Attention to the Unseen

Asser Khattab writes: When the war broke out in 2011 and many of us quickly grew accustomed to its horrors, programming my days around the possibility of rockets or mortar shells falling around me became increasingly ordinary, like picking clothes appropriate for the weather. And when I had to escape, it was just another thing that I had to do. The night before I left, I went to the bar, raised a glass to the good old days with the…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Undercover Taliban agents—often clean-shaven, dressed in jeans and sporting sunglasses—spent years infiltrating Afghan government ministries, universities, businesses and aid organizations. Then, as U.S. forces were completing their withdrawal in August, these operatives stepped out of the shadows in Kabul and other big cities across Afghanistan, surprising their neighbors and colleagues. Pulling their weapons from hiding, they helped the Taliban rapidly seize control from the inside. The pivotal role played by these clandestine cells is becoming…

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CNN reports: The Biden administration is weighing sending military advisers and new equipment including weaponry to Ukraine as Russia builds up forces near the border and US officials prepare allies for the possibility of another Russian invasion, multiple sources familiar with the deliberations tell CNN. The discussions about the proposed lethal aid package are happening as Ukraine has begun to warn publicly that an invasion could happen as soon as January. The package could include new Javelin anti-tank and anti-armor…

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The New York Times reports: American intelligence officials are warning allies that there is a short window of time to prevent Russia from taking military action in Ukraine, pushing European countries to work with the United States to develop a package of economic and military measures to deter Moscow, according to American and European officials. Russia has not yet decided what it intends to do with the troops it has amassed near Ukraine, American officials said, but the buildup is…

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Anne Applebaum writes: A small Kurdish boy is sitting on the ground in a damp Polish forest, a few miles from the eastern border with Belarus. The air is heavy with cold and fog. The boy is crying. Around the boy, sitting in a circle, are his parents, uncles, and cousins, all from the same village near Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are 16 of them, among them seven children, including a four-month-old infant and an elderly woman who can…

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The New York Times reports: In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped…

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Fred Kaplan writes: In March, Adm. Philip Davidson, the outgoing commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, told a Senate panel that China posed a “manifest” threat of invading Taiwan “in the next six years.” No senior official had ever issued such a specific or urgent warning about the fate of the tiny democratic island 100 miles off of China’s eastern coast. But since Davidson’s testimony, boatloads of military officers, active and retired, have sounded similar alarm bells. Some…

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Brian Whitaker writes: Hundreds of people died — many of them in their sleep — when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin struck Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of the Syrian capital early one morning in August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s. Considering that Ghouta was under fire from the Assad regime’s forces at the time, that the casualties were on the rebels’ side and that the regime…

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Michael Beckley and Hal Brands write: President Xi Jinping declared in July that those who get in the way of China’s ascent will have their “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” The People’s Liberation Army Navy is churning out ships at a rate not seen since World War II, as Beijing issues threats against Taiwan and other neighbors. Top Pentagon officials have warned that China could start a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait or other geopolitical…

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Reuters reports: The top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, has provided the first official U.S. confirmation of a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defenses. The Pentagon has been at pains to avoid direct confirmation of the Chinese test this summer, first reported by the Financial Times, even as President Joe Biden and other officials have expressed general concerns about Chinese hypersonic weapons…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Desperate to feed her family, Saleha, a housecleaner here in western Afghanistan, has incurred such an insurmountable debt that the only way she sees out is to hand over her 3-year-old daughter, Najiba, to the man who lent her the money. The debt is $550. Saleha, a 40-year-old mother of six who goes by one name, earns 70 cents a day cleaning homes in a wealthier neighborhood of Herat. Her much older husband doesn’t have…

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