Attention to the Unseen

RFE/RL reports: Hundreds of Afghans stand along dusty roadsides in the capital, Kabul, desperately trying to sell their meager possessions. Many offer used pots, plates, and cups that are piled up on bedsheets. Others sell tattered mattresses and old rugs or hope someone will buy their television or refrigerator. “There are no jobs and we don’t have any money,” says Haji Aziz, an unemployed cook who stands by a heap of kitchen utensils for sale along a busy road in…

Read More Read More

CNN reports: Stephen Miller seemed floored by the idea, raised during a fall Cabinet meeting in 2018, of  keeping open the doors for Afghan allies and other Middle East refugees to enter the US.  “What do you guys want?” Miller, then a top adviser to President Donald Trump, asked incredulously, according to one person in the room. “A bunch of Iraqs and ‘Stans across the country?” His words stunned many in the meeting, but they were no accident. Under Miller’s guidance, several…

Read More Read More

Jeff Greenfield writes: Much of the commentary on Biden’s speech today will focus on his defense of the Afghanistan withdrawal strategy — his celebration of the U.S. military’s mass evacuations and whether his promise to get those left behind has the ring of plausibility. But perhaps more significant for American politics is that Biden seems to be embracing a belief now shared across ideological lines: America’s international role has been an exercise in overreach. For more than a decade, in…

Read More Read More

NBC News reports: More than 120,000 people of all nationalities were evacuated from the Kabul airport as the U.S. military withdrew, but initial figures suggest that only about 8,500 of those who left Afghanistan in recent months were Afghans, according to numbers released by the Biden administration and estimates from advocates. That is a small percentage of the tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government or U.S. organizations and applied for special U.S. visas, and an…

Read More Read More

Zeeshan Aleem interviews Anand Gopal, an award-winning journalist who reports for The New Yorker and wrote the acclaimed book, “No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes.” He’s a trained sociologist and renowned foreign affairs reporter who lived in Afghanistan for years, embedded with the Taliban, speaks the local languages and is well versed in the history of the war-torn nation. Zeeshan Aleem: Was there a significantly better way to withdraw from Afghanistan?…

Read More Read More

Bloomberg reports: The Taliban called for friendly ties with the U.S. and indicated they were close to announcing details of a new government just hours after the last American soldiers flew out of Kabul to end 20 years of war. “The Islamic Emirate wants a good and diplomatic relationship with the Americans,” Zabihullah Mujahed, the Taliban’s main spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday from the Hamid Karzai International Airport, which was the last place under American control. Key Taliban leaders took…

Read More Read More

Adam Ciralsky writes: America’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan was not unforeseeable. Nor was it an intelligence failure—that old chestnut often used to absolve leaders of culpability. Instead, the Biden administration’s tumultuous exit from the war-torn country seems to have been the result of incremental and baffling bureaucratic decisions. Throughout the summer, I had been fielding Cassandra-like calls from U.S. officials. They warned of impending doom in Afghanistan. They spoke of scenarios in which the Taliban, on the eve of President…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: President Joe Biden has faced a torrent of criticism for abandoning Afghan partners as their country fell to the Taliban. Now, there is also a looming political controversy over the thousands of Afghans Biden will end up resettling over here. An increasingly vocal group of Republicans — led by Donald Trump, who made immigration restrictions a hallmark of his presidency — oppose the resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S., claiming that they could be dangerous, or will…

Read More Read More

Reuters reports: Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a phone call on Sunday that the international community should engage with Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers and “positively guide” them, China’s foreign ministry said. Washington should work with the international community to provide economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, help the new regime run governmental functions normally, maintain social stability, and stop the currency from depreciating and the cost of living from…

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: Zach Van Meter, a private-equity investor from Naples, Fla., phoned the government of Somaliland last week, asking if it would host thousands of Afghan refugees. “He just called me out of the blue,” said Bashir Goth, the Washington representative for a region of Somalia seeking independence. Two days later, on Aug. 25, Somaliland’s acting foreign minister signed a tentative accord with charities working with Mr. Van Meter, agreeing to temporarily house as many as 10,000…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: The United States and 97 other countries said on Sunday that they would continue to take in people fleeing Afghanistan after the American military departs this week and had secured an agreement with the Taliban to allow safe passage for those who are leaving. The Taliban’s chief negotiator, Sher Mohammed Abas Stanekzai, had announced on Friday that the group would not stop people from departing, no matter their nationality or whether they had worked for…

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: Two days before he was shot dead by the Taliban, Abu Omar Khorasani, a onetime leader of Islamic State in Afghanistan, sat slumped in a dingy Afghan prison interview room, waiting for his soon-to-be executioners. Mr. Khorasani saw the Taliban’s advance as a harbinger for change. For years both organizations had sworn to rid Afghanistan of nonbelievers. “They will let me free if they are good Muslims,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an…

Read More Read More

ISIS-K, an affiliate of the Islamic State group, has claimed responsibility for the Kabul terrorist attack. Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images By Amira Jadoon, United States Military Academy West Point and Andrew Mines, George Washington University An attack on a crowd gathered outside Kabul’s airport on Aug. 26, 2021, has left at least 100 people dead, including at least 13 U.S. troops. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the coordinated suicide bomb and gun assault, which came just days after President Joe Biden warned…

Read More Read More

Reuters reports: The deadly attack on Kabul airport has underlined the realpolitik facing Western powers in Afghanistan: engaging with the Taliban may be their best chance to prevent the country sliding into a breeding ground for Islamist militancy. Almost two weeks after the Taliban’s surprise return to power, officials in Europe are beginning to acknowledge that their pragmatic option is to put aside distaste for the country’s new leaders and work with them instead. “It is clear: the Taliban are…

Read More Read More

The Wall Street Journal reports: Twenty years ago, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban. Today, American forces, battered by one of the bloodiest attacks of the war, are relying for their own security on that same group, whose members they were trying to kill just weeks earlier. Fighters of the Taliban’s elite Badri 313 unit, dressed in the latest tactical gear, patrol the same Kabul airport parking lot as U.S. Marines, separated by a few coils…

Read More Read More