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Leaving Afghanistan and abandoning Bagram Air Base immediately created a terror state. Did anyone contemplate that?
Meanwhile, the Taliban has named Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a longtime ally of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, to serve as the country’s acting prime minister. Akhund, who was the Taliban’s foreign minister before the U.S. invasion in 2001, told the United Nations in 1999 that “we will never give up Osama [bin Laden] at any price.”Hibatullah Akhundzada, considered the “emir” of Afghanistan by the Taliban, is a strong al Qaeda ally and proud father of a suicide bomber known as the “commander of the faithful.” Current al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri reportedly swore allegiance to him as the “emir of the believers” in 2016.
Al Qaeda could reconstitute in Afghanistan and regain the capability to threaten the U.S. in “one to two” years, intelligence chiefs said Tuesday, revising downward estimates that were previously issued by the Pentagon.
“The current assessment, probably conservatively, is one to two years for al Qaeda to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,” said Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), at an annual summit hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, with panels moderated by CBS News.
“That said, DIA is not going to take…their eye off the ball of terrorism,” Berrier said.
CIA deputy director David Cohen said at the same event that the agency was keeping “a very keen watch” on the terror network’s activities in Afghanistan, adding there is evidence its militants are returning to the country.
“[W]e are already beginning to see some of the indications of some potential movement of al Qaeda to Afghanistan,” Cohen said, “but it’s early days, and we will obviously keep a very close eye on that.”
The Taliban, who seized control of Afghanistan in a stunningly rapid takeover last month, are known to have maintained close ties with al Qaeda and are suspected by analysts of harboring senior operatives.
Both U.S. officials said Tuesday that intelligence agencies were working on ways to continue intelligence collection without a troop presence or embassy in the country, acknowledging current capabilities had been meaningfully reduced by the U.S. withdrawal. Lawmakers, counterterrorism experts and former intelligence officials have expressed concern over how reliable so-called over-the-horizon capabilities can be without networks of informants to guide them.
“We’re thinking about ways how to gain access back into Afghanistan with all kinds of sources,” Berrier said. “We are prioritizing that effort.”
Cohen said the agency would seek to maintain a network of intelligence assets within Afghanistan, but that operating from a distance and absent a physical presence was not a “new” challenge for the intelligence community.
“As we work from over the horizon principally…we will also look for ways to work from within the horizon, to the extent that is possible,” Cohen said. “But we will approach this in the way that we have approached the counterterrorism mission in many places around the world for a number of years, and I think, as a community, we continue to get better and better at doing that.”
Speaking at the summit on Monday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Afghanistan did not currently top the list of international terror threats, saying the “greatest threat” came from militant groups operating in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.
The U.S. has frozen nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank and stopped shipments of cash to the nation as it tries to keep a Taliban-led government from accessing the money, an administration official confirmed Tuesday.This amounts to roughly one-third of the country’s annual economic output. International aid flows represented roughly 43 percent of Afghanistan’s economy in 2020, according to the World Bank.
The United States’ principal competitors in Beijing and Moscow see a potential opening with the U.S. departure. While there is little thought that China or Russia are interested in aiding Afghanistan’s development – instead seeing the country as both a playground for great power influence and, on the part of Beijing, a mercantilist maneuver critical to clinching its Belt-and-Road initiative in South Asia – it is possible that China and Russia can actually leverage U.S. sanctions and the restrictions major financial institutions will face in dealing with Afghanistan to empower the Taliban and their own interests. The Taliban meanwhile may welcome China and Russia filling the void of western finance and aid while also taking advantage of the departure of U.S. restrictions on poppy production to return to state controlled narcotics sales, furthering enriching themselves while continuing to impoverish the Afghan people.
Beyond the reserves, the United States also sends roughly $3 billion per year in support for the Afghan military, or roughly 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The funding can only be spent if the secretary of defense “certifies to Congress that the Afghan forces are controlled by a civilian, representative government that is committed to protecting human rights and women’s rights,” according to a congressional summary of the legislation. This funding is expected to stop flowing as well, along with smaller pots of money, such as $20 million for recruiting women to the Afghannational security forces.
