16th August 2021:
I knew it was a matter of Days and it has happened as anticipated
Déjà vu - looks like Saigon, feels like Saigon, even sounds like Saigon.
It's Kabul's Saigon moment, history does repeat itself.
Russia Failed in Afghanistan followed by USA and now China has gone into Afghanistan.
Wonder what is in Store for the World
Footage of thousands of passengers attempting to board outbound aircraft. No security, no order, chaotic scenes….with US GI’s firing into the air to throw them off the planes. An entire country was abandoned. Again. With no conclusive end to the conflict, nor an end in sight......If these people do not escape they will be dead meat in a matter of days
Inside an American plane leaving Afghanistan
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Interesting Article on Afghanistan and Afghans.
(All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta._)
I am trying to find a Link Around 32 years ago, Russian general Nikolai Ogarkov advised Leonid Brezhnev’s cabinet not to invade Afghanistan, saying that the country was unconquerable. Today US generals are asking Barack Obama to get the hell out of the place or else the Americans will have to leave the way they left Vietnam – in their underpants.
Are the Afghans really 10 feet tall? Is subduing Afghanistan an impossible task? Ogarkov, the chief of the Soviet Defense Staff, was of course being cautious. He referred to the rout of several British armies in Afghanistan in the 19th century. (On one notable occasion in 1842 the Afghans massacred a British army numbering over 21,000, allowing one soldier, William Brydon, to go back and tell the story).
Ogarkov was more concerned about the political fallout. An invasion would “align the entire Islamic East against us” he warned. In fact, with Pakistan as a fallback option, the Mujahideen (which was being supplied by the US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China to name just a few) could operate with impunity. The bear’s failure was its failure to swat Pakistan.
For the Russian generals, the temptation to create a second Vietnam in Afghanistan must be huge. However, despite Washington’s thanklessness for its valuable help in fighting the Afghans, Moscow is not interested in spoiling it for the US. Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, says: “In the event of NATO’s defeat in Afghanistan, fundamentalists who are inspired by this victory will set their eyes on the north. First they will hit Tajikistan, then they will try to break into Uzbekistan. If things turn out badly, in about 10 years our boys will have to fight well-armed and well-organised Islamists somewhere in Kazakhstan.”
India’s battles in Afghanistan
Not all the armies that invaded Afghanistan were defeated. Around 180 years ago an Indian ruler Ranjit Singh(1799-1839) and his brilliant commander Hari Singh Nalwa defeated the Afghans and the tribes of the Khyber Pass area, in the process securing India’s northwest border. Had it not been for Ranjit Singh, Peshawar and the northwest frontier provinces of India (now in Pakistan) would have been part of Afghanistan today.
But first a flashback: Afghanistan had always been a part of India; it was called Gandhar (modern Kandahar), a vibrant province that gave us excellent art, architecture, literature and scientific knowledge – a world far removed from today’s Taliban infested badlands.
It was an Indian province until 1735 when Nadir Shah of Iran, emboldened by the lack of strong central authority in India, ransacked Delhi and everything on the way. This was a highly opportunistic and reckless act because for the past 25 centuries India and Iran had respected each other’s borders, and though always a bit nervous of each other, the two empires never tried to subvert each other. Nadir Shah annexed Afghanistan and asked the Indians to forget about ever getting it back.
However, Ranjit Singh was not prepared to play according to the Persian script. Nadir Shah’s successor, Ahmad Shah Abdali, had been launching repeated raids into Punjab and Delhi. To check this Ranjit Singh decided to build a modern and powerful army with the employment of Frenchmen, Italians, Greeks, Russians, Germans and Austrians. Two of the foreign officers who entered the Maharaja’s service, Ventura and Allard, had served under Napoleon. Says historian Shiv Kumar Gupta: “All these officers were basically engaged by Ranjit Singh for modernisation of his troops. He never put them in supreme command.”
After conquering Multan, Punjab, in 1818 and Kashmir in 1819, Ranjit Singh led his legions across the Indus and took the Afghan strongholds of Dera Ghazi Khan in 1820 and Dera Ismail Khan in 1821. Alarmed, the Afghans called for a jehad under the leadership of Azim Khan Burkazi, the ruler of Kabul. A big Afghan army collected on the banks of the Kabul River but Ranjit Singh won a decisive victory in 1823. Peshawar was subdued in 1834.
The Afghans, especially the Pathans, considered themselves superior to the Hindus. They even looked down upon Indian Muslims and contemptuously referred to them as Hindko. According to historian Kirpal Singh, the reason for this was that the pride of the Afghans and Pathans was pricked for the first time as they had been defeated by people whom they considered infidels.
So how did Ranjit Singh manage to conquer such fierce mountain people? Mainly by using a blend of sustained aggression latter smoothened by Indian magnanimity. His biggest weapon was the scourge of the Afghans – Nalwa, who in one battle defeated 20,000 Hazaras. To defeat the cunning and fierce Hazaras on their treacherous home terrain was no small feat but to do that with only 7000 men was the stuff of legend.
Indeed, Nalwa had become a legend. He realised that to dominate the warlike tribes, the Indians had to give them the same treatment the Afghans had given the Indians in the past. Says Kirpal Singh, “Nalwa set up a very strong administration in the Peshawar valley. Because the Yusafzais were the most violent tribe, he levied a cess on every Yusafzai household. This cess was to be collected in cash or in kind. For its realisation, personal household property could be appropriated. There was scarcely a village that was not burnt. Part of the city of Peshawar was burnt and the residence of the governor near Kabul was razed to the ground. In such awe were his visitations held that Nalwa’s name was used by Afghan mothers as a term of fright to hush their unruly children.”
Though the spell of Afghan supremacy was broken, the region predominantly populated by turbulent Muslim tribes could not be securely held unless a large army was permanently stationed there. A force of 12,000 men was posted with Nalwa to quell any sign of turbulence and to realise the revenue.
Ranjit Singh ensured that the Afghans never again became a threat to India. The wild tribes of Swat and Khyber were also tamed.
The Indian approach vs the Western one
Since ancient times, Indians have observed Dharma Yuddha or the code of war fighting – civilians are never harmed (this was observed by Greeks 2500 years ago), places of worship are never damaged, and crops and trees are left untouched. It is this tradition that helped Ranjit Singh win a decisive victory in Afghanistan whereas the West is floundering.
First, terror tactics were followed by a period of liberal and secular Indian rule. In fact, secularism was the defining character of Ranjit Singh’s rule. There was no state religion, and religious tolerance was an article of his faith. He refused to treat Muslims like second class citizens. Compare this with the indiscriminate and regular strafing of wedding parties by US and European forces. Indoctrinated American soldiers are stepping off the plane with bagful of Bibles, trying to convert the locals, and furthering alienating the population.
On the other hand, when his victorious army passed through the streets of Peshawar, the maharajah issued strict instructions to his commanders to observe restraint: women, mosques and crops were not touched.
Two, like the NATO forces in Afghanistan today, Ranjit Singh’s army was a coalition too. The Indian king’s main forces were made up of Sikhs and Hindus, while the artillery was operated mainly by Muslims. Over half a dozen European nations are assisting US troops just as European specialists worked for Ranjit Singh.
