid that killed his two brothers. One was a teacher and the other a university student. He told Billing the Zero Unit strategy had actually made enemies of families like his. He and his brothers, he said, had supported the government and vowed never to join the Taliban. Now, he said, he’s not so sure.
• Little in the way of explanation was ever provided to the relatives of the dead — or to their neighbors and friends — as to why these particular individuals were targeted and what crimes they were accused of. Families who sought answers from provincial officials about the raids were told nothing could be done because they were Zero Unit operations. “They have their own intelligence and they do their own operation,” one grieving family member remembered being told after his three grandchildren were killed in an airstrike and night raid. “The provincial governor gave us a parcel of rice, a can of oil and some sugar” as compensation for the killings. At medical facilities, doctors told Billing they’d never been contacted by Afghan or U.S. investigators or human rights groups about the fate of those injured in the raids. Some of the injured later died, quietly boosting the casualty count.


In a statement, CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp said, “As a rule, the U.S. takes extraordinary measures — beyond those mandated by law — to reduce civilian casualties in armed conflict, and treats any claim of human rights abuses with the utmost seriousness.” She said any allegations of human rights abuses by a “foreign partner” are reviewed and, if valid, the CIA and “other elements of the U.S. government take concrete steps, including providing training on applicable law and best practices, or if necessary terminating assistance or the relationship.” Thorp said the Zero Units had been the target of a systematic propaganda campaign designed to discredit them because “of the threat they posed to Taliban rule.”

The Department of Defense did not respond to questions about Zero Unit operations.

With a forensic pathologist, Billing drove hundreds of miles across some of the country’s most volatile areas — visiting the sites of more than 30 raids, interviewing witnesses, survivors, family members, doctors and village elders. To understand the program, she met secretly with two Zero Unit soldiers over the course of years, wrangled with Afghanistan’s former spy master in his heavily fortified home and traveled to a diner in the middle of America to meet with an Army Ranger who’d joined the units on operations.

She also conducted more than 350 interviews with current and former Afghan and American government officials, Afghan commanders, U.S military officials, American defense and security officials and former CIA intelligence officers, as well as U.S. lawmakers and former oversight committee members, counterterrorism and policy officers, civilian-casualty assessment experts, military lawyers, intelligence analysts, representatives of human rights organizations, doctors, hospital directors, coroners, forensic examiners, eyewitnesses and family members — some of whom are not named in the story for their safety.

While America’s war in Afghanistan may be over, there are lessons to be learned from what it left behind. Billing writes:

The American government has scant basis for believing it has a full picture of the Zero Units’ performance. Again and again, I spoke with Afghans who had never shared their stories with anyone. Congressional officials concerned about the CIA’s operations in Afghanistan said they were startled by the civilian death toll I documented.

As my notebooks filled, I came to realize that I was compiling an eyewitness account of a particularly ignominious chapter in the United States’ fraught record of overseas interventions.

Without a true reckoning of what happened in Afghanistan, it became clear the U.S. could easily deploy the same failed tactics in some new country against some new threat.


Read her full report here. https://www.propublica.org/article/afgh ... zy-billing

https://orinocotribune.com/what-we-know ... ghanistan/
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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 22, 2023 2:24 pm

Foreign Devils on the Road to Afghanistan
MARCH 21, 2023

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UN Security Council held a meeting on women and peace and security at UN Headquarters, New York, March 7, 2023. Photo: File photo.

By M. K. Bhadrakumar – Mar 12, 2023

On March 7, the western powers huddled together in Paris for a restricted meeting on Taliban and the Afghanistan situation. It was an exclusive meeting of the Special Representatives and Envoys for Afghanistan of Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The random pick was striking — on a need-to-know basis — Turkiye out, Norway in. Presumably, the West won’t trust the Turks to keep secrets. But Norway makes itself indispensable as a European country with a first-rate intelligence apparatus that has served western interests.

Curiously, Australia and Canada took part, but then, they belong to the Five Eyes. And the Five Eyes goes wherever an agenda to destabilise Russia or China is mooted. Washington decides such things.

The Paris meeting rings alarm bells. On March 7, the UN Security Council also held a meeting on women and peace at UN headquarters in New York, where, interestingly, the US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield bracketed the “the violence and oppression of women and girls” in Afghanistan, Iran and “areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia.”

France’s excessive interest in hosting the meeting comes as no surprise. France is mentoring the so-called National Resistance Front of Afghanistan [NRFA] headed by the Panjshiris loyal to Ahmad Massoud, eldest son of anti-Soviet military leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.

President Emmanuel Macron took a hands-on role to woo Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon to lend his country as the sanctuary for NRFA to stage an armed insurrection against the Taliban government in Kabul with western help.

Macron has a chip on his shoulder that Russia’s Wagner Group replaced the French troops in the Sahel region in north Africa, which used to be France’s playpen since the deployment of troops in 2015 to Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger to set up military bases, ostensibly to fight ‘jihadists’.

But the French presence became increasingly unpopular in the region and the Islamist threat only spread while France dabbled in local politics in its former colonies, and eventually, Macron’s motives became suspect in the African eyes and the perception grew that the French expeditionary force was acting more like an occupation force.

As the African states began replacing the French contingents with Russia’s Wagner Group, Macron announced in November the end of his celebrated ‘Operation Barkhane’.

Macron is looking for opportunities to hit back at Russia in its own backyard in the Caucasus and Central Asia. But he’s punching way above his weight. Nonetheless, the Paris meeting on Tuesday expressed “grave concern about the increasing threat of terrorist groups in Afghanistan, including ISKP, Al Qaeda, Tehrik-i-Taliban-Pakistan and others, which deeply affects security and stability inside the country, in the region and beyond, and called on the Taliban to uphold Afghanistan’s obligation to deny these groups safe haven.” The joint statement is carefully drafted — an alibi for western intervention is available now. [Emphasis added.]

The Taliban has actually had considerable success on the ground in stabilising its rule against heavy odds. But the Western powers are furious that the Taliban is no longer bending over backward to seek engagement. The West’s sponsorship of NRFA antagonised the Taliban. Taliban sees NRFA as presaging the return of warlords bankrolled by the West.

The NRFA has failed to get traction. Macron’s personal diplomacy with Rahmon notwithstanding, the latter cannot afford to annoy Moscow — and the Kremlin’s top priority is to somehow stabilise the Afghan security situation. The Russians and the Chinese are willing to work with the Taliban and make them stakeholders in the security and stability of their country.

Indeed, on the same day the western powers ganged up in Paris, Delhi announced that it was shipping another consignment of 20,000 tons of wheat to Afghanistan via the Chabahar route as humanitarian assistance. The Russian Ambassador in Kabul Dmitry Zhirnov also spoke about Russia’s deepening engagement with the Taliban, focused on economic ties. (Interestingly, the ambassador disclosed that Moscow may repair and reopen the hugely strategic Salang Tunnel — a Soviet legacy — connecting Kabul with northern Afghanistan and Central Asia.)

China recently signed a $540 million oil-and-gas deal reached an agreement to extract oil in the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan. One of the first phone calls the new Foreign Minister Qin Gang made after his appointment was to call up the Taliban counterpart in Kabul to stress the security concerns in Afghanistan. No doubt, similar concerns were reflected in the meeting in the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Putin India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval recently.

Russia is very keen to work with India regarding Afghanistan. China shares Russian concerns in Afghanistan’s security and stability. On the contrary, the US and EU visualise that Russia’s preoccupations in the Ukraine conflict is an opportune time to stir up the Central Asian pot. But that is a simplistic, self-serving assumption.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who toured Central Asia last month learnt to his dismay that the regional states are simply not interested in getting entangled in Washington’s zero sum games. The joint statement issued after Blinken’s meeting with his Central Asian counterparts steered clear of any references critical of Russia (or China.)

Prof. Melvin Goodman at Johns Hopkins and noted author who used to be a CIA analyst, has described Blinken’s Central Asian tour, first by a senior Biden Administration official to the region, to be “a fool’s errand that merely exposed the futility of U.S. efforts to practice dual containment against Russia and China… All five Central Asian countries refused to support the United States in last month’s UN resolution calling for Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine and to recognise Ukraine’s full sovereignty over its territory. All five Central Asian countries will need support from Russia or China if faced with internal opposition in their own countries.”

The neutral stance of the Central Asian states is consistent with their independent position alike on the breakaway ex-Soviet regions of Abkhazia, Ossetia, Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhya and Kherson. The salience is: Moscow never threatened the Central Asians that ‘Either you’re with us, or are against us.’

The Central Asians witnessed the retreat of the Western alliance from Afghanistan and will not regard them as dependable providers of security. They are also wary of the West’s dalliance with extremist groups. The widely held belief in Central Asia is that the Islamic State is an American creation. Above all, the western countries pursue mercantilist foreign policies eyeing the region’s mineral resources but take no interest in the region’s development. On the other hand, they are intrusive and prescriptive.

At the Paris meeting, behind closed doors, the American input would have been that the Central Asian states will not support a regime change project in Afghanistan. Even Tajikistan, which has ethnic affinities with the Tajik population of Afghanistan, will mark distance from the NRFA lest it got sucked into an Afghan civil war. Macron fancies himself to be a born charmer, but Rahmon is a harcore realist.

Looking ahead, the real danger is that, having failed to get the Taliban to bend while also unable to build an anti-Taliban resistance movement or incite the Central Asian states to decouple from Moscow and Beijing, the US and its allies may now be left with the only remaining option, which is to create anarchical conditions in Afghanistan where there are no winners.

The ascendance of the Islamic State and its open threats to the Russian, Pakistani, Chinese, Iranian and Indian embassies functioning in Kabul are signposts. The Paris meeting of western spies and ‘diplomats’ was an exercise in stocktaking.


(Indian Punchline)

https://orinocotribune.com/foreign-devi ... ghanistan/

hat We Know About US-Backed Zero Units in Afghanistan
JANUARY 19, 2023

Image
Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Photo: Lynzy Billing for ProPublica.

By Lynzy Billing – Jan 13, 2023

Deadly Night Raids. Faulty U.S. Intelligence. A “Classified” War Loophole.

