Month: September 2021

For the first time, women in India are eligible to apply to the country’s elite military college after a historic Supreme Court ruling paved the way for them to aspire to the top ranks of the world’s second largest military and marking a key step in gender equality.

“Keeping in view gender equality, it is a good first step and something that had to happen given the fact that women are seeking more roles in the army all over the world,” former Lt. General H.S. Panag told VOA.

The battle for the rigorous four-year program in the National Defense Academy has not been easy — so far women enter the military through a shorter 11-month training course that excludes them from higher positions and mostly limits their career to 14 years. 

The Supreme Court cleared the decks this month for women to sit for entrance exams to be held in November. Its ruling came after a public interest petition argued that barring women from the premier military college violated the constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender.

Although qualifying through the military academy will put women on par with male officers, combat roles for them in the army will still be restricted.

Women form a miniscule part of India’s 1.3 million strong military with the army having the smallest percentage — a little over half a percent. The air force has 1.8% and the navy 6.5%.

During the hearing, judges had criticized the government for a “regressive mindset” after it cited numerous reasons to limit women’s role in the army including “motherhood, childcare, and psychological limitations.”

The court has been particularly critical of the army for being slower to induct women.

Last year, it had also cleared the way for them to hold non-combat command positions dismissing the government’s argument that “lower physical standards of women, composition of units that are entirely male mostly from rural background” play a role in deciding appointments of commanding officers.

“Policy makers were resisting women’s entry into military colleges because of a patriarchal mindset, that is why this has happened only after the court’s intervention,” said Akanksha Khullar, a researcher with the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi. “From my numerous interactions with women who joined the armed forces, the men who are under a woman leader do not question the gender, they simply follow instructions.”

The move toward gender parity in the armed forces could still take time. Although the Air Force has three women fighter pilots and the navy deployed four women on warships for the first time this March, allowing women into combat units in the army is not on the horizon. Women have worked in the armed forces mostly as doctors, nurses, engineers, administrators and lawyers.

“Certainly, the physical fitness standards of women cannot be at par with that of men, and this is not a problem where non-combat units are concerned,” points out Panag. “In the United States also for combat roles they have to be on par with physical fitness level of men and I agree with this. They should not be allowed into combat units unless they meet those standards. However, those women who do qualify should be allowed.”

Only a handful of countries, including Australia, Germany, Israel and the United States, allow women to take on combat roles.

“That is too major a leap considering that our government has taken so long to even open the military college to women,” Khullar said.

Some women who have served in the army say conquering the final frontier of combat roles will have to be a gradual process.

Sajita Nair, who joined the army in 1994, a year after it first began recruiting women, is happy that after three decades of serving in the armed forces, women will finally get their due. “This opens the way for them to get into senior positions,” she told VOA. “We have some way to go but we are nearly there. We need to go step by step.”

Nair said qualifying through the military college will give women the chance to build a full career instead of exiting in their thirties, as many have had to do in the past because the “short service commission through which they are inducted has a 14-year cap.

The entry of women will spell a change for the all-male academy located in western India.

It remains to be seen how many aspirants apply and make the cut. But women like Nair are optimistic.

“Overall, it will help the nation,” she said. “We have such able women and they should be given the opportunity, and then of course, it is up to them to prove themselves.”
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A day after giving their assessments of the end of the war in Afghanistan and future terror threats that may emanate from the country, the top U.S. military officials return Wednesday to Capitol Hill to testify before another congressional panel about the conclusion of the two-decade mission. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, and General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, are all due to appear before the House Armed Services Committee. 

At a Tuesday hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, lawmakers both praised the decision to end the country’s longest war and condemned its final days as a debacle.

Austin defended the evacuation, saying that while not perfect it went as smoothly as possible and that no other military could have done better. 

“It was the largest airlift conducted in U.S. history, and it was executed in just 17 days,” he told committee members. ”We planned to evacuate between 70,000 and 80,000 people. They evacuated more than 124,000.” 

“It was a logistical success but a strategic failure,” Milley, the nation’s top-ranking military officer, told lawmakers of America’s final days in Kabul, which saw the evacuation of 124,000 people, including about 6,000 Americans. 

Milley said the final outcome, with the Taliban in control of Afghanistan, “is a cumulative effect of 20 years, not 20 days.” 

He also warned of the potential threat from terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS Khorasan or ISIS-K. IS Khorasan is an Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic State extremist group. 

McKenzie cited the 2020 Doha agreement, which set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, saying it “had a profound psychological effect” on Afghan forces and may have hastened their collapse. 

“The Taliban were heartened by what they saw happen at Doha and what followed and our eventual decision to get out by a certain date,” McKenzie said. “I think the Afghans were very weakened by that morally and spiritually.” 
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America’s top military officer has described the Afghanistan evacuation as “a logistical success but a strategic failure.” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke at a contentious Senate hearing on the U.S. military’s withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has the details.

Produced by: Mary Cieslak
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According to the Pakistani government, over 45,000 angioplasty operations are conducted in Pakistan each year; an operation in which a small mesh tube is inserted into a blocked artery to allow blood to flow through it. Up until recently Pakistan had to import these medical devices, but now they’re being manufactured in country. VOA’s Asim Ali Rana files this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.

