Month: September 2021

Although U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan ended earlier this week, U.S. officials said Thursday there are still diplomatic and economic options for protecting the rights of Afghans under Taliban rule. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
Producer: Katherine Gypson
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It felt like hell itself had opened up, said Ramal Ahmadi, who was watching cartoons with his nephew when a U.S. drone slammed into his family’s courtyard where just moments before there had been a noisy celebration to greet the family’s oldest brother. The last thing Ahmadi remembers was the sound of his brother’s car horn announcing his arrival and the squealing of the children. He said his mind has been “not right” since that day. Sunday’s U.S. drone strike killed 10 members of his family, six of them children, Ahmadi said.  Senior U.S. military officials said the drone strike hit an Islamic State target and weakened the extremists’ ability to further disrupt the final phase of the U.S. withdrawal and evacuation of thousands of people from Afghanistan. Three days before the drone strike, an IS suicide bomber had attacked a crowded gate at Kabul airport, killing 13 U.S. service members and 169 Afghans. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that at least one of those killed in the drone strike was an Islamic State “facilitator.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged the reports of civilian casualties on Thursday and said they were being investigated. Previously, American officials have noted that subsequent explosions resulted from the destruction of the vehicle and may have caused additional casualties. Explanation demandedBut an enraged Ahmadi family is demanding proof — and disputes that the car was carrying explosives.  “They have to give us answers. Is our blood so worthless, we don’t even get an explanation?” Ahmadi asked.  Analysts warned that the risk of civilian casualties during drone strikes will only grow, now that the U.S. no longer has on-the-ground intelligence. Ramal Ahmadi, right, speaks during an interview with AP about a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 2, 2021. Ahmadi said the strike killed 10 members of his family.Inside the courtyard of the family home, Emal, another Ahmadi brother, recently picked through the twisted ruins of the devastated hulk of the Toyota Corolla. Inside was a blood-soaked child’s shirt. He said some family members, including children, were in the car when it was hit. He contended that if there had been a bomb in the vehicle there would be far more damage to the courtyard and house. He pointed to two undamaged gas cylinders tucked away in a corner of the courtyard. “If the car was filled with explosives like the Americans say, why didn’t these cylinders explode,” asked Emal. He also pointed to a shoddily constructed brick wall near the gutted car. “How could the wall still be standing if this car had been full of explosives?” But American officials, including some who watched the strike in real-time on video feeds, said the U.S. had been watching the car for several hours and saw people loading explosives into the trunk. The compound in Kabul’s Khoja Boghra neighborhood was home to four Ahmadi brothers and their families — 25 people in all. The roads that weave through the middle-class neighborhood pass homes hidden behind high walls and gates.  For the Ahmadis, the accusation that their family was involved with the Islamic State group is a devastating one. “If you have proof, I say, ‘Go ahead kill me,’ but show me the proof,” said Emal, whose 3-year-old daughter, Malika, was among the dead.  FILE – Afghans inspect damage to the Ahmadi family house after a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 29, 2021.Their oldest brother, Zamarai, and a nephew, Nasir Haideri — both of whom were killed in the strike — had worked for U.S. government-allied firms and had applied for Special Immigrant Visas granted to Afghans with such ties to the U.S. They were being processed at the time of the strike. Soon to marryEmal said Nasir, 30, who was to have been married just days after the strike, had dreamed of going to America.  The surviving brothers showed the commendation letters the relatives had included in their submissions for the visas. Emal, who has also applied for one of the visas, said he struggled to understand why the family compound was struck. “They have such high technology they can see an ant on the ground, but they couldn’t see a yard full of children?” he asked. Milley said Sunday’s strike was based on good intelligence, including a review of video. “We monitored that through various means and all of the engagement criteria were being met,” he said. “We went through the same level of rigor that we’ve done for years and we took a strike.” Psaki pushed back against the idea that a lack of solid on-the-ground intelligence is hampering the United States. She said that there are many countries where the U.S. has no military presence on the ground, “but we can still prevent terrorist groups from metastasizing and posing threats.” But Douglas London, who served as the CIA’s counterterrorism chief overseeing the region before retiring in 2019, said the strike and resulting deaths “really illustrates our handicap by having no presence on the ground to collect the best quality and most timely intelligence.” Not having U.S. or long-trained Afghan partner forces on the ground also foreclosed other possibilities, like potentially stopping the car before it entered a crowded residential area, he said. “A strike in a congested area would have been the last choice we would have made,” said London, author of the forthcoming book, The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence. 