Reporter Lynzy Billing’s Investigation Offers An Unprecedented Insight Into The Civilian Casualties Of Afghanistan’s Zero Units.

In 2019, reporter Lynzy Billing returned to Afghanistan to research the murders of her mother and sister nearly 30 years earlier. Instead, in the country’s remote reaches, she stumbled upon the CIA-backed Zero Units, who conducted night raids — quick, brutal operations designed to have resounding psychological impacts while ostensibly removing high-priority enemy targets.

So, Billing attempted to catalog the scale of civilian deaths left behind by just one of four Zero Units, known as the 02, over a four year period. The resulting report represents an effort no one else has done or will ever be able to do again. Here is what she found:

• At least 452 civilians were killed in 107 raids. This number is almost certainly an undercount. While some raids did result in the capture or death of known militants, others killed bystanders or appeared to target people for no clear reason.
• A troubling number of raids appear to have relied on faulty intelligence by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence-gathering services. Two Afghan Zero Unit soldiers described raids they were sent on in which they said their targets were chosen by the United States.
• The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency acknowledged that the units were getting it wrong at times and killing civilians. He oversaw the Zero Units during a crucial period and agreed that no one paid a consequence for those botched raids. He went on to describe an operation that went wrong: “I went to the family myself and said: ‘We are sorry. … We want to be different from the Taliban.’ And I mean we did, we wanted to be different from the Taliban.”
• The Afghan soldiers weren’t alone on the raids; U.S. special operations forces soldiers working with the CIA often joined them. The Afghan soldiers Billing spoke to said they were typically accompanied on raids by at least 10 U.S. special operations forces soldiers. “These deaths happened at our hands. I have participated in many raids,” one of the Afghans said, “and there have been hundreds of raids where someone is killed and they are not Taliban or ISIS, and where no militants are present at all.”
• Military planners baked potential “collateral damage” into the pre-raid calculus — how many women/children/noncombatants were at risk if the raid went awry, according to one U.S. Army Ranger Billing spoke to. Those forecasts were often wildly off, he said, yet no one seemed to really care. He told Billing that night raids were a better option than airstrikes but acknowledged that the raids risked creating new insurgent recruits. “You go on night raids, make more enemies, then you gotta go on more night raids for the more enemies you now have to kill.”
• Because the Zero Units operated under a CIA program, their actions were part of a “classified” war, with the lines of accountability so obscured that no one had to answer for operations that went wrong. And U.S. responsibility for the raids was quietly muddied by a legal loophole that allows the CIA — and any U.S. soldiers lent to the agency for their operations — to act without the same level of oversight as the American military.
• Congressional aides and former intelligence committee staffers said they don’t believe Congress was getting a complete picture of the CIA’s overseas operations. Lawyers representing whistleblowers said there is ample motivation to downplay to Congress the number of civilians killed or injured in such operations. By the time reports get to congressional oversight committees, one lawyer said, they’re “undercounting deaths and overstating accuracy.”
• U.S. military and intelligence agencies have long relied on night raids by forces like the 02 unit to fight insurgencies around the globe. The strategy has, again and again, drawn outrage for its reliance on sometimes flawed intelligence and civilian death count. In 1967, the CIA’s Phoenix Program famously used kill-capture raids against the Viet Cong insurgency in south Vietnam, creating an intense public blowback. Despite the program’s ignominious reputation — a 1971 Pentagon study found only 3% of those killed or captured were full or probationary Viet Cong members above the district level — it appears to have served as a blueprint for future night raid operations.
• Eyewitnesses, survivors and family members described how Zero Unit soldiers had stormed into their homes at night, killing loved ones** at more than 30 raid sites Billing visited. No Afghan or U.S officials returned to investigate. In one instance, a 22-year-old named Batour witnessed a raid that killed his two brothers. One was a teacher and the other a university student. He told Billing the Zero Unit strategy had actually made enemies of families like his. He and his brothers, he said, had supported the government and vowed never to join the Taliban. Now, he said, he’s not so sure.
• Little in the way of explanation was ever provided to the relatives of the dead — or to their neighbors and friends — as to why these particular individuals were targeted and what crimes they were accused of. Families who sought answers from provincial officials about the raids were told nothing could be done because they were Zero Unit operations. “They have their own intelligence and they do their own operation,” one grieving family member remembered being told after his three grandchildren were killed in an airstrike and night raid. “The provincial governor gave us a parcel of rice, a can of oil and some sugar” as compensation for the killings. At medical facilities, doctors told Billing they’d never been contacted by Afghan or U.S. investigators or human rights groups about the fate of those injured in the raids. Some of the injured later died, quietly boosting the casualty count.

In a statement, CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp said, “As a rule, the U.S. takes extraordinary measures — beyond those mandated by law — to reduce civilian casualties in armed conflict, and treats any claim of human rights abuses with the utmost seriousness.” She said any allegations of human rights abuses by a “foreign partner” are reviewed and, if valid, the CIA and “other elements of the U.S. government take concrete steps, including providing training on applicable law and best practices, or if necessary terminating assistance or the relationship.” Thorp said the Zero Units had been the target of a systematic propaganda campaign designed to discredit them because “of the threat they posed to Taliban rule.”

The Department of Defense did not respond to questions about Zero Unit operations.

With a forensic pathologist, Billing drove hundreds of miles across some of the country’s most volatile areas — visiting the sites of more than 30 raids, interviewing witnesses, survivors, family members, doctors and village elders. To understand the program, she met secretly with two Zero Unit soldiers over the course of years, wrangled with Afghanistan’s former spy master in his heavily fortified home and traveled to a diner in the middle of America to meet with an Army Ranger who’d joined the units on operations.

She also conducted more than 350 interviews with current and former Afghan and American government officials, Afghan commanders, U.S military officials, American defense and security officials and former CIA intelligence officers, as well as U.S. lawmakers and former oversight committee members, counterterrorism and policy officers, civilian-casualty assessment experts, military lawyers, intelligence analysts, representatives of human rights organizations, doctors, hospital directors, coroners, forensic examiners, eyewitnesses and family members — some of whom are not named in the story for their safety.

While America’s war in Afghanistan may be over, there are lessons to be learned from what it left behind. Billing writes:

The American government has scant basis for believing it has a full picture of the Zero Units’ performance. Again and again, I spoke with Afghans who had never shared their stories with anyone. Congressional officials concerned about the CIA’s operations in Afghanistan said they were startled by the civilian death toll I documented.

As my notebooks filled, I came to realize that I was compiling an eyewitness account of a particularly ignominious chapter in the United States’ fraught record of overseas interventions.

Without a true reckoning of what happened in Afghanistan, it became clear the U.S. could easily deploy the same failed tactics in some new country against some new threat.

Read her full report here.https://www.propublica.org/article/afgh ... zy-billing

https://orinocotribune.com/what-we-know ... ghanistan/

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Thu May 25, 2023 2:00 pm

Taliban factor
May 25, 13:40

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According to Shoigu, the United States is moving militants from various controlled terrorist groups to Afghanistan in order to destabilize the region.

With the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan, their ability to influence the processes in Central Asia decreased, since it was Afghanistan that served as the main operating base in the region. The stable Taliban regime dealing with Russia, China and Iran is like a bone in the throat for the US, so it will be shattered by supporting ISIS and fueling internal radical factions within the Taliban in order to split the Taliban and plunge Afghanistan into a habitual war of all against all under the sauce of a growing drug industry.

From the point of view of countering this American strategy, it would be wise to accelerate the process of recognizing the Taliban and working with the moderate factions of the Taliban interested in the eradication of ISIS and the economic development of Afghanistan. For Russia, Afghanistan in the medium term can become a profitable market, as well as an important transit country when laying trade and resource corridors to other countries of Central Asia.

Without a stable government in Kabul, Afghanistan's involvement in regional economic projects will be difficult. The United States knows about this, so they will shake the Taliban by any means. ISIS (wilayat Khorasan) is one of the tools, but far from the only one.

PS. Of recent worth noting is the visit of a government delegation of the Taliban to Tatarstan, where it was announced that the Taliban were very interested in increasing purchases of Russian oil. Russia has already supplied the Taliban with oil and grain as part of growing trade relations.

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 09, 2023 1:31 pm

AFGHANISTAN CUT OPIUM PRODUCTION BY 99% AFTER US MILITARY WITHDRAWAL.
Jun 8, 2023 , 4:35 p.m.

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Afghan farmers in a poppy field in Helmand province, Afghanistan (Photo: AP)

An Alcis report concluded that opium production in Afghanistan was reduced by 99%. What is remarkable about this news is that the truly unprecedented decline in poppy cultivation occurred in 2023 during the Taliban regime, which imposed a drug ban seven months after taking power in 2021.

Satellite images show that in Helmand province poppy cultivation has been reduced by more than 120,000 hectares, a reduction in this province that exceeds any previous national ban on poppies in Afghanistan, including the Taliban ban of 2000-01.

With all the real and projected image of the Taliban played into widespread skepticism when the opium ban was implemented. Now, those who live the consequences of such a decision are the countries of Europe and the United States, since the industry of opiates, methamphetamines and other synthetic drugs, legal or not, represent a very lucrative business in these nations, where there are also the higher consumers of these substances.

Nor should it be overlooked that during the US occupation of Afghan territory in 2000, which lasted 20 years with countless victims and billions of military spending, it meant an increase in poppy cultivation, even when resources were allocated to combat it . It also coincides with the increase in deaths from opioid overdose in the United States.

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 08, 2023 2:03 pm

How the Taliban Crushed the CIA’s Heroin Bonanza in Afghanistan
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 7, 2023
William Van Wagenen

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The Taliban has not once, but twice eradicated Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation, the world’s largest source of heroin. Despite western accusations, it has never been The Taliban behind the Afghan drug industry, but only ever the US and its allies, with billions in profits breezily laundered through the global financial system.

In the aftermath of the chaotic US and UK withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir warned in the Washington Post of the dangers of “ignoring one important consequence of the Taliban takeover: the coming boom in Afghanistan’s narcotics trade.”

Mir then boldly predicted that, “in the next few years, a flood of drugs from Afghanistan may become a bigger threat than terrorism.”

