Tag: Taliban

Taliban Crush Protest as Ladies March for Rights

Post author By
Post date September 7, 2021

KABUL, Afghanistan – Despite threats of violent strikes and retaliatory attacks, hundreds of women marched through the streets of Kabul Tuesday morning, urging the Taliban to respect their rights and making it clear that they would not easily give up on their accomplishments – the last two Decades.

But as the crowd grew and hundreds of men joined the women, demonstrators were beaten with rifle butts and sticks, according to witnesses. Then shots rang out. The crowd dispersed and for the second time in less than a week the Taliban used force to crush a peaceful demonstration.

Even as the Taliban continued to fight to destroy the armed opposition in the country, taking control of the troubled Panjshir Valley on Monday and announcing a new government that they promised would involve everyone, the demonstration broke up on Monday Tuesday another indication that they would stifle peaceful dissent with a heavy hand.

It was also a remarkable feat by women who were brutally subjugated the last time the Taliban were in charge. Those who have taken to the streets in the past few days fear the group has not changed.

The protests came as the Taliban were consolidating their military hold in the country. They announced their intention to integrate members of the former Afghan army into the country’s new security forces and wanted to provide further details on this process at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

While the Taliban have a near monopoly of violence, the demonstrations underscored the challenges ex-insurgents face in trying to win the hearts and minds of a generation of Afghans who have never lived under Taliban rule, especially in urban areas .

In the midst of a worsening humanitarian crisis, the Taliban are facing an uphill battle for legitimacy, not only domestically but also abroad. Basic services like electricity are threatened while the country is plagued by food and cash shortages.

And thousands of Afghans are still desperately trying to flee the country as the United States evacuates dozens of its citizens.

At a news conference in Doha, Qatar, Foreign Secretary Antony J. Blinken said Tuesday that US officials were “working around the clock” to ensure that charter flights with Americans can safely leave Afghanistan.

Mr Blinken, who appeared with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and her Qatari counterparts, said Taliban leaders had recently reaffirmed their commitment to allowing American citizens and others with valid travel documents to travel freely.

But the Taliban have objected to charter flights that combine people with and without valid travel documents, Blinken said.

He added that he was not aware of any “hostage-like” situation at Mazar-e-Sharif airport, where some stakeholders and members of Congress say the Taliban are blocking charter flights. Mr Blinken added that he believes there are around 100 American citizens remaining in Afghanistan, including “a relatively small number” who want to leave Mazar-e-Sharif.

Updated

9/2/2021, 5:49 p.m. ET

For the vast majority of Afghans, there is no escape. Just uncertainty.

But the fact that women have been prominently involved in many of the recent protests has underscored their willingness to stand up for their rights in the face of rifle butts, tear gas and retaliation.

In the two decades before the Taliban came to power, women were active in Afghanistan, holding political offices, joining the military and the police, playing in orchestras and taking part in the Olympic Games.

Many Afghan women, who have benefited from education and freedom of expression over the past twenty years, fear a return to the past when women were banned from leaving the home without a male guardian and were publicly flogged when they opposed violate morality, for example by not covering their skin.

Since taking power last month, the Taliban have tried to call themselves more moderate, inviting women to join the government and saying that women can work and girls can get an education.

But the group has not yet codified new laws or given details of their government plans. Initial signs from across the country were not promising, including the Taliban’s warning to stay home until the Taliban militants’ grassroots learned not to harm them.

Understanding the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

Map 1 of 6

Who are the Taliban? The Taliban emerged in 1994 amid the unrest following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including flogging, amputation and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here is more about their genesis and track record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who for years have been on the run, in hiding, in prison and dodged American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to rule, including whether they will be as tolerant as they say they are. A spokesman told the Times that the group wanted to forget their past but had some restrictions.

Tuesday’s protests marked the second women’s demonstration in less than a week in the country’s capital, and it was also the second to be violently suppressed.

Rezai, 26, one of the coordinators and organizers of the recent protest, only gave her first name out of fear of retaliation. She said the demonstration was organized in close coordination with the national resistance forces.

“We invited people who use social media platforms,” she said. “And there were more people than we expected. We expect more rallies tonight because the people don’t want terror and destruction. The Taliban have achieved no accomplishments since they came to power other than killing people and spreading terror. So it was a completely self-motivated protest, and we just coordinated and invited people to participate. “

When they marched on Tuesday morning, they carried a banner with a single word: “Freedom”.

The women sang the same word as they walked while the Taliban watched closely. They were joined by men, many of whom condemned Pakistan for its support for the Taliban and meddling in Afghan affairs.

“We are not defending our right to a job or a position in which we will work, we are defending the blood of our youth, we are defending our country, our country,” said one woman, according to a video posted on social media.

Witnesses reported Taliban fighters beat protesters with clubs and rifle butts. Tolo TV, a leading Afghan broadcaster, said one of its cameramen covering the protests was briefly arrested by the Taliban.

As a Times photographer approached the demonstration on a street outside the presidential palace known as Arg, a convoy of at least a dozen Taliban pickups raced toward it.

As soon as the Taliban fighters got off their trucks, they started firing – mostly into the air, it seemed. There were no immediate reports of serious injury or death.

The people – there seemed to be several hundred – ran off.

The big meeting was over. A short time later, when some of the male demonstrators gathered in a small group and began shouting slogans for the resistance, the Taliban chased them away.

After the crowd broke up, Jamila, 23, said it was a peaceful demonstration.

“People just took to the streets and protested,” she said. However, she feared that the Taliban’s tactics to disperse the crowd could lead to bloodshed.

Michael Crowley, Sahak Sami, Walid Arian and Farnaz Fassihi contributed to the coverage.

Tags Crush, March, Protest, Rights, Taliban, Women

Politics

Interpreter describes household’s escape from Taliban in Kabul

Post author By
Post date September 6, 2021

Antifullah Ahmadzai, an Afghan national, takes a selfie inside of a U.S. military cargo aircraft before an evacuation flight from Kabul.

Courtesy: Antifullah Ahmadzai

WASHINGTON – One month ago, Atifullah Ahmadzai boarded a flight from Connecticut to Kabul, eager to hold his wife and five young children again.

The purpose of this trip was nearly a decade in the making as Ahmadzai, a former interpreter for the U.S. military, was carrying the final documents needed for his family to complete a coveted special immigrant visa.

While in Kabul, Ahmadzai planned on saying goodbye to friends and extended family members before bringing his wife and children to America, where he had spent the last two years preparing for their new life.

Ten days into his plans, after the rest of Afghanistan had already fallen during the U.S. military’s withdrawal, the Taliban seized the presidential palace in Kabul.

The swift collapse of the Afghan national government forced Ahmadzai and thousands of others to flood the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport, where Western forces were conducting evacuation flights out of the country.

The story of Ahmadzai and his family is emblematic of the desperation and fear felt by thousands of Afghans as U.S. and coalition forces withdrew the last of their troops from Afghanistan after a nearly 20-year occupation.

Over the course of 17 days leading up to Aug. 31, the U.S. and coalition partners airlifted more than 116,000 people out of Afghanistan on cargo aircraft. The Pentagon said it dedicated more than 5,000 U.S. service members and 200 aircraft to the colossal evacuation mission.

Meanwhile, governments around the world opened their borders to at-risk Afghan nationals arriving on evacuation flights.

“I wasn’t expecting that everything was going to change immediately,” Ahmadzai told CNBC.

“The Taliban made a checkpoint 800 feet away from my house, where they would question you about your job,” he said, adding that he was too afraid to disclose his previous role in the Afghan military.

Taliban forces stand guard in front of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, September 2, 2021.

Stringer | Reuters

At one checkpoint, Ahmadzai said his cell phone was searched by Taliban insurgents looking for anything that would confirm his ties to the previous government or to the United States.

“They were also knocking on people’s doors and asking about their jobs,” he said. “The homes of those who worked for the government or with the U.S. military were marked during the day and at night the Taliban came back to those houses to kill.” Fear of targeted killings by the Taliban fueled many Afghans’ desire to get out of the country.

A rallying cry on Facebook

Desperate for a way out, Ahmadzai sent a text message to a U.S. Army officer he translated for during America’s longest war.

“He addresses me as his brother,” said the officer, Mike Kuszpa, now a teacher in Connecticut, when asked about Ahmadzai’s initial message.

“He wrote to me and said, ‘Brother, my family and I are out here and the Taliban has been looking for interpreters. Who knows what’s gonna happen, they may kill me and my family,'” Kuszpa told CNBC.

A 2004 photo of Antifullah Ahmadzai (left) and Mike Kuszpa (right) in Afghanistan.

Courtesy of Mike Kuszpa

“I was grasping at straws. I didn’t know anybody, so I posted to a neighborhood message board on Facebook asking if anybody had Department of State connections that could help my interpreter and his family get on an evacuation flight,” he said.

The post to the 109-member “Westville Dads” Facebook group triggered a flurry of phone calls, Facebook messages, encrypted text messages and emails to a network that spanned from academia to intelligence analysts to lawmakers to diplomats.

“I got in touch with a former student of mine who is a foreign service officer about getting his documents in the system so that he wouldn’t be turned away at the airport,” said Matt Schmidt, national security and political science professor at the University of New Haven, who reached out to at least 16 people in a bid to help Ahmadzai.

“I counseled Atif to wait for a phone call from State to go to the airport,” Schmidt said using a shortened version of Ahmadzai’s first name, Atifullah. “Mike was uneasy about waiting and told Atif to go to the airport. It was the right call.”

A struggle to flee

Across the globe, Western forces intensified emergency humanitarian evacuations amid a backdrop of security threats and the Biden administration’s self-imposed Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.

“At one point I started getting news alerts about gunfire at the airport while I was messaging with Atif. It was surreal,” said Schmidt, who breathlessly waited for updates from Ahmadzai.

In Kabul, Ahmadzai and his family were struggling to get out.

“It was difficult to get to the airport. I tried for three straight days but was not able to reach the gates,” Ahmadzai told CNBC, explaining that he had to sidestep Taliban checkpoints each time he and his family returned home after a full day of waiting at the airport.

“On the fourth day, I received a text message advising me to go through another gate. When I arrived, there were more than 1,000 people already gathered,” Ahmadzai said. He said there was occasional gunfire in the crowd.

“My family was very scared and shocked,” Ahmadzai said. “My wife asked me if we could go back because she was afraid for our children, but I told her we have to try and leave because it was better than dying at the hands of the Taliban.”

After more than three hours of waiting at the gate, Ahmadzai was able to get close enough to the U.S. Marines guarding the entry point to show them his green card and visa.

“I then showed them the paperwork for my children and wife,” he said. The Marines were able to verify his information, he said, because two days prior it was entered into the State Department’s system thanks to the network of mobilized dads on Facebook.

Ahmadzai’s next message to his friends coordinating his evacuation came from the interior gates of the airport.

Antifullah Ahmadzai, a former Afghan interpreter for the U.S. military, stands with his children and U.S. Marines at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“When he sent that pic of him and his kids safe in the airport with the soldiers flanking him, I broke down in tears,” Schmidt said.

“As a dad, I couldn’t imagine the fate that awaited them if they didn’t get out,” Schmidt continued. “We were just dads reaching across the globe to help a fellow dad. That bound us all together, more than culture or religion. We knew what it meant to need to protect your family.”

A fateful departure

Ahmadzai, his wife and their children, who range from age 2 to 12, boarded a C-17 cargo military aircraft and flew to Qatar, which is about 1,200 miles from Kabul. They spent two nights and three days in the Persian Gulf country.

“Qatar camp was good, but as soon as we got there my second son was feeling very sick and he vomited more than 15 times as he was not familiar with this kind of situation. A medic came and gave him an IV quickly and after that, he was able to start eating and drinking again,” Ahmadzai said.

Antifullah Ahmadzai, an Afghan national, takes a selfie inside of a holding bay from an unspecified location in Qatar.

Courtesy: Antifullah Ahmadzai

After Qatar, the family was flown to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they spent the night. The next day they boarded a flight to the United States and arrived at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

Ahmadzai said he and his family were tested for Covid-19 and completed biometric health screenings before leaving the airport in Dulles. He was vaccinated against Covid earlier this year. The Pentagon has previously said that all Afghan nationals relocating to the United States who want the coronavirus vaccine will be able to receive one.

“I never expected to come back to the States alive,” said Ahmadzai, who spoke to CNBC over the course of a week from Qatar, Germany and the United States. He said he was “thankful that the United States helped us in a very critical situation.”

“There was no option, no flights and no way for me and my family to escape the Taliban,” he said.

When asked about his children, Ahmadzai said they were “doing great and happy.”

“The kids are quite different now. They think they are in a different world and are trying to learn a new language and way of life.”

Ahmadzai and his family recently left a U.S. military installation in Virginia, where they finished their special immigrant visa paperwork. He is returning to Connecticut with his family.

Kuszpa, the Army officer, said there are plans for an outdoor barbecue to welcome Ahmadzai’s family to the community.

“Now he’s here and a part of our family,” said Schmidt, the professor. “His kids will play with ours.”