However, there is a key difference – Ranjit’s Singh’s forces functioned like clockwork with one aim in mind and that was to secure the empire.
Today, the US is reluctant to do all the fighting, the British forces are simply not up to the task of taking on the fierce Afghans and rely on bribes to keep their soldiers from being butchered by the Taliban.
Do you expect the Afghans to respect such opponents?
A gaggle of nationalities, including the Ukrainians, Poles, Australians, New Zealanders, Czechs and Danes are not in Afghanistan to win the hearts and minds or introduce democracy.
All they are interested in is sucking up to America and wrapping up their respective free trade agreements. In the meantime, they use civilians for target practice. At least the Russians fought like real men and earned the respect of the Mujahideen.
Nalwa and Ranjit Singh showed how a mixture of ferocity, valour and compassion could tame Afghanistan. At the end of the day, the Indians just did a much better job of fighting.
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
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If you have an even greater appetite for more info on Afghanistan then ReadThe Great Game - Wiki
Afghanistan conflict: The Air India flight out on a fateful Sunday
Here is Hillary Clinton on Afghanistan:
If you ever feel useless, just remember USA took 4 Presidents, thousands of lives, trillions of dollar and 20 years to replace Taliban with Taliban.
😜🤗🤗
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Afghan president fled Kabul with cars full of cash & was forced to abandon some loot on airport runway, Russian embassy claims
16 Aug, 2021 11:01 / Updated 1 day ago
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16 Aug, 2021 11:01 / Updated 1 day ago
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Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani addresses the nation in a message in Kabul, Afghanistan August 14, 2021. © Afghan Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS
By Jonny Tickle
By Jonny Tickle
The Western-backed former Afghan leader, Ashraf Ghani, departed his country with so much money that it couldn’t all fit on his helicopter, and he was forced to leave some cash at the airport, the Russian Embassy in Kabul has said.
Speaking to RIA Novosti, its spokesman Nikita Ishchenko dubbed Ghani’s escape an “eloquent characterization” of the fall of the “regime.”
“Four cars were stuffed with money. [They] tried to fit all the money on the helicopter, but not all of it fit. Some of the money was left lying on the tarmac,” he explained, without elaborating how he obtained the information.
ALSO ON RT.COMUS ‘failure’ in Afghanistan handed country to Taliban, Moscow says, claims American ‘hegemony’ declining as Russia & China on rise
Ghani became president of Afghanistan in September 2014, marking the first time in the country’s history that power was democratically transferred. Since his election, Ghani has enjoyed a close relationship with the US, which has pumped almost a trillion dollars into the country. According to a 2019 study by Brown University in the US, Washington has spent around $978 billion in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001.
The situation in Afghanistan has intensified in the past few weeks. On Sunday, Taliban militants entered the capital, Kabul, and declared that they had taken control of the entire country. The group is recognized in Russia as a terrorist organization. On the same day, Ghani fled the country, claiming that he had resigned and escaped to prevent any bloodshed in the capital. According to initial reports, he was flown to Tajikistan.ALSO ON RT.COMAfghanistan’s Ghani claims he resigned to prevent Taliban slaughter in Kabul as BLASTS reported at palace & abandoned US embassy
On Monday, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem declared that the war in Afghanistan was over and called for peace.
The Taliban’s victory came after the US decided to withdraw its troops from the country. In April, US President Joe Biden declared that he had decided to end the operation in Afghanistan – the most protracted foreign military campaign in US history. All troops were scheduled to leave by September 11, almost 20 years after the war began.
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Ghani became president of Afghanistan in September 2014, marking the first time in the country’s history that power was democratically transferred. Since his election, Ghani has enjoyed a close relationship with the US, which has pumped almost a trillion dollars into the country. According to a 2019 study by Brown University in the US, Washington has spent around $978 billion in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001.
The situation in Afghanistan has intensified in the past few weeks. On Sunday, Taliban militants entered the capital, Kabul, and declared that they had taken control of the entire country. The group is recognized in Russia as a terrorist organization. On the same day, Ghani fled the country, claiming that he had resigned and escaped to prevent any bloodshed in the capital. According to initial reports, he was flown to Tajikistan.ALSO ON RT.COMAfghanistan’s Ghani claims he resigned to prevent Taliban slaughter in Kabul as BLASTS reported at palace & abandoned US embassy
On Monday, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem declared that the war in Afghanistan was over and called for peace.
The Taliban’s victory came after the US decided to withdraw its troops from the country. In April, US President Joe Biden declared that he had decided to end the operation in Afghanistan – the most protracted foreign military campaign in US history. All troops were scheduled to leave by September 11, almost 20 years after the war began.
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18th August 2021
A Bit of History:
Vedic Afghanistan
How many of us know that Afghanistan was part of the Rigvedic horizon?
The great river Kubha (now Kabul) a tributary of Sindhu watered the lands of Afghanistan, the land famous for its horses (Ashva : Af) and hence the name Afghanistan. It is the land of Ashva and the horse-people or the 'Ashva-Ganas' which is rendered as Af-ghana and as Afghanistan.
This name is attested in history as Aśvakan and Assakan.
The name Ashvaka is mentioned as a kingdom in the Mahabharata allied to the Kambojas and Gandharas but situated to their west.
In Rigveda, the tribes like the Pakthas and the Bhalanas are mentioned. They were even part of the Dasarajnya battle against the Thristu Bharata king Sudas (who had his Rigvedic kingdom along the Sarasvati and Dhrishadvati region). From here the Rigvedic influence area spread to as far as south-eastern Afghanistan as indicated in the map.
Currently the Pakthas are known as the Paktuns and Bhalanas those who live in what is now Bolan pass.
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This is Funny: "Wish they had Listened to Rambo in 1990"
An Opinion:
The term Mujahideen is analogous to freedom fighter. The Taliban are mainly Pashtun militants, the largest single community in Afghanistan (out of 14, so that's not like some overwhelming majority). I could be mistaken, but the most moderate, in terms of using religious power as a weapon, mujahideen leader was Ahmed Bin Masood, probably a Tajik, who was almost certainly assassinated by the Saudi.
In the modern world, there is hardly any worse weapon than Saudi religious extremism fuelled with American military training and weapons.
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This is Funny: "Wish they had Listened to Rambo in 1990" ( Not Me Sly Stallone)
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3 fates await Afghanistan as US breaks it for 3rd time in 40 yrs. Afghans have say in none
By Sekhar Gupta
A Movie Dialogue :
19th August 2021
Amid reports Taliban is blocking evacuees, the desperate fear Australia will leave them behind
Hundreds of Afghans who helped Australian forces are likely to be left behind in the chaos. Photo: Getty
Reporter@JamesRied9
6:00am, Aug 19
Australian war veterans fear that more than 200 Afghans who supported them and their fellow soldiers over the past two decades will be left behind in Afghanistan.
Australian war veterans fear that more than 200 Afghans who supported them and their fellow soldiers over the past two decades will be left behind in Afghanistan.
