Long Post But Timely: Afghanistan turmoil right now: Fill in the blanks – historically and factually-speaking vis-à-vis Biden changing the withdrawal from May 2021 (Trump’s deal date) and his September 11, 2021 date.
Biden’s withdrawal date change (May to September) shift is stated here
from Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Adviser, via is appearance ABC's Good
Morning America. He said: “We spent 20 years, tens of billions of
dollars training the [Afghan security forces], giving them
equipment, giving them support of U.S. forces, for 20 years. The
question facing the president back in April, and again as we've gone
forward, is should U.S. men and women be put into the middle
of another country's civil war when their own army won't fight to
defend them? And his answer to that question was no.”
Full
story here from the AP – key parts follows with this headline:
“U.S.
to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by September 11”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will withdraw all U.S.
troops from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist
attacks on America that were coordinated from that country, several U.S.
officials have said. The decision defies the May 1 deadline for full withdrawal
under the February 2020 peace agreement that Trump had reached with the Taliban
(but again note: Wherein the Afghan
government did not participate in), and that leaves no room for additional
extensions. A senior Biden administration official called the September date an
absolute deadline that won’t be affected by security conditions in the country.
While Biden’s decision keeps U.S. troops in Afghanistan four months longer than initially planned, it sets a firm end to two decades of war that killed more than 2,200 U.S. troops, wounded 20,000, and cost as much as $1 trillion.
The conflict largely crippled al-Qaeda and led to the death of Osama
bin Laden, the architect of the September 11 attacks by Navy SEALS in May 2011
in Pakistan.
However, any American
withdrawal also risks many of the gains made in democracy, women’s rights, and
governance, while ensuring that the Taliban, who provided al-Qaeda’s safe
haven, remain strong and in control of large swaths of the country.
Biden has been hinting for weeks that he was going to let
the May deadline lapse, and as the days went by it became clear that an orderly
withdrawal of the roughly 2,500 remaining troops would be difficult and was
unlikely. The administration official said the drawdown would begin by May 1.
Biden’s choice of the 9/11 date underscores the reason that
American troops were in Afghanistan to begin with — to prevent extremist groups
like al-Qaeda from establishing a foothold again that could be used to launch
attacks against the U.S.
The administration official said Biden decided that the withdrawal
deadline had to be absolute, rather than based on conditions on the ground officials
saying: “We’re committing today to going to zero U.S. forces by September 11,
and possibly well before since President Biden concluded that a conditioned
withdrawal would be a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever.”
A Taliban spokesman,
Zabihullah Mujahed, told The AP that the religious militia is waiting for a
formal Biden announcement to issue its reaction.
NOTE: The Taliban previously warned the U.S. of “consequences” if
it reneged on the May 1 deadline (set by agreement with Trump but w/o
Afghanistan government input).
In the February 2020 Trump-Taliban agreement, the Taliban
agreed to halt attacks and hold peace talks with the Afghan government in
exchange for a U.S. commitment to a complete withdrawal by May 2021, and over
the past year, U.S. commanders and defense officials have said that those have
largely paused, but that Taliban attacks on the Afghans has increased.
NOTE: U.S. commanders
also have argued that the Taliban have failed to meet the conditions of the February
2020 agreement by continuing attacks on Afghan forces, failing to totally cut
ties with al-Qaeda, and other extremist groups.
When Biden entered the White House in January, he was keenly
aware of the looming deadline and had time to meet it if he had chosen to do
so.
He began a
review of the February 2020 agreement shortly after taking office, and has been
consulting at length with his defense advisers and allies on that aspect, and
in recent weeks, it became increasingly clear that he was leaning toward
defying the May deadline, saying in March: “It’s going to be hard to meet the
May 1 deadline. Just in terms of tactical reasons, it’s hard to get those
troops out. And if we leave, we’re going to do so in a safe and orderly way.”