Tags describes, Escape, Familys, Interpreter, Kabul, Taliban

Politics

U.S. Wrestles With Taliban Sanctions as Afghan Disaster Looms

Post author By
Post date September 3, 2021

WASHINGTON – America’s war in Afghanistan is over, but the Taliban’s finances are just beginning.

The fate of billions of dollars in international reserves and foreign aid represents its own politically and legally strained choices as the world grapples with what Afghanistan will look like under Taliban rule. The stake is extraordinarily high as millions of Afghans face the prospect of collateral damage from the stranglehold of the Taliban’s sanctions, which are still in place, an economy the United States has tried for two decades support, threatens to sink.

Faced with an impending humanitarian crisis, the Biden government is examining how this web of sanctions can be tailored so that aid can continue to reach the Afghan people. The challenge is to keep donor money flowing without further enriching the Taliban, who see the US as a terrorist organization. Experts say that such a situation, in which a group believed to be terrorists takes over an entire country, is unprecedented and represents a complex test for the US sanctions program.

“This is a new world,” said Adam M. Smith, a senior sanctions officer in the Obama administration’s Treasury. “I cannot imagine a case in which an already named terrorist group has taken power over an entire country.”

He said that the Treasury Department would soon have to decide what exemptions or licenses it would grant for certain types of transactions. It must also decide whether all of Afghanistan or just the Taliban leadership is under sanctions so that the world knows how to deal with the government.

“We have to find a way to get goods and services into Afghanistan or 30 million Afghans will have side effects here and it will be a disaster,” said Smith.

When the Taliban came to power last month, the United States acted quickly to maintain as much influence as possible. It blocked its access to $ 9.5 billion in international reserve funds and put pressure on the International Monetary Fund to suspend distribution of more than $ 400 million in currency reserves.

A Treasury Department official said the United States would not ease sanctions pressures on Taliban leaders or significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system. The militant group continues to be classified as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group, and it is also subject to United Nations sanctions that the United States and other countries must enforce.

But the desire to demonstrate some flexibility is already evident. Last week, the Ministry of Finance signaled to humanitarian organizations that it was taking steps to enable relief work to continue for the benefit of the Afghan people. On August 25, the agency issued a special license, similar to the one it has issued in countries such as Syria and Venezuela, to enable the delivery of food, shelter, medicines and medical services to Afghanistan.

There are also signs that the financial flows into the country, which have been frozen for two weeks, are resuming.

Financial institutions in the United States have been waiting for the Biden administration to clarify whether Afghanistan’s property is considered Taliban property, banking industry officials said. Banks fear they could violate US sanctions if they allow transactions with the country.

Updated

9/2/2021, 5:49 p.m. ET

However, Western Union said Thursday that it would resume money transfer services to Afghanistan so its customers can send money to loved ones and that it would waive fees for transfers into the country for two weeks. A company spokeswoman said she made the decision after the US government said it allowed money transfers to Afghanistan.

An official from the Treasury Department confirmed that the agency had contacted financial institutions to inform them that personal transfers were allowed.

The Treasury Department has experience trying to service people ruled by enemy governments and has issued humanitarian aid licenses to arrive at such locations. In June, it issued licenses to send relief supplies to fight the coronavirus to Iran, Syria and Venezuela.

However, a terrorist group presents its own challenges and it will not be easy to keep aid out of the hands of the Taliban, especially if they control the country. The group is notorious for using exorbitant taxes to steal wealth from Afghan citizens, and an influx of food or medicine from abroad would be an opportunity to confiscate and sell them to raise funds. Harsh sanctions could also force the Taliban to rely even more heavily on illegal finances and drug trafficking, despite their public opposition to such practices.

“Due to the increased risk that the Taliban takeover entails, the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing must be stepped up,” said Alex Zerden, from 2018 to 2019 financial attaché of the Treasury Department at the US embassy in Kabul.

Dealing with the situation in Afghanistan is becoming more complex as the Treasury Department carries out a broader review of its sanctions program. Critics have accused the previous administration of arbitrarily imposing sanctions and often undermining their effectiveness. The Biden government has stated that it is not conducting intelligence reviews of certain sanctions, but rather is focusing on ways to modernize the practice so that it is more effective.

Understanding the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

Map 1 of 6

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who for years have been on the run, in hiding, in prison and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to rule, including whether they will be as tolerant as they say they are. A spokesman told the Times that the group wanted to forget their past but had some restrictions.

The Treasury Department did not offer a schedule for this review. It’s taking place while Senate Republicans have blocked two of President Biden’s nominations for top sanctions positions at the Treasury, Brian E. Nelson and Elizabeth Rosenberg. Although the Biden administration has been less vocal than the Trump administration about the application of sanctions, it is still well on its way to making about 1,000 nominations this year, according to the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Any easing of sanctions for the Taliban could come at a political price.

Senators Marco Rubio from Florida and Rob Portman from Ohio, both Republicans, called on Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen on Monday to keep all internationally held Afghan assets out of the Taliban.

“The Taliban are sponsors of terrorism and have close ties to al-Qaeda, and therefore cannot be trusted to distribute money to the Afghan people who are in dire need and will instead use all means to actively set priorities that are hostile to US interests. “They wrote in a letter. “We can and should work to create alternative means of supporting the Afghan people, but we must not allow resources to be used to strengthen a repressive Taliban regime.”

Khalid Payenda, who resigned as Afghan finance minister last month, said Thursday during an event at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service that the Taliban appear to be struggling to resume government financial operations and that the country is about to run out of money would. He said the world must find ways to provide economic support to the people of Afghanistan without giving the Taliban the money and that sanctions must be maintained as leverage.

“I think it would be catastrophic to give full access to the reserves,” said Payenda, accusing the Taliban of still having links with al Qaeda. “The Taliban know that they cannot run a government without the finances and technical assistance of other countries.”

The White House made it clear this week that it will not let go of its economic influence on the Taliban prematurely. Biden government officials insisted that such interference is important to ensure the Taliban honor their pledges to allow Americans, permanent residents and Afghan citizens to leave the country on special immigrant visas.

“When we talk about Afghan reserves, Afghan access to the banking system, Afghan access to any kind of basic operation of the economy, remember that the United States has been basically the steward of them for the past 20 years. “Jake Sullivan, the White House national security advisor, told CNN.

He argued that the Taliban are now somewhat dependent on the United States, adding, “They understand the extent to which their ability to provide their citizens with everything needed for a functioning economy depends on the international community. It’s up to the United States. “

Tags Afghan, Crisis, looms, Sanctions, Taliban, Wrestles

World News

Shifting to Governing, Taliban Will Title Supreme Afghan Chief

Post author By
Post date September 2, 2021

On the second full day with no US troops on Afghan soil, the Taliban moved on Wednesday to form a new Islamic government and prepared to appoint the movement’s leading religious figure, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, as the country’s highest authority, said Taliban officials.

The Taliban are faced with a daunting challenge that switched from insurrection to government after two decades of insurgents fighting international and Afghan armed forces, planting roadside bombs and planning mass bombings that killed the lives of people in densely populated urban centers.

Now, with Taliban rule fully restored 20 years after being overthrown by the US-led invasion in 2001, the group is faced with the responsibility of ruling a country of around 40 million people for over 40 years War was devastated.

There are hundreds of thousands displaced in the country and much of the population lives in crushing poverty, all amid a punishing drought and Covid-19 pandemic. Food supplies distributed by the United Nations are likely to be depleted in much of Afghanistan by the end of September, said Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

The economy is in free fall after the US freeze $ 9.4 billion in Afghan currency reserves, part of a liquidity pipeline that long made a fragile, US-backed government dependent on foreign aid. International lenders, including the International Monetary Fund, have also cut funds, driving inflation higher and undermining the weak Afghani currency.

Electricity service, spotty and unreliable at the best of times, is failing, local residents say. Fear keeps many people at home instead of working and shopping outside. A shortage of food and other essentials has been reported in a country that imports much of its food, fuel and electricity. A third of Afghans had already dealt with what the United Nations called “crisis levels of food insecurity”.

Taliban officials did not indicate when the new governance would be announced. But the group was under heavy pressure to fill a political vacuum created by the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed administration of former President Ashraf Ghani, who like many other officials fled the country when Taliban forces broke out on Sept. .August invaded.

Sheikh Haibatullah, a pragmatic but passionate religious scholar from Kandahar, is supposed to take on a theocratic role similar to that of the supreme Iranian leader, according to official reports. His son was trained as a suicide bomber and blew himself up in an attack in Helmand province when he was 23, the Taliban say.

Taliban officials, including Sheikh Haibatullah, met in Kandahar, according to Taliban officials. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a respected Taliban co-founder and one of its current deputies, was expected to be put in charge of day-to-day affairs as head of government, officials said.

Mr. Baradar had a similar role during the Taliban’s early years in exile, directing the movement’s operations until his arrest by Pakistan in 2010.

After three years in a Pakistani prison and several others under house arrest, Mr. Baradar was released in 2019 and then headed the Taliban delegation that negotiated the troop withdrawal agreement with the Trump administration in February 2020.

Other key government positions are expected to be held by Sirajuddin Haqqani, another deputy and influential leader of operations within the movement, and Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqoub, the son of Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the group until his death in 2013.

Mr. Haqqani, 48, who helped direct the Taliban’s military operations, is also a leader of the brutal Haqqani Network, a mafia-like wing of the Taliban mainly based in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border. The network was responsible for hostage-taking, attacks on US forces, complex suicide bombings and targeted assassinations.

Political developments on Wednesday gave the Taliban, whose members celebrated with gunfire and fireworks, a real boost after the last planeload of US troops and equipment left Kabul airport shortly before midnight on Monday. On Tuesday, leading Taliban leaders led journalists on a triumphant tour of the looted airport, just hours after it was occupied by US troops.

Now the Taliban are fighting for international aid and diplomatic recognition. The relationship between the United States and the former insurgents is entering a tense new phase in which each side depends on decisive decisions made by their long-standing adversary.

Updated

9/2/2021, 12:24 p.m. ET

The Taliban cooperated in the US military’s evacuation efforts, but that does not mean further cooperations will follow, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday. “I wouldn’t make logical leaps on broader topics,” he said. “It’s hard to predict where this will lead.”

General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Taliban were “a ruthless group,” but when asked if the two sides could work together against a common enemy, the Islamic State of Khorasan, he said: “It is possible.”

A primary question is how much, if any, US economic aid will it provide and how it will ensure that aid goes to needy Afghans and not to the Taliban government.

The Taliban are also fighting stubborn opposition forces led by leaders of the National Resistance Front in Panjshir Province and other regions in northern Afghanistan, where anti-Taliban sentiment has always been strong. There were competing claims on Wednesday, with Taliban supporters saying their fighters had made progress and resistance leaders said they had repulsed a Taliban attack.

Panjshir, a stronghold of former Northern Alliance commanders, was one of the few areas in Afghanistan not under the control of the Taliban when the group ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

The Taliban’s transition to governance is based on years of patient building of a so-called shadow government at the provincial, district and even village levels. In the Taliban-controlled areas, many Afghans learned to rely on this shadow government for basic services such as litigation rather than turning to a deeply corrupt national government that could not or would not serve remote areas.

After a military evacuation that flown more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan in 18 days, most of them Afghans, 100 to 200 Americans will remain in the country, President Biden said Tuesday. Some stayed voluntarily. Others were unable to reach Kabul airport.

Tens of thousands of Afghans who have helped the US or its international partners also remain stranded, according to estimates by US officials. Many are permanent residents of the United States traveling in Afghanistan when the government and military collapsed at breakneck speed and the Taliban took control on August 15.

Understanding the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

Map 1 of 6

Taliban officials have repeatedly publicly assured that Afghans with proper passports and visas will be allowed to leave the country, regardless of their role during the 20-year US mission in Afghanistan.

About 6,000 Americans, the vast majority of them dual Afghan citizens, were evacuated after Aug. 14, Foreign Secretary Antony J. Blinken said Tuesday. In early spring, the American embassy in Kabul began warning Americans to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible, referring to the rapidly deteriorating security situation.

Mr. Blinken described “extraordinary efforts to give Americans every opportunity to leave the country.” He said diplomats made 55,000 calls and sent 33,000 emails to US citizens in Afghanistan, and in some cases took them to Kabul airport.

Mr Biden said Tuesday that the US government had alerted Americans 19 times since March to leave Afghanistan.

The president and his national security team have pledged to continue working to evict Americans and vulnerable Afghans who want to leave Afghanistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Tuesday that Kabul airport would be reopened to air traffic within a few days. But with the airport’s future uncertain, some Afghans are crawling around neighboring borders. Hundreds gather every day in Torkham, a major border crossing with Pakistan, in hopes that Pakistani officials will let them through.

The United Nations Refugee Agency recently warned that up to half a million Afghans could flee by the end of the year and urged countries in the region to keep their borders open to refugees.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, estimates that around 3.5 million people have been displaced by violence in Afghanistan – half a million since May alone. The majority of them are women and children.

On the Afghan side of the Pakistani border near Torkham, about 140 miles east of Kabul, some families have been huddled together with their belongings in recent days and decided to flee from the rule of the Taliban. There are also workers from neighboring Afghan provinces who, in the face of increasing money and food shortages, want to move over to earn a living.