Camera: Wajid Hussain Shah  Produced by: Asim Ali Rana 

 
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Twenty years of American blood and treasure spent in Afghanistan was reduced Tuesday to about six hours of testimony in the United States Senate, with the nation’s top military officer admitting that the war amounted to a “strategic failure” that in the end, perhaps, could never have been won.

The hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee with U.S. President Joe Biden’s top military officials saw a staunch defense of the efforts and sacrifices of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with lawmakers both praising the decision to end the country’s longest war and condemning its final days as a debacle. 

In between, it featured sobering assessments of what, if anything, could have been done differently. 

“It was a logistical success but a strategic failure,” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s top-ranking military officer, told lawmakers of America’s final days in Kabul, which saw the evacuation of 124,000 people, including about 6,000 Americans. 

“Outcomes in a war like this, an outcome that is a strategic failure — the enemy is in charge in Kabul; there’s no way else to describe that — that outcome is a cumulative effect of 20 years, not 20 days,” Milley added. 

Pressed on whether Washington could have done anything differently to prevent the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan from crumbling and stop the Taliban takeover, Milley was blunt. 

“If you kept advisers there, kept money following, etc., then we could probably have sustained them for a lengthy or indefinite period of time,” he said of the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces. 

“If you would have had a different result at the end of the day, that’s a different question,” Milley added. “I think the end state probably would have been the same no matter when you did it.” 

Testifying alongside Milley, General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said that in hindsight, the 2020 Doha agreement, which paved the way for the U.S. exit, “had a profound psychological effect” on the Afghan forces and may have hastened their collapse.

“The Taliban were heartened by what they saw happen at Doha and what followed and our eventual decision to get out by a certain date,” McKenzie said. “I think the Afghans were very weakened by that morally and spiritually.” 

Republican anger 

Such somber assessments did little to mollify some lawmakers, with at least two demanding the resignations of Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the way the U.S. ultimately left. 

“Our exit from Afghanistan was a disaster,” said Nebraska Republican Senator Deb Fischer. 

Another Republican, Senator Joni Ernst, called the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan “haphazard.” She pointed to the deaths of 13 U.S. troops and close to 170 Afghans from a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport days before the last military plane took off. 

“The loss of our service members and abandonment of Americans and Afghan allies last month was an unforced, disgraceful humiliation that didn’t have to happen,” Ernst said. 

Some Democrats, however, praised Biden and his administration for finally ending the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. 

“It took guts, and it was the right thing to do, and it should have been done earlier,” Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said. 

Others scolded their Republican colleagues. 

“Anyone who says the last few months were a failure but everything before that was great clearly hasn’t been paying attention,” said Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren. 

But most of the outrage was saved for the White House, with Republican lawmakers questioning the president’s decision-making, and some accusing him of misleading the American public when he told ABC news last month that his top advisers did not recommend keeping about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. 

“No, they didn’t,” Biden said at the time. “It was split.” 

On Tuesday, both Milley and CENTCOM’s McKenzie told lawmakers that in the early days of Biden’s presidency, they advised keeping 2,500 to 3,500 troops in Afghanistan because the Taliban had not met their commitments under the 2020 Doha agreement. 

“My view is that 2,500 was an appropriate number to remain and that if we went below that number, in fact, we would probably witness a collapse of the Afghan government and the Afghan military,” McKenzie said. 

Cost of staying 

At the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Jen Psaki defended Biden and the decision to end the war in Afghanistan. 

“There was a range of viewpoints, as evidenced by their testimony today, that were presented to the president, that were presented to his national security team, as would be expected, as he asked for,” she said.

“It was also clear to him that that would not be a long-standing recommendation, that there would need to be an escalation, an increase in troop numbers,” she said. “It would also mean war with the Taliban, and it would also mean the potential loss of casualties. The president was just not willing to make that decision.” 

Milley also cautioned that staying in Afghanistan once the U.S.-backed government had collapsed could have been done, but at a cost. 

“On the first of September, we were going to go to war again with the Taliban. Of that there was no doubt,” he told lawmakers, saying it would have required the U.S. to send in as many as another 25,000 troops. 

“We would have had to reseize Bagram (Airfield). We would have had to clear Kabul of 6,000 Taliban,” Milley said. “That would have resulted in significant casualties on the U.S. side, and it would have placed American citizens that are still there at greater risk.” 

Additionally, Milley and the other U.S. defense officials told lawmakers that even with troops and all but about 100 U.S. citizens out of Afghanistan and out of harm’s way, dangers would remain from terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS Khorasan or ISIS-K. 

“A reconstituted al-Qaida or ISIS with aspirations to attack the United States is a very real possibility,” Milley warned lawmakers, adding that the exact nature of the threat might not be evident for months or years. 

“They’re gathering their strength,” CENTCOM’s General McKenzie said of the threat from IS Khorasan, thought to have about 2,000 fighters now roaming Afghanistan.

“We have yet to see how it’s going to manifest itself,” McKenzie said. “We know with certainty that they do aspire to attack us in our homeland.” 