This projection of an international drug trade boom seemed plausible, considering the longstanding accusations that the Taliban funded their two-decade insurgency against the occupying forces by controlling opium production. In fact, it was believed that 95 percent of heroin used in Britain originated from Afghan opium.

It comes as a surprise then, that a June 2023 report published by Alcis, a British-based geographic information services firm, revealed that the Taliban government had all but eliminated opium cultivation in the country, wiping out the base ingredient needed to produce heroin. This outcome mirrored a similar move by the Taliban in 2000 when they were in power for the first time.

Ironically, instead of praising Kabul’s new leaders for quashing the source of illicit drugs, the international community responded to this development with criticism. Even the US Institute for Peace (USIP), which is funded by the US government, argued that “The Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world.”

Such western displeasure towards the Taliban’s efforts to dismantle the global heroin trade may seem perplexing at first glance.

However, a closer examination of events in Afghanistan reveals a different perspective. Under the guise of the “War on Terror,” the 2001 US and UK invasion was driven in part by the desire to restore the heroin trade, which the Taliban had abruptly terminated just a year earlier.

The western powers sought to reestablish the lucrative flow of billions of dollars that the heroin trade provided to their financial systems. In fact, “For 20 years, America essentially ran a narco-state in Afghanistan.”

‘Dollar for Dollar’

To understand the origins of the Afghan heroin trade, a review of US involvement in the central Asian nation is necessary, beginning in 1979 when the CIA embarked on a covert program to undermine the pro-Soviet Afghan government in Kabul.

The US covertly supported an umbrella of Muslim guerrilla fighters known as mujahideen, with the hope that provoking an insurgency would entice the Soviet Army to intervene. This calculated move would force the Soviets into occupying Afghanistan and engaging in a protracted and costly counter-insurgency campaign, thereby weakening the Soviet Union over time.

To accomplish this, the CIA turned to its close allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, for help. Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan facilitated a meeting between CIA Director William Casey and Saudi King Fahd, in which the Saudis committed to matching “America dollar for dollar supporting the mujahedeen.”

The US and Saudi Arabia, with help from Pakistani’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), set up training camps for the mujahideen in Pakistan, and supplied them with advisors, weapons, and cash to fight the Soviets.

Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the founder of the Hizb-i-Islami militia, was among the most prominent mujahideen leaders, receiving some $600 million in aid from the CIA and its allies.

Journalist Steve Coll writes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Ghost Wars that Hekymatyar recruited from the most radical, anti-western, transnational Islamist networks to fight with him, including Osama bin Laden and other Arab volunteers. CIA officers “embraced Hekmatyar as their most dependable and effective ally,” and “the most efficient at killing Soviets.”

Caravans of opium

Aid to Hekymatyar and other mujahideen leaders was not limited to cash and weapons. According to renowned historian Alfred McCoy:

“1979 and 1980, just as the CIA effort was beginning to ramp up, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. That region soon became the world’s largest heroin producer.”

The process involved smuggling raw opium gum to Pakistan, where it was processed into heroin in laboratories run by the ISI. The finished product was then discreetly transported via Pakistani airports, ports, or overland routes.

By 1984, Afghan heroin supplied a staggering 60 percent of the US market and 80 percent of the European market, while devastatingly creating 1.3 million heroin addicts in Pakistan, a country previously untouched by the highly-addictive drug.

McCoy states further that, “caravans carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to Pakistan loaded down with opium.” Reports from 2001 cited by the New York Times confirmed that this occurred “with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence officers who supported the resistance.”

In May 1990, the Washington Post reported that the US government had for several years received, but declined to investigate, reports of heroin trafficking by its allies, including “firsthand accounts of heroin smuggling by commanders under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.”

Rise of the Taliban

When the Soviets did finally withdraw in 1989, the country fell into civil war as the major CIA-backed factions began fighting among themselves for control of the country. Mujahideen leaders became warlords and committed terrible atrocities against the local population while fighting amongst themselves.

It was during this anarchy that religious students from the madrassas (seminary schools), the Taliban, emerged with the help of Pakistani intelligence to take control of the country in 1996, subsequently inheriting the opium trade, which continued unhindered for several years.

In July 2000, however, Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered a ban on all opium cultivation. Remarkably, the Taliban successfully slashed the opium harvest by 94 percent, reducing yearly production to only 185 metric tons.

Five months later, in December 2000, the US and Russia used the UN Security Council to impose harsh new sanctions on Afghanistan, citing the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden following the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, in which 17 US sailors were killed. Bin Laden had taken refuge in the Islamic Emirate in 1996 after he was expelled from Sudan.

The New York Times reported that US officials sought to impose the new sanctions, despite warnings from the UN that “a million Afghans could face starvation in coming months because of a drought and continued civil war.”

Following the attacks on 11 September, 2001, Bush administration officials demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden once again. Mullah Omar insisted the US first provide evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt, but President Bush refused this request and ordered the US air force to begin bombing Afghanistan on 7 October.

In the wake of the bombing, Mullah Omar dropped the demand for evidence, and offered to hand over Bin Laden to US ally Pakistan for trial. Bush administration officials once again refused.

Journalist and author Scott Horton highlights in his book Fool’s Errand a peculiar aspect of the US campaign: the lack of a clear focus on capturing or eliminating Bin Laden. In fact, President Bush had already stated on 25 September that success or failure should not be defined solely by capturing Bin Laden.

Horton notes further that US planners made no initial effort to hunt down Bin Laden and the foreign Arab fighters supporting him. Instead, head of US Central Command, General Tommy Franks prioritized partnering with Afghan warlord Rashid Dostum to take control of the north of the country, and establish a “land link” to Uzbekistan.

Turning to the warlords

To also capture the capital, Kabul, and other key cities in the south, Alfred McCoy notes the CIA:

“Turned to a group of rising Pashtun warlords along the Pakistan border who had been active as drug smugglers in the south-eastern part of the country. As a result, when the Taliban collapsed, the groundwork had already been laid for the resumption of opium cultivation and the drug trade on a major scale.”

Though US forces were too late to prevent Bin Laden’s escape to Pakistan, the US bombing campaign came just in time for the beginning of poppy planting season. Poppies are planted in the autumn so that the juice from the plant, from which opium is extracted, can be harvested in spring.

McCoy clarified further that, “the Agency (CIA) and its local allies created ideal conditions for reversing the Taliban’s opium ban and reviving the drug traffic. Only weeks after the collapse of the Taliban, officials were reporting an outburst of poppy planting in the heroin-heartlands of Helmand and Nangarhar.”

In December, one of these rising Pashtun warlords, Hamid Karzai, was appointed Chairman of the Afghan Interim Administration and later president.

By the spring of 2002, large amounts of Afghan heroin were once again being transported to Britain via daily flights from Pakistani airports. The Guardian observed the case of a 13-year-old girl who was stopped after she stepped off a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Islamabad to London carrying 13kgs of heroin with a street value of £910,000.

Industrial scale

Thanks to the “land link” established by General Franks, heroin also immediately began flowing north from Mazar-e-Sharif, under CIA ally Rashid Dostum’s control, to Uzbekistan and then to to Russia and Europe.

The flow of heroin was witnessed by Craig Murray, the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who explained that Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, facilitated the smuggling of heroin from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it was then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to Moscow and then Riga. As Murray noted:

“Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker…The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.”

‘A hands off approach’

In addition to Dostum, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, quickly secured a prominent role in the Afghan heroin trade.

Credible reports emerged that Wali Karzai was deeply involved in the heroin trade, however, according to the New York Times, the incidents were never investigated, “even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.”

Senior officials at the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) complained that the Bush “White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter.”

The Times later reported that according to a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official, a major source of Wali Karzai’s influence was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium-growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar. This allowed Karzai to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.

Like Dostum and Hekmaytar, Wali Karzai built his heroin empire while on the CIA payroll. The agency began paying Karzai in 2001 to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operated at the agency’s direction in and around Kandahar and to rent a large compound for use as the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. The CIA also appreciated Karzai’s help in communicating and sometimes meeting with Afghans loyal to the Taliban.

Karzai also served as the head of Kandahar’s elected provincial council. According to a senior US military officer in Kabul quoted by the Times, “Hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are flowing through the southern region, and nothing happens in southern Afghanistan without the regional leadership knowing about it.”

The blame game

In late 2004, as reports of Karzai’s involvement in the heroin trade were emerging, Alfred McCoy writes that “the White House was suddenly confronted with troubling CIA intelligence suggesting that the escalating drug trade was fueling a revival of the Taliban.”

A proposal from Secretary of State Colin Powell to fight the heroin trade was resisted by US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and then-Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani. As a compromise, the Bush administration used private contractors for poppy eradication, an effort that New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall later described as “something of a joke.”

Additionally, reports of a 2005 cable sent by the US embassy in Kabul to Powell’s successor, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, viewed Britain as being “substantially responsible” for the failure to eradicate poppy cultivation. British personnel chose where the eradication teams worked, but those areas were often not the main growing areas, and “the British had been unwilling to revise targets.”

The cable also faulted President Karzai, who “has been unwilling to assert strong leadership.” The State Department nevertheless defended him, saying, “President Karzai is a strong partner, and we have confidence in him,” despite reports of his brother’s key role in the heroin trade.

But the problem went beyond Wali Karzai. A UN report for the World Bank published in February 2006 concluded the Afghan heroin trade was operating with the assistance of many top Afghan government officials and under the protection of the Afghan Ministry of Interior.

As evidence of CIA and Afghan government involvement in the heroin trade grew, the focus of the western media shifted towards blaming the Taliban for using drug profits to fund their insurgency against foreign forces.

However, historian Peter Dale Scott challenged this narrative, citing UN estimates that the Taliban’s share of the Afghan opium economy was a fraction compared to that of supporters of the Karzai government. Scott emphasized that the largest share of the drug trade was controlled by those aligned with the Afghan government.

The surge

In early 2010, the Obama administration announced a “surge” of 33,000 US troops to help pacify the country, with a particular focus on key districts known for poppy cultivation. One such district was Marja in Helmand province, which McCoy referred to as “the world’s heroin capital.”