Pakistan has announced that it will not accept any further refugees from Afghanistan. Border officials reportedly only allow Pakistani nationals and the few Afghans who have visas to cross.

While Afghan refugees living in Pakistan commuted back and forth for decades without being asked, Pakistan has made access more difficult in recent years and has erected a 2,600-kilometer border fence.

Tags Afghan, Governing, Leader, Shifting, Supreme, Taliban

Politics

U.S. relationship with Taliban unclear after finish of warfare

Post author By
Post date September 1, 2021

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley attend a news conference at the Pentagon on July 21, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.

Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday it was not yet clear what kind of relationship the Pentagon would have with the Taliban in Afghanistan after Western forces fought the militant Islamist group for 20 years.

“It’s hard to predict where this will go in the future with regard to the Taliban,” Austin told reporters at the Pentagon when asked about the next steps following the full withdrawal of the US military from the country on Monday.

“We don’t know what the future of the Taliban looks like,” said General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Army General Staff.

“I can tell you from personal experience that this is a ruthless group from the past and whether it changes or not,” Milley said, adding that he and Austin both fought the group during their military careers.

Taliban troops patrol near the entrance gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport one day after the withdrawal of US troops in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 31, 2021.

Stringer | Reuters

“And as for our dealings with them at this airfield or for the last year or so in the war, do what you have to do to reduce the risk to the Mission and the armed forces, not what you absolutely want to do,” said Milley on the question of the coordination between the US and the Taliban in the last few days of a huge humanitarian evacuation mission.

The US coordinated with the Taliban during the final days of the war to ensure safe passage for US citizens and Afghan nationals to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul for evacuation. However, there were reports that, contrary to their public statements, the Islamist militants prevented some Afghans from reaching the airport.

When asked at the State Department whether the US would recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government, State Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said it was premature to say so.

“Our relationship with the Taliban is guided by what they do, not what they say,” Nuland began. “But there are some pressing questions, like the humanitarian situation of the people in Afghanistan. So let’s look at things like that, ”she added.

“But we haven’t made any decisions about the rest and we certainly won’t unless we see the expected behaviors,” said Nuland.

Taliban fighters patrolled the streets of Kabul in a vehicle on August 23, 2021, while the Taliban imposed a sense of calm in the capital in a city marked by violent crime by patrolling the streets and manning checkpoints.

Deputy Kohsar | AFP | Getty Images

Statements from the highest levels of Defense and State Department come a day after President Joe Biden defiantly defended his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan.

“When I ran for president, I made a commitment to end this war, and today I kept that commitment. It was time to be honest with the American people; we no longer had a clear goal in an indefinite mission. “In Afghanistan,” said Biden from the White House on Tuesday.

“This decision on Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan, it is about ending an era of major military operations to transform other countries,” added the president.

With its troops gone, the US must rely on diplomatic engagement with the Taliban to ensure that the remaining Americans and Afghans working for the US can safely leave Afghanistan

Biden said in his address on Tuesday that “90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave could leave.” According to the State Department, fewer than 200 Americans remain in the country.

The president said the US would hold the Taliban responsible for guaranteeing safe passage to anyone who still wants to get out of Afghanistan.

The US and NATO launched their military campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001, weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Taliban then offered refuge to al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that planned and carried out the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Around 2,500 US soldiers were killed in the conflict, which also killed more than 100,000 Afghan soldiers, police officers and civilians. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have cost US taxpayers more than $ 1.57 trillion since September 11, 2001, according to a Department of Defense report.

Tags Relationship, Taliban, unclear, War

World News

Afghanistan, Biden and the Taliban: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

U.S. and allied planes have flown an additional 19,200 people out of Kabul in the past 24 hours, officials said on Wednesday, as the Biden administration makes substantial inroads into getting American citizens and Afghans who worked for the United States over the last 20 years out of Afghanistan.

But thousands of U.S. citizens are believed to still be in the country, and President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of American troops is rapidly approaching. Tens of thousands of Afghans who qualify for special immigration visas are also waiting to be evacuated.

As of 3 a.m. in Washington, the United States had evacuated about 82,300 people from Kabul’s international airport since Aug. 14.

Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of Afghans will be targeted by the Taliban if they stay, including Afghan security forces, government officials, women’s rights advocates and other defenders of democracy. Those Afghans are desperately hoping to join the U.S. military’s airlift before it begins to wind down, potentially as soon as this weekend.

It is not clear how many people want to be evacuated — or can be — by next week’s deadline. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is set to release more details about the effort, potentially including the numbers of Americans who remain in Afghanistan, on Wednesday.

Though Mr. Biden has vowed to stick to the Aug. 31 exit plan, as the Taliban have demanded, he also has instructed Mr. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin to draw up plans to push back the date if necessary.

The Taliban have warned of potential reprisals should the United States renege on its deadline, and Mr. Biden on Tuesday noted the danger to American troops should they remain much longer. Beyond the Taliban, extremists affiliated with the Islamic State are also believed to pose a threat to the evacuation effort that has drawn crowds of people to Kabul’s airport gates, clamoring to be allowed on one of the flights that are departing every 45 minutes.

“I’m determined to ensure that we complete our mission,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “I’m also mindful of the increasing risks that I’ve been briefed on and the need to factor those risks in. There are real and significant challenges that we also have to take into consideration.”

But the dwindling hours are weighing heavily on the minds of people seeking to flee Afghanistan and members of Congress who want the United States to retain a presence there until Americans and high-risk Afghans can get out.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The Americans are all but gone, the Afghan government has collapsed and the Taliban now rule the streets of Kabul. Overnight, millions of Kabul residents have been left to navigate an uncertain transition after 20 years of U.S.-backed rule.

Government services are largely unavailable. Residents are struggling to lead their daily lives in an ecconomy that, propped up for the past generation by American aid, is now in free fall. Banks are closed, cash is growing scarce, and food prices are rising.

Yet relative calm has reigned over Kabul, the capital, in sharp contrast to the chaos at its airport. Many residents are hiding in their homes or venturing out only cautiously to see what life might be like under their new rulers.

Even residents who said they feared the Taliban were struck by the relative order and quiet, but for some the calm has been ominous.

A resident named Mohib said that streets were deserted in his section of the city, with people hunkering down in their homes, “scared and terrorized.”

“People feel the Taliban may come any moment to take away everything from them,” he said.

Credit…Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Germany will maintain support for Afghans who remain in their country after the deadline for the U.S. troop withdrawal and evacuation mission passes in six days, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. She also called for talks with the Taliban to preserve progress made in Afghanistan in the last two decades.

Speaking to a session of Parliament convened to discuss the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, the chancellor defended Germany’s decision to join the international intervention there in 2001.

“Our goal must be to preserve as much as possible what we have achieved in terms of changes in Afghanistan in the last 20 years,” Ms. Merkel told lawmakers. “This is something the international community must talk about with the Taliban.”

She cited changes such as improved access to basic necessities, with 70 percent of Afghans now having access to clean drinking water and 90 percent having access to electricity, in addition to better health care for women.

“But what is clear is that the Taliban are reality in Afghanistan and many people are afraid,” Ms. Merkel said. “This new reality is bitter, but we must come to terms with it.”

Germany pulled its last contingent of soldiers, about 570 troops, out of Afghanistan in June, but several hundred Germans were still engaged in development work funded by Berlin, and the German government believed they would be able to remain in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S. and international forces.

Ms. Merkel defended her government’s decision to leave development workers on the ground, saying that they had hoped to continue to provide essential support for Afghans after the troop withdrawal, and that an earlier retreat could have appeared as if they were abandoning people.

“At that time there were very good reasons to stand beside the people in Afghanistan after the troops were gone,” Ms. Merkel said.

But the opposition leaders criticized her government for not developing a plan to bring people to safety in the spring, when other European countries were evacuating citizens and Afghan support staff.

“The situation in Afghanistan is a catastrophe, but it did not come out of nowhere,” said Christian Lindner, the head of the Free Democratic Party, which together with the Green Party petitioned Parliament in June to begin evacuations of German staff and Afghans who could be in danger.

Ms. Merkel did not apologize, instead calling for a deeper examination of where the West went wrong in Afghanistan and what lessons could be learned. That will be the work of the next government, as she is stepping down after the German elections on Sept. 26.

“Many things in history take a long time. That is why we must not and will not forget Afghanistan,” said Ms. Merkel, who was raised in communist East Germany.

“Even if it doesn’t look like it in this bitter hour,” she said, “I remain convinced that no force or ideology can resist the drive for justice and peace.”

Credit…Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press

Five young women who are part of a famed Afghan robotics team — which had been a symbol of opportunities for women and girls in a post-Taliban Afghanistan — have arrived in Mexico as part of the first group of evacuees to land there.

“They will be received with great affection by the people of Mexico,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, said at a news conference at Mexico City’s international airport late on Tuesday. “They are bearers of a dream: to show that we can have an egalitarian, fraternal and gender-equal world.”

Mr. Ebrard has led Mexico’s efforts to evacuate people from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover this month, cutting through a typically lengthy immigration process to provide immediate protection. A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, also arrived safely in Mexico on Wednesday.

Images shared by the Foreign Ministry showed the group that included the robotics team arriving aboard a Lufthansa plane and being greeted by Mexican officials. Some of the young women, all wearing masks because of the pandemic, put their hands to their hearts and nodded their heads as they disembarked.

▶️ «Serán recibidas con mucho cariño por el pueblo de México […] Ellas son portadoras de un sueño: demostrar que podemos tener un mundo igualitario, fraterno y de igualdad entre los géneros».

Canciller @m_ebrard, en el recibimiento al grupo de mujeres de Afganistán en 🇲🇽. pic.twitter.com/9M4SkMUOsz

— Relaciones Exteriores (@SRE_mx) August 25, 2021

An institution based in Mexico, which was unnamed, has offered accommodations, food and basic services for the young women, according to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry.

Other team members had fled to Qatar earlier in the week, and some remained in Afghanistan, according to a statement issued by the team’s founder, the Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob.

Ms. Mahboob said that those who remained behind faced a worrying future under the Taliban, which banned education for girls when the group last ruled the country.

The young women were part of a robotics team that gained international attention in 2017 when they were denied visas to the United States for a competition in Washington.

Members of Congress signed a petition, and President Donald J. Trump intervened to get travel documents for them on humanitarian grounds. Once back in Afghanistan, they were received as icons of progress, though some accused them of dressing immodestly while abroad and said they had compromised their prospects for marriage.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. military undertakes its final withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials are reluctant to offer an estimate of one significant number: how many people ultimately are seeking to be evacuated.

U.S. officials say they believe that thousands of Americans remain in Afghanistan, including some far beyond Kabul, without a safe or fast way to get to the airport. Tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government over the past 20 years, and are eligible for special visas, are desperate to leave.

Refugee and resettlement experts estimate that at least 300,000 Afghans are in imminent danger of being targeted by the Taliban for associating with Americans and U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

But administration officials say the numbers are continually changing, especially since other countries have their own evacuation operations. And while the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is contacting Americans who are believed to be in Afghanistan, the alerts are going only to Americans who provided the government their location before Kabul fell or in the week since.

“It’s our responsibility to find them, which we are now doing hour by hour,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on Monday.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States has started to reduce its military presence at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul as President Biden signaled that he will stick to his Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing from Afghanistan.

A Defense Department official said that of the 5,800 Marines and soldiers at the airport, about 300 who were considered not essential to the evacuation operation had left the country.

Mr. Biden has left the door open to maintaining the U.S. military presence — now at 5,800 Marines and soldiers — at the airport beyond the deadline. But he does not want to do so, administration officials said, and the Taliban has warned of “consequences” if the United States military stays beyond the deadline.

The Pentagon will probably add additional military bases in the United States to provide temporary housing for Afghan refugees, the Pentagon press secretary, John F. Kirby, said. Discussing the evacuations, he said, “our plan is to continue this pace as aggressively as we can.”

Still, bottlenecks at the airport and at the bases around the world where the people are being temporarily housed could stand in the way, officials said. In particular, they pointed to the bureaucratic process of vetting people.

Mr. Kirby said Afghan allies of the United States, who fear reprisals from the Taliban, were still being processed at the Kabul airport, although several times over the past week the airport’s gates have been shuttered because of the surge of people.

And a Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday that the group’s fighters would physically block Afghans from going to the airport.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

When the Taliban were last in power, Afghan women were generally not allowed to leave their homes except under certain narrowly defined conditions. Those who did risked being beaten, tortured or executed.

In the days since the Taliban swept back into control, their leaders have insisted that this time will be different. Women, they say, will be allowed to work. Girls will be free to attend school. At least within the confines of their interpretation of Islam.

But early signs have not been promising, and that pattern continued on Tuesday with a statement from a Taliban spokesman that women should stay home, at least for now. Why? Because some of the militants have not yet been trained not to hurt them, he said.

The spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, called it a “temporary” policy intended to protect women until the Taliban could ensure their safety.