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Another Opinion:
It seems that Ahmed Shah Masood's son has succeeded him as head of the Northern Alliance, which controls the routes to the north. That opens the possibility that tension between the Taliban and Pakistan, thanks to the British-imposed partition of Pashtun lands called the Durand Line, then they will be cut off from most supplies, since the Taliban Sunni and Irani Shia are also traditionally at loggerheads.
Seems to me that a far seeing statesman is needed in Afghanistan to devise a new formula for governance that redefines the concept of nation-state. They are a very strongly ethnic people, who need an economic unit without getting obsessed with central management.
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Some History of Independent and Non Aligned INDIA not to be forgotten ever; as History Repeats itself as we all Know. 👇👇👇
Some history not to be forgotten
“If India pokes its nose in Pakistan, US will not keep its trap shut. India will be taught a lesson”
- Richard Nixon.
“India regards America as a friend. Not a boss. India is capable of writing its own destiny. We know and are aware how to deal with each one according to circumstances”
- Indira Gandhi
The year was 1971 and the month November.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi articulated these exact words sitting with the U.S. President Richard Nixon in the White House, while maintaining an eye-to-eye contact.
The said event was narrated by the then Secretary of State and NSA, Henry Kissinger in his autobiography.
That was the day when the Indo-U.S. joint media address was cancelled by Indira Gandhi who walked away from the White House in her own inimitable style.
Kissinger, while ushering Indira Gandhi into her car, had commented, "Madam Prime Minister, don't you feel you could have been a little more patient with the President".
Indira ji replied, "Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your valuable suggestion.
Being a developing country, we have our backbones straight - & enough to fight the atrocities. We shall prove that days are gone to rule any nation far from thousands of miles”
Thereafter.. as soon as the Air India Boeing touched the Palam runway in Delhi, Indira Gandhi summoned the leader of opposition, Atal Behari Vajpayee to her residence immediately.
Post an hour of discussion behind closed doors, Vajpayee was seen hurrying back. It was thereafter known that Atal Ji would be representing India at the United Nations.
Donald Paul of BBC had jumped in with a question to Vajpayee, "Indira ji regards you as a staunch critic. In spite of that, are u sure you'd be at the United Nations shouting your throat (voice) out in favour of the Incumbent Government?”
Vajpayee had a repartee.. "A rose adorns a garden, so does a Lily. Each is beset with the idea that they are individually the most beautiful. When the garden falls in a crisis, it's no secret that the garden has to safeguard its beauty as one. I have come today to save the garden. This is called Indian Democracy."
The resultant history is all known to us.
America sent 270 paton tanks to Pakistan. They called the world media to demonstrate that these tanks were produced under exclusive technology, and are/were thus indestructible. The intention was very clear. This was a warning signal to the rest of the world that no one should help India.
America did not stop here.
Burma-Shell the only U.S. company supplying oil to India, was told to stop. They were sternly told by U.S. not to deal with India anymore.
India's history thereafter was only about fighting back.
Indira Gandhi's incisive diplomacy ensured oil came in from Ukraine.
A battle that lasted just a day destroyed these 270 paton tanks. The destroyed tanks were brought into India for demonstration. The hot deserts of Rajasthan still stands as a witness where U.S. pride was decimated.
A war that lasted eighteen days thereafter culminated into capturing 1.5 lakhs POWs from Pakistan.
Mujibar Rahman was released from Lahore Jail.
The month was March - Indira Gandhi recognised Bangladesh as an independent nation in the Indian Parliament.
Vajpayee addressed Indira Gandhi as “Maa Durga”
These events had a packet of long lasting manifested fallouts.
—India's own oil company, viz. Indian Oil came into being.
—India expressed itself as a nation of strength in the eyes of the world.
—India led the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) from the front.
Its leadership was unquestioned.
Times and events of such strength did get submerged into the great depths of yore.
Truthful history till date remains as a baton.
Democracy finds itself lonely as a word in the lexicon.
The opposition is no longer part of democracy anymore.
The voices, if not in toe, are regarded as voices of evil.
An honest and truly described narration how we have maintained our pride and self respect....
Happy 75th Independence day
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Britain's fourth Afghan war is a replay of the first infamous retreat 170 years ago
William Dalrymple
Tue, August 17, 2021
The First Anglo-Afghan War was arguably the greatest military humiliation ever suffered by the West in the East. On the infamous retreat from Kabul, which began on the 6 Jan 1842, of the 18,500 who left the British cantonment, only one British citizen, the surgeon Dr Brydon, made it through to Jalalabad six days later. An entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world utterly destroyed by poorly-equipped tribesmen.
A year later, the Rev GR Gleig wrote a history of Britain’s first disastrous, expensive and entirely avoidable entanglement with Afghanistan. It was, he wrote, “a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, has been acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated.”
For many years the mass slaughter of the Retreat from Kabul acted as a deterrent to further adventures. As one veteran, George Lawrence wrote just before Britain blundered into the Second Anglo-Afghan War thirty years later, “a new generation has arisen which, instead of profiting from the solemn lessons of the past, is willing and eager to embroil us in the affairs of that turbulent and unhappy country... Although military disasters may be avoided, an advance now, however successful in a military point of view, would not fail to turn out to be as politically useless... The disaster of the Retreat from Kabul should stand forever as a warning to the Statesmen of the future not to repeat the policies that bore such bitter fruit in 1839–42.”
Even as late as October 1963, when Harold Macmillan was handing over the prime ministership to Alec Douglas-Home, he is supposed to have called the younger man to his office and passed on some reassuring advice, “My dear boy,” he said, looking down from his paper, “as long as you don’t invade Afghanistan you’ll be absolutely fine.” Sadly, John Major appears to have neglected to give the same advice to Tony Blair. In 2001, soon after the catastrophe of 9/11 Blair signed up with Bush to invade Afghanistan yet again.
What followed - our fourth Afghan war - was in many ways a replay of the first. The same tribal rivalries and the same battles were fought out in the same places 170 years later under the guise of new flags, new ideologies and new political puppeteers.
The same cities were garrisoned by troops speaking the same languages, and they were attacked again from the same high passes. In both cases, the invaders thought they could walk in, perform regime change, and be out in a couple of years. In both cases they were unable to prevent themselves getting sucked into a much wider conflict.
Not only was the puppet ruler the British tried to install in 1839, Shah Shuja ul-Mulk, from the same Popalzai sub-tribe as Hamid Karzai, his principal opponents were Ghilzais, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers. Mullah Omar was a Ghilzai, just like Mohammad Shah Khan, the resistance fighter who supervised the slaughter of the British army in 1841.
These parallels are frequently pointed out by the Taliban themselves: “Everyone knows how Karzai was brought to Kabul and how he was seated on the defenseless throne of Shah Shuja,” they announced in press release soon after he came to power.
Then as now, the poverty of Afghanistan has meant that it has been impossible to tax the Afghans into financing their own occupation. Instead, the cost of policing such inaccessible territory has exhausted the occupier’s resources.
For the last twenty years the US spent more than $100 billion a year in Afghanistan: it cost more to keep Marine battalions in two districts of Helmand than the US provided to the entire nation of Egypt in annual military and development assistance. In both wars the decision to withdraw troops has turned on factors with little relevance to Afghanistan, namely the state of the economy and the vagaries of politics back home. No one was more aware of these strange parallels that Hamid Karzai himself.