Despite the surge’s mission, US commanders seemed unaware of Marja’s significance as a hub for heroin production, fueled by the surrounding opium fields that accounted for 40 percent of the world’s illicit opium supply.

In September 2010, eight months after the start of the surge, “unsubstantiated” reports emerged that British soldiers were involved in trafficking heroin out of Afghanistan using military aircraft at airports in Camp Bastion and Kandahar.

Camp Bastion, jointly operated by the UK and the US, was located near Lashkar Gah, another major center of poppy cultivation. In 2012, it was alleged that poppy cultivation was taking place just outside the base’s perimeter, with British soldiers providing protection to farmers against Afghan security forces.

By late 2014, British and US forces withdrew from Camp Bastion, handing it over to Afghan forces, who renamed it Camp Shorabak. However, according to a UN report, “the opium-growing area around Britain’s main base in Afghanistan nearly quadrupled between 2011 and 2013.”

Despite the withdrawal, opium exports from Camp Shorabak apparently continued, and a small number of British military personnel returned in 2015 in what was described by the Ministry of Defense as an advisory role.

In 2016, Obaidullah Barakzai, a member of the National Assembly of Afghanistan, claimed, “It’s impossible for a few local drug smugglers to transfer opium in thousands of kilos. This is the work of the Americans and British. They transport it by air from Camp Shorabak.”

After US forces chaotically withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban once again succeeded in eliminating poppy cultivation, showing it was far from a “dedicated drug cartel” after all.

Follow the money

In November 2021, an opium merchant claimed that “All the profits go to the foreign countries. Afghans are just supplying the labor.”

Peter Dale Scott noted that according to the UN, some $352 billion in drug profits had been absorbed into the western financial system, including through the US’ largest banks in 2009. As a result, Scott said the “United States involvement in the international drug traffic links the CIA, major financial interests, and criminal interests in this country and abroad.”

In 2012, the Daily Mail reported that HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, faced up to £640million in penalties for allowing “rogue states and drugs cartels to launder billions of pounds through its branches,” and for becoming “a conduit for criminal enterprises.”

The billions in profits flowing from the Afghan heroin trade into western banks have now been eliminated by the Taliban not once, but twice in the past two decades.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s pronouncement in July 2000 that poppy cultivation was “un-Islamic” was, therefore, a more likely cause of the US sanctions imposed in December of the same year, and of the US invasion of Afghanistan a year later, than was any US desire to apprehend Bin Laden and dismantle Al-Qaeda.

In March 2002, just six months after the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan, a journalist asked President Bush, “Where’s Osama bin Laden?” Bush replied, ‘I don’t know. I don’t really think about him very much. I’m not that concerned.”

The Afghan drug trade serves as a stark reminder of the intricate connections between geopolitics, illicit economies, and global finance, and the need for greater transparency and accountability in addressing these complex issues.

The historical evidence also challenges the simplistic narrative that the Taliban largely controlled the Afghan drug trade, highlighting the dominant role played by the US-backed Afghan government and its allies in the CIA.

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Mon Aug 14, 2023 2:46 pm

Taliban’s Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along
AUGUST 13, 2023

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The Taliban government in Afghanistan embarks upon a program of opium eradication, while the US suffers a massive opioid addiction epidemic. Photo: MintPress News.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan – the nation that until recently produced 90% of the world’s heroin – has drastically reduced opium cultivation across the country. Western sources estimate an up to 99% reduction in some provinces. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of U.S. drug eradication efforts in the country over the past 20 years. And, as global heroin supplies dry up, experts tell MintPress News that they fear this could spark the growing use of fentanyl – a drug dozens of times stronger than heroin that already kills more than 100,000 Americans yearly.



The Taliban Does What the US Did Not


It has already been called “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history.” Armed with little more than sticks, teams of counter-narcotics brigades travel the country, cutting down Afghanistan’s poppy fields.

In April of last year, the ruling Taliban government announced the prohibition of poppy farming, citing both their strong religious beliefs and the extremely harmful social costs that heroin and other opioids – derived from the sap of the poppy plant – have wrought across Afghanistan.

It has not been all bluster. New research from geospatial data company Alcis suggests that poppy production has already plummeted by around 80% since last year. Indeed, satellite imagery shows that in Helmand Province, the area that produces more than half of the crop, poppy production has dropped by a staggering 99%. Just 12 months ago, poppy fields were dominant. But Alcis estimates that there are now less than 1,000 hectares of poppy growing in Helmand.

Instead, farmers are planting wheat, helping stave off the worst of a famine that U.S. sanctions helped create. Afghanistan is still in a perilous state, however, with the United Nations warning that six million people are close to starvation.

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Data from Alcis shows that a majority of Afghan farmers switched from growing poppy to wheat in a single year.

The Taliban waited until 2022 to impose the long-awaited ban in order not to interfere with the growing season. Doing so would have provoked unrest among the rural population by eradicating a crop that farmers had spent months growing. Between 2020 and late 2022, the price of opium in local markets rose by as much as 700%. Yet given the Taliban’s insistence – and their efficiency at eradication – few have been tempted to plant poppies.

The poppy ban has been matched by a similar campaign against the methamphetamine industry, with the government targeting the ephedra crop and shutting down ephedrine labs across the country.



A Looming Catastrophe

Afghanistan produces almost 90% of the world’s heroin. Therefore, the eradication of the opium crop will have profound worldwide consequences on drug use. Experts MintPress spoke to warned that a dearth of heroin would likely produce a huge spike in the use of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, a drug the Center for Disease Control estimates is 50 times stronger and is responsible for taking the lives of more than 100,000 Americans each year.

“It is important to consider past periods of heroin shortages and the impact these have had on the European drug market,” the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) told MintPress, adding:

Experience in the E.U. with previous periods of reduced heroin supply suggests that this can lead to changes in patterns of drug supply and use. This can include further an increase in rates of polysubstance use among heroin users. Additional risks to existing users may be posed by the substitution of heroin with more harmful synthetic opioids, including fentanyl and its derivatives and new potent benzimidazole opioids.

In other words, if heroin is no longer available, users will switch to far deadlier synthetic forms of the drug. A 2022 United Nations report came to a similar conclusion, noting that the crackdown on heroin production could lead to the “replacement of heroin or opium by other substances…such as fentanyl and its analogs.”

“It does have that danger in the macro sense, that if you take all that heroin off the market, people are going to go to other products,” Matthew Hoh told MintPress. Hoh is a former State Department official who resigned from his post in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in 2009. “But the response should not be reinvade Afghanistan, reoccupy it and put the drug lords back in power, which is basically what people are implying when they bemoan the consequence of the Taliban stopping the drug trade,” Hoh added; “Most of the people who are speaking this way and worrying out loud about it are people who want to find a reason for the U.S. to go and affect regime change in Afghanistan.”

There certainly has been plenty of hand-wringing from American sources. “Foreign Policy,” wrote about “how the Taliban’s ‘war on drugs’ could backfire;” U.S. government-funded “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” claimed that the Taliban were turning a “blind eye to opium production,” despite the official ban. And the United States Institute of Peace, an institution created by Congress that is “dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible,” stated emphatically that “the Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world”.

This looming catastrophe, however, will not hit immediately. Significant stockpiles of drugs along trafficking routes still exist. As the EMCDDA told MintPress:

It can take over 12 months before the opium harvest appears on the European retail drug market as heroin – and so it is too early to predict, at this stage, the future impact of the cultivation ban on heroin availability in Europe. Nonetheless, if the ban on opium cultivation is enforced and sustained, it could have a significant impact on heroin availability in Europe during 2024 or 2025.

Yet there is little indication that the Taliban are anything but serious about eradicating the crop, indicating that a heroin crunch is indeed coming.

A similar attempt by the Taliban to eliminate the drug occurred in 2000, the last full year that they were in power. It was extraordinarily successful, with opium reduction dropping from 4,600 tons to just 185 tons. At that time, it took around 18 months for the consequences to be felt in the West. In the United Kingdom, average heroin purity fell from 55% to 34%, while in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, heroin was largely replaced by fentanyl. However, as soon as the United States invaded in 2001, poppy cultivation shot back up to previous levels and the supply chain recommenced.



US Complicity in the Afghan Drug Trade

The Taliban’s successful campaign to eradicate drug production has cast a shadow of doubt over the effectiveness of American-led endeavors to achieve the same outcome. “It prompts the question, ‘What were we actually accomplishing there?!’” remarked Hoh, underscoring:

This undermines one of the fundamental premises behind the wars: the alleged association between the Taliban and the drug trade – a concept of a narco-terror nexus. However, this notion was fallacious. The reality was that Afghanistan was responsible for a staggering 80-90% of the world’s illicit opiate supply. The primary controllers of this trade were the Afghan government and military, entities we upheld in power.

Hoh clarified that he never personally witnessed or received any reports of direct involvement by U.S. troops or officials in narcotics trafficking. Instead, he contended that there existed a “conscious and deliberate turning away from the unfolding events” during his tenure in Afghanistan.

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Left, a US Marine picks a flower as he guards a poppy field in 2012 in Helmand Provine. Photo: DVIDS. Right, A man breaks poppy stalks as part of a 2023 campaign to target illegal drugs in Afghanistan. Photo: Oriane Zerah/AP.

Suzanna Reiss, an academic at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire,” demonstrated an even more cynical perspective on American counter-narcotics endeavors as she conveyed to MintPress:

The U.S. has never really been focused on reducing the drug trade in Afghanistan (or elsewhere for that matter). All the lofty rhetoric aside, the U.S. has been happy to work with drug traffickers if the move would advance certain geopolitical interests (and indeed, did so, or at least turned a knowingly blind eye, when groups like the Northern Alliance relied on drugs to fund their political movement against the regime).

