In 1996, Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda fled Sudan after years of enjoying safe haven in North Africa and returned to Afghanistan. At the time that the Taliban was rising in power and bin Laden was welcomed.

Now after 20 years, a new Sudan government that even did not exist in the 1990s is paying the price for harboring the al-Qaeda leader. The Sudanese government currently pays compensation to the families of 17 U.S. sailors who were killed in an al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole at a port in Yemen in 2000.

In response to harboring the al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan where al-Qaeda plotted 9/11 attack, the U.S. toppled the Taliban in December 2001 and then signed a deal in February, 2020. After nearly 20 years of fighting that cost billions of dollars and hundred thousand lives, the US is aiming for a withdrawal from Afghanistan. This hinges on a deal with a Taliban, a group which refused to hand over Bin Laden in 2001 and refused to name al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization in 2020.

Under the deal, the Taliban will not allow groups like al-Qaeda to use Afghan soil. The deal is only several months old and there does not seem to be a significant chance of cutting ties between al-Qaeda and Taliban considering they have been companions for 40 years. The U.S. Department of Defense said in a report that the al-Qaeda “maintains close ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan,
likely for protection and training.”  Earlier,  a UN report read that al-Qaeda and Taliban enjoy a close relationship and that the Taliban “offered guarantees that it would honor their historical ties.”

Al-Qaeda and the Taliban share a long history of partnership that took shape in the 1980s during the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The relationship deepened over the years of the rising of the Taliban as a conqueror in the Afghan civil war in the 1990s. When the international community was against the Taliban in the 2000s and the 2010s, al-Qaeda was in the blackline of the Taliban’s insurgency.

Ideological Ties

The extremist ideology of the Taliban and al-Qaeda makes cutting ties between the two Islamist groups more difficult. For 20 years of the insurgency, the Taliban’s hardline Islamist ideology drove young fighters to die in the front line and conduct suicide bombing in a bid to take over Afghanistan, while al-Qaeda’s ideology of hurting the West and driving them out from the Islamic world continues to inspire global jihad.

“The al Qaeda and Taliban relationship runs too deep and is too interwoven in Afghanistan for the Taliban to excise al Qaeda from its network,” said Katherine Zimmerman, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “Both groups believe in transforming the Muslim world into… restoration of the Caliphate. The Taliban seeks this [Emirate] governance in Afghanistan and al Qaeda seeks to support it in Afghanistan and bring it about throughout the Muslim world.”

Trump’s Desire to Cut al-Qaeda and Taliban Ties

In contrast to the expectation of President Trump administration that hoped-for cutting ties between al-Qaeda and Taliban and withdraw troops from Afghanistan, General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, told a virtual meeting hosted by Middle East Institute that “those conditions have not been fully met.” McKenzie said that leader of al-Qaeda is still in eastern Afghanistan, though the Taliban rejected it.

The Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations said in an earlier report that the senior leadership of al-Qaeda, armed operatives around 400 to 600, and other foreign terrorist fighters aligned with the Taliban remain in the country. During negotiating with the United States, the Taliban “regularly consulted” with al-Qaeda, according to the UN report. The Taliban dismissed the UN report in a statement.

“We cannot expect that the relations including structural, organic and emotional [the Taliban and al-Qaeda] cut within 24 hours or more,” said Jafar Mahdawi, secretary-general of Afghanistan Milat Party, a political party in Kabul. “Are these communications really for plotting attacks against the Afghan government? Or Just emotional and intermarriage relations that cannot threats the interests of the Afghan government and the U.S.?”

Roots in the Soviet Conflict

According to the UN report, the Haqqani Network — a notorious military branch of the Taliban — and al-Qaeda maintain close ties based on “friendship, a history of shared struggle, ideological sympathy, and intermarriage.” The relation between the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda formed in 1988 during the fight against the Soviets in eastern Afghanistan, home to the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of Haqqani Network who was once praised by US President Ronald Reagan as “freedom fighter,” gave al-Qaeda training space in eastern Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden used the space to train fighters who led their Jihad against the U.S. elsewhere when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Bin Laden stayed five years in Sudan before returning back to Afghanistan in 1996.

Rise of the Taliban

The Taliban were rising and capturing Afghan cities one by one. As the Taliban were facing resistance from Afghan Mujahidin groups, in particular, the northern alliance in the north, al-Qaeda came in to help. In return for harboring bin Laden, al-Qaeda provided the Taliban with enormous financial and military assistance to take over the country.

Hafiz Mansoor, a member of Northern Alliance who fought the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the 1990s, said the novice Taliban madrassa could never win over the Northern Alliance, if al-Qaeda did not step in. Mr. Mansoor said that the al-Qaeda organization included supporters, fighters, financial resources and propaganda machine supported the Taliban, and that orchestrated complex military operations to take over Mazar Sharif and Herat provinces, where the Taliban faced catastrophic failures.

“The Taliban was under pressure for harboring al-Qaeda, but Osama promised financial and military support,” Mr. Mansoor said. “At the very top level, al-Qaeda had plotted to assassinate Ahmad Shah Massod [Anti-Taliban icon]. In the last stance, I was there, and we had detected 30 radio channels that Arabs were using.”

The Price of Harboring al-Qaeda: Invasion

For the Taliban, the result of harboring al-Qaeda was a full crisis: the US toppled their regime in 2001 and supported a new Western-backed government. But the Taliban and al-Qaeda deepened their new struggle against the US  during the two long decades of insurgency. When the world was against the Taliban, al-Qaeda was supporting the Taliban in the backline.

