An Afghan tragedy unfolding

There are no positives to elicit from the disaster that has befallen Afghanistan. Joe Biden and Boris Johnson and a host of other western government types are looking earnest and saying how important it is to get everyone out of the country as quickly and as safely as possible but no one in power seems yet ready to admit that they have been responsible for one of the great strategic failures of modern times or acknowledge deep concern that the decision to pull out all troops and abandon the Afghans to Taliban brutality has given the people of that country a bleak and scary future. Biden owes the US people and the Afghan people an explanation and although he won't apologise for what he has done, at least an acknowledgement that his policy hasn't quite worked out the way he hoped or expected. There are now more foreign troops in Afghanistan than at any time in recent months but they are all at Kabul airport guarding the place as thousands of people desperately try to get on planes out of Afghanistan. It's a sorry sorry sight and a tragedy of appalling proportions.

Joe Biden can't blame Trump

It is perfectly accurate to say Donald Trump was responsible for a terrible strategic decision by effectively handing Afghanistan to the Taliban after telling them he wanted to pull out all US troops by the end of May 2021. All the insurgents had to do was bide their time till then. But that was the decision of Trump and his administration. Joe Biden has been in power since January 20 and he decided, he alone, to carry on with the Trump error but the only difference is he set a new timetable for withdrawal. That's all he did. What he didn't do was say Trump was so wrong he was going to scrap the agreement made in Qatar on February 29 last year. So he can't now claim, as he has done, that it was all Trump's fault that we are in the mess we are now in, with the Taliban back in control of the country. Biden is the president of the United States and commander-in-chief. He can do what he wants and he wanted to leave Afghanistan. So the buck stops with him and him alone.

Taliban leaders responsible for today's mayhem

The Taliban leaders who have waged war for most of their adult life have been plotting their return to power ever since they were toppled in 2001. Their founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, died in April 2013 and his successor, Akhtar Mansour, was killed in a US drone strike near the Afghan-Pakistan border in 2016. The third figure to take control of the Afghanistan Taliban has been remorseless in his aim to defeat the US-led coalition and to bring the Taliban back into power. The leader for the last five years who, like his predecessors, is rarely seen in public, is Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada. About 60 years old, he is known as the Leader of the Faithful. An Islamic legal scholar he rules over all the group’s political, religious and military activities, and is believed to be in hiding in Quetta in Pakistan. Other key members of the top echelon of Taliban leaders include Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the co-founders of the Taliban and deputy leader in charge of the group’s political office. He is a member of the negotiating team which led to the ill-fated deal between the insurgents and the US, signed on February 29, 2020 in Doha, capital of Qatar. Two other deputy leaders are Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, the son of the late Mullah Omar, in his 30s, who is in charge of military operations, and Sirajuddin Haqqani who is head of the Haqqani terrorist network which is allied to the Taliban. Mullah Abdul Hakim, a former chief justice in the Taliban courts, is the head of the negotiating team in Dohaand is one of the most trusted associates of the overall Taliban leader. The biggest coup for the Taliban leadership came in 2014 when the US agreed to release five of their most experienced figures from the US Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba where they had been held without charge as suspected “war combatants”. They won their freedom in return for the release by the Taliban of the US Army’s Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier taken prisoner by the insurgents. The five former Guantanamo detainees, Khirullah Sai Wali Khairkhwa, former interior minister in the Taliban government, Mohammad Fazi, ex-Taliban army chief, Norullah Noori, a former provincial governor, Abdul Haq Wasiq, ex-deputy chief of intelligence, and Mohammad Nabi Omari who is closely linked to the Haqqani network, were selected to join the negotiating team in Doha.

