Monthly Archives: August 2021

Jens Stoltenberg, 13th Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is talks to the media at the NATO headquarter on February 11, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium.

Thierry Monasse/ Getty Images

WASHINGTON NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg placed the blame squarely on the Afghan national government Tuesday for thestunning and swift Taliban takeover, echoing remarks President Joe Biden made a day earlier.

"Ultimately the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban and achieve the peaceful solution that Afghans desperately wanted," Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO's headquarters in Brussels.

"Despite our considerable investment and sacrifice over two decades, the collapse was swift and sudden. There are many lessons to be learned," he said, adding that "the failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today."

In April, the 30-member military alliance alongside the U.S. announced the withdrawal of Afghanistan-based troops. The inception of the NATO mission in Afghanistan stems from the groups' mutual defense clause, known as Article 5.

The alliance has only invoked Article 5 once in its history in defense of the United States in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

American forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 after the group harbored Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Two years later, U.S. troops invaded Iraq, a move aimed at removing then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"NATO allies and partners went into Afghanistan after 9/11 to prevent the country from serving as a safe haven for international terrorists to attack us. In the last two decades, there have been no terrorist attacks on allied soil organized from Afghanistan," Stoltenberg said.

"Today's Afghanistan is very different from Afghanistan of 2001," he added.

Stoltenberg's remarks come one day after Biden criticized Afghanistan's political leadership for allowing rapid Taliban gains across the country amid the departure of U.S. and NATO forces.

"The truth is this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated," Biden said in a speech from the White House, adding that he had been assured by now-deposed PresidentAshraf Ghanithat the U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan troops would hold their positions.

"Mr. Ghani insisted the Afghan forces would fight, but obviously he was wrong," Biden said.

Despite being vastly outnumbered by the Afghan military, which has long been assisted by U.S. and coalition forces,the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday.

Earlier on Sunday, Ghani fled the country as Western nations rushed to evacuate embassies amid a deteriorating security situation.

"American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves," Biden said. "We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them with the will to fight for that future."

"I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years I've learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces," Biden said in a memorable speech delivered from the East Room of the White House.

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NATO blames the 'failure of Afghan leadership' for Taliban's swift takeover - CNBC

Dutch forces at the Battle of Chora.

Back in the summer of 2007 when I first landed in Afghanistan to cover the war, I assumed I was too late.

The U.S.-led occupation was six years old. Fighting was sporadic. The Bush administration was surging forces into Iraq in a desperate bid to quell violence it had unleashed in that country. Attention was elsewhere.

For the United States, Afghanistan was a strategic afterthought. That soon would change.

What wouldnt change were the basic conditions on the ground. Even in 2007, signs were everywhere pointing to fragmentation, insecurity, an illegitimate and essentially powerless central government and an enduring insurgency.

I was too young at the timejust 29to understand what I was seeing. Looking back 14 years later, it all makes more sense. After the years-long draw-down of U.S. and NATO forcessteady at first, swift in the endthe Taliban easily recaptured Afghanistan last week.

U.S. and allied troops fell back to Kabuls airport. A last toehold in an new Islamic emirate.

An emergency airlift began hauling out thousands of embassy staff, foreign contractors and Afghans who had worked for occupying countries. Tens of thousands of other Afghans mobbed the airport and chased taxiing planes, hopingmostly in futilityfor rescue.

An Australian soldier in Tarin Kowt.

Back in June 2007, I rode a NATO helicopter to Tarin Kowt, a dusty town in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan. A contingent of Dutch soldiers patrolled the town, glad-handed with provincial officials and trained a local warlords gunmen as auxiliary police. An Australian reconstruction team ran a trade school.

On the afternoon of June 15, I drove into Tarin Kowt with the Australians. An infantry squad kept guard as engineers built a soccer field for the local kids.

Nearby, a Dutch convoy threaded along the towns narrow streets for a meeting with some local officials. I couldnt see the Dutch troops from where I stood. But when the bomb exploded alongside the convoy, I sure as hell saw that. And heard it, too. A deep crack sound.

The blast killed Pvt. Timo Smeehuijzen, a popular young Dutch soldier, along with several Afghan school children. Later, I watched video of the attack. The children, their bodies shattered by the bomb, died slowly, moaning like something out of a horror movie.

The Australians raised their weapons. But the ambush was over. In truth, the bomb merely was a preview of things to come. The next day, scores of Taliban attacked the nearby town of Chora. The fighting would continue for several days and kill nearly 200 people.