Afghanistan’s transformation into a preeminent narco-state owes a significant debt to Washington’s actions. Poppy cultivation in the 1970s was relatively limited. However, the tide changed in 1979 with the inception of Operation Cyclone, a massive infusion of funds to Afghan Mujahideen factions aimed at exhausting the Soviet military and terminating its presence in Afghanistan. The U.S. directed billions toward the insurgents, yet their financial needs persisted. Consequently, the Mujahideen delved into the illicit drug trade. By the culmination of Operation Cyclone, Afghanistan’s opium production had soared twentyfold. Professor Alfred McCoy, acclaimed author of “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” shared with MintPress that approximately 75% of the planet’s illegal opium output was now sourced from Afghanistan, a substantial portion of the proceeds funneling to U.S.-backed rebel factions.



Unraveling the Opioid Crisis: An Impending Disaster

The opioid crisis is the worst addiction epidemic in U.S. history. Earlier this year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the American fentanyl problem as “the single greatest challenge we face as a country.” Nearly 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, fentanyl being by far the leading cause. Between 2015 and 2021, the National Institute of Health recorded a nearly 7.5-fold increase in overdose deaths. Medical journal The Lancet predicts that 1.2 million Americans will die from opioid overdoses by 2029.

U.S. officials blame Mexican cartels for smuggling the synthetic painkiller across the southern border and China for producing the chemicals necessary to make the drug.

White Americans are more likely to misuse these types of drugs than other races. Adults aged 35-44 experience the highest rates of deaths, although deaths among younger people are surging. Rural America has been particularly hard hit; a 2017 study by the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 74% of farmers have been directly impacted by the opioid epidemic. West Virginia and Tennessee are the states most badly hit.

For writer Chris Hedges, who hails from rural Maine, the fentanyl crisis is an example of one of the many “diseases of despair” the U.S. is suffering from. It has, according to Hedges, “risen from a decayed world where opportunity, which confers status, self-esteem and dignity, has dried up for most Americans. They are expressions of acute desperation and morbidity.” In essence, when the American dream fizzled out, it was replaced by an American nightmare. That white men are the prime victims of these diseases of despair is an ironic outgrowth of our unfair system. As Hedges explained:

White men, more easily seduced by the myth of the American dream than people of color who understand how the capitalist system is rigged against them, often suffer feelings of failure and betrayal, in many cases when they are in their middle years. They expect, because of notions of white supremacy and capitalist platitudes about hard work leading to advancement, to be ascendant. They believe in success.

In this sense, it is important to place the opioid addiction crisis in a wider context of American decline, where opportunities for success and happiness are fewer and farther between than ever, rather than attribute it to individuals. As the “Lancet” wrote: “Punitive and stigmatizing approaches must end. Addiction is not a moral failing. It is a medical condition and poses a constant threat to health.”



A “Uniquely American Problem”

Nearly 10 million Americans misuse prescription opioids every year and at a rate far higher than comparable developed countries. Deaths due to opioid overdose in the United States are ten times more common per capita than in Germany and more than 20 times as frequent in Italy, for instance.

Much of this is down to the United States’ for-profit healthcare system. American private insurance companies are far more likely to favor prescribing drugs and pills than more expensive therapies that get to the root cause of the issue driving the addiction in the first place. As such, the opioid crisis is commonly referred to as a “uniquely American problem.”

Part of the reason U.S. doctors are much more prone to doling out exceptionally strong pain medication relief than their European counterparts is that they were subject to a hyper-aggressive marketing campaign from Purdue Pharma, manufacturers of the powerful opioid OxyContin. Purdue launched OxyContin in 1996, and its agents swarmed doctors’ offices to push the new “wonder drug.”

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Approximately 1 million fake pills containing fentanyl seized on July 5, 2022, at a home in Inglewood, Calif. Photo: DEA via AP.

Yet, in lawsuit after lawsuit, the company has been accused of lying about both the effectiveness and the addictiveness of OxyContin, a drug that has hooked countless Americans onto opioids. And when legal but incredibly addictive prescription opioids dry up, Americans turned to illicit substances like heroin and fentanyl as substitutes.

Purdue Pharma owners, the Sackler family, have regularly been described as the most evil family in America, with many laying the blame for the hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths squarely at their door. In 2019, under the weight of thousands of lawsuits against it, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy. A year later, it plead guilty to criminal charges over its mismarketing of OxyContin.

Nevertheless, the Sacklers made out like bandits from their actions. Even after being forced last year to pay nearly $6 billion in cash to victims of the opioid crisis, they remain one of the world’s richest families and have refused to apologize for their role in constructing an empire of pain that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Instead, the family has attempted to launder their image through philanthropy, sponsoring many of the most prestigious arts and cultural institutions in the world. These include the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Yale University, and the British Museum and Royal Academy in London.

One group who are disproportionately affected by opioids like OxyContin, heroin and fentanyl are veterans. According to the National Institutes of Health, veterans are twice as likely to die from overdose than the general population. One reason for this is bureaucracy. “The Veterans Administration did a really poor job in the past decades with their pain management, particularly their reliance on opioids,” Hoh, a former marine, told MintPress, noting that the V.A. prescribed dangerous opioids at a higher rate than other healthcare agencies.

Ex-soldiers often have to cope with chronic pain and brain injuries. Hoh noted that around a quarter-million veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq have traumatic brain injuries. But added to that are the deep moral injuries many suffered – injuries that typically cannot be seen. As Hoh noted:

Veterans are turning to [opioids like fentanyl] to deal with the mental, emotional and spiritual consequences of the war, using them to quell the distress, try to find some relief, escape from the depression, and deal with the demons that come home with veterans who took part in those wars.

Thus, if the Taliban’s opium eradication program continues, it could spark a fentanyl crisis that might kill more Americans than the 20-year occupation ever did.



Broken Society

If diseases of despair are common throughout the United States, they are rampant in Afghanistan itself. A global report released in March revealed that Afghans are by far the most miserable people on Earth. Afghans evaluated their lives at 1.8 out of 10 – dead last and far behind the top of the pile Finland (7.8 out of 10).

Opium addiction in Afghanistan is out of control, with around 9% of the adult population (and a significant number of children) addicted. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of adult drug users jumped from 900,000 to 2.4 million, according to the United Nations, which estimates that almost one in three households is directly affected by addiction. As opium is frequently injected, blood-transmitted conditions like HIV are common as well.

The opioid problem has also spilled into neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. A 2013 United Nations report estimated that almost 2.5 million Pakistanis were abusing opioids, including 11% of people in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 700 people die each day from overdoses.



Empire of Drugs

Given their history, It is perhaps understandable that Asian nations have generally taken far more authoritarian measures to counter drug addiction issues. For centuries, using the illegal drug trade to advance imperial objectives has been a common Western tactic. In the 1940s and 1950s, the French utilized opium crops in the “Golden Triangle” region of Southeast Asia in order to counter the growing Vietnamese independence movement.

A century previously, the British used opium to crush and conquer much of China. Britain’s insatiable thirst for Chinese tea was beginning to bankrupt the country, seeing as China would only accept gold or silver in exchange. The British, therefore, used the power of its navy to force China to cede Hong Kong to it. From there, it flooded mainland China with opium grown in South Asia (including Afghanistan).

The effect of the Opium War was astonishing. By 1880, the British were inundating China with more than 6,500 tons of opium per year – the equivalent of many billions of doses. Chinese society crumbled, unable to deal with the empire-wide social and economic dislocation that millions of opium addicts brought. Today, the Chinese continue to refer to the period as the “century of humiliation”.

Meanwhile, in South Asia, the British forced farmers to plant poppy fields instead of edible crops, causing waves of giant famines, the likes of which had never been seen before or since.

And during the 1980s in Central America, the United States sold weapons to Iran in order to fund far-right Contra death squads. The Contras were deeply implicated in the cocaine trade, fuelling their dirty war through crack cocaine sales in the U.S. – a practice that, according to journalist Gary Webb, the Central Intelligence Agency facilitated.

Imperialism and illicit drugs, therefore, commonly go together. However, with the Taliban opium eradication effort in full effect, coupled with the uniquely American phenomenon of opioid addiction, it is possible that the United States will suffer significant blowback in the coming years. The deadly fentanyl epidemic will likely only get worse, needlessly taking hundreds of thousands more American lives. Thus, even as Afghanistan attempts to rid itself of its deadly drug addiction problem, its actions could precipitate an epidemic that promises to kill more Americans than any of Washington’s imperial endeavors to date.

(MintPress News) by Alan Macleod

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Tue Sep 05, 2023 3:01 pm

Spoilers and stakeholders in the Trans-Afghan Railway saga

The Trans-Afghan Railway project is a game-changing opportunity to build critical Eurasian commercial ties and connect China, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan - If it can overcome the hefty challenges of finance, security, and geopolitics.


F.M. Shakil
SEP 4, 2023

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Photo Credit: The Cradle

In a promising development for regional connectivity and trade, the Trans-Afghan Railway project received a much-needed boost when officials from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan convened in Islamabad on 17 July. This ambitious initiative, six years in the making, seeks to forge a vital rail link between the three “stans.”

The tripartite agreement has garnered enthusiastic support from key stakeholders, including Pakistan's finance and railway ministers. Together, the railway and transport authorities of these countries endorsed a proposed 573-kilometer rail connection, poised to connect Tashkent, Kabul, and Peshawar.

The envisioned route maps a connection from the holy city of Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan to the Karlachy border crossing in Pakistan's Kurram tribal district, potentially reducing travel time between Uzbekistan and Pakistan by five days and slashing transport costs by around forty percent.

Already in 2011, a 75-kilometer railway segment linking Hairatan in southern Uzbekistan to Mazar-i-Sharif marked a successful milestone for this endeavor. Although there has been a lull in activity since, the July meeting unveiled ambitious plans to complete the railway by 2027, with the capacity to transport up to 15 million tons of cargo annually by 2030.

The vision for regional connectivity

Uzbekistan, a landlocked Central Asian country, is driving the Trans-Afghan Railway initiative with renewed vigor to establish connectivity with Pakistan's seaports, including Karachi, Gwadar, and Bin Qasim, thus gaining access to Persian Gulf and European markets.

This strategic move by Tashkent aims to bolster its transportation networks and foster the flow of trade across Eurasia. The prolonged conflict between Russia and Ukraine has prompted significant geopolitical realignment because of the instability of traditional transportation corridors, and necessitated a reassessment of global supply routes.