“We are worried our forces who are new and have not been yet trained very well may mistreat women,” Mr. Mujahid said. “We don’t want our forces, God forbid, to harm or harass women.”

Mr. Mujahid said that women should stay home “until we have a new procedure,” and that “their salaries will paid in their homes.”

His statement echoed comments from Ahmadullah Waseq, the deputy of the Taliban’s cultural affairs committee, who told The New York Times this week that the Taliban had “no problem with working women,” as long as they wore hijabs.

But, he said: “For now, we are asking them to stay home until the situation gets normal. Now it is a military situation.”

During the first years of Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001, women were forbidden to work outside the home or even to leave the house without a male guardian. They could not attend school, and faced public flogging if they were found to have violated morality rules, like one requiring that they be fully covered.

The claim that restrictions on women’s lives are a temporary necessity is not new to Afghan women. The Taliban made similar claims the last time they controlled Afghanistan, said Heather Barr, the associate director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch.

“The explanation was that the security was not good, and they were waiting for security to be better, and then women would be able to have more freedom,” she said. “But of course in those years they were in power, that moment never arrived — and I can promise you Afghan women hearing this today are thinking it will never arrive this time either.”

Brian Castner, a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International who was in Afghanistan until last week, said that if the Taliban intended to treat women better, they would need to retrain their forces. “You can’t have a movement like the Taliban that has operated a certain way for 25 years and then just because you take over a government, all of the fighters and everyone in your organization just does something differently,” he said.

But, Mr. Castner said, there is no indication that the Taliban intend to fulfill that or any other promises of moderation. Amnesty International has received reports of fighters going door to door with lists of names, despite their leaders’ public pledges not to retaliate against Afghans who worked with the previous government.

“The rhetoric and the reality are not matching at all, and I think that the rhetoric is more than just disingenuous,” Mr. Castner said. “If a random Taliban fighter commits a human rights abuse or violation, that’s just kind of random violence, that’s one thing. But if there’s a systematic going to people’s homes and looking for people, that’s not a random fighter that’s untrained — that’s a system working. The rhetoric is a cover for what’s really happening.”

In Kabul on Wednesday, women in parts of the city with minimal Taliban presence were going out “with normal clothes, as it was before the Taliban,” said a resident named Shabaka. But in central areas with many Taliban fighters, few women ventured out, and those who did wore burqas, said Sayed, a civil servant.

Ms. Barr, of Human Rights Watch, said that in the week since the Taliban said the new government would preserve women’s rights “within the bounds of Islamic law,” the Afghan women she has spoken to offered the same skeptical assessment: “They’re trying to look normal and legitimate, and this will last as long as the international community and the international press are still there. And then we’ll see what they’re really like again.”

It might not take long, Ms. Barr suggested.

“This announcement just highlights to me that they don’t feel like they need to wait,” she said.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At least 51 people who fled from Afghanistan landed in Uganda on Wednesday, the authorities said, the first to arrive in an African nation amid the race to complete such evacuations before the United States withdraws its military from Afghanistan by the month’s end.

Uganda said last week that it was preparing to temporarily host evacuees from Afghanistan after a request from the U.S. government. The East African nation is Africa’s top refugee-hosting nation — with nearly 1.5 million displaced people living within its borders — and the top fourth refugee host in the world, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.

The evacuees’ arrival came 10 days after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan and hours after President Biden said the United States was on pace for its withdrawal by the Aug. 31 deadline. Their arrival also came as the Pentagon said it had airlifted its biggest daily number of evacuees from Kabul’s airport on Tuesday. Some of those are now reaching countries that, like Uganda, agreed to serve as temporary transit stops.

In Uganda on Wednesday morning, the evacuees underwent a security screening and were tested for the coronavirus, the Foreign Ministry said. News outlets shared photos on social media of them arriving at a local hotel.

Ugandan officials have said that the United States is paying for the evacuees’ upkeep, with aid groups like Mercy Corps also promising to step in.

The evacuees arrived on a flight privately chartered by The Rockefeller Foundation and other funders, according to Ashley E. Chang, the head of the foundation’s media relations.

The Ugandan Foreign Ministry said there had also been plans to have some Ugandans travel on the chartered flight, but because of “challenges of accessing the airport in Kabul, they were unable to make it.”

Arrangements were being made to evacuate those Ugandan citizens on a subsequent flight, the ministry said.

The authorities did not specify the nationalities of the people who arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. But Okello Oryem, a junior minister in the Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that Afghans and people from other countries, including from Europe and the United States, were expected as part of the evacuation plan.

Ms. Chang also said the flight on Wednesday was carrying at-risk Afghan adults — along with some minors — who worked with U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations, Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and many others who qualified for P2 visas which are reserved for artists and entertainers.

U.S. officials have been in touch with countries around the world — including Canada, Kuwait, Mexico and Qatar — that have agreed to serve as transit stops or announced an intention to grant refugee status or resettlement for people fleeing Afghanistan.

The United States provides more than $970 million in development and military aid to Uganda annually. It supports education and agriculture, and provides antiretroviral treatment for more than 990,000 Ugandans who are H.I.V.-positive.

President Yoweri Museveni — who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986 and was re-elected to a sixth term in January after a bloody election — is also a key U.S. military ally, deploying troops to fight the Qaeda-linked group Al Shabab in Somalia.

Uganda now hosts nearly 1.5 million refugees who have fled violence in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan — conflicts that, critics point out, Mr. Museveni’s government has meddled in.

The authorities did not specify how evacuees would be arriving from Afghanistan and when they will come. But Mr. Oryem said the government would not rush them to leave.

“These are people who are traumatized and have gone through difficulties,” he said.

Credit…Azam Ahmed/The New York Times

A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, touched down safely early Wednesday — not in New York or Washington, but at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City.

Mexican officials, unlike their counterparts in the United States, were able to cut through the red tape of their immigration system to quickly provide documents that, in turn, allowed the Afghans to fly from Kabul’s embattled airport to Qatar.

The documents promised that the Afghans would receive temporary humanitarian protection in Mexico while they explored further options in the United States or elsewhere.

“We are right now committed to a foreign policy promoting free expression, liberties and feminist values,” Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said in a telephone interview.

He cited a national tradition of welcoming people including the 19th-century Cuban independence leader José Martí, German Jews and South Americans fleeing coups, and he said that Mexico had opened its doors to the Afghan journalists “in order to protect them and to be consistent with this policy.”

But the path of the Afghan journalists and their families to Mexico was as arbitrary, personal and tenuous as anything else in the frantic and scattershot evacuation of Kabul.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Just days after the Taliban swept into Kabul and toppled Afghanistan’s government, a group of former mujahedeen fighters and Afghan commandos said they had begun a war of resistance in the last area of the country that is not under Taliban control: a narrow valley with a history of repelling invaders.

The man leading them is Ahmad Massoud, the 32-year-old son of the storied mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. And their struggle faces long odds: The resistance fighters are surrounded by the Taliban, have supplies that will soon start dwindling and have no visible outside support.

For now the resistance has merely two assets: the Panjshir Valley, 70 miles north of Kabul, which has a history of repelling invaders, and the legendary Massoud name.

Spokesmen for Ahmad Massoud insist that he has attracted thousands of soldiers to the valley, including remnants of the Afghan Army’s special forces and some of his father’s experienced guerrilla commanders, as well as activists and others who reject the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate.

The spokesmen, some of whom were with him in the Panjshir Valley and some who were outside the country drumming up support, said that Mr. Massoud has stocks of weapons and matériel, including American helicopters, but needs more.

‘‘We’re waiting for some opportunity, some support,” said Hamid Saifi, a former colonel in the Afghan National Army, and now a commander in Mr. Massoud’s resistance, who was reached in the Panjshir Valley by telephone on Sunday. “Maybe some countries will be ready for this great work. So far, all countries we talked to are quiet. America, Europe, China, Russia, all of them are quiet.’’

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Two members of Congress secretly flew to Kabul without authorization on Tuesday to witness the frenzied evacuation of Americans and Afghans, infuriating Biden administration officials and prompting Speaker Nancy Pelosi to urge other lawmakers not to follow their example.

The two members — Representatives Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, both veterans — said in a statement that the purpose of their trip was “to provide oversight on the executive branch.” Both lawmakers have blistered the Biden administration in recent weeks, accusing top officials of dragging their feet on evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies.

“There is no place in the world right now where oversight matters more,” they said.

Credit…Erin Schaff for The New York TimesCredit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Today with @RepMeijer I visited Kabul airport to conduct oversight on the evacuation.

Witnessing our young Marines and soldiers at the gates, navigating a confluence of humanity as raw and visceral as the world has ever seen, was indescribable. pic.twitter.com/bWGQh1iw2c

— Seth Moulton (@sethmoulton) August 25, 2021

But administration officials were furious that Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer had entered Afghanistan on an unauthorized, undisclosed trip, arguing that efforts to tend to the lawmakers had drained resources badly needed to help evacuate those already in the country.

The trip was reported earlier by The Associated Press.

Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer said that they had left Afghanistan “on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence,” and that they had taken other steps to “minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground.” They were in Kabul for less than 24 hours.

Still, Ms. Pelosi pressed other lawmakers not to do the same.

“Member travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding countries would unnecessarily divert needed resources from the priority mission of safely and expeditiously evacuating Americans and Afghans at risk from Afghanistan,” Ms. Pelosi wrote in a letter. She did not refer to Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer by name.

In their statement on Tuesday night, the congressmen sharpened their criticism of the administration’s handling of the evacuation, saying that “Washington should be ashamed of the position we put our service members in” and that the situation they had witnessed on the ground was more dire than they had expected.

“After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late,” they wrote, “that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time.”

Tags Afghanistan, Biden, Live, Taliban, Updates

World News

Afghanistan Information Stay Updates: The Taliban, Pentagon and Kabul

Post author By
Post date August 23, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — With just eight days left before an Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, the Pentagon is ramping up evacuations from Kabul’s airport by deploying American helicopters and troops into select spots in Kabul to extract stranded American citizens and Afghan allies.

Defense officials said that as of Monday, the military has helped to evacuate 37,000 people since Aug. 14, when Kabul fell to the Taliban. The pace of flights has picked up in the last few days, allowing for 11,000 people to be evacuated in one day. But that number is still just a fraction of the American citizens, foreign nationals, and Afghan allies who are seeking to leave the country.

President Biden has left the door open to maintaining the American troop presence — now at 5,800 Marines and soldiers — at the airport beyond the Aug. 31 deadline. But on Monday a Taliban spokesman warned of “consequences” if the United States sticks around beyond Aug. 31.

John F. Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, declined to offer details about how American troops will deploy into Kabul itself, or other parts of the country, to extract Americans, citing delicate ongoing negotiations between American and Taliban commanders. But he acknowledged two specific incidents in which American helicopters and troops have gone into Kabul to extract some 350 Americans, and said other cases may occur if Americans and allies are “in extremis.”

That is a change in the Pentagon’s position from last week, when officials said U.S. forces did not have the capacity to operate beyond the airport, and that people seeking evacuation had to make their way to the airport on their own.

In a 24-hour period from Sunday to Monday, “the U.S. military transported just under 11,000 personnel,” from the airport to other countries, Gen. Hank Taylor said at the Pentagon briefing — by far the highest one-day figure so far. “Since the beginning of evacuation operations on Aug. 14, we have evacuated approximately 37,000.”

He said Afghan allies are still being processed at the Kabul airport, although several times over the past week the gates of the airport have been shuttered because of the surge of people.

The Pentagon added a fourth American military base — Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, in New Jersey — to the list of temporary places where Afghan refugees will be taken upon arrival in the United States. Mr. Kirby said that the addition of the base will bring the housing capacity to 25,000 in the next weeks.

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Even as the evacuation from Afghanistan accelerates, President Biden is considering extending the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw, amid a groundswell of pressure from global leaders and veterans concerned that a security vacuum could risk lethal consequences.

Violent clashes at Kabul’s airport on Monday reinforced fears that the American withdrawal would aggravate the already precarious security situation.

The German military wrote on Twitter that a member of the Afghan security forces had died in a firefight with unidentified attackers in the early hours. It did not specify which group the Afghans were affiliated with.

Three other members of the Afghan forces were wounded in the skirmish outside the airport’s North Gate, it said. U.S. and German soldiers were also drawn into the fight but were not harmed.

In recent days, the United States has scrambled to control the mayhem at the airport as thousands of Afghans try desperately to flee the Taliban, with surging crowds turning deadly. Britain’s Defense Ministry, which has troops at the airport, said on Sunday that seven Afghan civilians had died in the crowds, where people — including a toddler — have been trampled to death.

Mr. Biden said on Sunday that his administration might extend his Aug. 31 deadline, and he pledged that all evacuated Afghan allies would be settled in the United States after they were screened and vetted at bases in other countries.

“We will welcome these Afghans who have helped us in the war effort over the last 20 years to their new home in the United States of America,” he said in remarks from White House. “Because that’s who we are. That’s what America is.”

But the Taliban have made it clear that an extension of the U.S. deadline for troop withdrawal would be unwelcome. “They should finish the evacuation by Aug. 31 as they have promised,” Mohammad Naem, a Taliban spokesman in Qatar, said on Monday.

