Month: September 2021

A top White House official pledged Sunday that the United States would find a way to get the remaining Americans out of Afghanistan if they want to leave, but a key Republican foreign affairs lawmaker said Taliban insurgents are blocking easy passage out of the Kabul airport. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that U.S. officials believe “around 100” Americans remain in Afghanistan nearly a week since the U.S. military pulled its last troops out of the country after a nearly two-decade war against al-Qaida terrorists and the Taliban. FILE – White House chief of staff Ron Klain attends a weekly economic briefing in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, April 9, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)“We’re going to find ways to get them out if they want to leave,” Klain said, likely through the resumption of flights to Qatar. In addition, he said the U.S. would continue to try to help Afghans who assisted U.S. troops over the years to escape the country and life under Taliban rule. FILE – Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, center, speaks on the close of the war in Afghanistan, at the Capitol in Washington, Aug. 31, 2021.But a key opposition lawmaker, Congressman Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the “Fox News Sunday” show that based on U.S. intelligence briefings he believes “hundreds of Americans” were left behind as the last U.S. military flights left Kabul last Monday. He said no U.S. citizens have gotten out of Afghanistan since then. “The Taliban have been making demands, not clearing airplanes to leave,” McCaul said. He said the Taliban “want something in exchange,” full U.S. recognition of its control of the Afghan government.   “This is not a new and improved Taliban,” McCaul said, compared to the group’s conduct in 2001 when the U.S. overthrew it in an invasion targeting al-Qaida terrorists harbored by the Taliban as they planned the September 11 attacks on the U.S. that killed nearly 3,000 people. He said that some Afghan interpreters who assisted U.S. troops over the years and are looking to leave their homeland have been turned back from the Kabul airport and forced to return to their homes to watch as their family members have been executed, including some beheaded, before the interpreters themselves are killed. He did not say how many had been killed by the Taliban. “I’ve said all along [President Joe Biden] has blood on his hands,” McCaul said. After the U.S. pulled its last troops out of Afghanistan last week, Biden forcefully defended his withdrawal in getting 98% of Americans out of the country as an “extraordinary success.” FILE – Hundreds of people gather, some holding documents, on Aug. 26, 2021, near an evacuation control checkpoint on the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan.Biden often has said he would not continue the American presence in Afghanistan as a “forever war.” National polls in the U.S. show that Americans support Biden’s decision to leave the country but not the chaotic end to operations there. In the waning days of the U.S. presence, 13 U.S. troops were killed in a suicide bomb attack at the airport that Islamic State Khorasan, an Afghan offshoot of the terrorist group, claimed. 
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After two decades of near-constant warfare and destruction, the Taliban now face the need to figure out how to govern the underdeveloped and impoverished nation they have just recaptured. Some insight into how that may progress can be gleaned from a closer look at the group’s leadership and organizational structure, as well as the parallel shadow government they established to prepare themselves for the challenges ahead.      The reestablishment of the Taliban leadership council after 9/11 As quickly as the Taliban seized power in recent weeks, their defeat at the hands of an international coalition and allied Afghan forces in 2001 was just as swift. The U.S.-led invasion destroyed the Taliban’s organizational command and scattered their leadership. Their fighters merged into the populace or fled with refugees to neighboring Pakistan. According to a book written by a Taliban senior member, Abdul Hai Mutmain, in 2016, it was not until May 2002 that their supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was able to gather a few senior aides and set up a leadership council to direct resistance against the United States and its allies.    The members of that council comprised Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Usmani, Mullah Abdul Lateef Mansur, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, Mullah Dadullah Khund, Mullah Jalaluddin Haqqani, Mullah Abdul Kabeer, Mullah Hamdullah Nani, Mullah Muhammad Hassan Rahmani, Mashar Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, and Mullah Ameer Khan Mutaqi. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Mullah Obaidullah Akhund were appointed its first and second emirs. The leadership council serves much like a government Cabinet running all the group’s affairs subject to the approval of the supreme leader.   Obaidullah Akhund was arrested by Pakistani intelligence agencies in February 2007 and was succeeded by Akhtar Muhammad Mansur as a deputy to Mullah Baradar. Pakistani intelligence arrested Baradar three years later, and Mansur succeeded him both as deputy supreme leader and head of the leadership council.    