About 80 percent of Afghanistan’s budget is funded by the United States and other international donors, John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told Reuters in the spring. A spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget declined to comment on the status of congressionally approved funding for Afghanistan. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference Tuesday that NATO has suspended aid to the Afghan government as well. “We have of course suspended all support, financial and other kinds of support, to the Afghan government, because there is no Afghan government for NATO to support,” Stoltenberg said. “No money is transferred; no support is provided.” More context here.
Meanwhile, China, Pakistan, Iran and Russia will keep their embassies in Kabul open and functional while most other nations have shuttered and evacuated their embassy operations. China is making financial moves to support the Taliban while doing the same to takeover the now former US air base in Bagram.
The UN Secretary General held a half day conference seeking to raise the $606 million which humanitarian agencies say is urgently needed to provide life-saving aid to millions of Afghans over the four final months of the year.
Among other things, the money is needed for critical food and livelihood assistance for nearly 11 million people and essential health services for 3.4 million.
‘Starvation’
Guterres stressed that Afghans were experiencing “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world” even before the Taliban takeover on August 15.
Some 40 percent of the country’s GDP was already drawn from foreign funding, and half of the population was already dependent on humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
Afghanistan is also facing a devastating drought and mass displacement in addition to the impact of Covid-19.
Fears now abound that other countries’ reluctance to deal with the Taliban could push Afghanistan over the edge.
Guterres announced that the UN would release $20 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to support the humanitarian operation in Afghanistan.
Under the leadership of acting central bank governor, Haji Mohammad Idris, a Taliban loyalist who has no formal financial training, the central bank has been moving to restrict dollar outflows amid a pause in foreign aid and a scramble by some Afghanis to get savings out of the country.
Further controls are expected to hasten the afghani’s depreciation against the dollar, exacerbating inflation in a country where more than a third of the population lives on less than $2 a day.
“It’s a matter of concern that the remaining physical cash of U.S. dollars is going to reduce further,” said an Afghani banker. “With the restrictions we are predicting the dollar will reach more than 100 afghanis to the dollar.”
Treaties and other international agreements are written agreements between sovereign states (or between states and international organizations) governed by international law. The United States enters into more than 200 treaties and other international agreements each year.
The subjects of treaties span the whole spectrum of international relations: peace, trade, defense, territorial boundaries, human rights, law enforcement, environmental matters, and many others. As times change, so do treaties. In 1796, the United States entered into the Treaty with Tripoli to protect American citizens from kidnapping and ransom by pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. In 2001, the United States agreed to a treaty on cybercrime.
Read more about what specific bureaus are doing to support this policy issue:
Office of Treaty Affairs (L/T): The Office of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs, within the Office of the Legal Adviser, provides guidance on all aspects of U.S. and international treaty law and practice. It manages the process under which the Department of State approves the negotiation and conclusion of all international agreements to which the U.S. will become a party. It also coordinates with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on issues involving the Senate’s advice and consent to ratification of treaties. Read more about the Office of Treaty Affairs
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To date, the U.S. State Department has no secured refugee agreements with a permanent status as a result of the Afghanistan refugee crisis. Some countries are cooperating only on a temporary basis while conditions and vetting has been satisfied. This now forces the United States to essentially accept the high majority of the refugees which could exceed perhaps as many as 1.0 million. Today, several of our military bases across the globe and those inside the United States have become refugee camps with no end in sight.
Anyone remember the Syrian refugees and the continuing crisis throughout Europe? Even Germany is deporting Syrian refugees.
Afghans who aided the U.S. war effort can be eligible for special immigrant visas, but those who don’t qualify can look to resettle in the U.S. in other ways.
Earlier this summer, the Biden administration expanded its Afghan refugee program and created a new category for those who worked with U.S.-based news outlets or nongovernmental organizations.
The Biden administration has not announced exactly how many Afghan refugees will be taken in by the U.S., but has committed to resettling up to 125,000 refuges in the 2022 fiscal year.
U.K.
Earlier this month, the U.K. government announced plans to welcome 5,000 Afghan refugees this year and resettle a total of 20,000 Afghans in the coming years.
The Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme would prioritize women and girls as well as religious and other minorities who are at most risk from the Taliban, the government said.