Dutch troops hunkered down at the district center. An American Apache helicopter fired a missile, killing dozens of Taliban hiding in a farmhouse. Dutch F-16s dropped bombs. A Dutch howitzer fired shells.

Warlord Rozi Khan offered to help the NATO troops. Col. Hans van Griensven, the Dutch commander, was skeptical. Warlords such as Khan had a bad habit of switching sides. But the situation in Chora was dire. There were reports the Taliban were forcing local men to fight.

A rocket struck an American convoy in Tarin Kowt, killing U.S. Army staff sergeant Roy Lewsader Jr. I picked on him and teased him about his hair, the way he ate or slept, just about anything I could think of, his younger brother Mark said. I dont claim him as a hero, I claim his as a brother.

A piper plays as Dutch troops move Timo Smeehuijzen's remains.

Dutch and Australian troops seized a strategic road. Afghan reinforcements arrived by helicopter. A mortar shell malfunctioned and exploded, killing Dutch sergeant-major Jos Leunissen. At one time, six F-16s were in the air over Chora.

The bombing broke the Taliban force. On June 19, Khan and the NATO troops counterattacked and recaptured Chora.

Officials tallied the dead. One American. Two Dutch. Sixteen Afghan fighters. Seventy-one Taliban. Sixty-five civilians. A NATO inquiry blamed many of the civilian deaths on the alliances F-16s and artillery.

Khans fighters, some of them wearing the uniform of the Afghan National Auxiliary Police, had helped win the battle for NATO. But it was a pyrrhic victory. It was clear the cops answered to Khan, not to NATO or the Afghan government.

The auxiliary police force was barely trained, had poorly defined rules of engagement, underwent minimal vetting and was famously corrupt, Human Rights Watch explained. They were abusive, hijacked by warlords and open to infiltration by the Taliban.

NATO quietly shut down the auxiliary police program, only to restart it under a different nameAfghan Local Policea few years later. The rebranding did not solve the fundamental problem. The most important fighters in Afghanistan answered to unelected local leaders with local agendas.

Hundreds of Dutch and Australian troops gathered for Smeehuijzens memorial service. I dont speak Dutch, so I didnt understand the words. But the words were beside the point. All around me, men wept.

Australian troops accidentally shot and killed Khan during a nighttime operation in 2008. The Dutch left Uruzgan in 2010. The Taliban seized the provinceincluding Chora and Tarin Kowton Friday.

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In 2007, NATO Needed A Warlord To Beat the Taliban. Signs Of Eventual Collapse Were Everywhere. - Forbes

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS. Observers from four NATO countries will take part in the Army-2021 International Army Games that will run for the seventh time, Russian Defense Minister Army General Sergei Shoigu said in an interview with the Defense Ministrys Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on Wednesday.

"This year, we will have 11 groups of observers who will arrive for the Games and four of them will be from NATO countries," Russias defense chief said.

The 7th Army-2021 International Army Games will run on August 22-September 4, 2021. Apart from Russia, competitions in some categories will run on the territory of 11 states, Shoigu said.

Some stages of the International Army Games will run in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, Iran, Uzbekistan, and also Algeria, Vietnam, Serbia and Qatar that will host the competitions for the first time. The international Army Games will bring together over 280 teams from 43 states. Six countries will send their teams for the first time. These are Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cyprus, Malaysia, Cameroon and Ecuador.

Link:
Observers from four NATO countries to take part in International Army Games Shoigu - TASS

Former Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachevon Tuesday said he believes thatNATO and the United States had no chance of garnering success from entering Afghanistan.

Gorbachev, who previously oversawthe withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, said that while he now regards the Soviet presence in Afghanistan as a mistake, Americans and NATO have mishandled their campaign in the country as well.

"They should have admitted failure earlier,"Gorbachev, 90, told RIA. "The important thing now is to draw the lessons from what happened and make sure that similar mistakes are not repeated."

Gorbachev told the the Russian state-owned news outlet, according to Reuters,that the U.S. goals in Afghanistan were unrealistic.

"[The U.S. campaign] was a failed enterprise from the start even though Russia supported it during the first stages," he added. "Like many other similar projects at its heart lay the exaggeration of a threat and poorly defined geopolitical ideas. To that were added unrealistic attempts to democratize a society made up of many tribes."

The United States entered Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks during the administration of President George W. Bush. It initially was a campaign to go after al Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the attacks, but was criticized over the years as a nation-building effort.