Leaders of the Group of 7 nations will hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday to discuss the increasingly dangerous situation. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, which holds the group presidency this year, is expected to broach the issue of the retrenchment as some inside Britain call for sanctions against the Taliban.

Beyond fears that the Taliban are regressing to their past behavior of violent repression, there are also worries among national security officials that the American withdrawal could create a new and ongoing threat, including ISIS terrorists regaining a foothold in the country.

“It is vital that the international community works together to ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years,” Mr. Johnson wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

U.S. military veterans have also pressed the White House not to abandon its resolve to provide a safe exit for American citizens and Afghan allies. Dozens of organizations representing the military and veterans sent a letter to the White House on Monday requesting a meeting with Mr. Biden to discuss the issue.

With Afghanistan becoming a potent emblem of American retrenchment in the world, Vice President Kamala Harris met on Monday with leaders in Singapore, the first stop in a trip to Southeast Asia that is aimed at bolstering ties in the region.

The Biden administration has made Asia a centerpiece of its foreign policy, hoping to build stronger ties there to counter an increasingly assertive China. But Ms. Harris’s senior aides have faced questions about whether the haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan could undermine the administration’s diplomatic efforts.

The timing and optics of Ms. Harris’s trip to Vietnam, where she will arrive on Tuesday, are particularly awkward, with scenes of desperate Afghans at Kabul’s airport stirring memories of another war.

Many fear for the safety of those left behind, among them the roughly 3,400 Afghan United Nations staff members in Afghanistan, especially the women. Some have expressed worry that the Taliban and their extremist allies will target them because of their foreign affiliation.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — On the ground in Kabul, Rear Adm. Peter G. Vasely, a former member of the Navy SEALs who is now the top U.S. military officer in Afghanistan, talks daily or near daily with his Taliban counterparts regarding security measures at the airport, Pentagon officials said on Monday.

As the Pentagon rushes to evacuate tens of thousands of people before President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the discussions between Admiral Vasely and Taliban commanders have helped set the rules of engagement to allow Americans and some Afghan allies to reach Kabul’s airport. At the same time, the U.S. has been sending helicopters and troops beyond the airport to extract people who can’t get there on their own.

Other American officers down the military chain of command in Kabul have also engaged with Taliban commanders on specific security and threat reduction issues, the officials said — a partnership of necessity between parties that spent 20 years on opposite sides of a war.

The regular discussions between American and Taliban commanders yielded an agreement in which Taliban fighters expanded the security perimeter outside the airport, pushing back the massive crowds of Afghans and others seeking access to flights out.

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, first spoke to senior Taliban commanders on Aug. 15 when he was in Doha, Qatar, to help get the evacuation effort off the ground.

Al Udeid Air Base, a sprawling airfield outside Doha, has become the main receiving station for thousands of Afghans arriving on American military flights from Kabul.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Desperate people fleeing Afghanistan face dangerous crowds, vanishingly rare plane seats and Taliban fighters issuing beatings. But those lucky enough to leave can be consumed by feelings of despair for the country they left behind.

As thousands of Afghans scramble to leave, Samiullah Mahdi, a lecturer at Kabul University, said the attempted exodus was spurring a sense of shock, fear and alienation for people who had fled the Taliban takeover.

“Afghanistan is not the same anymore,” said Mr. Mahdi, who worked as a journalist for Tolo News, a popular Afghan news outlet. “We are not the same anymore.”

He managed to flee a few days before the collapse of Kabul and asked that his location not be revealed because he feared for his safety. Now, he said, he was overcome by the sense of becoming a permanent refugee.

“We have no home to return to,” he said.

In recent days, the situation at Kabul’s airport has grown increasingly dangerous for people trying to flee the Taliban. The large crowds have become unruly and in some cases deadly. Fears of attacks have grown.

Mr. Mahdi said he had heard harrowing accounts of people trying to escape. He said a colleague who suffered a broken arm after being beaten by Taliban fighters had not been given medical attention until he was evacuated.

The days since Kabul’s collapse have felt more like centuries, he said. A friend left in Kabul, where many people have remained cloistered inside for fear of Taliban retribution, described it to him as “a city of ghosts.”

“Even during the light of the day, you feel like it’s dark. That kind of depression is governing the city,” Mr. Mahdi said. “People fear that the international community has given up on Afghanistan and they will one day recognize this regime change in the country.”

There was also an overwhelming sense, he said, that the advances of the past two decades, the liberalization of the press and the flourishing of women’s rights, now threatened to unravel. “You have tears in your eyes, and you cannot hold it together,” he said. “It’s grieving, it’s anger, it’s hopelessness.”

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the past, they imposed a harsh version of Shariah law, barring women from working outside the home or leaving the house without a male guardian, eliminating schooling for girls and publicly flogging people who violated the group’s morality code.

Mr. Mahdi said that the Taliban were already displaying their past tendencies and had asked private and public universities to segregate people by gender, using only female lecturers and professors for female students. But he said universities were struggling to find enough instructors, and he feared that they would be asked to abolish classes for women.

“It’s a lot of pain when you feel like everything that you tried and tried to build and love to work on is taken away from you,” he said.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The Taliban held their first meeting of religious leaders since retaking Afghanistan’s capital last week, laying out guidelines about religious instructions to hundreds of the nation’s imams and religious school instructors.

Taliban leaders, including their spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, took turns speaking at the Loya Jirga Hall on Monday, from a stage that was still decorated with the tricolor flag of the fallen Afghan government. The conference’s title, which included the “promotion of virtue and prevention of vice,” was reminiscent of language used by Taliban’s religious police when they ruled the country in the late 1990s.

More than a week after the Taliban pushed the U.S.-backed government out of power, the militants are urging Afghans to return to their jobs and daily lives as they try to form a new government. Many of their leaders, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, have returned to Kabul and meetings are being held with politicians including former President Ahmed Karzai. The Taliban have pledged to allow women to work and girls to attend schools, and have said they offered a general amnesty to everyone loyal to the former government.

“We invited you here today to talk about your role in this system,” Mawlawi Mohammad Shafiq Khatib, one of the organizers of the conference, said to the participants at the meeting. Whatever religious leaders “say that is compatible with Shariah and the principles of Islam, the people must heed. We are thankful to God that we have an Islamic system now.”

Still, no women appeared to be present at the meeting on Monday.

The Taliban leaders at the conference in Kabul indicated that school curriculum would be changing to fall in line with their teaching and that there would be more information soon about the overall structure of the educational system.

The speakers praised deceased leaders of the Taliban — including Mullah Muhammad Omar and Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour — and urged the attendees to take an active role in promoting the formation of a new government. They also urged a discussion of the ongoing drug problem among Afghanistan’s young people.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said Monday that after discussions, the Taliban had moved their checkpoints farther out from the perimeter of the Kabul airport to allow more room for American citizens and Afghan allies to be processed for evacuation by the United States.

“Through these military channels of communication with the Taliban, they have extended the perimeter from the point of view of their checkpoints to allow Americans through, to allow third-country nationals through,” Mr. Sullivan said.

He declined to provide details, other than to say that the Taliban checkpoints were now a “substantial distance away from the gate” at the airport.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr. Sullivan said this was the perimeter extension that Mr. Biden had been referencing when he said on Sunday: “We have constantly — how can I say it? — increased rational access to the airport, where more folk can get there more safely. It’s still a dangerous operation.”

That had prompted speculation that American troops were engaged in operations outside the perimeter of the airport, in areas of the city now controlled by the Taliban. But Mr. Sullivan said that was not the case.

“American troops are not operating outside the perimeter of the airport,” he said on Monday.

It was not clear if he meant only that U.S. forces were not operating in the area around the airport. The Pentagon confirmed on Monday that Special Forces troops and helicopters had gone into Kabul on two occasions to extract people who were unable to reach the airport on their own, and that they might do so again.

But the agreement with the Taliban on moving the checkpoints is one concrete result of what American officials have described as ongoing conversations between military officers and diplomats and their Taliban counterparts during the last week.

“We are in talks with the Taliban on a daily basis through their political and security channels,” Mr. Sullivan said, but added that he was “not going to get into the details of those discussions here to protect those discussions, which are covering a wide range of issues.”

American officials have been cagey on specifics, though Mr. Sullivan said the Biden administration was “consulting with the Taliban on every aspect of what’s happening in Kabul, on what’s happening at the airport, on how we need to ensure that there is facilitated passage to the airport for American citizens” and others.

He stressed, however, that Mr. Biden had made it “very clear” that he did not trust the Taliban to live up to promises that they made.

“Of course he does not — of course none of us do,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Because we’ve seen the horrific images from the last time they were in power, because we’ve seen the way that they’ve conducted this war, because we’ve seen the fact that they have been responsible for the deaths of American men and women through two decades.”

“We have no illusions about the Taliban,” he said.

Credit…Pool photo by Evelyn Hockstein

Facing rising pressure over the United States’ haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan, Vice President Kamala Harris said on Monday that the Biden administration was “singularly focused” on evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies.

Ms. Harris’s comments, at a news conference in Singapore, came at the start of a weeklong trip to Southeast Asia that is aimed at strengthening economic ties and countering China’s growing sway in the region.

Instead, her joint news conference with Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, was dominated by questions about the chaotic execution of the withdrawal, which has prompted criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and leaders from around the world.

“Right now we are singularly focused on evacuating American citizens, Afghans who worked with us and Afghans who are vulnerable, including women and children,” Ms. Harris said. “That is a singular focus at this time.”

The remarks came after the White House detailed a series of new agreements with Singapore to address climate change, cyberthreats and the pandemic. Ms. Harris has also said the administration is focused on working with Southeast Asian nations to address supply-chain issues, including a global shortage of semiconductors that are used to build cars and computers. More broadly, the trip is part of the Biden administration’s goal to refocus its national security strategy on competing with the rising influence of China.

Still, the beginning of Ms. Harris’s trip has been overshadowed by the widely criticized exit of American troops from Afghanistan. The military has evacuated tens of thousands of people from the Afghan capital, Kabul, since Aug. 14, although thousands of Americans and Afghan allies remain in limbo. Thousands of Afghans seeking to escape the Taliban have rushed to the airport there amid violence and several deaths.

Standing alongside Mr. Lee, Ms. Harris said her presence in Singapore, as well as the agreements reached during the visit, should assure allies that the United States remained a credible partner.

“I am standing here because of our commitment to a longstanding relationship, which is an enduring relationship, with the Indo-Pacific region, with Southeast Asian countries and, in particular, with Singapore,” she said.

Afterward, Mr. Lee said he had offered to send one of Singapore’s military planes to assist in the effort to evacuate Afghan interpreters, guides and others who had helped or worked for the United States. Ms. Harris said the United States would follow up on the offer.

“We hope Afghanistan does not become an epicenter for terrorism again,” Mr. Lee said, “and post-Afghanistan in the longer term, what matters is how the U.S. repositions itself in the Asia Pacific, engages the broader region and continues the fight against terrorism.”

Credit…Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Commercial airlines have started evacuating Americans and Afghan allies from bases in the Middle East, fulfilling a commitment to aid the military in emergencies.

A United Airlines spokeswoman said the company started providing the assistance on Sunday but declined to give additional details. According to FlightRadar24, a tracking service, a United flight left Frankfurt and landed at a military base in Qatar on Sunday. That same plane was scheduled to return to Ramstein Air Base, a U.S. base in Germany, and then fly on to Washington’s Dulles International Airport.

American Airlines said it planned to have three wide-body planes available starting Monday to assist in the evacuations. United is contributing four Boeing 777 planes. Delta Air Lines and two charter-flight operators, Atlas Air and Omni Air, are providing three planes each, and Hawaiian Airlines is providing two.

“The images from Afghanistan are heartbreaking,” American Airlines said in a statement. “The airline is proud and grateful of our pilots and flight attendants, who will be operating these trips to be a part of this lifesaving effort.”

A voluntary program known as the Civil Reserve Air Fleet was established in 1951, after the Berlin airlift, during which the United States and Britain combated a Soviet blockade of West Berlin by delivering supplies over the course of 277,569 flights. The program is run by the Defense Department with help from the Transportation Department. Participation in the program gives airlines preference in carrying passengers and cargo for the Defense Department in peacetime — a lucrative business.

In discussions last week, government officials notified airlines that they might activate the fleet to help with evacuations in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, the union that represents flight attendants at United Airlines, the Association of Flight Attendants, allowed its members to sign up to staff the flights through a bidding system.

“As a global airline and flag carrier for our country, we embrace the responsibility to quickly respond to international challenges like this one,” Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, said on social media. “It’s a duty we take with the utmost care and coordination.”

The flights are not expected to hurt participating airlines, which are carrying fewer passengers because of the coronavirus pandemic. Demand for tickets is especially weak for the international flights that use the kinds of larger planes that will be involved in the evacuations.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At Hamid Karzai International Airport, where thousands of U.S. troops and NATO allies are trying to evacuate citizens and Afghans desperate to flee their country after the Taliban took control of Kabul last week, the coronavirus is an afterthought.