People believed to have recently arrived from Afghanistan stand in the courtyard of a hotel near Manchester Airport on August 25, 2021 in Manchester, England.CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES
Canada
Canada has said that it will take in 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan, focusing on those in danger from the Taliban, including government workers and women leaders.
The country’s Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino has said Canada would consider taking in additional refugees on behalf of the U.S. or other allies, if asked.
As we face this crisis together, Canada is leading with our commitment to welcome 20,000 refugees who’ve fled Afghanistan, focusing on women and girls, LGBTQ individuals and targeted minorities.
Mexico welcomed a group of 124 Afghan media workers and their families on Wednesday.
The country had accepted its first group of refugees from Afghanistan on Tuesday, when five women and one man arrived in Mexico City, according to the Associated Press.
Mexico’s interior secretary, Olga Sánchez Cordero, said Wednesday that Mexico would grant asylum “to those Afghan citizens who require it.”
Germany
Germany has indicated that some Afghan refugees will be accepted, but numbers have not been specified.
Chancellor Angela Merkel faced criticism after Germany opened its borders to over a million migrants, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, six years ago.
After the Taliban takeover, Merkel said her government was focused on ensuring Afghan refugees “have a secure stay in countries neighbouring Afghanistan.”
France
In a televised address after the Taliban takeover, President Emmanuel Macron said Europe must protect itself from a wave of Afghan migrants.
He said France would “protect those who are in the most danger” but added that Europe “cannot take on the consequences from the current situation alone.”
Pakistan
Most Afghan refugees cross over the border into neighboring Pakistan.
In June, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan told The New York Times that the country would seal its border if the Taliban took control as it did not want another wave of refugees from Afghanistan.
The country was already struggling to cope with the estimated three million Afghan refugees already in Pakistan, he said.
Tajikistan
In July, Tajikistan said it was preparing to accept up to 100,000 refugees from its neighboring country.
Uganda
Uganda said it had agreed to a request from the U.S. to temporarily take in 2,000 refugees from Afghanistan. The African nation currently hosts about 1.4 million refugees.
Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo
Albania and North Macedonia have also accepted a U.S. request to temporarily take in Afghan refugees, accepting 300 and 450 refugees respectively. Kosovo has also agreed to temporarily host refugees headed for the U.S., but numbers have not been specified.
Switzerland
The Swiss government has said it will not accept large groups of refugees arriving directly from Afghanistan.
Austria
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has ruled out taking in any more Afghan refugees. In a recent interview, Kurz said Austria had accepted 40,000 Afghans in the past few years, which he described as a “disproportionately large contribution.”
Afghan people climb atop a plane as they wait at the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war.WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Turkey
Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees out of any country in the world, but has been ramping up construction of a border wall to keep further influxes of migrants out.
There are 182,000 registered Afghan migrants in Turkey and up to an estimated 120,000 unregistered ones, according to Reuters.
But the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged other European countries to take responsibility for those fleeing Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, saying Turkey had no intention of becoming “Europe’s migrant storage unit.”
Iran
Iran already hosts 780,000 Afghans refugees, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
Emergency tents for refugees were set up in three Iranian provinces which border Afghanistan.
However, Hossein Ghassemi, the country’s interior ministry border affairs chief, has said that any Afghans who have crossed into Iran would be repatriated once conditions improve.
Russia
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will not accept Afghan refugees because he does not want militants entering the country disguised as refugees.
“We don’t want militants under the disguise of refugees to appear here [in Russia] again,” he said Sunday, according to the TASS news agency.
“We will do everything, in particular in contact with our Western partners, to ensure stability in Afghanistan as well. But we do not want a repeat of the situation of the 1990s and early 2000s.”
Australia
Australia has pledged to take in 3,000 Afghan refugees within an existing annual allocation of its humanitarian visa program. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has indicated the number could be increased, referring to it as “a floor, not a ceiling.”
Meanwhile, the country has also begun a campaign to deter Afghan refuges from trying to reach Australia by boat.
“Australia’s strong border protection policies have not and will not change,” Karen Andrews, Australia’s minister for home affairs, said in a video posted on YouTube Monday.
“No one who arrives in Australia illegally by boat will ever settle here. Do not attempt an illegal boat journey to Australia. You have zero chance of success.”