In ending the campaign, President BidenJoe BidenUtah 'eager' to assist with resettling Afghan refugees: governor Pelosi presses moderate Democrats amid budget standoff Democrat on Biden's claim some Afghans didn't want to leave earlier: 'Utter BS' MORE, who has come under fierce criticism for his handling of the U.S. exit, said he would not hand the war to a fifth U.S. president.

Afghanistan's Soviet-backed officials governed for three years after Soviet troops left the country. That government fell three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to aid being cut off from Moscow,Reuters noted.

Biden defended his decision on Monday despite the increased criticism.

I stand squarely behind my decision, Biden said at the time. After 20 years, Ive learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.

Read this article:
Gorbachev says US, NATO had no chance of success in Afghanistan | TheHill - The Hill

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN) The Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in December, 1979 and withdrew, exhausted and demoralized, 10 years later. In Moscow a joke had long circulated: Why are we still in Afghanistan? Answer: We are still looking for the people who invited us.

The same is true for the Americans and NATO who are now moving through the exit door. They came to obliterate Al Qaeda after 9/11, 2001.

There was certainly no invitation issued by the Afghani government, then controlled by the militant Taliban. The US was angry that Afghanistan sheltered Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, and didnt have the time of day or desire to discuss an invitation.

After an air and ground campaign the outsiders savaged Al Qaedas fighters. Its rump, including bin Laden, fled to the barely accessible mountains of Pakistan. Ordinary Afghans had never really liked al-Qaeda and they certainly never equated their home-grown Islamist movement, the Taliban, with the Arab-led extremists.

Yet the US and its allies were not prepared to declare victory and leave. They changed the goalposts and stayed on to confront the Taliban, determined to drive them into the ground and to nurture the creation of a democratic government. But there was still no invitation from the people at large. Only after the longest war in American history are the US and NATO now leaving. The tail is between their legs as diplomats, chosen Afghanis and aid people scramble on to the military planes packed to the gills. Some Afghanis who have supported the NATO and American-implanted government have been filmed clinging to the wheels and wings of an enormous transporter as it taxied down the runway.

As Jonathan Steele writes in his seminal book, The Ghosts of Afghanistan, The principal ghosts are the dead on every side. In 35 years of unfinished civil war, made worse by foreign intervention, close to 15,000 Soviet dead, over 1,500 Americans, nearly 400 British and 500 from other countries. Above all, the sons and daughters of Afghanistan itself: some 20,000 troops and as many as two million civilians. Hundreds, if not thousands, of aid workers have also been killed.

American involvement began with President Jimmy Carters decision, fashioned by his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to send in covert military aid to the mujahedin that were trying to end the Soviet occupation. They did. Brzezinskis ambition was, in his words, to give the Soviets their Vietnam and to undermine the political stability of the USSR. Seen from this vantage point, Brzezinskis strategy was a brilliant success.

The victorious mujahedin, always a fissiparous group, despite US and Saudi Arabian military aid, were eventually dominated by the Taliban who imposed a peace that lasted until the massive bombing launched by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11. Then the Taliban was forced out of Kabul and has continued ever since to wage war with the Western invaders. Despite all the blows received from much superior forces it has emerged victorious. The Taliban always said: The Americans have the watches, we have the time.

As the Westerners leave, we have to recognize that some good has been done thanks to Western governmental and NGO aid. Afghanistan now has some good roads, electricity, many more hospitals, clinics and schools, (including girl pupils), with a fast-declining infant mortality rate, increased longevity, and much increased economic activity. But no one can honestly say that it was right to achieve all this by wielding the sword. It could have been done and should have been done by working with a Taliban-led government. This work should continue.

The US leaves Afghanistan in a better state than it did Vietnam or Iraq. However, it took the long road round the mountain20 years of warfare to do what could have been done with a good, well thought out, aid program, in half the time. (Ive seen the speed and efficiency of a fast aid program at work in Uganda after the fall of President Idi Amin who had devastated the country.)

Afghanistans future, to say the least, is unclear. The new Taliban-led government must face the fact it has to forge a kind of power-sharing deal with the secularized middle class of Kabul.

The country is awash with guns. It has been traumatized by war. The omens are not good.

Afghanistan remains one of the worlds messes. If only the US and NATO had limited themselves to destroying Al Qaeda, Afghanistan would have remained an introverted Islamist backwater, slowly but steadily developing with outside aid, capable of harming no one but itself.

About the author: The writer was for 17 years a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune, now the New York Times. He has also written many dozens of columns for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. He is the European who has appeared most on the opinion pages of these papers. Visit his website: http://www.jonathanpowerjournalist.com [IDN-InDepthNews 17 August 2021]

Photo: NATO Allies decided on 14 April 2021 to start withdrawing forces from the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan by May 1, with plans to complete the drawdown of all troops within a few months. Credit: NATO

IDN is the flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate.