The U.S. first sent troops into Afghanistan to pursue al-Qaida, after the militant group used the country to plan the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. 

Milley and McKenzie said that despite the Taliban’s commitments under the terms of the Doha agreement, the group had yet to sever its long-standing ties with al-Qaida. 

“I think al-Qaida is at war with the United States, still,” Milley said. 

No going back 

For his part, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers that the Pentagon remains focused on the threat but will use its over-the-horizon strike capabilities to target al-Qaida and IS Khorasan as needed. 

“We’ve not been tasked to construct any plans to go back,” Austin said. 

Austin also defended the evacuation, telling lawmakers that it went as smoothly as possible, and that no other military in the world could have done any better.  

“It was the largest airlift conducted in U.S. history, and it was executed in just 17 days,” he told committee members. ”We planned to evacuate between 70,000 and 80,000 people. They evacuated more than 124,000.”  

“Was it perfect? Of course not,” Austin added, describing as “difficult” the first two days of the airlift, when huge crowds had rushed to the airport following the Taliban’s unexpectedly swift takeover.  

“We moved so many people so quickly out of Kabul that we ran into capacity and screening problems at intermediate staging bases outside of Afghanistan,” he said.  

But some lawmakers, such as the committee’s top Republican, Senator Jim Inhofe, were unconvinced. 

“We all witnessed a horror of the president’s own making,” Inhofe said, accusing the Biden administration of failing to create a plan to counter the terror threats likely to emerge in Afghanistan with the Taliban in control.  

“The terrorist threat to American families is rising significantly,” the senator said. “While our ability to deal with these threats has declined decidedly.” 

Austin, Milley and McKenzie are all due to appear again Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee.  

 
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The Taliban said Tuesday they plan to temporarily enact articles from Afghanistan’s 1964 constitution that are “not in conflict with Islamic Sharia (law)” to govern the country.

An official announcement quoted Abdul Hakeem Sharaee, the Taliban’s acting minister of justice, as telling the Chinese ambassador about the plan in a meeting in Kabul.

“The Islamic Emirate will implement the constitution of the era of former King Mohammad Zahir Shah for the interim period without any content that is in conflict with Islamic Sharia and the principles of the Islamic Emirate,” Sharaee said, using the Taliban’s name for their new government.

“Moreover, international laws and instruments which are not in conflict with the principles of Sharia and the Islamic Emirate will be respected, as well,” Sharaee added.

The minister did not discuss the provisions they are using from the constitution that granted women the right to vote and opened the doors for their increased participation in Afghan politics. 

Zahir Shah ratified the constitution a year after coming to power in 1963, enabling Afghanistan to enjoy a decade of parliamentary democracy on its own without external help or intervention before he was overthrown in 1973 in a peaceful coup by his cousin Mohammed Daoud.

The hard-line Taliban swept back to power in August and have promised to rule the conflict-torn country with a more tolerant and inclusive political approach than during their reign in Kabul from 1996 to 2001, when women were barred from public life and education, among other human rights abuses. 

The Taliban are already under fire for excluding women in their male-only caretaker Cabinet introduced earlier this month. Taliban leaders have promised to bring women on board and dismissed criticism of their government, saying it is represents all Afghan ethnicities.

But the failure to give women a role in governance has fueled concerns about a marked deterioration in women’s rights since the Taliban takeover, especially after the new rulers announced that secondary education would resume for boys only. 

Taliban officials have dismissed those fears as unfounded, saying female students will be able to return to schools “very soon” once arrangements for them to study in a “safe and sound” environment are put in place. 

And one of the group’s founders said last week that executions and amputations will be back, though perhaps not in public.

The U.S. said Monday it was “deeply concerned” about the human rights situation in Afghanistan.

“We have also consistently emphasized, as has the international community, the importance of respect for human rights, as well as fundamental freedoms on the part of any government in Afghanistan,” Jalina Porter, principal deputy spokesperson at the State Department, told reporters in Washington.

“Of course, these rights would include freedom of expression, as well as the promotion and protection of the rights of women and girls, as well as other ethnic and minority religious groups,” Porter emphasized.

After invading the country nearly 20 years ago to oust the Taliban for sheltering al-Qaida leaders, the United States and Western allies helped Afghanistan adopt a new constitution in 2004 that envisaged a presidency and enshrined equal rights for women.

But while waging a deadly insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government, the Taliban adamantly rejected that constitution as an illegal entity and a product of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

The U.S. and the world at large have so far refused to recognize the Taliban as legitimate rulers of the country, saying they want to see if the Taliban uphold their commitment of introducing an inclusive government and respect human rights.

“It seems a pragmatic approach by the Taliban to adopt the 1964 constitution,” said Said Azam, a Canada-based political analyst and former Afghan government official, when asked about the Taliban’s plans. 

He noted that the constitution was the outcome of a comprehensive national debate, and the entire process of drafting and ratification spanned over two years.

“The Taliban’s main goal is to receive widespread acceptance from the Afghan society by implementing the 1964 constitution, therefore,” Azam said.
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