Uzbekistan, in particular, finds itself in a transformative phase, where infrastructure projects once considered unviable are now making strides. The Trans-Afghan Railway project, championed by Uzbekistan, holds the promise of becoming a transformative force, connecting Tashkent to prominent export markets such as China and the EU.

Speaking to The Cradle, Zia Ul Haq Sarhadi, a director and coordinator of the Pakistan-Afghan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PAJCCI) says:

“The whole shebang of Southeast Asia and the Middle East (West Asia) getting cozy with Central Asia and the Caucasus depends on Afghanistan and Pakistan. If they manage to wrap up the Trans-Afghan Railway Line, it will be a game-changer for a united Eurasia. There is, however, a pressing need for the regional countries to get on board with this new corridor and put their reservations to rest. It's crucial to address their concerns and clear the air so that this railway link can truly become the beating heart of regional trade, connecting China, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Central Asian nations.”

Is the trans-Afghan Railway just a pipe dream?

The envisioned trade route, which seeks to establish a connection between Uzbekistan and Pakistan via Afghanistan, carries profound geopolitical significance, but its realization appears to be mired in a web of financial and security challenges.

One notable stumbling block is the improbable prospect of western financial institutions providing funding for such an ambitious project within the volatile terrain of Afghanistan. Also, Pakistan's past track record in handling similar initiatives has raised doubts, further complicating the project's outlook.

Pakistan, known for its two-faced foreign policy, has often struggled to weather the storm when faced with pressure from Washington and the EU. Last month, Pakistan formally communicated to Tehran its inability to fulfill its contractual obligation to complete the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project due to external factors beyond its control. Pakistan has also requested Tehran to suspend the project and cited US pressure as a significant factor influencing this decision.

Earlier this year, Tehran had cautioned Islamabad that failing to meet its obligations by March 2024 would entail a hefty penalty of around $18 billion. Iran claims to have completed its part of the pipeline, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the border of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province.

Adding to the uncertainty is Pakistan's abrupt halting of crude oil imports from Russia just weeks after receiving its initial shipment, citing perceived limited advantages and a commitment to establishing long-term deals for discounted crude oil imports. This decision came a month after receiving the first shipment in June, following months of deliberations and public declarations.

Furthermore, lawmakers in Peshawar, where the proposed railway corridor would culminate, express concern about the project's feasibility, given Islamabad's current fiscal challenges. Doubts linger about the capacity of the Pakistani establishment to independently pursue policies that genuinely prioritize the economic well-being of the general population.

According to former senator and Awami National Party spokesperson Zahid Khan, the initiative remains largely on paper and will likely remain a distant dream until Pakistan can assert greater autonomy in shaping its economic policies, aligned with its unique regional circumstances. He tells The Cradle:

"Such projects are just an eyewash to deflect the public anger from the core realities at a time when the economy was on the rope and masses took to the streets to protest over the soaring food inflation and inflated power bills."

Khan further underscores that Islamabad's credibility suffered when it backed away from the IP gas pipeline project and rejected Russia's crude oil imports - all while the nuclear-armed state grappled with a persistent energy crisis.

Taliban's railway diplomacy

The complexity of the trans-Afghan Railway project lies in the financial capacity of its partners, none of whom can independently shoulder the multi-billion-dollar burden. In 2020, the tripartite team jointly sought funding for the project from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and other international financial institutions. However, contradictory estimates emerged, with Tashkent estimating $4.6 million and Islamabad proposing a substantial $8 billion, highlighting the financial challenge at hand.

Last month, the Taliban's acting minister of commerce and industry, Nooruddin Azizi, decided to reach out to Russia and Kazakhstan to join forces in constructing a railroad that would connect the landlocked countries of Central Asia to the Arabian Sea coast.

This decision aligns with the Taliban's broader vision, capitalizing on global shifts following the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It provides them with an opportunity to pave the way for economic development through enhanced regional connectivity.

By extending an olive branch to Kazakhstan and Russia, the Taliban aims to achieve multiple objectives, fostering regional connectivity through the Trans-Afghan Railway project. This endeavor not only brings Kabul closer to lucrative export markets in Central Asia but also lays the groundwork for stronger ties between these states.

Chinese considerations

China, and potentially the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), also emerge as potential sources of financial assistance for the trans-Afghan Railway project. Beijing's expanding trade volume with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan positions it as a key player in the region.

Based on the most recent data compiled by China's General Administration of Customs (GTU) and released for the initial half of 2023, Beijing’s exports to Central Asia amounted to approximately $26.4 billion during the first six months of the year. In contrast, the country recorded imports worth nearly $13.5 billion, primarily driven by the importation of oil and natural gas.

Chinese-Uzbekistan trade, in particular, witnessed substantial growth of 26.8 percent compared to the previous year, reaching over $6.1 billion. Chinese exports to Uzbekistan totaled approximately $5.46 billion, with imports from Uzbekistan valued at $629 million. China's increasing bilateral trade with Central Asia illustrates its significant economic interests in the region.

Establishing a reliable railway corridor would certainly serve China's interests by facilitating cost-effective and efficient transportation of transit goods. Nevertheless, the project still faces numerous challenges and uncertainties that may influence Chinese decision-makers in allocating vital resources.

Security risks and countermeasures

In an article published in the Hasht-e Subh Daily news website, Afghan railway engineer Nazir Ahmad Rasa claimed that the Trans-Afghan Railway project was directly threatened by ISIS. As a result, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan will need to allocate a lofty budget to procure armored vehicles and recruit security personnel to safeguard the technical team.

“Given the occurrence of many operations conducted by ISIS in Kabul and Herat provinces, together with their explicit threats targeting this project, it is plausible to assert that this situation may provide a significant obstacle to its advancement,” Rasa explained.

He went on to add that the ongoing military operations conducted by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militia factions against the Pakistani government posed an additional risk to the execution of this project.

In response to security concerns in Afghanistan, Zia Ul Haq Sarhadi cites recent developments involving Pakistan facilitating cargo from China to Afghanistan under the Transports Internationaux Routiers (TIR) Convention.

This initiative promises a more efficient and cost-effective trade route, reducing travel time by approximately 70 percent and logistics costs by over 30 percent.

Sarhadi points out to The Cradle that goods from China are now being transported to Afghanistan through Pakistan's Khunjerab Pass in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, which he sees as a positive sign for the security situation in the Islamic Emirate:

“This development is a clear sign that the security situation in Afghanistan is not all doom and gloom.”

He emphasizes that China's successful transport of goods along the Silk Route from Kashghar to Afghanistan indicates that security may not be a major impediment to completing the Trans-Afghan Railway project connecting China, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to the Central Asian markets."

Achieving the full realization of the Trans-Afghan Railway project would transform the region, enabling the establishment of vital trade routes spanning across Eurasia and delivering substantial benefits to several developing countries. Nevertheless, the project necessitates an unwavering commitment from all stakeholders involved in the face of immense economic and political pressures.

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/unloc ... -potential

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China Will Continue to Support Afghanistan as it Transitions from Chaos to Stability
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 4, 2023
Liu Xin, Xing Xiaojing (and Zhao Haihan

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An aerial view of Kabul, Afghanistan Photos: VCGAn aerial view of Kabul, Afghanistan

Global Times Editor’s Note: On August 30, 2021, with celebratory fireworks lighting up the Kabul night sky, the US completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending its 20-year presence in the country after its October 2001 invasion. Afghanistan has had two years to explore its own path for development. How has the Afghan interim government performed in solving the problems in Afghanistan? And how have China-Afghanistan relations developed? Global Times reporters Liu Xin and Xing Xiaojing (GT) interviewed Zhao Haihan (Zhao), Chargé d’Affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan, to get his views on these and other questions, for an exclusive report.

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Dr. Zhao Haihan, Chargé d'Affaires of?the Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan Photo: Courtesy of Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan


Zhao Haihan, Chargé d’Affaires of?the Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan Photo: Courtesy of Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan

GT: How do you view the performance of the Afghan interim government, which has been in power for two years? How do you feel about being in Afghanistan?

Zhao: Since the establishment of the Afghan interim government two years ago, it has been committed to promoting national peace reconstruction and independent development, actively engaging in foreign exchanges and cooperation, and has taken a series of practical measures in areas such as economic development, corruption eradication, drug prohibition, improvement of people’s livelihoods, and social security, achieving certain results. The international community should give an objective and fair assessment.

The Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan staff has been stationed in Kabul. Over the last two years, especially this year, in our daily lives, we can feel that this country is gradually recovering. Economic and social development is slowly improving, prices and exchange rates are stable, and some infrastructure construction and large-scale energy and water projects are actively progressing, with trade with neighboring countries continuously developing.

In the reports by some Western media outlets, Afghanistan seems to be on the verge of economic collapse with starving bodies everywhere. But you will see completely different scenes if you visit major cities in Afghanistan: Daily necessities and supplies are basically available; there is a wide variety of food and vegetables, and the supply of electricity, communication, and fuel is also stable, with social order being well-maintained; the price of the staple food, naan, is less than 10 Afghanis (equivalent to 7 cents yuan), or even cheaper.

It is worth mentioning that the majority of the people and foreign diplomats believe that compared with two years ago, the overall security situation in Afghanistan has seen positive improvements, and people can now freely travel throughout the country, with an increase in foreign tourists. According to the Afghan Foreign Minister, there were about 70,000 foreign tourists visiting Afghanistan, including 10,000 from Europe, in 2022.

Afghanistan still faces many challenges at present. However, let’s not forget that this country has just experienced 20 years of war, is starting from scratch, and is a fragmented state. Its economic development heavily relies on foreign aid, and its per capita GDP has always been the lowest in the world.

The interim government of Afghanistan took over a mess and faced external economic blockades, financial sanctions, asset freezes, and other difficulties. Achieving these development results in just two years and maintaining national unity and overall stability is not easy.

GT: On May 6, during the 5th China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue held in Pakistan, a joint statement was issued, clearly stating that terrorism and terrorist organizations including the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” (ETIM), will not be tolerated. It was also the first time that the Afghan Taliban made a written commitment to not allow the “ETIM” and other forces to engage in terrorist activities. What is the current situation regarding the activities of ETIM members in Afghanistan, and what is the significance of this written commitment by the Afghan Taliban for the promotion of regional counter-terrorism and security cooperation?