Why it went all wrong in Afghanistan

MY ANALYSIS IN THE TIMES TODAY: The Taliban have taken the Pentagon and the White House by surprise by the speed with which they have overrun Afghanistan since American and coalition troops began withdrawing to a timetable set by President Joe Biden. From talking peace and power-sharing to American negotiators in Qatar early last year, the Taliban have reverted to type and demonstrated their dependence on brutality and unrelenting ferocity to try and snatch back the country they lost in 2001. The insurgents are at the gates of Kabul while the US, Britain and other coalition countries rush to evacuate their diplomats and civilian workers, sending thousands of troops to ensure their safety. And yet this scenario was inevitable. It is almost beyond comprehension that anyone, let alone those in power in the West, should be surprised by what is happening in Afghanistan. The Taliban promised peace solely in order to win a commitment from the US to withdraw all troops by May 2021, under President Trump’s timetable, subsequently changed to September 11 by President Biden and then revised to August 31. The date of the final withdrawal didn’t matter to the Taliban. They had the green light to launch an offensive, provided they didn’t attack US forces, and did so with their own version of America’s “shock and awe” tactics. As John Kirby, chief spokesman for the Pentagon said yesterday: “No one’s pleased to see.....that the Taliban continues to act as if they believe the only path to governance is through violence and brutality and aggression and force.” On the face of it, in sheer numbers, the Taliban were facing poor odds, with 75,000 fighters under their command up against 350,000 Afghan troops and police. But the Taliban were always going to win because once the American and coalition troops and advisers and firepower had left the country, there was no one in charge in Kabul capable of masterminding a battle plan to stop the insurgents from seizing districts and cities. Afghan special forces, easily the best-trained and most capable fighters, were deployed to defend the cities but they lacked the reinforcements and logistical back-up so desperately needed to continue the fight. Retreat became the only option. The Pentagon and White House have repeatedly stated in recent weeks that it was now up to the Afghan government to demonstrate leadership and use the advantages the US-led coalition had provided at such financial and human cost. But the sacking this week of the Afghan army chief said everything. The Kabul government has nothing left in its locker. While this may grievously disappoint all the US military commanders who tried to nurture their Afghan counterparts to take charge of an anti-Taliban force, it should never be forgotten that Afghanistan’s security forces have suffered an appalling attrition rate at the hands of the insurgents. President Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan leader, revealed in 2019 that 45,000 members of the security forces had been killed since 2014 when he took power. Since then the Kabul government has refused to issue casualty figures but in recent days the toll has been devastating. Biden was advised by all the top US military chiefs, including the two most intimately involved in Afghanistan - General Frank McKenzie, commander of Central Command, and General Scott Miller, the last leader of US forces there - to leave 3,500 US troops in the country as a safeguard and deterrent. Not to continue waging war but as a strategic presence to back up and motivate the Kabul government. Biden rejected the advice and now his political legacy will be damaged by the mayhem that decision has created.

Total appalling disaster in Afghanistan

I can hardly bear reading and seeing what is going on in Afghanistan. The Taliban are the most brutal vengeful alleged human beings on the planet. Tens of thousands of Afghans are fleeing from the Taliban-controlled towns and cities and arriving in Kabul with nowhere to sleep, no food and no water and the Adghan government is hopeless and can't cope. Afghan males related to Afghan soldiers are being killed, children are being killed, women are being beaten for not wearing the right headgear. The Taliban are seizing cities every day and the US military now fears Kabul could fall in 90 days. The withdrawal of all US and coalition troops was wrong, strategically, morally, humanely. The world should be angry. Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, warns the Taliban that if they take control of Afghanistan they will never be recognised by the international community. Ha!! Really?!! And President Joe Biden declares that he has no regrets about withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan and feels it's time for the Afghan government to stand on its own two feet. The tragedy is getting worse by the day and it makes me both angry and tearful!

Andrew Cuomo does the right thing for once

When facing a barrage of sexual harassment allegations going back years, it doesn't matter who you are, you should either resign from the job where the alleged offences took place or get arrested. Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, had resisted resignation despite a mass of accusations coming from women who claim to have been sexually abused. Now he has at last resigned. It is extraordinary in this day and age for a man in a position of power to treat women badly and believe he can get away with it. Even more shocking than the alleged Cuomo transgressions was the statement by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Representative for New York, that she feared she was going to be raped and killed during the terrifying riot inside the Capitol on January 6. It still seems staggering to me that there are still Republican senators who try to claim that January 6 was just a boisterous event and neither a riot nor a coup attempt. Yet here we have an elected member of the House of Representatives saying she feared for her life. It does make you wonder whether a woman will ever be elected president in the United States. I hope I'm wrong.

Collapse of the Afghan national security forces

FULLER VERSION OF MY TIMES STORY: The rapid Taliban advances and collapse of part of the Afghan national security forces were the direct result of a “strategic error” by the US, a former American commander in Afghanistan told The Times. “For the United States, the strategic cost of potentially losing Afghanistan will be significant, but for ordinary Afghans, the impact will be deadly and utterly catastrophic,” said Lieutenant-General David Barno, commander of US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. “The rapidly unfolding tragedy in Afghanistan is a direct result of an unforced strategic error, started by President Trump ‘s administration and continued by President Biden, to pull the small number of US troops and American contractors out of the country,” Barno said. “The results have been predictable: rapid Taliban advances, rising murders and atrocities and a worrisome collapse of parts of the Afghan national security forces which relied upon US and Nato support to continue to effectively battle the Taliban,” he said. He warned: “This deepening conflict now has the potential to be a major foreign policy disaster for the Biden administration, and one which was wholly avoidable.” “The benefits of sustaining even a small US presence are now obvious, whereas the cost of withdrawing those forces are going to play out for years to come,” Barno said. His grim warning of the future facing the Afghan people was echoed by Andrew Krepinevich, a former senior Pentagon official and colonel in the US Army. He said the US had failed to prevent the return of “a hostile radical Islamist regime that suppresses many basic rights, especially women’s rights”. He accused the US of “walking away” from this objective which had been accomplished until the decision to pull out all troops. “While China continues to place new pieces on the international chessboard in the form of base and port development in the Indo-Pacific, we are instead abandoning a key square on the geostrategic chessboard .” he said.