Month: October 2021

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that he had ordered a full-scale review of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in August as the U.S. ended its two-decade fight against terrorism there.

In a hastily arranged airlift, the U.S. and its allies evacuated more than 124,000 civilians, including Americans, Afghans and others, as the Taliban took swift control of the Kabul government while Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled to exile in the United Arab Emirates.

But thousands of other Afghans linked to the U.S. occupation of their country were left behind as the evacuation ended, although some have managed to get out of the country in the last two months. During the evacuation from the Kabul airport, 13 American service members were killed in a bomb attack orchestrated by the Afghan offshoot of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Blinken, speaking at the Foreign Service Institute outside Washington to a group of lawmakers, diplomats and others, said, “I’ve ordered a series of internal reviews focused on our planning and execution for the evacuation and relocation effort in Afghanistan.”

Blinken praised the State Department’s evacuation effort but said the agency needs to learn from it as well, in case the U.S. ever confronts a similar situation calling for a rapid withdrawal from a war zone.

“There are many things that now, looking back, we can and should ask: Could we have done things differently? Could we have taken that step differently? Should we have tried that idea first? Could we have gotten to that decision more quickly?” Blinken said.

The top U.S. diplomat did not spell out details of the review. But he said, “We owe it to ourselves, to our Afghan friends and partners, and to the future State Department employees who might find themselves facing a similar challenge one day to capture all that we learned, to study it, to apply it, to preserve it in a way that it enhances our future planning and helps us prepare better for future contingencies.”

U.S. news outlets reported last week that the State Department’s inspector general would review the end of diplomatic operations in Afghanistan, while also looking into the Special Immigrant Visa program, which allowed Afghans to be admitted to the U.S. as refugees, and their resettlement in the United States.
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Eyes in Beijing and Moscow are trained on Central Asia, prompted by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

The security threat in Afghanistan and the desire to shut off Central Asia from other powers, such as the U.S., is motivating Beijing and Moscow to cooperate and gloss over their differences, according to Emil Avdaliani, director of Middle East Studies at Georgian think tank Geocase.

“They purposefully avoid forming an alliance as that — as Moscow and Beijing argue — would constrain their foreign policies rather than create better conditions for coordination,” Avdaliani told VOA.

While China is the economic power in the Central Asian region, Russia plays more of a role as security guarantor, according to Avdaliani.

In the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Beijing’s gradual engagement with Central Asian countries had been focused on the economic front, with state-backed investments in hydrocarbons, mineral extraction, pipeline construction, transportation, power generation and, recently, industrialization of non-energy fields. China also has developed security coordination with regional powers through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Main security backer

Moscow has been the dominant security partner for the countries within the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization framework and has been the largest supplier of arms. Russia remains the main security backer of Central Asia, accounting for 62 percent of the regional arms market, while its economic dominance dropped from 80 percent of the region’s total trade in the 1990s ($110 billion) to just two-thirds that of Beijing ($18.6 billion).

“Lately there has been a trend of China becoming a security player, too,” Avdaliani told VOA. “First, there are reports of a Chinese military base in Tajikistan and perhaps some security presence in the north of Afghanistan. China is also increasingly engaged in military drills with Central Asia states.”

Beijing’s arms transfers through donations and sales to the regional countries, such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, were modest until 2014. Since that year, China has ramped up arms transfers to the region, according to a Wilson Center report this year.

China built its Tajik military outpost in 2016, with facilities in the country’s mountainous Gorno-Badakhshan province near the Afghan border.

Other bordering nations

In addition to Russia, China has cooperated with Pakistan and Iran, countries that border Central Asia, and have economic, security or political interests in that region.

Another regional power is India, which, like China, aims to maintain security in Afghanistan. India worries about a spillover of the insurgency into the disputed territory of Kashmir, which borders Afghanistan.

“Beijing is clearly the dominant power in Central Asia, with India likely to lose some of the influence it used to enjoy over Kabul as a result of the substantial aid it provided before the U.S. withdrawal,” said Alexander Cooley, director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.

China’s relationship with India has been tense as a result of border clashes and India’s embrace of the Quadrilateral strategic grouping, Cooley told VOA.

The grouping, also known as the QUAD, is a strategic dialogue among the United States, India, Japan and Australia that involves coordination and cooperation among the member countries, all of which have strained relationships with China.

China-Russia security agenda

Beijing’s and Moscow’s security agendas are complementary, according to Cooley, and can be mutually accommodated because each views the region as key to its own security, and neither wishes for the United States to return.

“Russia is concerned about potential instability on Central Asian borders, maintaining security cooperation with the Central Asian states and curbing the influx of refugees into Eurasia,” Cooley told VOA. “China is primarily concerned with ensuring that the Taliban clamp down on Uyghur groups residing near the border and securing the Afghan and Tajik borders with Xinjiang.”