The speed, size and scope of the evacuation operation — which came together rapidly as U.S. officials were caught off guard by the Taliban’s swift offensive — have meant that few measures, if any, are in place to help prevent the spread of the disease and its newer, more aggressive variants.

There is no testing of the thousands of passengers passing through the base, in what has turned into the final operation of the United States’ nearly 20-year-old war in Afghanistan. Social distancing is nonexistent as hundreds of Afghans are ferried in from the airport’s gates, held in crowded parking lots or tents and processed in packed terminals.

The U.S. military cargo aircraft responsible for carrying a large number of Afghan refugees to bases in the Middle East and Europe are packed with 300 to 400 passengers at a time who sit practically knee-to-back on the floor.

Coronavirus testing usually takes place at American bases outside Afghanistan, where passengers are tested and isolated if found to be positive. Before the government of Afghanistan collapsed, its ministry of public health had reported a third wave of coronavirus infections in the country, with a record number of positive cases and deaths.

But coronavirus testing in the country has been unreliable and inconsistent since the start of the pandemic, as testing ability was limited or unavailable in rural areas. The current situation is part of a broader humanitarian and medical issue facing Afghans on top of the security crisis.

Humanitarian and medical aid has been scarce in the past week, with the World Health Organization and other aid agencies unable to fly supplies into the airport while it is overwhelmed by the evacuation effort.

“Conflict, displacement, drought and the Covid-19 pandemic are all contributing to a complex and desperate situation in Afghanistan,” the W.H.O. said in a statement.

According to Dapeng Luo, a W.H.O. representative in Afghanistan, the movement and mixing of the newly displaced in Afghanistan, coupled with many now living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, has severely limited infection prevention protocols and increased the risk of transmission of the coronavirus.

Dr. Luo said there were concerns that this, and the nation’s relatively low vaccination rate, could lead to an uptick in the virus.

“This will place an enormous burden on the health system, which is already struggling to cope with escalating trauma and emergency cases and experiencing shortage of supplies due to the current instability, disruptions to governance and shipment of supplies into the country,” Dr. Luo said. “A new wave of Covid-19 could leave some of the most vulnerable without critical health care.”

Credit…Rahmat Gul/Associated Press

Last week, former President Hamid Karzai stood outside his home in Kabul to record a video message, surrounded by his daughters, and said that he would stay in the Afghan capital with his family to try to coordinate with the Taliban for a peaceful transition.

But even as he has tried to position himself as a mediator at this crucial moment, his ability to play that role is tenuous. By the time Mr. Karzai appeared in a second video — recorded in the garden of the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah — he appeared less confident and his speech was stilted. Mr. Abdullah stood beside him in silence.

Mr. Karzai found refuge with Mr. Abdullah, two Afghan officials said on Monday, after the Taliban disarmed his guards and took over security of his compound several days ago.

Mr. Karzai, who since retiring in 2014 has lived in a well-guarded government house beside the presidential palace, remained in Kabul after many officials left. He had said that he was forming a council of Afghan leaders to negotiate an inclusive interim government with the Taliban.

But he and Mr. Abdullah are in an increasingly strained situation, said Muslem Hyatt, a former military attaché for the government of Afghanistan to London. The pressure on Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah raises questions about their ability to work freely to help form a new government despite Taliban suggestions that former officials would be pardoned as the group seized control of the country.

Saad Mohseni, the director general of MOBY Media Group, which owns the independent news channel Tolo TV, said that he had been in touch with Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah and that his impression was that the meetings between the Taliban and the former leaders were little more than show.

“They are consulting them on general things,” he said — “national unity, reassuring the Afghan public, building national consensus, but nothing substantive on the future government.”

An Afghan official who is outside the country said he had been told that Mr. Karzai’s wife and children were also with him at Mr. Abdullah’s house.

Both Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah were on a Taliban list of wanted people, and former government officials said they were concerned for their safety as the Taliban intensify their search for members of the Afghan government security services.

“We are very worried,” Mr. Hyatt said, noting that he had learned the circumstances of the takeover of Mr. Karzai’s home from people still in Kabul. An aide to Mr. Abdullah reached by telephone said that he was not available to speak to the news media.

Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, a former finance minister who met with Taliban leaders on Sunday in Kabul alongside Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah, said that no official negotiations had begun. The meeting was more about “building trust” and “mutual introduction,” he said, rather than negotiations over the future of the country.

He said he had urged the Taliban to begin the talks sooner rather than later and that a new government should be formed within a month to lessen the uncertainty.

“Security wise, Kabul is safe, but mentally people are worried about the future,” he said, adding that the economy was getting worse by the day. “I walked around the city today, and the image that I have is — disappointment,” he said.

“The Taliban have won militarily — they can announce their government now — but politically they need to include others to form an inclusive government acceptable to the people of Afghanistan and the world,” he added. “They haven’t announced their government yet, which shows they understand the need for a political settlement.”

Credit…Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

When American bombs began to fall in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Taliban members fled Kabul within weeks and soon the group was reaching out to Hamid Karzai, who would become the country’s interim president: They wanted to make a deal.

But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.

Almost 20 years later, the United States did negotiate a deal to end the Afghan war, but the balance of power was entirely different by then — it favored the Taliban.

For diplomats who had spent years trying to shore up the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan, the deal that President Donald J. Trump struck with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw American troops — an agreement that President Biden decided to uphold shortly after taking office this year — felt like a betrayal.

Now, with the Taliban back in power, some of those diplomats are looking back at a missed chance by the United States, all those years ago, to pursue a Taliban surrender that could have halted America’s longest war in its infancy, or shortened it considerably.

Credit…Trevor Collens/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As Australia scrambles to evacuate citizens and visa holders from Kabul, it has also started an advertising campaign to deter Afghan refugees from trying to reach Australia by boat, promising that they will have “zero chance of success.”

“Australia’s strong border protection policies have not and will not change,” Karen Andrews, Australia’s minister for home affairs, said in a 30-second video uploaded to a government YouTube channel on Monday. “No one who arrives in Australia illegally will ever settle here. Do not attempt an illegal boat journey to Australia. You have zero chance of success.”

The notice is a reminder of the nation’s strict stance on asylum seekers and an offshore detention policy that has been widely criticized by rights groups in recent years. The video message is the latest in a series created by the government since 2013 to discourage attempts to reach Australia by sea.

In an emailed statement, Ms. Andrews reiterated that people who arrive by boat will not be resettled in Australia.

“The Australian government has granted more than 8,500 visas to Afghans under Australia’s humanitarian program since 2013,” she said. “These people arrived legally, on a valid visa issued by the Australian government.”

Australia has pledged to take in 3,000 Afghan refugees within its existing annual allocation of humanitarian visas, not including Afghans employed by the Australian government who are eligible for other visas. Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested last week that this number could be increased, calling it “a floor, not a ceiling.”

The government has said it will not ask Afghans already in Australia on visas to return to their native country while the situation there remains fraught.

The video follows controversy last weekend when Australian news outlets reported that over 100 Afghans who worked as guards at Australia’s embassy in Kabul had been rejected for a specialty visa and told to “contact a migration agent” because they were contractors and not directly employed by the embassy.

Hours after that was reported, the government said the workers had been approved for humanitarian visas.

On Monday, Mr. Morrison said that 470 Australians, Afghan visa holders and citizens of allied countries had been evacuated from Kabul to Australia’s military base in the United Arab Emirates on Australian flights overnight. He said this took the total number of people evacuated from Kabul by Australian forces, with the help of the forces from the United States and Britain, to over 1,000.

A repatriation flight from the U.A.E. also landed in Melbourne, carrying 175 people who had been evacuated from Afghanistan. That followed another flight that landed in Perth on Friday, carrying 94 people.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The chaotic and abrupt end to the United States’ longest war is looming large in the world. But at some American army bases, civilian neighborhoods and rural crossroads across the United States, the subject of Afghanistan is eerily absent.

At the main gate of a busy Army post in Fort Carson, Colo., stands a sandstone slab etched with the names of soldiers from there killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It ran out of room for names in 2005, so the Army added another. And another. And another. Nine slabs now stand by the gate with the names of 407 dead.

But despite so many slabs put up over so many years, there was no ceremony at Fort Carson to recognize that the war in Afghanistan had ended. There were no civilians waving homemade signs as there were at the war’s start, no pause for a moment of silence.

The same absence of acknowledgment could be found across the United States, where people who once flew American flags and stuck yellow ribbons on their cars, this month watched the fall of Kabul on television and often struggled to weave coherent responses from conflicting threads of 20 years of emotion, memory and, at times, apathy.

The fall of Afghanistan has left people in the United States both fearful of attacks and wary that the kind of military response seen in Iraq and Afghanistan may not offer any remedy.

Some watching the Taliban ride through Kabul in celebration worry that the end of the war isn’t an end at all.

“Is it ever going to end?” said Pat Terlingo, 76, a retired school superintendent in Shanksville, Pa. “I don’t think it will.”

Credit…Taliban, via Associated Press

The Taliban have reached out to former President Hamid Karzai and to Russia in an attempt to fulfill their pledge to form an “inclusive” government and defeat holdouts against their rule, amid deadly mayhem outside Kabul’s airport, with thousands of terrified Afghans trying to flee.

Little in the Taliban’s history suggests any readiness to compromise on their harsh Islamist principles or to share power, but the United States has warned the militant group that going it alone will result in continuous conflict and isolation. In this context, Mr. Karzai, who led the country from 2001 to 2014, has tried to put himself forward as a mediator, albeit one under increasingly strained circumstances.

Mr. Karzai, 63, who as president fell out with the United States over American drone attacks, corruption accusations and other issues, has met with Taliban leaders, including Khalil Haqqani, whom the United States has designated as a terrorist. Mr. Karzai is also working closely with Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the former Afghan’s government’s peace delegation.

A Taliban leader described as the acting governor of Kabul talked over the weekend with Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah. A growing number of senior Taliban have been seen in Kabul in recent days to discuss the shape of the next government, among them Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s chief diplomat, who was a senior official in the group’s government in the 1990s.

A delegation of Taliban leaders also visited the Russian Embassy in Kabul, asking officials there to pass along an offer of negotiations to a group of Afghan leaders holding out in northern Afghanistan, the Russian ambassador, Dmitri Zhirnov, told Russian television on Saturday.

Mr. Karzai’s position is tenuous. Both he and Mr. Abdullah were on a Taliban list of wanted people, and former government officials said they were concerned for their safety.

How the United States will view Mr. Karzai’s re-emergence is unclear. So, too, is whether Afghans will be convinced by the sudden professed moderation of the Taliban, whose oppression of women and brutality have been hallmarks of their rule.

A week after the Taliban overran the country and the two-decade long American attempt to shape a democratic Afghanistan collapsed, there was no sign of any cabinet taking form.

Credit…Narendra Shrestha/EPA, via Shutterstock

Security personnel from Nepal, a landlocked country in the Himalayas that is one of the poorest in Asia, have played a little-known but crucial role in protecting officials, diplomats and companies in Afghanistan.

Hired by private contractors, the security workers — many of whom are ethnic Gurkhas who have served in the Nepali, Indian or British military — often work under conditions that have drawn protests from labor activists.

Now, Nepal is trying to get thousands of its people out of Afghanistan, and the task is daunting.

The exact number of Nepali nationals in the country is unclear, and the country does not have an embassy in Afghanistan. So the government of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is urging Western nations to help rescue Nepali security guards as they evacuate their own citizens from Kabul.

“Our fellow guards should be evacuated out of Afghanistan as soon as possible,” said Amrit Rokaya Chhetri, who survived a 2016 Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 13 Nepalis. “What happens if someone is killed there in a blast or shooting because of a delayed evacuation?”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At the center of the scramble to airlift American citizens out of Afghanistan after its fall to the Taliban is a basic question: How many Americans are waiting to be evacuated?

It is a question the Biden administration has been unable to answer.

“We cannot give you a precise number,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Mr. Sullivan said the United States had been in touch with “a few thousand Americans” and was working on making arrangements to get them out of the country. In another interview, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he estimated that “roughly a few thousand” Americans were trying to leave Afghanistan.

American officials had estimated on Tuesday that 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens were in Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. William Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff said on Saturday that about 2,500 Americans had been evacuated since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban took Kabul, the Afghan capital.

The evacuation of U.S. citizens is one piece of the broader airlift effort that is underway in Kabul, with thousands of Afghans also being flown out of the country. Mr. Biden said on Sunday that nearly 28,000 people, in total, had been evacuated on military and other flights since Aug. 14.

Complicating matters for the Biden administration is a lack of clarity about how many Americans were in Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control of the country.

When American citizens come to Afghanistan, they are asked to register with the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Sullivan said. Some register but then leave the country without notifying the embassy. Others never register to begin with.

“We have been working for the past few days to get fidelity on as precise a count as possible,” Mr. Sullivan said in the NBC interview. “We have reached out to thousands of Americans by phone, email, text. And we are working on plans to, as we get in touch with people, give them direction for the best and most safe and most effective way for them to get into the airport.”