When I first published my book the First Anglo-Afghan war, Return of a King, he called me to Kabul, quizzed me on the details over several dinners at his palace, and substantially altered his policies to make sure he never repeated his forbear Shah Shuja’s mistakes.
In a leaked email published in The New York Times after Wikileaks, Hilary Clinton blamed his reading of the book for a chilling of relations between Kabul and the White House during the Obama years.
Sadly his successor, Ashraf Ghani, learned nothing from the lessons of history. He had none of Karzai’s diplomatic skills and must bear a large share of the responsibility for the collapse of his own regime: Ghani’s impatience, rudeness and arrogance alienated many tribal leaders and he entirely lacked the charm and politeness that made Karzai a much more popular and acceptable figure. As we have seen, very few were willing to die to keep Ghani in power. Meanwhile, the longer-term strategic picture is grim. Few will now trust American or Nato promises and we have handed a major propaganda victory to our enemies everywhere.
In 2009, I met some tribal elders from the village of Gandamak, where the British troops made their last stand in 1842. Already then, a decade before this weekend’s debacle, they could see the way the winds were blowing. “All the Americans here know their game is over,” said one elder. “It is just their politicians who deny this.” “These are the last days of the Americans,” said his friend. “Next it will be China.”
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I have not verified this :
Can it be True
A curse was given by Gandhari, princess of Kandhar (Afghanistan) to her brother, Shakuni (the then ruler of Afghanistan) that because of your crooked and cunning ways, I lost my 100 children.
She cursed him that never ever in your kingdom will there be peace, prosperity and progress.
Well ….. How true scriptures are!
Afghanistan in Vedic period was known as 'Avgan Sthan' (a defective place).
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From pages 318-319 of Barack Obama's memoirs:
" A Promised Land"
"Among the principals, only Joe Biden voiced his misgivings. He had traveled to Kabul on my behalf during the transition, and what he he saw and heard on the trip - particularly during a contentious meeting with Karazai - had convinced him that we needed to rethink our entire approach to Afghanistan. ... he saw Afghanistan as a dangerous quagmire and urged me to delay a deployment...
"Listen to me, boss," he said. "Maybe I've been around this town for too long, but one thing I know when these generals are trying to box in a new president."
He brought his face a few inches from mine and stage-whispered. "Don't let them jam you."
Old Joe was right all along...
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*The US Defence contractors made tons of money 💰 with the war in Afghanistan watch this video in English with Chinese sub titles * ⬇️⬇️⬇️
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Taliban and Afghanistan – it won’t end in Kabul
The Taliban's return to power will have serious geopolitical ramifications. Photo: AAP
ANALYSIS
Andrew MacLeod
As if the world did not have enough to worry about with COVID-19, last week saw the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It will not end well, but not for the reasons you may have read.
To recognise the real danger of the last week in Afghanistan we need to understand where the Taliban came from, how they got to where they are now, and what is yet to come.
Although some commentators trace the Taliban back to the immediate pre-September 11 days, and others to the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, neither is true and neither school of thought looks far back enough.
The Taliban fighters have been patient and have always seen things through the lens of a multi-generation war, while the West have looked only at decades.
The Taliban trace their history back through the Mujahideen fighters, who did resist the Soviets and received CIA funding to do so, all the way to those who fought for an ‘independent Pashtunistan’ dating back not decades, but centuries.
Many in the Taliban still hold the original objective of reuniting all Pahstuns on both sides of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.
Pashtunistan includes territories of southern and central Afghanistan, taking in Kandahar and Kabul, and stretches across the border taking in Peshawar and other parts of north-western Pakistan.
The border region was created by the British as part of the ‘Great Game’ conflict with the Russians in the 1890s, then known as the Durand Line that divided the Pashtun territory across the two countries.
Pashtuns are still the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second largest in Pakistan.
This is an important detail as Afghanistan (literally ‘land of the Afghans’ – with Afghan and Pashtun previously being synonymous words) is a complex country with many ethnic minorities including Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and many others.
Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 the Taliban found it relatively easy to unite disparate groups against a common enemy – the Americans.
While in Afghanistan, a US official told me the story of one Taliban detainee saying to a CIA interrogator: “You think you are Luke Skywalker, but we see ourselves as the rebels fighting against you, the overpowering evil empire. No, you are not Luke Skywalker, you are Darth Vader”.
The Taliban have been patient and organised and have shown, by the speed of this takeover, how much planning and local-level negotiation they had put in place waiting for the trigger point to take over.
So what of the Taliban now? Are they different from the last time they were in power?
Without doubt they are, but in what ways?
As if the world did not have enough to worry about with COVID-19, last week saw the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It will not end well, but not for the reasons you may have read.
To recognise the real danger of the last week in Afghanistan we need to understand where the Taliban came from, how they got to where they are now, and what is yet to come.
Although some commentators trace the Taliban back to the immediate pre-September 11 days, and others to the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, neither is true and neither school of thought looks far back enough.
The Taliban fighters have been patient and have always seen things through the lens of a multi-generation war, while the West have looked only at decades.
The Taliban trace their history back through the Mujahideen fighters, who did resist the Soviets and received CIA funding to do so, all the way to those who fought for an ‘independent Pashtunistan’ dating back not decades, but centuries.
Many in the Taliban still hold the original objective of reuniting all Pahstuns on both sides of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.
Pashtunistan includes territories of southern and central Afghanistan, taking in Kandahar and Kabul, and stretches across the border taking in Peshawar and other parts of north-western Pakistan.
The border region was created by the British as part of the ‘Great Game’ conflict with the Russians in the 1890s, then known as the Durand Line that divided the Pashtun territory across the two countries.
Pashtuns are still the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second largest in Pakistan.
This is an important detail as Afghanistan (literally ‘land of the Afghans’ – with Afghan and Pashtun previously being synonymous words) is a complex country with many ethnic minorities including Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and many others.
Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 the Taliban found it relatively easy to unite disparate groups against a common enemy – the Americans.
While in Afghanistan, a US official told me the story of one Taliban detainee saying to a CIA interrogator: “You think you are Luke Skywalker, but we see ourselves as the rebels fighting against you, the overpowering evil empire. No, you are not Luke Skywalker, you are Darth Vader”.
The Taliban have been patient and organised and have shown, by the speed of this takeover, how much planning and local-level negotiation they had put in place waiting for the trigger point to take over.
So what of the Taliban now? Are they different from the last time they were in power?
Without doubt they are, but in what ways?
One particularly distressing video showed a mother passing her sick child to American soldiers over the fence at Kabul Airport. Photo: AAP
How the Taliban have changed
Firstly, the Taliban are far more organised than many thought. They will not crumble quickly.
Secondly, the Taliban have learned from history. September 11 taught them that if you threaten the US, the US will fight back.
Equally, pre-Kuwait Iraq and North Korea among others showed the Taliban that the West is unlikely to intervene to prevent human rights abuses that do not spill outside national borders.
China, in its recent discussions with the Taliban, have repeated the lesson by making it clear that the Taliban can do what they like in Afghanistan. But if the Taliban were to harbour groups that threatened China’s stability, namely the Uighur ethnic minority in the Chinese region that borders Afghanistan, then the Chinese would respond ferociously.