-------------------------------------------------------
Major breaking news on
the mess in Afghanistan with this headline from Business Insider:
“Afghan President Ashraf Ghani flees
Afghanistan for Tajikistan as Taliban fighters enter Kabul”
Biden said
in a statement: “One more year, or five more years, of US military presence
would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold
its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another
country's civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”
I totally agree with Biden
– if that country can’t defend itself, then no amount of American blood, sweat,
tears, or money will do it for them. Twenty-years of our entanglement there is
enough. If they can’t or won’t hold their own – then as President Biden says,
we can’t do it for them, period.
Original story and my related posts are here and here.
I ask you to focus on Trump’s actions or inactions that got us to the point in the first place and in this mess with his May plan (and, again without input from any Afghan government officials).
History of the
Taliban:
First, who are the Taliban and their rise to power: The Taliban, (aka: “Students” in the Pashto language), emerged in the early 1990’s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
This predominantly Pashtun movement (e.g., a movement of religious students (Talib) from the Pashtun areas of
eastern and southern Afghanistan who were educated in traditional Islamic
schools in Pakistan.
They first appeared in religious seminaries – mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia – which preached “a hardline form of Sunni Islam” (that is one of the two major branches of Islam which consists of the majority of that religion's followers.
Sunni Muslims
regard their denomination as the mainstream and traditionalist branch of Islam,
and it is distinguished from the minority denomination: the Shia).
Major Taliban
Prohibitions:
1. They
prevent girls and women from attending school.
2. They ban
women and girls from working in public places.
3. They
require women to be accompanied by a male relative.
4. They
demand women wear a burqa at all times when in public.
5. Penalties
for breaking these or other rules resulted in public whippings or even
executions.
6. All
religious and ethnic minorities were heavily discriminated.
7. The
Taliban and their allies were responsible for 76% of Afghan civilian casualties
in 2019; 80% in 2010; and again, 80% in 2011 and 2012 (Cite: UN
report).
8. They
engage in cultural genocide – that is destroying numerous
monuments (1500-year old Buddhas of Bamiyan).
Historical notes:
1. On February 27, 2018, following an increase in violence, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (elected in 2014) proposed unconditional peace talks with the Taliban, offering them recognition as a legal political party and the release of the Taliban prisoners.
That offer was
the most favorable to the Taliban since the war started. That was preceded by
months of national consensus building, which found that Afghans overwhelmingly
supported a negotiated end to the war.
2. On February 25, 2018 – two days earlier, the Taliban called for talks
with the U.S. saying: “It must now
be established by America and her allies that the Afghan issue cannot be solved
militarily. America must henceforth focus on a peaceful strategy for
Afghanistan instead of war.”
On March 27, 2018, a conference of 20 countries in Tashkent, Uzbekistan backed the Afghan government's peace offer to the Taliban. However, the Taliban did not publicly respond to Ghani's offer.
A growing peace movement arose in Afghanistan during the rest of 2018 in various forms. One in particular following a peace march by the People's Peace Movement, which the Afghan media dubbed the “Helmand Peace Convoy.”
That peace march was in response
to a car bomb on March 23 in Lashkar Gah that killed 14 people. The marchers
walked several hundred miles from Lashkar
Gah in Helmand Province, through Taliban-held territory to the
capital in Kabul.
There they met Ghani and held sit-in protests outside the UN Mission in Afghanistan and nearby embassies. Their efforts inspired further movements in other parts of Afghanistan.
Following that peace march, Ghani and
the Taliban agreed a mutual ceasefire during
the Eid al-Fitr celebration (e.g., the end of
the month-long fasting of Ramadan) in June 2018. During
the Eid ceasefire, Taliban members flocked into Kabul where they met and
communicated with locals and state security forces.
Although civilians called
for the ceasefire to be made permanent, the Taliban rejected an extension and
resumed fighting after the ceasefire ended on June 18, 2018 – the Afghan
government's ceasefire ended a week later.