Tags Afghanistan, Kabul, Live, News, Pentagon, Taliban, Updates

World News

Desperation as Afghans Search to Flee a Nation Retaken by the Taliban

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Post date August 22, 2021

On Saturday morning, a former interpreter for an American company in Kabul plunged into a mass of humanity outside a gate at the Kabul airport with her family in tow.

Even as she was jostled and elbowed by people in the throng, she pushed ahead, desperate to secure a flight out of the country for everyone accompanying her — her husband, 2-year-old daughter, disabled parents, three sisters and a cousin.

Then the crowd surged. The entire family was slammed to the ground. People trampled them where they lay, the woman recalled just hours later.

She remembered someone smashing her cellphone and someone else kicking her in the head. She couldn’t breathe, so she tried to tear off her abaya, a robe-like dress.

As she struggled to her feet, she said, she searched for her toddler. The girl was dead, trampled to death by the mob.

“I felt pure terror,” the woman said in a telephone interview from Kabul. “I couldn’t save her.”

In the six days since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, Afghans have negotiated a terrifying new reality after enduring 20 years of war and suicide bombings. Their world has been upended, and something as prosaic as a trip to the airport now inspires terror. Just stepping outside the front door can be jarring and disorienting.

With the situation increasingly chaotic, the U.S. embassy warned American citizens to stay away from the airport, citing “potential security threats outside the gates.”

Across the country, Afghans who served the American military effort in Afghanistan, or the American-backed former government, are in hiding, many of them threatened with death by the Taliban. Gunmen have gone door-to-door, searching for “collaborators” and threatening their family members, according to human rights groups.

A 39-year-old former interpreter for the U.S. military and Western aid groups was hiding Saturday inside a home in Kabul with his wife and two children. He said the Taliban had telephoned, telling him, “Face the consequences — we will kill you.”

The interpreter, whose identity was shielded like others in this article for safety concerns, said he had given up trying to secure a flight after a harrowing and ultimately futile attempt to force his way past Taliban gunmen and unruly mobs at the airport the day before. He has been spending his time calling and texting American soldiers and officers in the United States who are struggling to find ways to rescue him and his family.

“I’m losing hope,” he said by telephone. “I think maybe I will have to accept the consequences.”

Another former interpreter for the U.S. military was also in hiding in Kabul Saturday. He, too, said he had abandoned any hope of getting a flight for him, his wife and young son after two terrifying forays to the airport.

“I’ve lost hope,” he said. “I’ve lost trust in the U.S. government, which keeps saying, ‘We will evacuate our allies.’”

Updated

Aug. 22, 2021, 12:03 p.m. ET

“Evacuation is impossible,” he added.

Afghans who have been crowding airport gates tend to panic every time tear gas is released or shots are fired into the air to disperse the crowds, the former interpreter said.

“Your child could get trampled,” he said. “If the U.S. gives me the entire universe after I lose a child, it is worthless.”

To cope with the expected flood of Afghan refugees, the Biden administration wants to enlist commercial airlines to ferry those arriving in Gulf states from Kabul to transport them to countries willing to offer them resettlement.

In the Shar-e-Naw neighborhood of Kabul, a female Afghan journalist said she finally ventured outside after hiding indoors since last Sunday. Trying to obey randomly enforced Taliban strictures on women, she wore a full-body abaya.

“It was so heavy it made me feel sick,” she said. And in the street, she said, “There is no music, nothing. All you hear is the Taliban talking on TVs and radios.”

She said her sister-in-law appeared in front of male family members with her hair uncovered. Her brother-in-law gave her a vicious kick and told her, “Put your bloody scarf on!”

Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan

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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.

What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.

Also in hiding was a former Interior Ministry police officer who had seen Taliban fighters ransack the ministry, combing through paperwork that contained detailed information about employees. He worried that they would come looking for him.

“Kabul has become a city of fear,” the officer said.

In Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan, a journalist said he was hiding inside his home Saturday, afraid to show his face. He had reported on Taliban atrocities when the government controlled the province. Now the Taliban were in charge and on the prowl for journalists, he said.

“The Taliban will kill me and members of my family, just like they’ve killed my colleagues,” the journalist said.

In the eastern province of Khost, another journalist was also in hiding, moving between his home and the home of a family member. Taliban fighters were roaring through the province in American-supplied vehicles captured from Afghan security forces, he said. He feared they would find him soon.

“I’m out of hope,” he said. “Pray for me.”

In Kabul, the woman whose daughter was killed said the family was able to bring the girl’s body back for burial. She wept as she recalled how she would try to ease her daughter’s fears whenever gunshots rang out in their neighborhood: She had told her they were “crackers” — firecrackers.

“My baby was such a brave child,” she said. “When she heard the gunshots, she would just yell out, ‘Crackers!’”

She said she and her family were unlikely to return to the airport anytime soon. “I’d rather die a dignified death here at home than die in such an undignified way.”

Inside the Kabul house where the 39-year-old former interpreter was hiding, hope was fading. He said he was gratified by persistent attempts at assistance by the American soldiers he once served, but had concluded they could do nothing.

“If the Taliban kill me, OK, I can accept that,” he said. “I only ask them to spare my children.”

Jim Huylebroek, Sharif Hassan, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi contributed reporting.

Tags Afghans, Country, Desperation, flee, Retaken, Seek, Taliban

World News

Cryptocurrency, the Taliban, and capital flight

Post author By
Post date August 22, 2021

Crypto trader and vlogger Farhan Hotak traveling to the Shah Wali Kot District in Afghanistan.

Farhan Hotak isn’t your typical 22 year-old Afghan.

In the last week, he helped his family of ten flee the province of Zabul in southern Afghanistan and travel 97 miles to a city on the Pakistani border. But unlike others choosing to leave the country, once his relatives were in safe hands, Hotak then turned around and came back so that he could protect his family home – and vlog to his thousands of Instagram followers about the evolving situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

He has also been keeping a very close eye on his crypto portfolio on Binance, as the local currency touches record lows and nationwide bank closures make it next to impossible to withdraw cash.

“In Afghanistan, we don’t have platforms like PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle, so I have to depend on other things,” said Hotak.

Afghanistan still mostly operates as a cash economy, so money in Hotak’s crypto wallet won’t help him put dinner on his table tonight, but it does give him peace of mind that some of his wealth is safeguarded against economic instability at home.

It also offers bigger promises down the road: Access to the global economy from inside Afghanistan, certain protections against spiraling inflation, and crucially, the opportunity to make a bet on himself and a future he didn’t think was possible before learning about bitcoin.

“I have very, very, very limited resources to do anything. I’m interested in the crypto world, because I have earned a lot, and I see a lot of potential in myself that I can go further,” he said.

Run on the banks

For many Afghans, this week has laid bare the worst-case scenario for a country running on legacy financial rails: A nationwide cash shortage, closed borders, a plunging currency, and rapidly rising prices of basic goods.

Many banks were forced to shutter their doors after running out of cash this week. Photos featuring hundreds of Kabul residents crowding outside branches in a futile effort to draw money from their accounts went viral.

Afghan people line up outside AZIZI Bank to take out cash as the Bank suffers amid money crises in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 15, 2021.

Haroon Sabawoon | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

“There’s no bank I can go to right now, no ATM,” said Ali Latifi, a journalist born and based in Kabul. “I live above two banks and three ATM machines, but they’ve been off since Thursday,” said Latifi, referring to the Thursday before the palace ouster.

Without an authority helming the Central Bank, it appears that printing cash to cover the shortfall isn’t an option, at least in the short-term.

The Western Union has suspended all services and even the centuries-old “hawala” system – which facilitates cross-border transactions via a sophisticated network of money exchangers and personal contacts – for now, remains closed.

Sangar Paykhar, a Kabul native currently living in the Netherlands, has been in constant touch with relatives there in recent weeks. He said that many who live paycheck to paycheck were, at first, borrowing money from others to get by, but now, those able to lend out cash have started conserving their funds.

“They’ve realized the regime has collapsed” and that those they are lending to “might not have a job tomorrow,” said Paykhar.

A few days before the Taliban entered Kabul, Musa Ramin was among the people who queued outside a bank in a fruitless attempt to withdraw cash. But unlike other Afghans in line with him that day, months earlier, he had invested a portion of his net worth into crypto. Ramin had been burned before by a rapidly depreciating currency, and decentralized digital money had proven to be a trusted safeguard.

In 2020, on what was meant to be a brief layover on a trip from London to Kabul, Ramin got stuck in Turkey. A one-week, mandatory Covid quarantine ballooned into six months.

“I converted all my money to the lira,” he said. After the Turkish currency began to spiral, Ramin said his capital was cut in half, and he was forced to conserve it. “That is when I discovered bitcoin.”

With all flights cancelled and no other options for departure, Ramin realized he needed to find alternative ways to support himself while stranded in Turkey during the pandemic-related shutdown. That’s when he started trading crypto.

“At first, I lost a lot of money,” he said. But he’s since gotten the swing of managing his digital assets, thanks to Twitter and tutorials on YouTube.

Musa Ramin at the Royal Opera House in London, just before his six-month quarantine in Turkey.

Even after returning to Kabul, the 27 year-old says he put all his focus into trading crypto. 80% of his crypto capital is in spot exposure, primarily in major coins, like bitcoin, ethereum, and binance coin. The other 20% he uses to trade futures.

“I was making more money in crypto in a month than in construction in a year,” said Ramin, though he did acknowledge the risk that’s involved. “It’s easy making money in crypto but keeping that wealth is the difficult part.”

Despite that volatility, Ramin still sees crypto as the safest place to park his cash. “If a government isn’t formed quickly, we might see a Venezuela-type situation here,” Ramin told CNBC. He feels virtual tokens are his safest hedge against political uncertainty and plans to increase his exposure to digital currencies in the coming year to as much as 40% of his total net worth.

Ramin isn’t alone in his thinking. Google trends data shows that web searches in Afghanistan for “bitcoin” and “crypto” rose sharply in July just before the coup in Kabul. That said, because this tool is a measure of interest, the spike could be referring to 10 searches or it could be 100,000.

But in a country that has long relied on physical cash for virtually all transactions, not many people have the option to let their savings sit in a bank account, let alone a digital wallet.

Just take Hotak. He lives in a remote part of Afghanistan where there are no ATMs or bank branches nearby. That means he has to keep a lot of physical cash on hand, in order to cover daily expenses. “Afghanistan is an unexpected country, and you have to be ready for anything,” he said.

While Hotak thinks that crypto is his future, for now, the bulk of his income comes from day labor jobs, like shoveling, brick work, digging wells, and running a tailor shop that makes clothes.

“Zabul is not a very developed city. It’s a village, so that’s how I earn,” he said.

Signs of a growing crypto economy

It’s hard to get insight into crypto adoption in Afghanistan.

Beyond the fact that measuring cryptocurrency adoption at the grassroots level isn’t easy, people actively go out of their way to hide who they are.

Some Afghans, for example, will conceal their IP address by using a virtual private network, or VPN, in order to mask their geographic digital footprint.

And unlike many crypto boosters – who tend to be vocal and community-driven – digital currency supporters inside Afghanistan often don’t want others to know they exist.

“The crypto community in Afghanistan is very small,” said Hotak. “They actually don’t want to meet each other.” He thinks that could change if the political situation normalizes, but “for now, everyone just wants to stay hidden until things are nice.”

However, new research from blockchain data firm Chainalysis is offering fresh optics on the country’s apparently burgeoning peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto network, which is increasingly the most telling metric of adoption in Afghanistan. Hotak, as well as his friends, use Binance’s P2P exchange, which allows them to buy and sell their coins directly with other users on the platform.

Chainalysis’ 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index gives Afghanistan a rank of 20 out of the 154 countries it evaluated in terms of overall crypto adoption. And when you isolate for its P2P exchange trade volume, Afghanistan jumps up to seventh place. That’s a big move in just 12 months: Last year, Chainalysis considered Afghanistan’s crypto presence to be so minimal as to entirely exclude it from its 2020 ranking.

“Afghanistan on top makes sense from a capital controls point of view, given it’s hard to move money in and out,” explained Boaz Sobrado, a London-based fintech data analyst.

And some experts tell CNBC that Chainalysis could actually be underestimating its overall adoption.

“Unlike many other countries, sanctioned nations don’t have good and clear data on P2P markets,” explained Sobrado. He says that is partly to do with the fact that it is harder to track those transactions.

Afghan currency traders at a central money market in Kabul.

Getty

There are other anecdotal signs of adoption across the country.

Nearly a decade ago, sisters and Afghan entrepreneurs Elaha and Roya – both of whom had a focus on computer science at Herat University – founded the Digital Citizen Fund, an NGO that helps women and girls in developing countries gain access to technology. The organization has 11 women-only IT centers in Herat and another two in Kabul, where they teach 16,000 females everything from essential computer skills to blockchain technology.

Before classes were suspended earlier this week, creating a crypto wallet was also part of the curriculum. Elaha Mahboob tells CNBC that some students have chosen to secure their money in crypto accounts and a few have specifically started investing in bitcoin and ethereum in order to achieve their long-term financial goals.

“This is especially important as they don’t have to worry about not having access to their money, because major banks in Afghanistan have closed,” Mahboob said.

