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Category: War

A humanitarian catastrophe: ‘No one benefits from a failed state in Afghanistan’

A humanitarian catastrophe: ‘No one benefits from a failed state in Afghanistan’

David Ignatius writes: Americans have been generous after military victories. Just look at the postwar economic miracles in Germany and Japan. But it’s harder to be generous in defeat — as we see in the Biden administration’s wary response to the humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s seizure of power there in August. As winter approaches, Afghanistan’s battered population faces food shortages approaching famine; its financial system has imploded, thanks in part to U.S. Treasury sanctions. There is, literally,…

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Civilian deaths mounted as secret American unit pounded ISIS in Syria

Civilian deaths mounted as secret American unit pounded ISIS in Syria

The New York Times reports: A single top secret American strike cell launched tens of thousands of bombs and missiles against the Islamic State in Syria, but in the process of hammering a vicious enemy, the shadowy force sidestepped safeguards and repeatedly killed civilians, according to multiple current and former military and intelligence officials. The unit was called Talon Anvil, and it worked in three shifts around the clock between 2014 and 2019, pinpointing targets for the United States’ formidable…

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The secret history of the U.S. diplomatic failure in Afghanistan

The secret history of the U.S. diplomatic failure in Afghanistan

Steve Coll and Adam Entous write: Biden welcomed Ghani and his top aides to the Oval Office on the afternoon of June 25th. “We’re not walking away,” Biden told Ghani. He pulled from his shirt pocket a schedule card on which he’d written the number of American lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11, and showed it to Ghani. “I appreciate the American sacrifices,” Ghani said. Then he explained, “Our goal for the next six months is to stabilize…

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It’s getting dire in Afghanistan. Biden can’t walk away

It’s getting dire in Afghanistan. Biden can’t walk away

Saad Mohseni writes: In Afghanistan, young babies are now starving to death. Those parents who fear this fate are selling off their children to survive themselves. More than half of Afghanistan’s 39 million people do not have enough to eat and are “marching to starvation,” in the haunting words of the World Food Program. By next year, the United Nations warns, 95 percent of the country could be plunged into poverty. Two months after the Taliban’s takeover, Afghanistan is reeling…

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Facing economic collapse, Afghanistan is gripped by starvation

Facing economic collapse, Afghanistan is gripped by starvation

The New York Times reports: One by one, women poured into the mud brick clinic, the frames of famished children peeking out beneath the folds of their pale gray, blue and pink burqas. Many had walked for more than an hour across this drab stretch of southern Afghanistan, where parched earth meets a washed-out sky, desperate for medicine to pump life back into their children’s shrunken veins. For months, their once-daily meals had grown more sparse as harvests failed, wells…

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Why I stopped writing about Syria

Why I stopped writing about Syria

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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Taliban covert operatives seized Kabul and other Afghan cities from within

Taliban covert operatives seized Kabul and other Afghan cities from within

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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U.S. considering sending extra weaponry to Ukraine as fears mount over potential Russian invasion

U.S. considering sending extra weaponry to Ukraine as fears mount over potential Russian invasion

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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U.S. warns allies of possible Russian invasion as troops amass near Ukraine

U.S. warns allies of possible Russian invasion as troops amass near Ukraine

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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Belarus’s ruler has used asylum seekers to destabilize the EU

Belarus’s ruler has used asylum seekers to destabilize the EU

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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How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

How the U.S. hid an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria

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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Why Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ reminds me of my years in a Syrian prison

Why Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ reminds me of my years in a Syrian prison

Omar Alshogre writes: A lot of people I know have been watching the Netflix show “Squid Game,” the dystopian drama in which players participate in surreal versions of traditional Korean children’s games. The losers are punished by death — until only one is left alive. My friends see “Squid Game” as a kind of horror movie, a grotesque commentary on the gap between rich and poor in today’s capitalist societies. To them, it’s a fantasy, a frightening fable. But I’m…

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Will China really invade Taiwan?

Will China really invade Taiwan?

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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Foreman says military jury was disgusted by CIA torture

Foreman says military jury was disgusted by CIA torture

The New York Times reports: A Navy captain who as head of a jury in a war-crimes court wrote a damning letter calling the C.I.A.’s torture of a terrorist “a stain on the moral fiber of America” said his views are typical of senior members of the U.S. military. Capt. Scott B. Curtis, the jury foreman, said it is just that he had the opportunity to express his thoughts in a letter proposing clemency for the prisoner Majid Khan, a…

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The ‘echo chamber’ of Syrian chemical weapons conspiracy theorists

The ‘echo chamber’ of Syrian chemical weapons conspiracy theorists

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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What will drive China to war?

What will drive China to war?

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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