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White House officials said Thursday that U.S. involvement with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers had entered an uncertain new phase, as U.S. officials continued working to evacuate about 100 Americans still in the country.Meanwhile, Taliban officials indicated that their fledgling government was strengthening ties with China and other nations.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. no longer controlled the airspace over Afghanistan. So far, she said, 31,107 people have been brought to the U.S., of the more than 120,000 who have been evacuated in what administration officials have described as the largest airlift in history.Also Thursday, a Taliban spokesman said via Twitter that a top Taliban official had spoken to a top Chinese official.“The Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister said that they would maintain their embassy in Kabul, adding our relations would beef up as compared to the past,” tweeted Suhail Shaheen, an English-language spokesman for the group. 1/3Abdul Salam Hanafi, Deputy Director, PO held a phone conversation with Wu Jianghao, Deputy Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China. Both sides discussed the ongoing situation of the country and future relations. The Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister said that— Suhail Shaheen. محمد سهیل شاهین (@suhailshaheen1) FILE – State Department spokesperson Ned Price speaks during a media briefing at the State Department, July 7, 2021.“There is a review of our assistance to the Afghan government,” Price said in response to a reporter’s question. “Now we’re in a position where there is not yet a new government formed. So in the first instance, we’ll need to see government formation take place. That is a mere technicality. … What we will be looking to when it comes to the issues that you’ve raised, including the potential for any forms of assistance, will be the actions of the new Afghan government.”Specifically, he said, the U.S. will prioritize “safe passage, respect for the rights of the people of Afghanistan, including women and girls and minorities, a government that is inclusive, a government that follows through on its counterterrorism commitments, a government that respects the universal international norms.”Rebel movementIn setting up a new government, the Taliban also face challenges from within their borders, notably from the National Resistance Front, the revived rebel movement led by the son of famed mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.His British-educated son has returned to Afghanistan, and, in an editorial in the Washington Post, vowed to fight for “an open society, one where girls could become doctors, our press could report freely, our young people could dance and listen to music or attend soccer matches in the stadiums that were once used by the Taliban for public executions — and may soon be again.”Military officials said the U.S. could still counter terrorism in the region, though “the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan is over,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.“What we will do is continue to be able to conduct over-the-horizon terrorism strikes as needed for threats to our interests and to the homeland,” he said. “That’s a different thing than saying that we have an enduring military mission in Afghanistan.” VOA’s Jeff Seldin and Cindy Saine contributed to this report. Some information came from Agence France-Presse.
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Women serving in the Afghan military say that they are worried about their safety and future under the Taliban. Yalda Baktash has this report.