The lesson: Do not threaten foreigners and they will not threaten you.
This means that the Taliban will say ‘nice things’ and allow Americans to leave, and only after that will we see how Afghanistan shapes up.
It won’t be good for Afghans, but Afghanistan under the Taliban won’t threaten the West in the short term.
Pakistan’s so-called ‘victory’
Pakistan is a different story.
India and Pakistan have been fighting proxy and real wars on and off since the British left more than half a century ago.
Afghanistan has been one of the proxy battlefields, with India and Pakistan backing different sides.
Within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are secular, moderate, conservative and radical elements roughly equating to the general community of Pakistan.
Some of ISI’s operations in Afghanistan have reflected Pakistan government policy. Other operations have been less formal but used ISI resources to strengthen more radical elements in Afghanistan, including the notorious terrorist group the ‘Haqqani network’.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is the son of the Haqqani network’s founder, is No.3 in the Taliban today.
Some serving and retired Pakistani army officers have said on their Facebook feeds that the Taliban takeover is a great Pakistani victory.
This triumphalism forgets that the Taliban’s desire for a united ‘Pashtunistan’ includes parts of Pakistan. To them, I say “be careful what you wish for”.
Some in the Taliban will not consider Peshawar ‘foreign’ and the above lessons with respect to China and the West may not apply to Pakistan.
Peshawar in Pakistan’s Pashtun area is also one of the world’s largest sources of counterfeit US dollars in circulation outside the US.
While many fear the Taliban could destabilise Pakistan’s grip on their nuclear weapons, others see the Taliban’s ability to flood the world with counterfeit US dollars as a huge economic threat. Both are real risks.
The Taliban have taken over a country and, thanks to the Americans, inherited advanced weaponry and machinery for an army, police and security force of 300,000. What will they do with this power?
What next for the Taliban?
History is littered with rebel groups united against a common enemy only to divide and squabble once power has returned.
This will be the Taliban’s first challenge – will they want to govern all of Afghanistan, or only the Pashtun homelands? Will they or won’t they seek to extend their reach into Pakistan?
Looking beyond these first few weeks of evacuations and chaos at the airport, there will be far greater challenges.
Will the Pashtuns want to reunify the territory across the Pakistan/Afghanistan border?
Will China, not encumbered by the history of colonialism and the ‘Great Game’, be more effective in relations with Afghanistan?
Will Pakistan and India continue their proxy wars on Afghanistan territory?
Will any or all of these happen?
None end well and none end in Kabul.
Andrew MacLeod is a visiting professor to King’s College London, chairman of Griffin Law, a non-executive director to Australian and US companies, a former high-level UN official and co-founder of BrexitAdvisoryServices.co.uk. He tweets @AndrewMMacLeod
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Taliban Onslaught Why the Afghan Army Collapsed
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Steven King on Donald Trump
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The Great Game of smashing countries
By John Pilger
Aug 26, 2021
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup”. The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honour the new flag …the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned”. Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a programme of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.
Under the monarchy, life expectancy was thirty-five; one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.
For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants.
So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:
“Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.”
For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the “puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy “Soviet backed”, as the American and British press claimed at the time.
President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: “We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”
In the same administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, a Polish émigré and fanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on American presidents expired only with his death in 2017.
On 3 July 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorised a $500 million “covert action” programme to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.
The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as “Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:
“Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.”
Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.
The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilise and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.
In August, 1979, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”
Read again the words above I have italicised. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly. The US was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.
Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as “freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin eventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.
Calling themselves the Northern Alliance, the mujahedin were dominated by war lords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorised rural women. The Taliban were an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.
In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. “Marina” of RAWA told me, “We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”
In1996, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The Prime Minister, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.
“I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, “upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”
The Viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.
“This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
On Afghanistan, he added this: “We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”
Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office: “The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering … “
Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery “we” in the West rarely recognise as such.
In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.
Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.
In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.
An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped a Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.
Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with fifteen notes: a total of 15 dollars. “Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a US oil company consortium.
In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the US and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s Vice-President.
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.
“Do you have any regrets?” I asked.
“Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”
When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of “our protection”, isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?
John Pilger
John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.
In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.
Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup”. The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons … marched to honour the new flag …the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
The Washington Post reported that “Afghan loyalty to the government can scarcely be questioned”. Secular, modernist and, to a considerable degree, socialist, the government declared a programme of visionary reforms that included equal rights for women and minorities. Political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.
Under the monarchy, life expectancy was thirty-five; one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care. A mass literacy campaign was launched.
For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants.
So radical were the changes that they remain vivid in the memories of those who benefited. Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who fled Afghanistan in 2001, recalled:
“Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked … We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday … it all started to go wrong when the mujahedin started winning … these were the people the West supported.”
For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the “puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy “Soviet backed”, as the American and British press claimed at the time.
President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: “We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”
In the same administration was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, a Polish émigré and fanatical anti-communist and moral extremist whose enduring influence on American presidents expired only with his death in 2017.
On 3 July 1979, unknown to the American people and Congress, Carter authorised a $500 million “covert action” programme to overthrow Afghanistan’s first secular, progressive government. This was code-named by the CIA Operation Cyclone.
The $500 million bought, bribed and armed a group of tribal and religious zealots known as the mujahedin. In his semi-official history, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as “Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli:
“Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it … Gary would soon ask CIA headquarters for and receive $10 million in cash.”
Recruited from all over the Muslim world, America’s secret army was trained in camps in Pakistan run by Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and Britain’s MI6. Others were recruited at an Islamic College in Brooklyn, New York – within sight of the doomed Twin Towers. One of the recruits was a Saudi engineer called Osama bin Laden.
The aim was to spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and destabilise and eventually destroy the Soviet Union.
In August, 1979, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of the PDPA government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”
Read again the words above I have italicised. It is not often that such cynical intent is spelt out as clearly. The US was saying that a genuinely progressive Afghan government and the rights of Afghan women could go to hell.
Six months later, the Soviets made their fatal move into Afghanistan in response to the American-created jihadist threat on their doorstep. Armed with CIA-supplied Stinger missiles and celebrated as “freedom fighters” by Margaret Thatcher, the mujahedin eventually drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan.
Calling themselves the Northern Alliance, the mujahedin were dominated by war lords who controlled the heroin trade and terrorised rural women. The Taliban were an ultra-puritanical faction, whose mullahs wore black and punished banditry, rape and murder but banished women from public life.
In the 1980s, I made contact with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known as RAWA, which had tried to alert the world to the suffering of Afghan women. During the Taliban time they concealed cameras beneath their burqas to film evidence of atrocities, and did the same to expose the brutality of the Western-backed mujahedin. “Marina” of RAWA told me, “We took the videotape to all the main media groups, but they didn’t want to know ….”
In1996, the enlightened PDPA government was overrun. The Prime Minister, Mohammad Najibullah, had gone to the United Nations to appeal to for help. On his return, he was hanged from a street light.
“I confess that [countries] are pieces on a chessboard,” said Lord Curzon in 1898, “upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.”