In July 2018, American officials secretly met Taliban
members at their political
office in Qatar.
In September 2018, Trump appointed Zalmay
Khalilzad as special adviser on Afghanistan in the US State
Department, with the stated goal of facilitating an intra-Afghan political
peace process.
In October 2018, Khalilzad led talks between the U.S. and
the Taliban in.
In November 2018 and noteworthy: Russia also hosted a
separate peace talk between the Taliban and officials from Afghanistan's High
Peace Council.
In December 2018, the peace
talks in Qatar resumed even though the Taliban refused to allow the Afghan
government to be invited, saying they considered them a puppet government of
the U.S.
In February 2019, the
Taliban spoke with Afghans including former President Hamid
Karzai at a hotel in Moscow. As before, those talks did not include the Afghan government.
In late February 2019, a further
round of talks was held in Qatar, and they included Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar
(aka: Mullah Baradar Akhund and Mullah Brother), the co-founder of the Taliban
in Afghanistan and his Taliban delegation, and he was also the deputy of Mullah
Mohammed Omar – invited at the request of the U.S.
NOTE: In February 2010, Baradar was captured in Pakistan by a team of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the CIA, and held until his release on October 24, 2018.
Since his
release he has played an increasingly influential role within the Afghan
Taliban movement.
U.S. Envoy Khalilzad reported that this round of
negotiations was “more productive than they have been in the past” and that a
draft version of a peace agreement had been agreed. The deal involved the
withdrawal of U.S. and international troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban
not allowing other jihadist groups to operate within the country. The Taliban
also announced that progress was being made in the negotiations.
In February and May 2019, a delegation of Taliban officials
and senior Afghan politicians met in Moscow for
peace talks as Reuters reported at the time: “Russian officials as well as
religious leaders and elders had asked for a ceasefire.”
Between April 29 and May 3, 2019, the Afghan government
hosted a four-day Loya Jirga (e.g., a legal assembly) to discuss peace
talks. The Taliban were invited but did not attend.
Later in May, a third meeting was held in Moscow between a
Taliban delegation and a group of Afghan politicians.
In August 2019, an eighth round of U.S.-Taliban talks in
Qatar was held.
The Washington Post reported that the U.S. was close to reaching a peace deal with the Taliban and was preparing to withdraw 5,000 troops from Afghanistan.
In September, Khalilzad stated that an agreement had been reached by the U.S. and the Taliban, pending approval by Trump.
However, less than a week later, Trump canceled the peace talks in
response to an attack in Kabul that killed an American soldier and 11 other
people.
On September 18, 2019, the Taliban stated that their “doors are open should Trump decide to resume peace talks in the future.”
Following the
collapse of the talks with the U.S., the Taliban sent a delegation to Russia,
China, Pakistan, and Iran to discuss prospects for a withdrawal of U.S. troops
from Afghanistan.
In December 2019, a seven-day partial ceasefire had been greed
to and effective on February 22, 2020. Now all that was for naught.
My 2 Cents: Based on all
this and current events in Afghanistan, still it’s a sin to blame Trump, right?
Yep – why?
Simple: To keep him in the
limelight in a positive way to pave the way for 2022 and beyond with the GOP’s
#1 strategy (change voting laws to ensure they never lose again) and along the
way, blame the DEMS for everything and shame Joe Biden by smearing is son Hunter
Biden. So, what’s the connection to all this?
Really not much, except to
harm Biden and his presidency anyway possible by inflicting as much damage and turmoil
as possible for GOP's benefit.
All-in-all, it’s just a raw
nasty Trump and GOP tactics (same old version) designed to keep the GOP base in
tow along with the scared GOP congress thus giving Trump full rein and control to run and operate the GOP and basically to do
whatever he damn well pleases in 2022 and beyond.
This is a sad, dangerous time
at this point in our history. Stay tuned, it’s apt to get much uglier down the
road.
Thanks for stopping by.
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