Russia may not be happy, though, Cooley said, about China’s recently increased security footprint in Central Asia — including the military facility in Tajikistan, expanded military exercises with the Central Asian states, surveillance technologies “transferred” to Central Asian cities and increased activities by Chinese private security companies to help protect Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects.

“But the two countries have every reason to reject talk of ‘competition’ and emphasize their joint opposition to U.S. hegemony and the U.S.-led liberal international order,” Cooley underscored.
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India’s top court on Wednesday established a committee of experts to look into accusations that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government used Israeli military-grade spyware to monitor political opponents, journalists and activists. 

The Supreme Court order came in response to petitions filed by a group of Indian journalists, rights activists and opposition politicians following an investigation by a global media consortium in July. The committee, headed by a retired judge, is expected to give its findings by year-end. 

India’s opposition has been demanding an investigation into how the Israeli spyware, known as Pegasus, was used in India. 

Modi’s government has “unequivocally” denied all allegations regarding illegal surveillance. India’s information technology minister Ashwani Vaishnaw in Parliament dismissed the allegations in July, calling them “highly sensational,” “over the top” and “an attempt to malign the Indian democracy.” 

But the government in an affidavit did not tell the court whether it used the Israeli equipment for spying, citing security reasons. 

On Wednesday, the court said the state cannot get a free pass every time by raising security concerns. 

“Violation of the right to privacy, freedom of speech, as alleged in pleas, needs to be examined,” the Press Trust of India cited Chief Justice N.V. Ramanna as saying. 

Based on leaked targeting data, the findings by a global media consortium provided evidence that the spyware from the Israel-based NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire company, was allegedly used to infiltrate devices belonging to a range of targets, including journalists, activists and political opponents in 50 countries. 

The company said in July it only sells to “vetted government agencies” for use against terrorists and major criminals and that it has no visibility into its customers’ data. 

Critics call those claims dishonest and have provided evidence that NSO directly manages the high-tech spying. They say the repeated abuse of Pegasus spyware highlights the nearly complete lack of regulation of the private global surveillance industry.

Pegasus infiltrates phones to vacuum up personal and location data and surreptitiously controls the smartphone’s microphones and cameras. In the case of journalists, that allows hackers to spy on reporters’ communications with sources.

Rights groups say the findings bolster accusations that not only autocratic regimes but also democratic governments, including India, have used the spyware for political ends.
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Both the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate and al-Qaida could be ready to launch strikes against the United States and the West sooner than previously thought following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Pentagon’s third-highest ranking official told lawmakers Tuesday that the latest intelligence suggests Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, is on a faster track to regenerate its external strike operations, though al-Qaida’s terror operatives are not far behind.

“Both al-Qaida and ISIS-K have the intent to conduct external operations,” Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Colin Kahl said, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We could see ISIS-K generate that capability in somewhere between six and 12 months,” Kahl said. “Al-Qaida would take a year or two to reconstitute that capability.”

Fears that the terror groups could gain strength in Afghanistan following the departure of U.S. and coalition troops are not new. U.S. and Western officials have warned for months that both groups were poised to take advantage of the absence of U.S. boots on the ground.

Officials and analysts cautioned that IS Khorasan in particular had already bolstered its clandestine networks in Afghanistan and surrounding countries in the months leading up to the U.S. pullout.

Attacks sooner rather than later

But the intelligence shared with lawmakers Tuesday suggests both IS Khorasan and al-Qaida may have made additional gains in recent months, allowing them to speed up the time frame, which top Pentagon and intelligence officials previously put at six months to three years.

“I don’t think they are nearly as well-resourced as ISIS in Iraq and Syria were back in the heyday,” Kahl told lawmakers of the threat from IS Khorasan, though he warned the affiliate’s links to the terror group’s global network is troubling.

“They do have a cadre of a few thousand folks, some of which would love to conduct external attacks,” he said. “I think we have to be vigilant that a subset of ISIS-K could develop the resources and the capability to strike outward to the U.S. homeland.”

Kahl’s warning echoes the concerns of other top U.S. officials, who likewise have cautioned IS Khorasan has been steadily building momentum.

During a congressional hearing last month, Washington’s top counterterrorism official, Christine Abizaid, told lawmakers that the group seemed to be taking advantage of the notoriety it got for carrying out the deadly attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in the waning days of the U.S. withdrawal.

“Will it become more focused on the West? Will it become more focused on the homeland than it was?” Abizaid asked at the time.