The Viceroy of India was referring in particular to Afghanistan. A century later, Prime Minister Tony Blair used slightly different words.
“This is a moment to seize,” he said following 9/11. “The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
On Afghanistan, he added this: “We will not walk away [but ensure] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.”
Blair echoed his mentor, President George W. Bush, who spoke to the victims of his bombs from the Oval Office: “The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering … “
Almost every word was false. Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions for an imperial savagery “we” in the West rarely recognise as such.
In 2001, Afghanistan was stricken and depended on emergency relief convoys from Pakistan. As the journalist Jonathan Steele reported, the invasion indirectly caused the deaths of some 20,000 people as supplies to drought victims stopped and people fled their homes.
Eighteen months later, I found unexploded American cluster bombs in the rubble of Kabul which were often mistaken for yellow relief packages dropped from the air. They blew the limbs off foraging, hungry children.
In the village of Bibi Maru, I watched a woman called Orifa kneel at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, and seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed next door.
An American F-16 aircraft had come out of a clear blue sky and dropped a Mk82 500-pound bomb on Orifa’s mud, stone and straw house. Orifa was away at the time. When she returned, she gathered the body parts.
Months later, a group of Americans came from Kabul and gave her an envelope with fifteen notes: a total of 15 dollars. “Two dollars for each of my family killed,” she said.
The invasion of Afghanistan was a fraud. In the wake of 9/11, the Taliban sought to distant themselves from Osama bin Laden. They were, in many respects, an American client with which the administration of Bill Clinton had done a series of secret deals to allow the building of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline by a US oil company consortium.
In high secrecy, Taliban leaders had been invited to the US and entertained by the CEO of the Unocal company in his Texas mansion and by the CIA at its headquarters in Virginia. One of the deal-makers was Dick Cheney, later George W. Bush’s Vice-President.
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims”.
“Do you have any regrets?” I asked.
“Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”
When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of “our protection”, isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?
John Pilger
John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com
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27th August 2021
The attacks occurred while thousands of people were waiting for evacuation flights. Photo: Getty
The New Daily@TheNewDailyAU
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings that have killed US troops and innocent families waiting to escape Afghanistan.
At least 60 people are dead, including children, and scores more are in hospital after the twin attacks on crowds of people outside Kabul Airport.
The first explosion occurred late on Thursday (local time) near the Abbey Gate entrance to the airport and the second hours later at or near the Baron Hotel near the entrance, the US has confirmed.
Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), an affiliate of militants who previously battled US forces in Syria and Iraq, said it was behind the twin blasts.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described it as a “complex attack” that has resulted in a number of US and civilian casualties.
“A number of others are being treated for wounds,” Mr Kirby said.
“We also know that a number of Afghans fell victim to this heinous attack…our thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones and teammates of all those killed and injured.”
The US is yet to confirm the death toll but said 12 Americans had been killed and 15 other troops wounded.
Estimates of the total dead and wounded differed, and were rising quickly.
The Morrison government said there were no Australian casualties.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton confirmed Australian forces departed Kabul after the decision to complete a final airlift on Thursday.
“It’s a horrible, horrible day,” he told the Nine Network on Friday.
“I just grieve, like every decent person would, at the loss of life and in particular for us, the loss of the American lives.”
One explosion went off in a crowd of people waiting to enter the airport, according to Adam Khan, an Afghan waiting nearby. He said several people appeared to have been killed or wounded, including some who lost body parts.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings that have killed US troops and innocent families waiting to escape Afghanistan.
At least 60 people are dead, including children, and scores more are in hospital after the twin attacks on crowds of people outside Kabul Airport.
The first explosion occurred late on Thursday (local time) near the Abbey Gate entrance to the airport and the second hours later at or near the Baron Hotel near the entrance, the US has confirmed.
Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), an affiliate of militants who previously battled US forces in Syria and Iraq, said it was behind the twin blasts.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described it as a “complex attack” that has resulted in a number of US and civilian casualties.
“A number of others are being treated for wounds,” Mr Kirby said.
“We also know that a number of Afghans fell victim to this heinous attack…our thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones and teammates of all those killed and injured.”
The US is yet to confirm the death toll but said 12 Americans had been killed and 15 other troops wounded.
Estimates of the total dead and wounded differed, and were rising quickly.
The Morrison government said there were no Australian casualties.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton confirmed Australian forces departed Kabul after the decision to complete a final airlift on Thursday.
“It’s a horrible, horrible day,” he told the Nine Network on Friday.
“I just grieve, like every decent person would, at the loss of life and in particular for us, the loss of the American lives.”
One explosion went off in a crowd of people waiting to enter the airport, according to Adam Khan, an Afghan waiting nearby. He said several people appeared to have been killed or wounded, including some who lost body parts.
Two bombs detonated near the airport. Photo: AAP
US President Joe Biden spoke from the White House, hours after the blasts. In a voice shaking with emotion, he said the US would hunt down those responsible.
He has asked the Pentagon to develop plans to strike back.
“We will not forgive, we will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Mr Biden said.
He promised US evacuations would continue. He gave no indication of a change in Tuesday’s US pullout target.
“I have also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing,” Mr Biden said.
US President Joe Biden spoke from the White House, hours after the blasts. In a voice shaking with emotion, he said the US would hunt down those responsible.
He has asked the Pentagon to develop plans to strike back.
“We will not forgive, we will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Mr Biden said.
He promised US evacuations would continue. He gave no indication of a change in Tuesday’s US pullout target.
“I have also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing,” Mr Biden said.
In a video aired on Thursday morning, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. Photo: Twitter
Western forces who have been facilitating the evacuation at the airport were quick to confirm no casualties among their number, including Turkey, the UK, Germany and Italy.
World leaders condemned the attacks.
“I can confirm there has been a barbaric terrorist attack, series of attacks in Kabul, on the airport or the crowds at the airport, in which members of the US military have very sadly lost their lives and there have been many Afghan casualties,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said talks with the Taliban about the situation were already underway.
Thousands of Afghans have gathered at the airport for days trying to flee the country following the Taliban takeover.
Western nations warned Thursday of a possible attack on Kabul’s airport in the waning days of a massive airlift, as thousands of Afghans desperate to flee Taliban rule continued to flock to the gates.
Several countries urged people to avoid the airport, where an official said there was a threat of a suicide bombing. But just days – or even hours for some nations – before the evacuation effort ends, few appeared to heed the call.
Western forces who have been facilitating the evacuation at the airport were quick to confirm no casualties among their number, including Turkey, the UK, Germany and Italy.
World leaders condemned the attacks.
“I can confirm there has been a barbaric terrorist attack, series of attacks in Kabul, on the airport or the crowds at the airport, in which members of the US military have very sadly lost their lives and there have been many Afghan casualties,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said talks with the Taliban about the situation were already underway.
Thousands of Afghans have gathered at the airport for days trying to flee the country following the Taliban takeover.
Western nations warned Thursday of a possible attack on Kabul’s airport in the waning days of a massive airlift, as thousands of Afghans desperate to flee Taliban rule continued to flock to the gates.
