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Collapse of former govt, military rooted in US deal with IEA: CENTCOM chief

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(Last Updated On: September 30, 2021)

Senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August could be traced to a 2020 U.S. agreement with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) that promised a complete U.S. troop withdrawal.

General Frank McKenzie, the head of the U.S. Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that once the U.S. troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unraveling of the U.S.-backed Afghan government accelerated.

“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military — psychological more than anything else, but we set a date-certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.

McKenzie said he also had believed “for quite a while” that if the United States reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the Kabul government inevitably would collapse “and that the military would follow.”

He said in addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was ”the other nail in the coffin” for the 20-year war effort because it blinded the U.S. military to conditions inside the Afghan army, “because our advisers were no longer down there with those units.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with McKenzie’s analysis. He added that the Doha agreement also committed the United States to ending airstrikes against the IEA, “so the Taliban (IEA) got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on a weekly basis.”

Wednesday’s hearing was politically charged, with Republicans seeking to cast Biden as wrongheaded on Afghanistan, and Democrats pointing to what they called ill-advised decisions during the Trump years.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said a day earlier in a similar hearing in the Senate that the war in Afghanistan was a “strategic failure,” and he repeated that on Wednesday.

Defying U.S. intelligence assessments, the Afghan government and its U.S.-trained army collapsed in mid-August, allowing the IEA, which had ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, to capture Kabul with what Milley described as a couple of hundred men on motorcycles, without a shot being fired.

This week’s House and Senate hearings marked the start of what is likely to be an extended congressional review of the U.S. failures in Afghanistan, after years of limited congressional oversight of the war and the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars it consumed.

“The Republicans’ sudden interest in Afghanistan is plain old politics,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supported Biden’s decision to end U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Tuesday’s hearing also was contentious at times, as Republicans sought to portray Biden as having ignored advice from military officers and mischaracterized the military options he was presented last spring and summer.

Milley said Tuesday that lessons need to be learned, including whether the U.S. military made the Afghans overly dependent on American technology in a mistaken effort to make the Afghan army look like the American military.

Milley cited “a very real possibility” that al-Qaida or the Islamic State (ISIS) group’s Afghanistan affiliate, Daesh, could reconstitute in Afghanistan and present a terrorist threat to the United States in the next 12 to 36 months, AP reported.

The hearings come after US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said last weekend that former president Ashraf Ghani’s decision to leave Afghanistan without warning took everyone, including Washington, by surprise.

In an exclusive interview with Ariana News, Khalilzad said that the night before his departure, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spoken to Ghani on the phone.

He said Ghani had not given any signal as to his intentions.

“Everyone including the US were shocked when this happened,” he said.

However, he implied that had Ghani stepped down as president in the lead up to the IEA’s takeover, things could have been very different.

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Dozens of needy families in west Kabul receive Bayat’s Ramadan aid

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(Last Updated On: March 19, 2024)

Dozens of needy families in the western suburbs of Kabul have been given much needed food aid for Ramadan by Bayat Foundation.

Foundation officials said the campaign is conducted during the holy month of Ramadan in order to help those in need.

The aid packages include essential food items such as flour and oil.

Residents in the west of Kabul, who received the packages, welcomed Bayat Foundation’s initiative but appealed for more assistance from other organizations.

Bayat Foundation is considered to be a key charitable organization in the country and has done valuable work in the past twenty years. The foundation has assisted victims of natural disasters, implemented public benefit projects, and helped the needy in different seasons.

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1402, a difficult year for Afghan women and girls

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(Last Updated On: March 19, 2024)

As this solar year, 1402 draws to a close, the suspension of high school and higher education for girls continues, despite repeated calls to the Afghan government to reconsider this decision.

This year, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) officials repeatedly said they plan to reopen schools above grade 6, and universities, to girls – once plans were finalized. However, nothing has come of this.

In many meetings, both in Afghanistan and outside the country, repeated requests were made to the IEA to provide education for everyone – and some officials of the Islamic Emirate even expressed their dissatisfaction over the decision.

Representatives of the United Nations and countries of the world have repeatedly emphasized that the right to education should be given to women and girls, but these requests were not accepted by the Islamic Emirate.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said: “Supporting the rights of women and girls is a central part of our foreign policy. Over the past three years, we have put forward concrete strategies, policies and programs to support women and girls around the world. It’s not just rhetoric, it’s action.”

Spokespersons of the Islamic Emirate said many times in interviews with the media that schools and universities for girls would reopen. However, they did not say when the wait for girls would end.

Now, almost three years after schools, above grade 6, were closed to girls, the hope is that in the new academic year there will be changes in the policy of the Islamic Emirate and the school bell will ring with a good news for girls.

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US urges Pakistan to exercise restraint after airstrikes in Afghanistan

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(Last Updated On: March 19, 2024)

The United States on Monday urged Pakistan to exercise restraint in its counter-terrorist offensive in Afghanistan.

Addressing a press conference, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre called on both sides to address differences through dialogue.

This came after Islamabad carried out airstrikes early Monday on what they claim were Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) hideouts in Khost and Paktia provinces in Afghanistan.

The Islamic Emirate in turn responded and said they targeted Pakistan’s military posts along the Durand Line.

Jean-Pierre meanwhile said: “We are aware of the reports, obviously, that Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Afghanistan in response to an attack in Pakistan on Saturday at a military post. We deeply regret the loss of life and injuries sustained during the attack in Pakistan and the loss of civilian lives during the strikes in Afghanistan.”

“We urge the Taliban to ensure that terrorist attacks are not launched from Afghan soil. We urge Pakistan to exercise restraint and ensure civilians are not harmed in their counterterrorism efforts. We urge both sides to address any differences through dialogue. We remain committed to ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists who wish to harm the United States or our other partners or allies,” she continued.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office on Monday said “intelligence-based anti-terrorist operations” were carried out inside the border regions of Afghanistan, hours after Kabul said airstrikes conducted on its soil had killed eight people.

The dead included five women and three children in the airstrikes carried out by Pakistan.

The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said Monday the attack was a violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) does not allow anyone to compromise security by using Afghan territory,” he said in a statement.

While Pakistan blames Afghanistan for sheltering the TTP responsible for the rise of such attacks, the ruling Taliban has denied these allegations.

In response to the Pakistani military’s air strikes the IEA claimed it carried out attacks on “Pakistani military centers with heavy weapons” and warned Islamabad of repercussions.

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