The Biden administration is waiting for good behavior by the Taliban before it officially recognizes the Taliban as the official government in Afghanistan, that is while China already has.
FB: Chinese diplomats relegated Biden climate czar John Kerry to a Zoom conference the same day China joined Taliban leaders in a photo-op to pledge “friendly relations” with the terror group.
Kerry was denied face-to-face interactions with senior Chinese officials such as Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vice Premier Han Zheng. China instead dispatched a junior-level climate official to meet with the former secretary of state in the city of Tianjin. Kerry’s bungled visit coincided with Beijing’s open-arms embrace of Taliban leadership at an in-person visit in Qatar, affirming China’s interest in furthering “friendly relations” to fill the vacuum in Afghanistan left by America’s withdrawal.
Kerry met separately with Yi and Zheng over Zoom. The Chinese officials reportedly bristled at Kerry’s suggestions to decouple climate change from other issues fraught with tensions between China and the United States, leaving no immediate results from the meetings. One expert told Voice of America the Taliban received a better welcome than Kerry. The Biden climate czar, however, said the meetings proved “very constructive and detailed,” but deferred to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Joe Biden to set a timetable for further talks with the Chinese.
The White House did not return a request for comment about their plans for future climate talks with Beijing. The State Department declined to comment.
FB: A Taliban spokesman on Tuesday announced the appointment of a terrorist on the FBI’s most-wanted list to a cabinet-level position in its new government.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is a senior leader in the al Qaeda-aligned Haqqani network of terror groups, will serve in the Taliban’s government as minister of the interior. He is wanted by federal authorities for his involvement in a 2008 bombing in Kabul that killed Thor Hesla, a U.S. citizen. The State Department is offering up to $5 million for information leading to Haqqani’s arrest.
Haqqani authored an op-ed in the New York Times in February 2020, which expressed the demands of the Taliban ahead of talks with U.S. officials in Qatar.
The Taliban leader said his organization would work to protect human rights for all Afghans and work toward “mutual respect” with foreign powers. The claims run counter to reports of atrocities the Taliban have committed against Afghans, many of whom assisted the United States during its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Haqqani’s op-ed ran four months before a now-infamous New York Times editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) that argued federal forces should be deployed to quell violence and restore order in America’s cities during the summer’s riots. Whereas some employees said Cotton’s views put black journalists at the newspaper “in danger,” no Times employees said publishing a known terrorist’s words in their opinion pages put any subgroup of U.S. citizens at risk.
United Nations-sanctioned terrorist Mohammad Hasan Akhund will lead the newly installed Taliban government. A 2020 report from the United Nations Security Council said the Taliban’s senior council of 20 members—including Akhund—maintained close ties with al Qaeda during negotiations with the West.
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JTN: The new interior minister is Sirajuddin Haqqani, who led the Haqqani network, has a $5 million bounty out on him by the FBI for being on their most-wanted list, and is believed to be still holding an American hostage, The Associated Press reported. The American, a civilian contractor named Mark Frerichs, has not been heard from since being abducted by the network in January 2020.
The Haqqani network, which controls much of eastern Afghanistan, has been blamed for coordinating kidnappings, often of Americans, and attacks in Kabul over the last 20 years.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid explained in announcing the cabinet that the appointments were temporary, but did not say how long they would last or what would be the reason for a change, according to the AP. The Taliban has not indicated that they plan on holding elections.
Mullah Hasan Akhund, the interim prime minister, led the Taliban government during the final years of its previous rule. One of his two deputies, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, led talks with the U.S. and signed the deal leading to the withdrawal. The other deputy, Abdul Salam Hanafi, is a long-time Taliban member, the AP reported.
The new defense minister is Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, who is the son of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Amir Khan Muttaqi is the foreign minister, and was also a prominent figure from the Taliban’s last rule.
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FNC: Four out of five Guantanamo detainees whom former President Barack Obama released in exchange for former U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in 2014 now hold senior positions in the interim government created by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), noted that Fazl will also return to his role as deputy defense minister. “U.S. officials found that Fazl worked with senior al Qaeda personnel, including Abdel Hadi al Iraqi, one of Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenants,” Joscelyn wrote in a tweet. “Al Iraqi is still held at Guantanamo.”