Several countries urged people to avoid the airport, where an official said there was a threat of a suicide bombing. But just days – or even hours for some nations – before the evacuation effort ends, few appeared to heed the call.
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Talibans belongs to Deobandi School of Islam a category under Sunni Muslims and they follow the Hanafi School of Islamic Jurisprudence. Talibans consider only who belongs to Deobandi are the true Muslims and do not approve other sects . It has a colonial root in under British India. Please read the following paragraphs.
"Deobandi Islam emerged in India in 1867, 10 years after a major Indian nationalist uprising against the rule of the British East India Company.
Two Muslims clerics, Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi and Maulana Rashid Muhammad Gangohi, were behind the setting up of the Deobandi school. Their aim was to indoctrinate Muslim youth with an austere, rigid and pristine vision of Islam. At its heart, Deobandi Islam was an anti-colonial movement designed to revitalize Islam.
This school of Islamic thought had a very particular understanding of the faith. The Deobandi brand of Islam adheres to orthodox Islamism insisting that the adherence to Sunni Islamic law, or sharia, is the path of salvation. It insists on the revival of Islamic practices that go back to the seventh century – the time of the Prophet Muhammad. It upholds the notion of global jihad as a sacred duty to protect Muslims across the world, and is opposed to any non-Islamic ideas.
The first madrassa – or Islamic school – to educate Muslim youth in the Deobandi tradition was set up in the north Indian state of present-day Uttar Pradesh toward the end of the 19th century.
The Deobandi school system spread over the next several decades and attracted Muslim youth in different parts of the Indian subcontinent. For instance, the Deobandi tradition became the most popular school of Islamic thought among the Pashtuns, an ethnic group living in an area on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Pashtun leaders played an instrumental role in establishing and expanding the Deobandi curriculum and tradition in the Pashtun belt across the Durand line, the colonial border separating British India from Afghanistan.
Even now there is some sections among Indian Muslims who admire Taliban for following the conservative path.
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3rd September 2021
After Herat, Afghan women take to Kabul streets to demand rights under Taliban rule | WATCH
A group of Afghan women took to the streets in Kabul demanding their right to education and employment be upheld in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, a day after similar protests in Herat.
India Today Web Desk
Afghan women hold a protest rally in Kabul demanding their right to education and employment.
Agroup of Afghan women took to the streets in Kabul demanding their rights be upheld in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, a day after similar protests were held in the western city of Herat.
Bearing placards and raising slogans, the Afghan women demanded that they be allowed to pursue education and hold jobs.
In a video of the rally, a gun-toting Taliban fighter can be seen approaching the women protesters and attempting to stop their sloganeering.
The Taliban, who seized power last month after a lightning military campaign, are in discussions about the formation of a new, "inclusive" government. They have promised a softer brand of rule, pledging that women will be allowed to work but within the limits of Sharia law.
The rebranding is being treated with scepticism, with many women doubting whether they will find a place in Afghanistan's new administration.
Samira Hamidi, who works for Amnesty International, said in a Twitter thread that the Taliban have asked women workers at banks, offices and media outlets to remain at home, whereas gender-segregated studies have been imposed in schools and universities.
Taliban beat Afghan woman as protest in Kabul turns violent:
Every item against Islam to be removed from education: Taliban
Interesting facts about 29 Indian states and 7 Union Territories with their capitals
No change in Aug 31 deadline, will probe explosion near Kabul airport: Taliban spokesperson |
"Women disappeared from political, social & economic spaces. Women-led NGOs are searched, questioned and have been asked to remain shut. Prominent women activists are threatened through calls, messages and social media... In every discussion on future possible governance structure women are ignored. Taliban don’t think women should be part of senior roles in the new government," said Samira Hamidi.
ALSO READ | Women should sit at home, we’ll pay them: Taliban leader Stanikzai’s 1996 interview a grim throwback
When the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, their strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law - sometimes brutally enforced - dictated that women could not work and girls were not allowed to attend school.
Women had to cover their face and be accompanied by a male relative if they wanted to venture out of their homes. Those who broke the rules sometimes suffered humiliation and public beatings by the Taliban's religious police.
WATCH | Afghan woman journalist who fled country after interview with Taliban leader narrates her escape ordeal
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7th September 2021
Women should sit at home, we’ll pay them: Taliban leader Stanikzai’s 1996 interview a grim throwback
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EXCLUSIVE: Pakistan will face consequences of its actions in Afghanistan, warns ex-Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
WION Web Team
New Delhi Published:
Speaking to WION’s Executive Editor Palki Sharma, Ahmadinejad stressed that the handing over of power to Taliban is part of a ‘satanic plot’ by the western powers led by the US.
India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China and regional countries will face the consequences of the re-emergence of Taliban, he said on WION’s Afghanistan Dialogues programme.
He urged Pakistan to join efforts by Iran and India to resolve the crisis.
Amid reports that Pakistan had helped the Taliban quell the resistance in Panjshir, Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Islamabad that it will be haunted by its actions in near future in which he foresaw the militant group threatening Pakistani government and sovereignty.
Speaking to WION’s Executive Editor Palki Sharma, Ahmadinejad also stressed that the handing over of power to Taliban is part of a ‘satanic plot’ by the western powers led by the US.
India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China and regional countries will face the consequences of the re-emergence of Taliban, he said on WION’s Afghanistan Dialogues programme.
He asked for Pakistan to join efforts by India and Iran to resolve the situation in Afghanistan.
On reports that Pakistani officers directly got involved in the war of Panjshir, he said: “Here I have a piece of advice for the Pakistani officials: What happened in Afghanistan will soon expand and take the grip of Pakistan and all countries that supported the Taliban.
“I am sure that the consequences in the aftermath of this event will soon go to those countries which supported and designed this plot including the US, UK, Russia and China.”
His comment came even as Iran became the first country to slam Pakistan’s role in the Panjshir fight.
“Last night's attacks are condemned in the strongest terms…and the foreign interference …. must be investigated,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday, adding Iran is investigating it.
Taliban takeover is part of an intentional plot
Ahmadinejad said the events that unfolded in Afghanistan are an “international plan that will affect all the regional countries”.
Anybody, who has participated, supported and been a companion to this, should repent and revise their behavior, he added.
“A group has been supported, which is created and then trained, armed and supported by the neighbours. It has captured a country and called itself the government. The world had either been watching or supporting. This is an ugly thing in the face of the world.”
He said a few world powers for their own interests violated the rights of the people and the rights to determine their fate.
In fact it is a meddling by a neighbour in the internal issues of its neighbour, he said.
He said the plot of the US government will not bring about success in carrying out what they planned to do and in near future, "they will lose face, vis-à-vis the measure they have taken behind the scenes against the Afghans.”
It’s a shame to recognise Taliban
Asked about several countries and inter national organisations like the United Nations talking to Taliban, Ahmadinejad said: “Recognising a government which has taken power with the force of arms and support of the aliens, which has dominated the country and whose attitude and policies aren't clear, is a matter of shame and actually it will damage the entire human society.”
He said an independent government is the will of any freedom seeking person. Power, he said, should be in the hands of the people and any government should be elected with the direct vote of people of Afghanistan.
“These developments will soon unfold and please don't suppose that I am talking about an unknown far away future. Very soon these will uncover,” he added.