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When the U.S. ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan this week, the Biden administration underscored the success of the evacuation effort from Hamid Karzai International Airport.”No nation, no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history,” said President Joe Biden from the White House on Tuesday, the day the U.S. completed its Afghan military withdrawal.The administration has said the massive airlift evacuated most of the remaining Americans in the country, as well as thousands of Afghan interpreters, activists, journalists and other groups that have been targeted by the Taliban.But thousands of others are left behind. Frustrated U.S. diplomats, military officials and civilian personnel involved in the effort tell VOA it was a haphazard process that left out many people who qualified for evacuation.Haseeb Kamal and his wife were married on August 14th, the day before Kabul fall. She did not make it through the airport gate. (Courtesy photo)He pleaded with the Marines to allow his father and sister to join him on a flight despite them only having Afghan documents and none of the typical U.S. paperwork required for entry.”Don’t you dare kick them out (of the airport),” Kamal said to the Marines, who finally allowed them to stay.Kamal and his sister, Bibi Sara, are now living with family in the U.S. state of Virginia, while their father is still being processed in Fort Lee, a military base in the same state.’Ever-changing rules’Rules about which individuals could evacuate were “ever-changing,” said a diplomatic source on the ground who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity. That meant family members of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, as well as Special Immigrant Visa applicants, may have been allowed into the airport one day, but not the next.”What constituted as proper documentation changed nightly,” he said.The diplomat said that on at least one day during the early phase of evacuation, local staff of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were given instructions via email to go to the East Gate. Their extended families were processed despite lacking documentation such as Afghan passports, national IDs, or SIV applications, and whether they had “credible fear” of retaliation by the Taliban. As long as they said they were local embassy staff or their families, individuals were able to get in, he said.It was easy to confirm who is an embassy staff member, the diplomat said, but family connections were more difficult to determine.”These guys who have come in with large extended families, members with weak documentation … how do you vet that?” the officer said, adding that sometimes groups were waived through nevertheless.”We had to make a quick moral calculus – send them back out to the Taliban check point and potentially in danger or move them forward.”Those who were not U.S. citizens, permanent residents or holders of valid visas were sent to third countries referred to as “lily-pads” to be vetted.On other days, stricter guidelines meant extended families including parents and siblings of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents were not allowed entry. At points where people were screened, some officers followed the rule while others were more relaxed, he said.On Monday, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby defended the work of the troops.”Without speaking to these reports, the Marines and the soldiers that for the last couple of weeks have been helping consular officers man the gates and process them did heroic work,” Kirby told VOA. “And they had to make decisions in real time about trying to help people get out.””A lot of lives were saved, and a lot of lives are now in a better place,” Kirby said.Many lives were saved, in some instances possibly because the rules were so flexible at times. Haseeb Kamal, the former interpreter, said he met a family with only two U.S. citizens who brought 30 people in with them.”I had no information that I could bring all of my family,” Kamal said. “What shocked me was how they knew.”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.After Kabul’s fall, around the clock missionA State Department spokesperson defended the Kabul airlift, telling VOA that “the Biden administration has demonstrated, in the face of significant challenges, its sacrosanct commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who have stood-by-side with the United States over the course of the past two decades.”After Kabul fell to the Taliban, the State Department flew diplomats from around the world to the Afghan capital. Diplomats and American troops worked around the clock to evacuate as many Americans and vulnerable Afghans as they could.An American civilian source on the ground who witnessed the evacuation said their efforts were “remarkable.” “Their empathy and humanity was admirable,” he said.A US Marine carries a baby during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 28. (US Marine Corps photo)However aid groups which were involved say despite the massive effort by diplomats and soldiers, the airlift was plagued by problems.”There appears to be at best very problematic and at worst no rhyme or reason for who’s getting into the gates,” said Mark Jacobson, who helped organize evacuees. Jacobson served in 2006 in Afghanistan as a naval intelligence officer and from 2009-2011 as the deputy NATO representative and deputy political adviser at the International Security Assistance Force.”For those of us who are helping to get Afghans out, it does certainly appear as though the SOP (standard operating procedure) doesn’t just change day to day but hour to hour,” Jacobson said.Jacobson said the inconsistencies were partly due to the multiple departments involved.”When we get to our State people, they say it’s DOD. When we get to the DOD people they say it’s State,” Jacobson said referring to departments of State and Defense.VOA asked the White House whether inconsistent policies and a lack of coordination between the State Department and the Pentagon resulted in vulnerable Afghans left behind while those who were not at-risk