Zhao: The “ETIM” is a terrorist organization listed by the United Nations Security Council and recognized by the Chinese government in accordance with the law. The forces of the “ETIM” based in Afghanistan still pose a serious threat to the security of China, Afghanistan, and the region. The “three forces” – terrorism, separatism and extremism, based in Afghanistan are also still major security threats to the region and even the world.

The Afghan interim government’s written commitment to not allow the “ETIM” and other forces to engage in terrorist activities is of great significance for the future development of China-Afghanistan relations and the promotion of regional counter-terrorism and security cooperation. China supports Afghanistan’s efforts to combat all forms of terrorism and violence and maintain national security and stability.

We hope that the Afghan side will effectively fulfill its commitments, take more effective measures, and resolutely combat all terrorist forces, including the “ETIM.”

China calls on the international community to firmly support Afghanistan in combating the “three forces,” support Afghanistan in taking active measures to cut off the financial channels of terrorism and combat the recruitment and cross-border movement of terrorists, and the dissemination of violent and terrorist audiovisual materials, curb extremism, youth radicalization, and the spread of terrorist ideology, and eradicate hidden terrorists and their hiding places.

China will also actively encourage the international community to strengthen bilateral and multilateral counter-terrorism and security cooperation, provide anti-terrorism materials, equipment, and technical assistance to Afghanistan, support Afghanistan in implementing comprehensive counterterrorism measures, address both the symptoms and root causes of terrorism, and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven, breeding ground, and source of terrorism again.

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Afghan people receive food aid from China in Kabul, on April 23, 2022. Photo: XinhuaAfghan people receive food aid from China in Kabul, on April 23, 2022. Photo: Xinhua

GT: China has always emphasized its support for peace, development, and a political solution to the Afghan issue. Could you please introduce China’s specific measures and future plans in assisting Afghanistan?

Zhao: The friendly bilateral cooperation between China and Afghanistan has always been a key factor in China’s unique role in the Afghan issue. The Afghan government and society have widely recognized that China is the only major country and neighboring country in history that has never bullied Afghanistan, and China has always pursued cooperation, assistance, and friendship with Afghanistan.

In the last two years, in order to avoid a humanitarian crisis, China has provided timely humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, including the provision of vaccines, medicines, and winter supplies, totaling 300 million yuan. In March 2022, China also provided 1 billion yuan in unconditional assistance to Afghanistan for humanitarian, educational, medical, and rural construction projects.

China has also provided a large amount of assistance to Afghanistan in the form of food, emergency supplies, earthquake relief, and through other means using channels such as the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund, the Red Cross, local governments, and civil society, helping the Afghan people to cope with various crises.

At the same time, China’s assistance projects in Afghanistan, such as the building of Kabul University, vocational and technical education colleges, low-cost housing, and a hospital, have been successfully handed over or are about to resume construction. Personnel training and student exchange programs are also progressing in an orderly manner, cultivating a large number of talents in various fields in Afghanistan.

In terms of economic and trade cooperation, we have opened the “Pine Nuts Air Corridor,” granting Afghanistan 98 percent tariff-free treatment for products, restoring direct flights between China and Afghanistan, and promoting practical cooperation in major projects.

Currently, China and Afghanistan are actively exploring enhanced connectivity construction under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and negotiating to promote the export of more Afghan specialty agricultural products such as pomegranates, almonds, and apricots to China. All these practical measures are being taken to support the Afghan people’s economic development, income generation, and improvement of livelihoods through concrete actions.

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A CH-47 Chinook helicopter creates a cloud of dust in Afghanistan.Photo:VCGA CH-47 Chinook helicopter creates a cloud of dust in Afghanistan September 6, 2004. Photo:VCG

GT: The Global Times launched a petition in February 2022 calling for the unconditional return of life-saving money to the Afghan people by the US, which has received a lot of attention. How do you view the Chinese public’s concern for the livelihood of the Afghan people? How do you think China and Afghanistan can further strengthen people-to-people exchanges and promote friendly cooperation?

Zhao: China and Afghanistan are traditional friendly neighbors, and the ancient Silk Road has closely connected the people of the two countries, with a long history of friendly exchanges. Both China and Afghanistan believe in the cultural concept of “a close neighbor is better than a distant relative” and have a fine tradition of mutual assistance.

Since significant changes have occurred in Afghanistan, the safety and wellbeing of the Afghan people have always concerned the Chinese people. Having grown and risen from hardship, the Chinese people deeply empathize with the suffering of the Afghan people and have always provided assistance and steadfast support in various ways to help them overcome their hardships. This is a continuation of the traditional spirit of solidarity and cooperation between the two peoples and a reflection of Chinese people’s pursuit of justice and the well-being of the world.

The relationship between countries lies in the affinity between their people. Today, with the overall situation in Afghanistan transitioning from chaos to stability and the complete dispersal of the shadow of the COVID-19 epidemic, people-to-people exchanges between China and Afghanistan are ushering in new opportunities.

China will continue to uphold the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit, and inclusiveness in its neighborhood diplomacy, and carry out more pragmatic cooperation with Afghanistan in various fields. Together with the Afghan people, China will continuously consolidate the foundation of popular support for friendly relations between the two countries and work hand in hand to build a China-Afghanistan community of shared future.

GT: Can you give more examples of the close and friendly cooperation between China and Afghanistan?

Zhao: The friendly cooperation between China and Afghanistan is reflected in various aspects, for example, in the smooth communication and cooperation between our foreign ministries.

I remember one time when we wanted to have face-to-face exchanges with senior officials from various departments of the Afghan interim government regarding some cooperation issues. After receiving our request, the Afghan side quickly arranged for our ambassador to Afghanistan to meet with the acting prime minister and six cabinet ministers within a week. All the protocol arrangements were seamless, efficient, and smooth. Some foreign embassy colleagues heard about this and couldn’t help but admire that only Chinese diplomats could receive such treatment.

Furthermore, the Afghan people have great enthusiasm for learning Chinese. We often encounter fluent Chinese speakers among the Afghan people at airports and other public places. This includes not only students from Confucius Institutes and those who have studied in China, but also many ordinary people who have self-studied Chinese and hope to engage in trade and tourism in China in the future.

GT: At the Central Asia Summit in May, Chinese leaders emphasized the role of platforms such as the Afghanistan Neighboring Countries Coordination Mechanism in promoting Afghanistan’s path to reconstruction. In terms of promoting peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan, what specific diplomatic efforts and cooperation methods will China adopt?

Zhao: As a close neighbor and sincere friend to Afghanistan, China hopes for peace and stability in Afghanistan more than any other country. China has built platforms, created conditions, and contributed Chinese wisdom and solutions to promote peace and stability in Afghanistan, earning unanimous praise from the Afghan people and the international community.

Especially after significant changes in the Afghan situation, China advocated for the establishment of the Afghanistan neighboring countries coordination mechanism, leveraging the advantages of neighboring countries to consolidate regional consensus and cooperation, and played a constructive role in ensuring a smooth transition in the Afghan situation.

Currently, Afghanistan is at a critical juncture of transitioning from chaos to stability, with challenges and opportunities, and difficulties and hopes all coexisting. As a builder of world peace, contributor to global development, preserver of international order, and a friendly neighbor to Afghanistan, China will continue to provide assistance within its capabilities for Afghanistan’s reconstruction and development.

China will fulfill its aid commitments to Afghanistan, steadily promote economic and trade investment cooperation, actively engage in cooperation in areas such as healthcare, poverty alleviation, agriculture, and disaster prevention and reduction, deepen cooperation in jointly building the BRI, support Afghanistan in leveraging its geographical advantages to integrate into regional economic cooperation and connectivity, transform from a landlocked country to a land-linked country, and help Afghanistan emerge from the shadows of war and regain its ancient Silk Road glory.

At the same time, we will continue to uphold justice and advocate for the Afghan people in the international community, urging relevant countries, as the initiators of the Afghan issue, to learn from their mistakes, face the severe humanitarian, economic, and security risks and challenges in Afghanistan, immediately lift sanctions on Afghanistan, return Afghan overseas assets, and fulfill their commitments to humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.

GT: What are your expectations for the future of Afghanistan?

Zhao: Afghanistan is a brilliant pearl on the ancient Silk Road, which has created a splendid and glorious culture and made unique contributions to the exchanges and mutual learning of different civilizations between the East and the West, as well as the progress and development of human civilization.

However, due to its important geographical location, known as the “heart of Asia,” it has always been a strategic place for the great powers to compete, and its fate has been tumultuous. For a long time, Afghanistan has suffered from the ravages of war and turmoil, and its people have experienced hardships, causing this pearl to be repeatedly covered in dust.

Afghan people are diligent and kind, just like we the Chinese, and they are constantly striving for self-improvement. Afghans often mention that they have defeated three superpowers in a hundred years, which makes its nickname, the graveyard of empires, well deserved.

Nowadays, with the withdrawal of foreign troops, the Afghan people have ushered in an opportunity to truly control their own destiny and enter into a new era of independence, peace, and development.

In our contacts with Afghan officials, we can clearly feel their strong sense of national pride and their desire to change the fate of their country through development. They often say that today’s Afghanistan is very similar to the new China of more than 70 years ago. They have driven away foreign aggressors and opened a new chapter in national construction.

However, there is still much to be done, and the road ahead is long. They lack experience and capabilities, so they strongly hope to deepen cooperation with China, their thousand-year neighbor, learn from China’s governance experience, and achieve lasting peace and prosperity with China’s help.

As an unwavering friendly neighbor, China will continue to support Afghanistan’s independent and self-reliant development and make positive contributions to its prosperity and the promotion of regional peace and stability.

If the interim government of Afghanistan can seize the opportunity, further open up and engage in inclusive governance, pursue moderate and stable policies, and actively explore a modern development model that suits the Afghan national conditions, it is entirely possible to lead the Afghan people onto the path of peaceful reconstruction and prosperous development. I personally have confidence in this.