After the Taliban announced Mullah Omar’s death in 2015, Mansur became the Taliban supreme leader and appointed two deputies — Shaikh Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban current emir, and Mullah Sirajuddin Haqqani — head of the Haqqani network.After Mansur died in a U.S. drone strike in May 2016 in Pakistan, Shaikh Akhundzada succeeded him and appointed Mullah Yaqoob Omari, son of its founding emir, Mullah Umar — to serve as a deputy alongside Haqqani. When Baradar was released from a Pakistani prison in 2018, Akhundzada made him a third deputy with responsibility for political affairs. This leadership structure remains in place, with Shaikh Hibatullah Akhundzada serving as supreme leader, aided by the three deputies — Mulawi Yaqoob Umari, Shaikh Sirajuddin Haqqani and Mulawi Abdul Ghani Baradar.    The Taliban bureaucracy Muhammad Ahsas, a well-informed authority on the Taliban, told VOA that the Taliban have divided Afghanistan’s 34 provinces administratively into two branches, south and southeast. The south comprises 14 provinces and falls under the authority of Umari. The southeast comprises the remaining 20 provinces and is administered by Haqqani. Each province is divided into eight zones, which in turn are divided into districts similar to those that already exist. Mutmain writes in his book that the Taliban appointed its shadow provincial and district governors in 2005.    According to Ahsas, the Taliban leadership has established 18 commissions which function like ministries, dealing with military, political, economic, media and culture, public works, intelligence, and other matters. Eleven of these commissions are categorized as large and seven as small. Each has representatives at the zonal, provincial and district levels.    The Taliban-appointed governor for Kunar, Haji Usman Turabi, announced to a large public gathering last month that these commissions were now responsible for running the province. Citizens were told they should contact the appropriate commission to ask for any service they might need.   According to Mutmain, the first three Taliban commissions were military, economic, and cultural, established in 2004.   Afghan researcher Fazelminallah Qazizai says that the biggest and most significant Taliban commission is its military commission. The Taliban deputy chief, Mullah Yaqoob Umari, heads that commission with three deputies — Maulawi Sadar Ibrahim, Maulawi Abul Qayum Zakir, and Qari Fasihuddin. All three are prominent military commanders. Fasihuddin is the senior commander for nine northern provinces and is of Tajik ethnicity.     Qazizai says the next most important commission is the economic commission which, like the military commission, deals with drug smuggling, a significant source of income for the Taliban. The intelligence commission is smaller but also considered to be significant. It deals with drone technology and other modern weaponry.      According to Ahsas, the media and culture commission lacks the big budget of the intelligence commission or the vast organizational structure of the military commission but is also considered vital. The political commission, meanwhile, is the most prominent currently, due to its daily interaction with the international media. It operates under Baradar and has several senior leaders including Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, Suhail Shaheen and Shaikh Shahabuddin Dalawar.     Qazizai says the 18 commission heads serve on the Taliban leadership council along with several other senior military commanders and prominent religious scholars. According to a confidential Taliban source, the leadership council currently has around 30 members, although most meetings are attended by only 18 to 20 of them, mainly the commission heads.    Qazizai says the most influential Taliban figure after the supreme leader is Shaikh Abdul Hakeem, a religious scholar who has served as a teacher and mentor to all Taliban leaders since the group’s founding in 1994 — including Mullah Omar, his son Yaqoob and his successor Akhtar Muhammad Mansur. Hakeem designs the Taliban’s most important religious verdicts, which drive its policies. He also drafted the Taliban verdict against the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State group or Daesh. His seminary in the Kuchlak area of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province was targeted by a suicide attack in January 2020. Hakeem survived but lost a son. There were several other casualties as well.     Also wielding influence is a group of powerful special forces commanders, known as the Sara Qitaa, or Red Unit. This group has battalions across the country and became prominent in the Taliban’s largely successful fight against Daesh. Its most prominent commanders include Peer Agha, the Taliban current governor for Kunar, Haji Usman Turabi, Bilal Fatih Zadran in Paktika, Umar Yasir in Laghman and its two recently killed commanders — Naik Muhammad Rahbar from Nangarhar and Abu Idrees Yousaf from Ghazni. Rahbar played an instrumental role in driving Daesh from its strongholds in Nangarhar before the group assassinated him in April.    Several other important military figures are still playing central roles on the ground but have been kept away from the international media. Among these is Bilal Zadran, who emerged from the Haqqani network and is considered a top commander despite his low public profile in the last couple of years.    Abdul Sayed is a security specialist and researcher on radical militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan based in Lund, Sweden.  Twitter: @abdsayedd 