 

U.S. officials have also said IS Khorasan has benefited from the way Taliban forces took over Afghanistan, emptying prisons and releasing thousands of IS supporters and fighters.

“What we see is ISIS newly rejuvenated,” General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, told lawmakers last month about the Taliban’s indiscriminate opening of Afghanistan’s Parwan prison in August.

Other U.S. officials now estimate the IS group has at least 2,000 “hardcore” fighters in cells across Afghanistan, though some foreign intelligence services think the number may be higher.

Growth of groups a concern

And there are concerns IS Khorasan’s numbers, as well as those for al-Qaida, could soon start to swell, with intelligence reports suggesting supporters of both groups have started to head to Afghanistan.

 

Getting a sense of how much both terror groups could grow, though, will be difficult.

Kahl said the U.S. is conducting daily surveillance flights over Afghanistan while also using technical capabilities to obtain information on each group’s plans.

But U.S. military and intelligence officials have consistently warned that getting vital intelligence on the threat is more difficult without a U.S. presence on the ground.

There are also questions about what role the Taliban will play, if any, in limiting the threat of terror plots emanating from Afghan soil against the U.S. and other Western countries.

“We have seen signs … that the Taliban is wary about Afghanistan being a springboard for al-Qaida external attacks, not because the Taliban are good guys but because they fear international retribution if that were to occur,” Kahl said.

U.S. officials have likewise said there is an expectation the Taliban will crack down on IS Khorasan, which already has launched attacks against Taliban targets across Afghanistan.

Still, there is concern that it won’t be enough.

“The Taliban certainly have a vested interest in quashing any Islamic State elements,” Katherine Zimmerman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA.

“[But] the gap between the will of the Taliban to eliminate the Islamic State and the Taliban’s capabilities to do so seems to be large enough that the Islamic State threat will persist from Afghanistan,” she said.

There are also lingering questions about the ability of U.S. forces to successfully limit terrorism threat from “over the horizon.”

Despite ongoing discussions, the U.S. has so far failed to acquire any basing options that would allow it to establish drones and other assets in the region, instead relying on flights from its bases in the Persian Gulf, some eight hours away.

“We’ve not secured firm basing arrangements,” Kahl told lawmakers, noting ongoing talks with Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

“They [Pakistani officials] continue to give us access to Pakistani airspace, and we’re in conversations about keeping that airspace open,” he added. “They don’t want Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorist attacks, not just against Pakistan but against others.”

Biden critics’ worries

A number of U.S. lawmakers have been highly critical of U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to move ahead with the Afghanistan withdrawal, charging it has laid the groundwork for a terrorist revival in Afghanistan.

“The consequences of the president’s disastrous decisions are impossible to ignore,” Senator Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday.

“The danger is likely to grow across the world in our own backyard,” he said, adding that “instead of putting together a real counterterrorism plan for the future, all we get is buzzwords.”

Lieutenant General James Mingus, the Joint Chiefs director for operations, on Tuesday tried to allay those concerns.

“We are actively setting the conditions to ensure we remain situationally aware and are postured to mitigate and neutralize developing terrorist threats,” Mingus told lawmakers.

He also said intelligence estimates that IS Khorasan or al-Qaida could launch terror attacks in six months to a year were, “based on no U.S. or coalition intervention.”

“Our efforts in the months ahead, and as we continue to improve our over-the-horizon architecture, is to ensure that that external capability never comes to fruition,” Mingus said.

Kahl on Tuesday, also pushed back, while admitting the U.S. needs to “remain vigilant.”

“The intelligence community assesses that the overall risk to the homeland across the world is at its lowest point since 9/11,” he told lawmakers, arguing other hotspots are just as dangerous, if not more so.

“We’re focused on the counterterrorism front on Somalia, the growth of violent extremism in places like the Sahel,” Kahl said. “We continue to have to vigilant in Iraq and in Syria and in Yemen.”
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Uzbekistan has completed another election without real opposition. Yet Uzbeks, hungry to express their preferences, still turned out to vote, flocking to polling stations at a rate of over 80%. International observers say that is notable in a country that has undertaken halting and tentative reforms in recent years.

Anthony Bowyer of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems spent a month in Uzbekistan monitoring the campaign, visiting 30 polling stations on the October 24 election day. He sees the official turnout number as accurate, calling it a signal that people expect more from their leadership.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who ran for the Liberal Democratic Party, crushed four token rivals: the National Revival Democratic Party’s Alisher Kadirov, the People’s Democratic Party’s Maqsuda Vorisova, the Justice Social Democratic Party’s Bahrom Abduhalimov, and the Ecological Party’s Narzullo Oblomurodov. These putative “opponents” lost badly to an incumbent who won with a whopping 80% of the official tally.