individuals were evacuated.”I have no confirmation of what you’ve just outlined,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “What I will tell you is that 117,000, approximately — many of them Afghans who — people who are not American citizens — were evacuated. That’s more people than ever in any airlift in U.S. history.”In this image provided by the US Air Force, aircrew prepare to load qualified evacuees aboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 21, 2021.The administration has not provided a full breakdown of evacuee nationalities and their immigration status. On Wednesday the White House said that 77 percent of the evacuees that have arrived in the U.S. since August 17 were Afghans including “SIV and other visa holders, SIV applicants, P-1 and P-2 referrals, and others.”State Department spokesman Ned Price said a total of 31,107 people arrived in the U.S. from Afghanistan between August 17 and August 31.Warren Binford, a law professor at the University of Colorado, was part of a remote, entirely digital network of volunteers who, she estimates, assisted 1,400 Afghans in getting out.”The State Department had been put in charge of an evacuation from a warzone,” she said, contending that as a result the military did not have the full command of the operation. They learned to “pivot and adapt on a constant ongoing basis”, she said.Another individual, who asked not to be named because he wanted to protect the Afghans he is still trying to evacuate, described the evacuation process as “chaos.”A convoy of 130 people he organized was turned away after waiting for 18 hours. The plane took off without them, their seats empty.Another source, a former U.S. government official assisting evacuation who also asked not to be named, confirmed that the majority of Afghans in their group who were direct family members of American citizens (e.g. children, spouses) were turned away, even when their names were on flight manifests.The Marines blocking them said their orders from the State Department were to only allow American citizens and legal permanent residents. The former official said that should not have been the rule for charter flights for authorized individuals who are identified as at-risk, such as humanitarian organization employees, SIVs, women leaders, and their families.”Why isn’t the manifest being shared at the gate?” the former official lamented, also confirming that many of the privately arranged flights left with no one on board.The private group sources said the likelihood of evacuation depended in part on luck and on contacts inside the airport and in Washington, and who can get them past Taliban check points, past the Marines at the airport gates, into the terminal, on the tarmac and eventually on planes heading to safety.”It’s like The Hunger Games,” the former government official source said.One such group of hundreds of Afghans were rescued by the “Pineapple Express” – a secret mission run by U.S. military veterans who defied orders to stay within the security perimeter and scooped up their Afghan allies outside of the airport in a daring operation first reported by ABC News.”What is making us so incredibly sad is the seriously at-risk Afghans who don’t have the privilege of those connections, that are being left behind,” the former government official source said.Afghans wait in long lines for hours to try to withdraw money, in front of Bank in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 30, 2021. The Taliban have limited weekly withdrawals to $200.’Haunted’ by choicesA senior State Department official involved in the evacuation on the ground said they had the legal obligation to prioritize Americans. The operation involved “some really painful trade-offs” and officers are “haunted by the choices we had to make, and by the people we were not able to help depart,” the official said.Administration officials have repeatedly said that U.S. commitment to evacuate the potentially thousands or more vulnerable Afghans, as well as the remaining 200 or so individuals who self-identify as Americans and want to leave, is “enduring.””We will have means and mechanisms of having diplomats on the ground being able to continue to process out those applicants and facilitate passage of other people who want to leave Afghanistan,” Jen Psaki said Monday.One interpreter, who submitted his SIV application in 2014 and whose former U.S. Army colleagues enlisted three U.S. Senators to try to get him evacuated, is now in limbo after he and his wife and seven children failed to gain access to the airport.Jamshid, who did not give his real name for fear of retribution, told VOA that he traveled from outside of Kabul and spent 11 days trying to get inside the airport before giving up.”For now we are doing well,” he said. “But me and my family are worrying about our safety… because I have worked four years with U.S. army as interpreter.”On Sunday, the United States and 97 other countries announced the Taliban has assured them that foreign nationals and Afghans with visas from those countries will be allowed out of the country after the August 31 deadline. The Taliban released a statement saying all airports will be open to allow those who wish to leave Afghanistan.The day after the U.S. withdrawal, Jamshid received an email from the U.S. State Department assuring him that the U.S. will continue efforts to help them. The email instructed SIV applicants who want to transfer their case to an embassy or consulate outside of Afghanistan to submit their inquiry online.The success of that effort will depend in part on the willingness of the Taliban to help their former battlefield enemies.”It’s not easy to go to a third country,” Jamshid said.VOA’s Nike Ching, Carolyn Presutti, Anita Powell, Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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Albania is temporarily hosting some 600 Afghan refugees who have fled the violence and chaos in their country. The last of several flights – with 150 people on board – arrived in Albania August 30. Ilirian Agolli spoke with some of them. Keida Kostreci narrates his story. 
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