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In the vast Sunderbans delta that spans eastern India and Bangladesh, coastal erosion due to rising sea levels has been slowly carving away chunks of its low-lying islands, forcing thousands of people to relocate, according to climate experts.“When we talk to families in the Sunderbans, we find that only elderly people are left behind. Many young people are already working in different parts of the country as day laborers or semiskilled workers,” Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at Climate Action Network International, said.The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, warns that the Indian Ocean is warming faster than other seas. As a result, it says that sea levels around South Asia have increased faster than the global average, leading to coastal area loss and retreating shorelines in densely populated countries such as India and Bangladesh.That is affecting millions — a December report by ActionAid and Climate Action Network South Asia estimated that the combined effects of climate change will result in the displacement of 63 million people in South Asia from their homes by 2050 if emissions continue at the same levels.Many of those displaced will be from coastal communities, and are already seeing their homes regularly inundated from rising sea levels and their farms shrinking or becoming unusable because of increased soil salinity, say experts.Millions displacedWhile disasters such as cyclones and floods linked to climate change have grabbed headlines, the displacement of millions of people in the region has gotten less attention.“The IPCC report points out that the sea level is rising much faster than earlier research had suggested,” said Roxy Mathew Koll at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.“A 3-centimeter rise in a decade might not seem much but it is equivalent to 17 meters of land carved out by the sea every decade along the entire coast of India. That is what we are seeing happening currently,” Koll said.Mega cities in India, such as Mumbai and Chennai, have been witnessing increased monsoon flooding, as rural communities along the shore see livelihoods destroyed.Low-lying Bangladesh, where more than 35 million people live in coastal areas, could lose more than 15% of its land, affecting the homes and livelihoods of millions in coastal areas.“This region is not prepared to deal with such levels of displacement because the poor do not have resources to relocate. These climate migrants are mostly pushed into slums in nearby towns and cities, which are already densely populated,” Singh said.Barriers of mud and rock erected by residents, as well as concrete structures, have done little to keep the ocean out.Bangladesh’s government is planning to improve coastal embankments that were built to keep out tidal flooding and offer protection against severe cyclones, according to Malik Fida Khan at the Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services in Dhaka.Ocean damages soilEven where the land is not swallowed by the ocean, though, the sea water pushing into farms has caused long-term damage.“We can build embankments and resilience against cyclonic storms and sea level rise, but it is very difficult to handle soil salinity. You need fresh water to push back the salinity,” Khan said.“For example, it will take 50 years or more to remove soil salinity that has increased in 10 years. So, you need different kind of adaptation measures such as growing saline-tolerant varieties of rice,” he said.While Bangladesh has developed several such varieties of rice, some studies say the soil salinity has increased so much that even growing these is difficult.Nowhere is the situation more dire than in the Sunderbans, often called one of the world’s climate hotspots. Increasingly battered by more intense cyclones, the region is witnessing one of the fastest rates of coastal erosion in the world, with islands dotting the delta steadily shrinking, according to several studies.Ghoramara island in the Indian state of West Bengal for example has diminished by half since 1970, according to several studies. Once home to 40,000 people, India’s 2011 census counted only 5,000 on the island.Those who have grown up in the Sunderbans in India, such as Bhakta Purakayastha, founder of the Sunderbans Social Development Center, describe the dramatic changes they have witnessed.“When I was a child, we used to cross the river in a boat. Now the river has shrunk so much due to silt deposits from upstream that we can walk across,” he said.He said fish were once abundant in the river but the catch has shrunk as the rising sea pushes into rivers, affecting poor communities that rely on their rice paddies and fish for sustenance.“Now they have to go out into the deep sea to catch fish, but rising tides pose a challenge” Purakayastha said.’We do not have a plan’A severe cyclone that hit the region in May has exacerbated the problem in the delta, with even drinking water becoming scarce because of rising salinity in rivers.Experts are calling on regional governments to develop plans to assist the growing tide of climate migrants, saying marginalized communities are the hardest hit by climate change.“The reality is we do not have a plan, although many of the impacts of climate change are already locked in,” Singh of Climate Action Network International said.“None of the governments in South Asia have specific policies for people forced to migrate due to climate change to eke out a living. Even the recognition of climate induced migration is not there,” he said. 