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After US and NATO Withdrawal, Afghanistan's Future Is Unclear - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

Thomas Catenacci

Leaders of the U.K., Germany and other Western nations bemoaned the stunning fall of Afghanistan, while foes such as China and Iran criticized the role the U.S. played in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens StoltenbergsaidTuesday that there were many lessons to be learned from the swift and sudden collapse of Afghanistan. Led by the U.S.,thousandsof NATO service members have fought in Afghanistan since 2001.

We were always aware of the risks that Taliban could regain control. That was stated clearly when we made the decision to end our military presence, Stoltenberg told reporters during a press briefing. But it was a surprise, the speed of the collapse, and how swiftly that happened.

Prior to the briefing, NATO convened an emergency meeting with leaders of several of its 30 member states to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the Taliban invaded andcapturedKabul, Afghanistans capital, the culmination of the groupsmulti-week effortto take control of the country. The complete fall of the government, which the U.S.helped put in placein 2002, came mere months after President Joe Bidenannouncedhis administrations plans to pull all of the remaining American troops out of the country by Sept. 11, 2021.

Janez Jansa, the prime minister of NATO member Slovenia, characterized the rapid collapse of Afghanistan as the greatest defeat for NATO in history on Monday,accordingto the Associated Press. Jansa noted themassive handoverof NATO weaponry, equipment and vehicles to the Taliban.

The situation remains very difficult and its clear that there is going to be a new government in Kabul or a new political dispensation, however you want to put it, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnsonsaidin a video statement Sunday. I think its very important that the West collectively should work together to get over to that new government, be it by the Taliban or anybody else, that nobody wants Afghanistan once again to be a breeding ground for terror.

Johnson held calls withStoltenberg,French President Emmanuel MacronandGerman Chancellor Angela Merkelover the last few days. The leaders all agreed the West had a role to play in preventing a humanitarian crisis and facilitating the evacuation of thousands of foreign nationals from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan must not become the haven for terrorists that it once was, Macron told the French public on Monday, Reutersreported. It is a challenge for peace and international stability, against a common enemy.

He added that France would welcome its fair share of Afghan refugees fleeing out of concern for their safety.

Since the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan we have had to watch the Taliban, with breathtaking speed, province for province, town for town, reconquer the entire country, Merkel said Monday in a national address of her own,accordingto Reuters. This is an absolutely bitter development: Bitter, dramatic and awful, especially for the people in Afghanistan.

We need to make sure that the many people who have big worries and concerns, even though they have not worked with German institutions, have a secure stay in countries neighboring Afghanistan, she continued.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed the British, French and German leaders and committed to welcoming thousands of refugees, CTV Newsreported. Trudeau described the situation as extremely dire, saying Canada has already accepted 500 refugees and plans to accept hundreds more.

We take very seriously the situation, Trudeau said.

Biden hasnt discussed Afghanistan with any world leaders yet, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivansaidon Tuesday.

To be honest, people have been shocked by the chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport on television and the internet since yesterday, especially the video clips capturing some unfortunately falling to their deaths after clinging to the landing gear of a U.S. aircraft to evacuate, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunyingtoldreporters Tuesday.

The U.S. launched the Afghan War in the name of counterterrorism, she continued. But has the U.S. won? For 20 years, the number of terrorist organizations in Afghanistan grew to more than 20 from a single digit.

China would respect the Talibans authority and Afghanistans sovereignty, Hua Chunying said.

An editorial published in the Chinese state-controlled media outlet Global Timessaidthe fall of the Afghan government represented a complete failure by the U.S.

A separate articlesuggestedthe U.S. would abandon other global allies like Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.

The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that the reign of the will of the wronged people of Afghanistan has always created security and stability, Iranian President Ebrahim RaisitoldAl Jazeera on Monday. While consciously monitoring developments in the country, Iran is committed to neighborly relations.

He also said the Talibans victory may revive life, security and lasting peace.

Russia, which recentlyhostedTaliban officials for a peace conference, has stopped short of officially recognizing the Taliban government,accordingto Agence France-Presse. However, senior Russian officials said that the Taliban has been cooperative in recent talks.

They are currently engaged in restoring order in the city and have succeeded in this, Russian ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov said Tuesday, AFP reported. They behave in a responsible, civilized manner.

China, Iran and Russia said they would keep their Kabul embassies open, according toReutersandFrance 24.

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