Describing Taliban as a political group that has religious and ideological claims, he said “their behavior needs to be analysed and evaluated within the framework of politics.
India, Iran, Pakistan should come together to resolve crisis
Pakistan needs to join this cooperation of Iran and India in resolving the issue, Ahmadinejad said, “because it is seriously being threatened.”
"What I mean is the sovereignty and the government of Pakistan ... is soon going to be threatened by the Taliban's current movement."
Fighting and withstanding terrorism is not a matter of war, he said, but a matter of cooperation and correlation between states. Terrorism is a political issue and if we suppose that it's a military one, then we would definitely face problems in resolving these issues.
“So Iran, India and others should come together and make plans to resolve this in the framework of political and humane issues.”
Ahmedinejad said the root cause of this jihadi group goes back to when the Ex-Soviet Union was dominating Afghanistan. At that time the US started training and preparing these terrorist groups in Pakistan in order to withstand the Communist Government's threats. This trend later on continued, he said.
Taliban rule will affect Iran, India, Pakistan, China and Russia
The origin of all these groups is one place, the hegemonic system, he said, referring to Western powers.
“The Taliban, Daesh [Islamic State] and all the other ones originate from one source and they are in fear, which is the global hegemonic system. They are utilised as tools under scene of political chess and it too will be at the right time utilised.”
“We have to ask the question, why the US had the Taliban take control of Afghanistan, that it was very intentional plot. Although, in the first place, that's gonna be a threat against Iran and India."
This has got a long-term and much higher level of goals, although primarily it's going to hit Iran and India, but soon it's gonna turn into a threat against Pakistan, China and Russia," he said.
The fact that how Pakistan, China and Russia were involved in this plot, which is going to backfire, is a question because this is a very violent and illogical group which considers itself to be the very right thing that has got an existential reason and it considers no value, attaches no value to any other beings.
So when such a group is armed and it takes control of the country in those form within the framework of a government, this will soon definitely turn into a huge threat for regional countries, he said.
A terrorist group which is basically political and they have political views, they are gonna be a threat to entire region, including India, Pakistan, Iran, China, the northern states and Russia.
"They are going to be serious threat to all of them," Ahmadinejad warned.
Amid reports that Pakistan had helped the Taliban quell the resistance in Panjshir, Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Islamabad that it will be haunted by its actions in near future in which he foresaw the militant group threatening Pakistani government and sovereignty.
Speaking to WION’s Executive Editor Palki Sharma, Ahmadinejad also stressed that the handing over of power to Taliban is part of a ‘satanic plot’ by the western powers led by the US.
India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China and regional countries will face the consequences of the re-emergence of Taliban, he said on WION’s Afghanistan Dialogues programme.
He asked for Pakistan to join efforts by India and Iran to resolve the situation in Afghanistan.
On reports that Pakistani officers directly got involved in the war of Panjshir, he said: “Here I have a piece of advice for the Pakistani officials: What happened in Afghanistan will soon expand and take the grip of Pakistan and all countries that supported the Taliban.
“I am sure that the consequences in the aftermath of this event will soon go to those countries which supported and designed this plot including the US, UK, Russia and China.”
His comment came even as Iran became the first country to slam Pakistan’s role in the Panjshir fight.
“Last night's attacks are condemned in the strongest terms…and the foreign interference …. must be investigated,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday, adding Iran is investigating it.
Taliban takeover is part of an intentional plot
Ahmadinejad said the events that unfolded in Afghanistan are an “international plan that will affect all the regional countries”.
Anybody, who has participated, supported and been a companion to this, should repent and revise their behavior, he added.
“A group has been supported, which is created and then trained, armed and supported by the neighbours. It has captured a country and called itself the government. The world had either been watching or supporting. This is an ugly thing in the face of the world.”
He said a few world powers for their own interests violated the rights of the people and the rights to determine their fate.
In fact it is a meddling by a neighbour in the internal issues of its neighbour, he said.
He said the plot of the US government will not bring about success in carrying out what they planned to do and in near future, "they will lose face, vis-à-vis the measure they have taken behind the scenes against the Afghans.”
It’s a shame to recognise Taliban
Asked about several countries and inter national organisations like the United Nations talking to Taliban, Ahmadinejad said: “Recognising a government which has taken power with the force of arms and support of the aliens, which has dominated the country and whose attitude and policies aren't clear, is a matter of shame and actually it will damage the entire human society.”
He said an independent government is the will of any freedom seeking person. Power, he said, should be in the hands of the people and any government should be elected with the direct vote of people of Afghanistan.
“These developments will soon unfold and please don't suppose that I am talking about an unknown far away future. Very soon these will uncover,” he added.
Describing Taliban as a political group that has religious and ideological claims, he said “their behavior needs to be analysed and evaluated within the framework of politics.
India, Iran, Pakistan should come together to resolve crisis
Pakistan needs to join this cooperation of Iran and India in resolving the issue, Ahmadinejad said, “because it is seriously being threatened.”
"What I mean is the sovereignty and the government of Pakistan ... is soon going to be threatened by the Taliban's current movement."
Fighting and withstanding terrorism is not a matter of war, he said, but a matter of cooperation and correlation between states. Terrorism is a political issue and if we suppose that it's a military one, then we would definitely face problems in resolving these issues.
“So Iran, India and others should come together and make plans to resolve this in the framework of political and humane issues.”
Ahmedinejad said the root cause of this jihadi group goes back to when the Ex-Soviet Union was dominating Afghanistan. At that time the US started training and preparing these terrorist groups in Pakistan in order to withstand the Communist Government's threats. This trend later on continued, he said.
Taliban rule will affect Iran, India, Pakistan, China and Russia
The origin of all these groups is one place, the hegemonic system, he said, referring to Western powers.
“The Taliban, Daesh [Islamic State] and all the other ones originate from one source and they are in fear, which is the global hegemonic system. They are utilised as tools under scene of political chess and it too will be at the right time utilised.”
“We have to ask the question, why the US had the Taliban take control of Afghanistan, that it was very intentional plot. Although, in the first place, that's gonna be a threat against Iran and India."
This has got a long-term and much higher level of goals, although primarily it's going to hit Iran and India, but soon it's gonna turn into a threat against Pakistan, China and Russia," he said.
The fact that how Pakistan, China and Russia were involved in this plot, which is going to backfire, is a question because this is a very violent and illogical group which considers itself to be the very right thing that has got an existential reason and it considers no value, attaches no value to any other beings.
So when such a group is armed and it takes control of the country in those form within the framework of a government, this will soon definitely turn into a huge threat for regional countries, he said.
A terrorist group which is basically political and they have political views, they are gonna be a threat to entire region, including India, Pakistan, Iran, China, the northern states and Russia.
"They are going to be serious threat to all of them," Ahmadinejad warned.
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Gravitas: Afghans take to the streets, demand "death to Pakistan"
Sep 07, 2021, 11:55 PM(IST) WION Video Team
Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets today. They chanted slogans like "death to the Taliban" and accused Pakistan of invading Afghanistan. Palki Sharma tells you how the demand to #ProbePakForPanjshir is gathering steam.