Several voters who talked to VOA on election day said they chose Mirziyoyev in part because he is a known quantity. Some rural voters said they chose the president “even though the changes he promised have not come to our village yet.” For many, his opponents were unknown, their parties irrelevant.

Others, like Rukhsora, a young Tashkent professional, said they are “happy with the changes,” which include greater openness and accountability than during the rule of authoritarian President Islam Karimov from 1989 to 2016. “The fact that we still have many problems does not make him a bad president.”

Uzbekistan has struggled to reflect opposition in a government-managed vote. Tashkent students complained that other candidates did not bother seeking their votes. “If you want to become president, should you not try to win hearts and minds? They can’t expect our vote just because their name is on the ballot,” said Sobir from Kashkadarya.

All candidates toured the country, while their representatives held community forums. But they were never seen together. And candidate debates are unheard of in Uzbek presidential elections.

Yet many voters remember live TV debates during parliamentary elections in 2019 as an exciting hint of what could be. But this time, two debates featuring the candidates’ representatives went unnoticed.

“Should not this be something the presidential nominees personally do?” asked a group of law students, attending political forums at the International Media Hall in Tashkent.

A group of international observers concluded Monday that “the lack of genuine pluralism and meaningful engagement between candidates or with citizens meant that Uzbekistan’s presidential election was not truly competitive, while significant procedural irregularities were noted on election day.”

But Sherzod Qudratkhoja, rector of the University of Journalism and Mass Communications in Tashkent and a member of the Central Election Commission, said it is not easy to satisfy everybody in a country of 35 million, most of whom are under age 45.

“The incumbent’s clear win does not mean that competition was unfair and undemocratic,” Qudratkhoja said.

“It’s unfair to criticize the absence of heated debates and personality-based campaigns. Uzbekistan is a modest society, and we never claim to be good at political advertising and election strategy. It’s clear we lack experience, but we are honest about it. This is not some spectacle. Believe me, we feel the difference now.”

The joint observation mission from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and the European Parliament, acknowledged extensive legal reform but said election legislation still does not yet fully comply with international standards for democratic elections.

“This election has shown that the democratic reforms of recent years must be carried forward,” said Reinhold Lopatka, leader of the short-term OSCE observer mission. “Full respect for basic freedoms and real competition among political forces, which were lacking, will be essential to live up to the people’s democratic aspirations.”

Russian, Chinese and Central Asian leaders rushed to congratulate Mirziyoyev but Washington issued a cautiously optimistic statement that did not name the president himself.

“We concur with the OSCE-ODIHR monitoring mission’s observation that the vote was peaceful and characterized by high voter turnout but share the OSCE mission’s concerns that the elections took place in an overly restrictive political environment and that important election safeguards were disregarded,” said the State Department.

The Biden administration called on Tashkent to expand civil and political rights.

Mirziyoyev, for his part, has pledged to improve livelihoods within the span of his second and constitutionally final five-year term.

But experts caution that he may change the constitution. After all, no Uzbek leader has yet left office democratically, with his predecessor dying in office after more than 25 years in power.

A group of pro-Mirziyoyev bloggers told VOA they hope he will break that mold to set an example.

“If he turns into yet another strongman, following the path of our previous president, Islam Karimov, everything Mirziyoyev has been doing will be quickly forgotten,” said one.

Mirziyoyev’s constant refrain that his government is committed to serve the people resonates deeply with supporters who may ultimately call for him stay on.

Foreign observers criticized “excessively strict requirements for the right to become a candidate, together with burdensome party registration rules.”

The distinction between incumbency and candidacy was blurred, reported the OSCE, giving Mirziyoyev an undue advantage. It criticized the fact that even private media provided more coverage to him than to the other four candidates combined.

Party officials agree Uzbekistan “deserves better campaigns and elections” but argue that citizens should work towards those goals, mirroring the growing spirit of political activism in the country.

“The recent and ongoing reforms are an encouraging sign,” said Heidi Hautala, head of the European Parliament delegation. “But the exclusion of opposition parties and the lack of genuine competition, as well as the high number of irregularities we saw on election day, remain substantial obstacles in the path of democratization.”

Hautala urges that the system Mirziyoyev leads should open further, letting citizens form a genuine civil society.

However, many question the need for a formal opposition, reflecting an innate conservatism born of decades of authoritarian rule. “Will opposition solve our longstanding problems?” asked a middle-aged female voter. “Explaining all problems by pointing to the lack of opposition is quite naïve. I travel around the world and don’t think opposition parties are a solution.”

Bahrom Kuchkarov, vice chair of the Central Election Commission, says citizens are the ultimate judges: “We know the shortcomings, but this election is a step forward.”
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