Late last month, following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban announced that Mohammad Nabi Omari, another former Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GTMO) detainee with close ties to al Qaeda, would govern Khost Province.
In 2011, a Washington, D.C., district court judge found that Khairkhwa “was, without question, a senior member of the Taliban both before and after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.”
The court also denied Khairkhwa’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, concluding that he “has repeatedly admitted that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he served as a member of a Taliban envoy that met clandestinely with senior Iranian officials to discuss Iran’s offer to provide the Taliban with weapons and other military support in anticipation of imminent hostilities with US coalition forces.”
Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the militant group known as Haqqani Network, now serves as acting interior minister for the Taliban government. The U.S. has put a $10 million bounty on Haqqani’s head. Since 2016, Haqqani has served as one of two deputy leaders of the Taliban.
Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse released a statement on Tuesday regarding the Taliban’s formation of the government, insisting that the trust President Joe Biden and U.S. officials placed in the Taliban is “pathetic.”
“President Biden still clings to an insane fantasy that the Taliban is kinder and gentler,” Sasse said. “It’s nonsense. Haqqani is the Taliban’s new interior minister for precisely the same reason the FBI’s got a $5 million bounty on his head: he’s a bloodthirsty terrorist. He’s armed, dangerous, and running a country we just abandoned.”
Frankly, a few should go to prison but then again Washington protects its own.
***President Joe Biden on Tuesday received a classified intelligence report on the origins of the coronavirus that reportedly failed to conclusively determine if the outbreak was the result of spillover from animals to humans or an accidental lab leak, highlighting the difficulty of pinning down the cause of the pandemic amid China’s reticence to cooperate with international investigations. The information noted below fully challenges the quality of the classified report on the origins of Covid-19. Nothing is real, true or honest…remember that.
Newly released documents appear to contradict Dr. Anthony Fauci’s repeated claims that the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The internal documents detail the work of EcoHealth Alliance, an American research non-profit which used NIH funding to research novel bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. Among the documents, which were obtained by The Interceptthrough a Freedom of Information Act request, is a previously unpublished EcoHealth Alliance grant proposal filed with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which is run by Fauci.
The proposal requests $3.1 million for a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” which involved screening thousands of lab workers for novel bat coronaviruses. The grant was awarded for five years, from 2014 to 2019, and was subsequently renewed before being suspended by the Trump administration. The proposal directs $599,000 of the total grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for research designed to make the viruses more dangerous and/or infectious — and its author acknowledged the danger associated with such work.
“Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled,” it read.
After reviewing the documents, Gary Ruskin, executive director of a group probing COVID’s origins called U.S. Right to Know, told the Intercept that the grant was a “road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic.”
Fauci has repeatedly insisted during his Senate testimony that the research being funded by the NIH at the WIV did not qualify as “gain-of-function” under the NIH’s current definition. But critics, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have accused Fauci of playing semantic games by excluding research which makes bat coronaviruses more transmissible — the commonly accepted definition of “gain-of-function” — from his more convenient definition.
Dr. Richard Ebright, biosafety expert and professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, has also disputed Fauci’s claims. Primarily, he has rebutted Fauci’s chief declaration that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV]” as “demonstrably false.”
Ebright told National Review that the NIH-financed work at the WIV “epitomizes” the definition of gain-of-function research, which involves working with “enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)” or those pathogens “resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.”
The Wuhan lab’s program qualified as gain-of-function research because it artificially engineered novel SARS-related coronaviruses to make them more transmissible and dangerous to humans, the breeding ground for accident, Ebright said.
Following the FOIA release secured by the Intercept, Ebright doubled down on his repudiation of Fauci, confirming that the NIH did conduct gain-of-function research during the five-year period in question.
“The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present,” Ebright tweeted.
He added that the “documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”
As evidence mounts in favor of Ebright’s conclusion, further discrediting Fauci, some Republican lawmakers have called for the doctor’s removal from his post in the Biden administration. Shortly after the FOIA disclosure, GOP Senator Josh Hawley demanded that Fauci step down and be subject to a congressional investigation for lying to the public about the NIH’s activities.
“Anthony Fauci has repeatedly and deliberately mislead Congress and the American people. Resign. And face a congressional inquiry,” he tweeted.