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 28, 2023 3:01 pm

Why are US and British intelligence agencies again active in Afghanistan?
October 28, 2023
Rybar

According to the head of the Russian FSB , Alexander Bortnikov , the leading role in destabilizing the situation in Afghanistan is played by the American and British intelligence services. The CIA and MI6 are re-establishing their intelligence presence in a number of key provinces in Afghanistan. The issue of returning American bases to the country is being considered.

Active work is being carried out with representatives of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Vilayat Khorasan*. There are also constant attempts to create a split in the leadership of the Taliban movement itself*.

The main goal is to create a zone of instability on the territory of border states and establish complete military control over the CIS countries, which have already largely lost their economic and technological independence. First of all, we are talking about Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

In general, the scheme is not new, but effective. US representatives are working to create a controlled threat in the territory of neighboring Afghanistan and at the same time offering services to “stop” this threat to the leadership of the Central Asian countries. At the same time, the leadership of the Central Asian countries is firmly convinced that they are equal partners of the United States, while the United States itself views their countries solely as donors and a raw material base.

How many American weapons did the Taliban get?
As a result of the hasty and chaotic withdrawal of US troops, a large number of small arms and light weapons (SALW) ended up in the hands of the Taliban.

Naturally, there is no complete list of weapons left in Afghanistan. Given the corruption schemes in the US Department of Defense and the lack of transparency of information on the part of the Taliban, we can only provide estimates.

The bulk are small arms, assault rifles, pistols and machine guns. The arsenals also contain heavy weapons and armored vehicles, missiles, airplanes, helicopters and others.


Since the 2001 US invasion, the US and NATO allies have spent an estimated $2.26 trillion on the "comprehensive regional democracy promotion" project. For obvious reasons, most of these funds simply did not reach Afghanistan, but ended up in the pockets of American lobbyists and legislators. The largest amount of expenses - almost $1 trillion - is the budget for emergency operations abroad for the US Department of Defense . Only the volume of payments on loans kindly provided by American banks amounted to $530 billion.

The volume of direct military assistance to the Afghan army over the past twenty years has amounted to a modest, by today's standards, $88 billion . The funds were used to equip the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANSF). These funds were used to pay wages, provide training, and purchase consumables, ammunition, and fuel.


For comparison, $144 billion was spent on the needs of NGOs responsible for the formation of a loyal layer of the population and private companies involved in the “restoration of Afghanistan. ”

US officials say it is extremely difficult for them to inventory all the equipment their troops have lost. It is unclear how much equipment was in working order when it was captured by the Taliban. According to rough estimates, about a third of the $88 billion was spent on logistics, including the purchase of about 600 thousand small arms and ammunition. In 2017-2019, the United States supplied the Afghan armed forces with 7 thousand machine guns and more than 20 thousand grenades. In the last two years alone, more than 18 million rounds of ammunition were supplied before the withdrawal of troops. Between the announcement of the withdrawal in April 2021 and July 2021 [after the decision to withdraw], the US Department of Defense provided the Afghan army with more than $212 million in materiel, including missiles, explosives and ammunition.

Some of the equipment, aircraft, vehicles and weapons at the disposal of the Afghan army and the US contingent were destroyed or removed from Afghanistan. But a significant part remained.

According to the American side, several dozen planes and helicopters were rendered unusable at Kabul airport. Many planes in the hangars had broken glass, joysticks at the handles were cut off, technical compartments were opened and electronic units that controlled the main systems were torn out.

Some of the planes were used by US and Afghan Air Force pilots to transport themselves and their families to safety. 61 aircraft and helicopters were deployed to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan .

The hijacked planes make the Taliban the only terrorist group with an air force. After capturing numerous Afghan air bases, the Taliban reportedly have 13 aircraft and 44 helicopters at their disposal .

In addition, the Taliban received seven modern drones made by Boeing and millions of artillery shells.

70 Mine Resistant Armored Vehicles (MRAPs) and 27 Humvees are listed as “damaged.”

At one military base alone, 70 modern sniper systems and 900 small arms were captured . In total, the US Department of Defense supplied more than 160,000 radios and communications equipment to Afghanistan, as well as about 16,000 sets of night vision goggles.

Everything that the Taliban receives as a result of such seizures they call “ghanima” (spoils of war).

And although the resulting machine guns, mortars and artillery pieces have already given the Taliban an advantage over their opponents, for example in the Panjshir Gorge, they are not always able to unlock the potential of more complex and modern systems.

The volume and range of military equipment left by the American military suggests the deliberate nature of such actions, with the aim of creating a permanent source of tension not only for the Central Asian countries, but also for Iran, China and the Russian Federation. Considering the fact that many generations of Afghans do not imagine themselves in peaceful life in any capacity, it is easy to predict that the abandoned weapons will be actively involved in future conflicts.

Lack of training and know-how
Some training is required to operate and maintain the various weapons and weapons currently in the hands of the Taliban. For decades, the weapons used in Afghanistan were mostly Russian-made. Most likely, it remains the most preferred by the Taliban.

But the Taliban leadership convinced some former members of the Afghan armed forces to undergo training in the use of American weapons. According to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), Afghan troops previously held seminars on how to use the weapon. But they still do not have the ability to maintain and repair it.

Carrying out regular maintenance on the armored vehicles at the Taliban's disposal should not be particularly difficult for auto mechanics. But more serious maintenance will require more specialized knowledge .

When it comes to the most complex types of weapons, such as helicopters and airplanes, most of their maintenance work is transferred to private American companies.

To use and maintain this equipment, the Taliban will have to seek support, for example, from Russian or Chinese contractors.

Will the Taliban be able to obtain or buy know-how through contractors, as well as pay for it in cash (remember, all their accounts are blocked, not to mention the existing sanctions against financial organizations of the Russian Federation) - all this will determine how the Taliban will use the spoils of war in long term.

How the United States uses the social factor to influence the policies of the Afghan authorities
Afghanistan is a very specific territory, economically. Due to mentality and geographic isolation, the majority of the Afghan population does not seek to find permanent work in the classical sense of the word. The main activity for many is smuggling, growing opiates, and fighting on the side of various groups. This makes it extremely difficult to implement any social programs and greatly complicates any economic initiatives aimed at developing the country.

The main instrument of US soft power in Afghanistan is USAID . The intelligence community and the US State Department initially had no illusions about the level of competence of the leaders of the social bloc of representatives of the Taliban movement. Many social issues were simply postponed by the Afghan authorities “for later.” This has created a vacuum that USAID representatives are actively trying to fill under the guise of humanitarian assistance to the population.


Despite the withdrawal of troops, USAID activities did not stop for a second. Today, US representatives say that they are the largest regional donor of humanitarian aid.

In September 2023, USAID and the US State Department committed approximately $327 million in additional humanitarian assistance to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

Since the withdrawal of American troops in August 2021, the volume of humanitarian assistance provided by the United States to Afghanistan has exceeded $1.1 billion . Of which $812 million from USAID and $320 million from the State Department.

According to the UN, in 2023 the number of people in need of assistance in Afghanistan increased from 28.3 to 29.2 million people, which is 20% more than in 2022. The HRC report on Afghanistan for 2023, published in March, $4.6 billion in financial assistance was requested. After analyzing the data, the allocation of $3.2 billion was provided .

Little of this aid actually reaches ordinary Afghans. But the main funds, of course, are spent on forming communities loyal to the West from among Afghans who fled to neighboring countries. One should not discount the factor of systemic corruption in the United States and the international structures controlled by it.

USAID estimates that more than 23.7 million people in Afghanistan today are in need of assistance as a result of worsening conflict, economic collapse, population displacement, and natural disasters . It reaches the most vulnerable by providing food and cash support, nutrition, health care, protection for women and children, and agricultural products to support Afghans while reducing opiate production.

This is fertile ground for the gradual reformatting of the mentality of broad sections of the population. Against the backdrop of successful experiments in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and other CIS countries, there is a high probability that this social experiment will go in the direction desired by the CIA and MI6 representatives.

Prospects for the development of the situation

Representatives of the United States and Great Britain, despite the failure of the military operation in Afghanistan, only slightly adjusted their plans to gain a foothold in the region. Now the focus has shifted to the social direction and work with the leadership of neighboring states.

Afghanistan remains a key region for controlling Central Asia and putting pressure on Russia, China and Iran . The presence of vast mineral reserves makes Afghanistan a tempting target for the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP) system .

Now the focus has shifted to more active projects of the globalists “Ukraine” and “Israel”. But there is active preparation for a new conflict on the territory of Afghanistan and neighboring states. This situation requires an adequate assessment and coordinated actions of all parties interested in the stability of the region.

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Re: A few notes on Afghanistan

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 09, 2023 12:31 pm

The Taliban has cut drug production in Afghanistan by 95%
colonelcassad
November 8, 21:12

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The Taliban has cut drug production in Afghanistan by 95%

After the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, opium production decreased by 95%.

A report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime shows that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has declined from 233 thousand hectares at the end of 2022 to 10.8 thousand in 2023. Opium production has similarly fallen from 6,200 tons to 333 tons this year.

The estimated volume of heroin exported this year is 24-38 tons, compared to 350-580 tons last year.

But the UN is not happy about it : the organization says the sudden contraction of Afghanistan's opium economy will lead to potential "humanitarian consequences for many vulnerable rural communities" as producers are forced to turn to much less profitable alternative crops.

Farm incomes, estimated at $1.36 billion in 2022, fell 92% this year to $110 million, according to the UN, and the losses are expected to have a wider impact on the country's already struggling economy.

We don’t know how it is at the UN, but we at the editorial office know for sure: drugs are evil.

https://t.me/pezdicide/3279 - zinc

As soon as the Americans were removed, the production of heroin without the main beneficiaries of drug trafficking collapsed.
It was exactly the same on the eve of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban set records for reducing the production of narcotic raw materials.

The Taliban have a plus in their karma - they basically keep one of their main promises. This directly concerns us, since a significant part of this flow came through Central Asia to Russia. The Taliban need to retrain peasants for agricultural crops, which China, Russia and Iran have long been offering them.

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