A few Digital Citizen Fund participants have left the country and used the crypto accounts they made in class as a way to transfer their money out.

Afghanistan’s exposure to the cryptosphere was also taking place inside the presidential palace. Blockchain company Fantom told CNBC it had been working in tandem with the previous government.

One such project with the Ministry of Health involved piloting blockchain technology to track counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Fantom says the pilot “concluded successfully,” and they had been preparing for national rollout before the Taliban took over.

Then there’s Sweden-based Bitrefill, an online marketplace that helps customers live on cryptocurrency by exchanging digital coins like bitcoin or dogecoin for gift cards with partner merchants. In Afghanistan, the card offerings include multiple mobile phone service providers, games such as Fortnite and Minecraft, Hotels.com, and Flightgift, which can be redeemed for flights with 300 international airlines.

While the company wouldn’t share sales numbers on the record with CNBC, Bitrefill does have the endorsement of Janey Gak, who uses it to top up her phone. Her Twitter account has become a must-follow for those who want to understand the situation on the ground through her eyes, but she’s also evangelizing the power of bitcoin to transform the country.

“I’m just an ordinary person. I’m not anyone special,” she said. “I am just someone who discovered bitcoin a couple of years ago.”

In 2018, Gak — who goes by the name “Bibi Janey” — started a Facebook page as a hobby to see what Afghans thought of bitcoin. “I remember getting a lot of comments and questions like, ‘Can you explain more?'” she said. “People would be fascinated by it, but they would be so confused.” She also got lots of questions about where to buy bitcoin.

Since entering this world, she has learned how to code and reads as much as she can about bitcoin. “I don’t trade, I don’t do any of that,” she said. “I just make some money here and there and save it in bitcoin.”

Through her research, she’s come to the conclusion that in order for Afghanistan to be a truly sovereign state, it must never borrow money – and adopt a bitcoin standard. To foment wider adoption, Gak commissions articles to be translated to local languages.

“It’s not much, but it’s a start,” she told CNBC.

DIY crypto rails

The on-ramp to participating in the crypto economy in Afghanistan is complicated and there are still multiple barriers to entry.

Access to the internet, while growing, remains low. There were 8.64 million internet users in Afghanistan in January 2021, according to DataReportal.com and internet penetration stood at 22%.

Unreliable electricity poses another major issue, as power outages are common. “Power goes out once every day for a couple of hours,” said Ramin, though he noted that it happens in some parts of Kabul more often than others.

When CNBC first spoke to Hotak, he was seated near one of the land-crossings into Pakistan, tapping into a WiFi network across the border. “We don’t have proper internet on the Afghanistan side,” he explained.

Hotak also uses solar power to charge his phone, given the country’s long-standing issue with electricity outages.

Electricity and a stable internet connection are two essential rails for widespread crypto adoption. Also critical is having access to some form of online banking or a credit card that is recognized internationally – which again, poses a big problem for many Afghans. Eighty-five percent of the country is unbanked, according to one U.N. estimate, meaning they do not have a bank account.

So people wishing to deal in crypto have to get creative.

Hotak and some of his contacts enlist the help of family and friends in neighboring Pakistan or across the Gulf of Oman in the United Arab Emirates, where they have easier access to global markets.

“It’s very easy in Pakistan,” he said. “Most people have relatives in Dubai, who buy crypto for them using their credit cards.”

When the person then wants to liquidate their crypto stake, relatives will sell it for them and use the hawala system, an honor-based system of credit common in Asia and the Middle East, to transfer the funds across the border to Afghanistan. The strategy requires a great deal of trust. In the case of Hotak, his friend in Pakistan doubles as his crypto broker.

“He is a very, very close friend. He has his details on the account that I use, so we could say that it’s his account, but I use it,” Hotak said of the arrangement.

The Salma Hydroelectric Dam in Herat, Afghanistan, is close to the Iran border.

Getty

Trust is also key when it comes to judging the quality of trading tips. “There’s a lot of scammers on YouTube and Twitter,” warned Ramin. When he first started off, he would spend most of his money buying coins promoted by people looking for exit liquidity. “That’s why I stopped trading small-cap coins.”

Hotak, on the other hand, has found a reliable online community that offers him sound trading advice.

“There’s a few groups on Telegram, WhatsApp, and there’s even a Pakistani community on Facebook I follow that gives me the signals to sell. I follow them, and it’s been good so far,” said Hotak.

Brokers advertising crypto services on Facebook appear to be operating across the country. Hotak visited one in Herat in early 2020. He went to interview for a job there and says the two-story data center was packed with boys, mostly aged 20 to 25.

“They were all university people,” he said. “They all had smartphones in their hands, and they were just scrolling down and down.”

CNBC has not spoken with any of these brokerages directly, but Hotak says the site he visited in Herat is still going. Hotak also says that Herat is home to a bitcoin mining farm.

“They had these very big CPUs. Very advanced,” he said. But Hotak tells CNBC he didn’t get to see the entire operation. “I just got a little glimpse of it.”

Blockchain analysts Lorne Lantz and Rieya Piscano say they looked at various data sources and found no sign of bitcoin or ethereum nodes running in Afghanistan, so it is unclear whether this miner in Herat has covered his online footprint, or whether he’s cut off his rigs.

Even with all of these workarounds, the political turmoil of the last few weeks doesn’t make it easy to find time to think about crypto.

“The reality is I cannot focus on crypto trading when the ongoing events in Afghanistan are this intense,” said Hotak. “With no electricity and bad internet, crypto trading is near to impossible, so we just hold.”

Crypto trader and vlogger Farhan Hotak in Herat, Afghanistan.

Path to mass adoption

On Aug. 15, an hour and a half before Ramin’s flight bound for Turkey was due to take off, then-President Ghani arrived to the airport in Kabul. After that, Ramin says that all flights were halted and everyone was kicked out.

Ramin still has plans to leave, along with his family. But finding a flight is proving to be difficult. He’s used his now dwindling supply of afghanis to purchase flights for ten members of his family. He’s done this three times, and all three times, the flights were canceled. With travel agencies shut, he remains in a bit of a holding pattern on the ground in Kabul.

Ramin is one among many looking to leave the country. Every media outlet on the planet has been circulating the same photos of Afghans clinging to planes, fleeing the country with whatever possessions they can carry. For several, this has meant having to leave a lot behind.

Ramin estimates that around 5-10% of his net worth is in crypto, which makes it easier to plan an exit, knowing that there is some money in the bank to tide him over, especially since he doesn’t know if he will ever see the money in his bank accounts in Kabul.

“If some type of government doesn’t come to existence, then I could potentially see the majority of my wealth being wiped out,” he said. For now, he and his family are just sitting tight, waiting to catch a flight out.

But many people are staying put, in part because they want to foment positive change at home.

“In these circumstances, one can fully appreciate the censorship-resistance property of blockchain-based assets. I believe this is the main driver of the fundamental value of bitcoin and other cryptos,” said Andrea Barbon, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of St. Gallen.

Gak, for example, thinks that using legacy financial rails like the hawala system might be one of the most effective ways to foster mass adoption. It is a vision she detailed in a prescient story she wrote for Hacker Noon in 2018.

She’s also thinking about opening her own exchange shop in Kabul. “The idea is that anyone with bitcoin can exchange it for fiat and then use that to buy goods like always. Anyone who is unable to receive can have their family for example, send the bitcoin to me with a unique address that only the recipient would know just like hawala,” she explained in a tweet.

Ramin has a similar plan to make crypto more accessible to Afghans. “I hope once I gain more knowledge in blockchain technology to create a team and develop an easily accessible trading platform which Afghans can use,” he said.

There are promising trends on their side. The number of social media users in Afghanistan increased by 22% from 2020 to 2021, and 68.7% of the total population now has a mobile phone connection, according to DataReportal.com. It helps that more than 60% of the population is under 25 and hungry to be a part of the modern economy. Shakib Noori, previously the CEO of a mobile money company in Afghanistan, says this younger demographic also tends to be more tech savvy.

Ultimately, CNBC is told that grassroots adoption comes down to one Afghan teaching another about how cryptocurrencies like bitcoin work. Hotak has already mentored three students, and that’s just the beginning.

“The Afghan people – they’re very complicated. And it’s very hard convincing them that digital currency exists,” he said. “I have plans to teach people about cryptocurrency in the future…but for now, people are just laying low and waiting to see what happens next.”

Evacuees crowd the interior of a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft, carrying some 640 Afghans to Qatar from Kabul, Afghanistan August 15, 2021.

Courtesy of Defense One | Handout via Reuters

Tags Capital, Cryptocurrency, flight, Taliban

Entertainment

A Celebrated Afghan College Fears the Taliban Will Cease the Music

Post author By
Post date August 20, 2021

For more than a decade, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music has stood as a symbol of the country’s changing identity. The school trained hundreds of young artists, many of them orphans and street hawkers, in artistic traditions that were once forbidden by the Taliban. It formed an all-female orchestra that performed widely in Afghanistan and abroad.

But in recent days, as the Taliban have been consolidating control over Afghanistan again, the school’s future has come into doubt.

In interviews, several students and teachers said they feared the Taliban, who have a history of attacking the school’s leaders, would seek to punish people affiliated with the school as well as their families. Some said they worried the school will be shut down and they will not be allowed to play again. Several female students said they had been staying inside their homes since the capital was seized on Sunday

“It’s a nightmare,” Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the head of the school, said in a telephone interview from Melbourne, Australia, where he arrived last month for medical treatment.

The Taliban banned most forms of music when they previously ruled Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001. This time, they have promised a more tolerant approach, vowing not to carry out reprisals against their former enemies and saying that women will be allowed to work and study “within the bounds of Islamic law.”

But the Taliban’s history of violence toward artists and its general intolerance for music without religious meaning has sowed doubts among many performers.

“My concern is that the people of Afghanistan will be deprived of their music,” Mr. Sarmast said. “There will be an attempt to silence the nation.”

In 2010, Mr. Sarmast, an Afghan music scholar who was trained in Australia and plays trumpet and piano, opened the school, which has more than 400 students and staff members, with the support of the American-backed government. It was a rarity: a coeducational institution devoted to teaching music from both Afghanistan and the West.

The school’s musicians were invited to perform on many of the world’s most renowned stages, including Carnegie Hall. They played Western classical music as well as traditional Afghan music and instruments, like the rubab, which resembles the lute and is one of the national instruments of Afghanistan.

The school placed special emphasis on supporting young women, who make up a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra, Zohra, founded in 2015, earned wide acclaim. Many were the first women in their families to receive formal training. In a symbol of its modern ways, head scarves for girls at the school’s campus in Kabul were optional.

Updated

Aug. 20, 2021, 5:22 p.m. ET

The school’s habit of challenging tradition made it a target. In 2014, Mr. Sarmast was injured by a Taliban suicide bomber who infiltrated a school play. The Taliban tried to attack the school again in the years that followed, but their attempts were thwarted, Mr. Sarmast said.

Now, female students say they are concerned about a return to a repressive past, when the Taliban eliminated schooling for girls and barred women from leaving home without male guardians.

Several female students — who were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation — said that it felt like their dreams to become professional musicians could disintegrate. They worried they might not be able to play music again in their lives, even as a hobby.

In recent weeks, as the Taliban swept through the country, the school’s network of overseas supporters tried to help by raising money to improve security on campus, including by installing an armed gate and walls.

But it’s now unclear if the school will even be permitted to operate under the Taliban. It is also increasingly difficult for citizens of Afghanistan to leave the country. Airport entrances have been chaotic and often impassable scenes for days, even for people with travel documentation. The Taliban control the streets, and though they say they are breaking up crowds at the airport to keep order, there are widespread reports that they are turning people away by force if they try to leave the country.

The State Department said in a statement that it was working to get American citizens, as well as locally employed staff and vulnerable Afghans, out of the country, though crowding at the airport had made it more difficult. The department said it was prioritizing Afghan women and girls, human rights defenders and journalists, among others.

“This effort is of utmost importance to the U.S. government,” the statement said.

In the 1990s, the Taliban permitted religious singing but banned other forms of music because they were seen as distractions to Islamic studies and could encourage impure behavior. Taliban officials destroyed instruments and smashed cassette tapes.

Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan

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William Maley, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who has studied Afghanistan, said he was troubled by reports that the Taliban had recently sought to limit the spread of popular music in some parts of the country.

“The Taliban in the 1990s were extremely hostile to any form of music other than religious chants, and people had to hide their instruments and play music secretively,” Professor Maley said. “I would not be optimistic.”

Amid the chaos in Kabul, students, teachers and alumni of the school have exchanged frantic messages on chat groups. They have lamented the fact that they might need to hide their instruments or leave them in the care of others if they try to flee.

William Harvey, who taught violin and conducted the orchestra at the school from 2010 to 2014, said he felt despair thinking his former students might be in peril for pursuing their passion. Still, he said the school is an inspiration for artists and audiences around the world.

“It is to those students, then, that we owe a tremendous responsibility,” said Mr. Harvey, now the concertmaster of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional in Mexico. “They must live to lift their voices again another day.”

Tags Afghan, Celebrated, fears, Music, School, stop, Taliban