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Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir charged family members of late resistance leader Syed Ali Geelani under a harsh anti-terror law for raising anti-India slogans and wrapping his body in the Pakistani flag, officials said Sunday.Geelani, who died Wednesday at age 91, was the emblem of Kashmir’s defiance against New Delhi and had been under house arrest for years.His son, Naseem, said Indian authorities buried Geelani’s body in a local cemetery without any family members present after police snatched his body from the home. Police denied that and called it “baseless rumors” by “some vested interests.”A video widely shared on social media purportedly showed Geelani’s relatives, mostly women, frantically trying to prevent armed police from forcing their way into the room where his body, wrapped in a Pakistani flag, was being kept. It showed women wailing and screaming as police took the body and locked his family and relatives inside the room.Police said unspecified family members and some others were charged Saturday under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. They have not yet been taken into custody.The anti-terror law was amended in 2019 to allow the government to designate an individual as a terrorist. Police can detain a person for six months without producing any evidence, and the accused can subsequently be imprisoned for up to seven years.Rights activists have called the law draconian.Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan, which administer parts of the Himalayan region while claiming it entirely.Geelani spearheaded Kashmir’s movement for the right to self-determination and was a staunch proponent of merging Kashmir with Pakistan. For many in Kashmir and beyond, he was an enduring icon of defiance against India.Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989. The region is one of the most heavily militarized in the world. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the raging conflict.Meanwhile Sunday, authorities eased some restrictions that had been imposed since Geelani’s death, allowing some private vehicles on roads and vendors to operate in some parts of Srinagar.Mobile phones were restored late Friday but mobile internet and restrictions on the movement of people continued in many parts of the Kashmir Valley. 
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The Taliban claimed Saturday that their forces had seized several districts in the northern Panjshir Valley, the last remaining province in Afghanistan holding out against the Islamist group.Taliban officials said that overnight advances had brought several days of fighting to Anaba, an area close to the provincial capital, Bazarak.Emergency, an Italy-based charity, confirmed the Taliban had reached Anaba. The nongovernmental organization, which runs a medical center in the area, said its facility had “received a small number of wounded people.”There has so far been no interference with EMERGENCY’s activities. We have received a small number of wounded people at the Anabah Surgical Centre.FILE – Militiamen loyal to Ahmad Massoud take part in a training exercise in Panjshir province, northeastern Afghanistan, Aug. 30, 2021.The Panjshir Valley, home to the country’s Tajik ethnic minority and located north of the capital, Kabul, is surrounded by mountain peaks.Afghanistan has 34 provinces and 33 of them were overrun by the Taliban last month in a stunningly swift military campaign that ended with their seizure of Kabul on August 15.The fighting for the control of Panjshir broke out several days ago and since then both sides have been making inflated claims and counterclaims about their battlefield gains.The anti-Taliban armed resistance comprises members of the U.S.-trained former Afghan security force and local tribal militias. It is being led by Ahmad Massoud. His father successfully defended Panjshir when the Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.Massoud vowed in a Facebook post Saturday to resist and “stand strongly in the fight” against the Taliban.The lack of control over all of Afghanistan has apparently discouraged the Taliban from announcing a new government.Members of Taliban security forces stand guard among crowds of people walking past in a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 4, 2021.On Saturday, small groups of female activists took to the streets in Kabul and in parts of western Afghanistan, demanding respect for their rights and representation in the new government.Taliban fighters broke up a rally of about a dozen women in the capital to stop them from heading to the presidential palace.Footage circulating on social media showed demonstrators confronted by armed Taliban fighters covering their mouths and coughing, with one woman saying the security guards had used tear gas to disperse the rally.“They also hit women on the head with gun magazines, and the women became bloody,” said one of the demonstrators who identified herself as Soraya.“Taliban blocking protest by beatings and tear gas: unfortunately this is pretty much on brand for a group that relies on brute force to suppress dissent,” tweeted Patria Gossman, associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch.The Taliban imposed a brutal justice system and banned women from work and prevented older girls from receiving an education when the fundamentalist group had previously seized power in Afghanistan.FILE – Afghan women’s rights defenders and civil activists protest to call on the Taliban for the preservation of their achievements and education, in front of the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 3, 2021.However, Taliban leaders have promised to install an inclusive government in Kabul that they say will allow women to work and receive education within the framework of Islamic law, or Shariah, but many Afghans doubt the reliability of their pledges.”It will be an inclusive, strong central and sustainable system of government,” Bilal Karimi, a Taliban spokesman, told VOA on Friday.The Taliban are under international scrutiny for delivery on pledges that their governance system will represent all Afghan ethnic groups and respect human rights, particularly those of women, unlike their previous exclusive hardline regime in Kabul.Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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