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Further U.S. Hostility Against The Taliban Is Not In Its Best Interest
The chaotic evacuation of international 'assets' and economic migrants from Kabul airport just got more complicate.
An hour ago a suicide bomber blew himself up amidst a crowd which was waiting to get access to the airport. Additionally gunfire was heard. At least 13 people got killed. There are pictures and video of dozens of killed and wounded Afghans.
Hours ago the U.S. and UK had warned of an imminent ISIS attack on the airport and had asked their citizens to stay away from the airport.
The evacuation flights for civilians were supposed to end today. That was to leave time for the several thousand military on the ground to wrap up their mission before the August 31 end date. The Taliban have insisted on that final date.
Whoever has sent in the suicide bomber wanted to interrupt that process. Your guess who that was is as good as mine.
The whole evacuation panic was and is, in my view, totally unnecessary.
The Taliban have no interest in taking hostages or in taking systematic revenge on Afghan personnel that had worked with foreign governments. They publicly issued a complete amnesty. They also need money, international recognition and support.
The U.S. has blocked the Afghan central bank accounts with the Fed and ordered the IMF and the World Bank to not provide money to Afghanistan. That is huge leverage.
The U.S. could have used that leverage in a positive sense to organize, if necessary at all, a very smooth and orderly evacuation of people by normal civil flights over several weeks or months. But for some reason the Pentagon friendly media in Washington created an artificial panic and set off a monstrous military emergency show.
The U.S. should by the way lift its block on that Afghan money. It is in its best interest to have good relations with the Taliban. The German chancellor Merkel recognized that. She announced that Germany will continue to support Afghanistan even under Taliban rule. It is the right thing to do because Afghanistan is still a dirt poor country, because there are people in need and because it is in 'western' interest to keep Afghanistan peaceful and united. An unruly Afghanistan under financial pressure is way more likely to create trouble abroad – be it as shelter for global militants or as a source of huge refugee streams.
Withholding money does not create long term leverage. Leverage is to use money to reward good behavior. The Taliban have so far behaved very well. They protected the airport from again being overrun. All of Kabul except for the airport is living a normal life. People are back at work, the banks have reopened.
President Joe Biden has taken on political risk by ordering the complete retreat from Afghanistan. Should he consider further hostility against the country, by financial means or by igniting a new civil war as some Republican demands, he will not gain the political profit from it.
Escobar writes about yesterday’s events, “Who profits from the Kabul suicide bombing?”
He provides a very detailed report as to who runs and is enrolled in ISIS-K. Here, Pepe brings up a crucial point I made on his VK blog about the Taliban needing assistance from its more sophisticated neighbors:
“The suicide bomber who carried out ‘the martyrdom operation near Kabul airport’ was identified as one Abdul Rahman al-Logari. That would suggest he’s an Afghan, from nearby Logar province. And that would also suggest that the bombing may have been organized by an ISIS-Khorasan sleeper cell. Sophisticated electronic analysis of their communications would be able to prove it – tools that the Taliban don’t have.” [My Emphasis]
Here’s more:
“ISIS-Khorasan comprises a bunch of fanatics, termed takfiris because they define fellow Muslims – in this case the Taliban – as ‘apostates.’
“Founded in 2015 by emigré jihadis dispatched to southwest Pakistan, ISIS-K is a dodgy beast. Its current head is one Shahab al-Mujahir, who was a mid-level commander of the Haqqani network headquartered in North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal areas, itself a collection of disparate mujahideen and would-be jihadis under the family umbrella.
“Washington branded the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization way back in 2010, and treats several members as global terrorists, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the family after the death of the founder Jalaluddin.
“Up to now, Sirajuddin was the Taliban deputy leader for the eastern provinces – on the same level with Mullah Baradar, the head of the political office in Doha, who was actually released from Guantanamo in 2014.
“Crucially, Sirajuddin’s uncle, Khalil Haqqani, formerly in charge of the network’s foreign financing, is now in charge of Kabul security and working as a diplomat 24/7….
“NATO intel picked up by a UN report attributes a maximum of 2,200 jihadis to ISIS-K, split into small cells. Significantly, the absolute majority are non-Afghans: Iraqis, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Chechens and Uighurs.
“The real danger is that ISIS-K works as a sort of magnet for all manners of disgruntled former Taliban or discombobulated regional warlords with nowhere to go.”
And yes, Pepe tells us about the Daesh “ratline”:
“Zabihullah Mujahid – the new Taliban minister of information in Kabul, who in that capacity talks to global media every day – is the one who actually warned NATO members about an imminent ISIS-K suicide bombing. Brussels diplomats confirmed it.
“In parallel, it’s no secret among intel circles in Eurasia that ISIS-K has become disproportionally more powerful since 2020 because of a transportation ratline from Idlib, in Syria, to eastern Afghanistan, informally known in spook talk as Daesh Airlines.
“Moscow and Tehran, even at very high diplomatic levels, have squarely blamed the US-UK axis as the key facilitators. Even the BBC reported in late 2017 on hundreds of ISIS jihadis given safe passage out of Raqqa, and out of Syria, right in front of the Americans.” [My Emphasis]
So yes, CIA “stay behinds” if you will killed Imperial troopers and 100+ Afghans. As I wrote, there’s no worry given to how bloody the means are as long as they provide for the desired ends. A brief interlude and Pepe continues about the new Daesh:
“The origin of ISIS is incandescent material. ISIS was spawned in Iraq prison camps, its core made of Iraqis, their military skills derived from ex-officers in Saddam’s army, a wild bunch fired way back in 2003 by Paul Bremmer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
“ISIS-K duly carries the work of ISIS from Southwest Asia to the crossroads of Central and South Asia in Afghanistan. There’s no credible evidence that ISIS-K has ties with Pakistani military intel.
“On the contrary: ISIS-K is loosely aligned with the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, Islamabad’s mortal enemy. TTP’s agenda has nothing to do with the moderate Mullah Baradar-led Afghan Taliban who participated in the Doha process.”
Pepe concludes with the SCO’s potential actions given the fact that its formation preceded 911 and the Outlaw US Empire’s War OF Terror with its major goal to be the elimination of “terrorism, separatism and extremism;” and provides the reason why I continue to insist that Russia will get involved in aiding the Taliban:
“The record shows Moscow has all that it takes to help the Islamic Emirate against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. After all, the Russians flushed ISIS out of all significant parts of Syria and confined them to the Idlib cauldron.
“In the end, no one aside from ISIS wants a terrorized Afghanistan, just as no one wants a civil war in Afghanistan. So the order of business indicates not only an SCO-led frontal fight against existing ISIS-K terror cells in Afghanistan but also an integrated campaign to drain any potential social base for the takfiris in Central and South Asia.”
So again, we have what appears to be a complicated situation but once distilled is yet another battle to eliminate a major unit of the Outlaw US Empire’s Terrorist Foreign Legion, which means that all the noise emanating from Washington DC is just that and misdirection all aimed at the domestic audience.
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 27 2021 17:18 utc | 268
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