Despite al-Qaeda losing its senior leader bin Laden in 2011, the global terror group continued supporting the Taliban and enjoyed safe haven in the mountains of Afghanistan. Al-Zawahiri, the new leader of al-Qaeda, pledged alliance to the Taliban and argued that Taliban’s leaders “have been the only Muslims worthy of holding the title of ‘leader of the Faithful.’”

With such a long history of companionship with al-Qaeda, the Taliban refused to call al-Qaeda as a terrorist group in the agreement signed with the United States on February 29. In the four-page and three-part agreement, the Taliban just commit to keeping groups including al-Qaeda out of the Afghan soil and prevent such groups from launching attacks against the US.

Mahdawi, who wrote a book on society of the Taliban, said that the Taliban paid a huge price for harboring al-Qaeda once, and that this agreement with the US was a historical opportunity for the Taliban to take part in power-sharing of Afghanistan. “As the Taliban seeks political power, they have must put on their agenda to cut structural and organic ties with al-Qaeda. They cannot hide their relations from the world.”

As once alliance with al-Qaeda cost Taliban their regime, cutting ties with al-Qaeda can pave the way for the Taliban to return to the power. Unlike in the 1990s when ties with al-Qaeda carried political and military weight for the Taliban, experts said that ties with al-Qaeda may no longer carry military weight for the Taliban.

“Some suggest al-Qaeda fighters have embedded with Taliban units, while other reports suggest al-Qaeda fighters train new Talib recruits or provide specialized skills (though little evidence exists),” said Andrew Watkins, senior analyst at Crisis Group. “In an insurgent group the size of the Taliban, which may count anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 fighters, even if all al-Qaeda suspects in Afghanistan provide military benefits, they are less than 1%.”

The Taliban’s Attempted Shift

Through negotiations with the United States, the Taliban sought to portray itself as a legitimate group that have political ambitions that weigh heavier than ideological issues. On the paper, the Taliban accepted that they will break up with their friends, fight them back and is no longer an Islamic movement that helps other Islamist foreign fighters, said Mansoor who was a junior reporter in Kabul when the Taliban emerged in the early 1990s. Mansoor added that the real challenge is implementing the paperwork.

“Taliban ideological support to foreign resistance or insurgent movements, including groups that carry out terror attacks, is a concern, especially when it comes to the potential to host such groups,” said Andrew Watkins of the International Crisis Group. “But it is also not clear that Taliban leaders currently (or plan to) devote great resources to supporting such groups.”

Has the Taliban Really Changed?

The ideology of the Taliban fueled 20 years of insurgency. A record number of Taliban fighters were killed in the frontline for their ideology. Many Taliban suicide bombers died in the name of their ideology. Extremism experts said that the Taliban have given up little of their extremist ideology which was reflected by their action of harboring and helping other extremist groups like al-Qaeda.

Mullah Omar, the first leader of the Taliban, defended the Taliban’s ideology by refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden in 2001. “So you won’t give Osama bin Laden up”? Mullah Omar was asked by a reporter of Voice of America in September 2001. “No. We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims … that Islam is finished.”

In public, the Taliban continues defending the decision. As recent as in April 2020, the Taliban praised Mullah Omar’s “historical statement.” In a statement, the Taliban said that “It is because of his historical stand in front the global coalition of invaders under the leadership of the Americans that Afghans resisted and brought down another idol of this age.”

Hussain Ehsani, an extremism expert in Kabul said that ideology of the Taliban did not remain confined to Afghanistan, but rather than the community of believers in Islam. “Being confides to Afghanistan contrast the core ideology of the Taliban,” said Mr. Ehsani. “Religious ideas are not limited by borders. The idea of Jihad is against the infidel” and lasts until doomsday.

Afghanistan as a Launchpad for Global Jihad

Ehsani said that the Taliban use the agreement with the United States to establish their emirate in Afghanistan, from where many other Islamists can be inspired to pursue their armed Jihad elsewhere in the world, from Kashmir to Palestine. “Islamic movements are like the pandemic,” said Mr. Ehsani. “Like the corona” that spread everywhere in the world.

The Taliban have not shown evidence that they have given up on their extremist beliefs. In Voice of Jihad, the official website of the Taliban, the group continues denouncing liberalism and democracy. “The Deviants are those who are trained in the poisonous deviant beliefs of atheism, communism, secularism, democracy, and other satanic western and disbelieving ideologies in order to mislead the Muslims with their deviant ideologies,” said one episode of a Taliban propaganda video series.

Human Rights Watch said in a report that the Taliban imposes severe restrictions on rights such as education, equality, and freedom of speech in their areas of Afghanistan. “The Taliban’s widespread rights abuses in areas it controls raise concerns about their willingness and ability to keep commitments on rights in any future peace agreement,” read the report by Human Rights Watch.

Internal Taliban Tensions

Even if the Taliban want to make compromises over their ideology in peace talks with the Afghan government, many fear a split of the Taliban. The UN report concludes that the political office of the Taliban in Doha, “understood the need for the Taliban to interact with the international community and show moderation, while rank-and-file fighters were reported not to share that view.”

As much as the United States fear al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Taliban also faces trouble in handling their old friends from bad times. According to the UN report, the Taliban leadership did not tell their fighters of commitment to cut ties with al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters due to fear of a backlash and possible split of “pro and anti-al-Qaeda camps.”

For al-Qaeda, the US-Taliban deal was a cause for celebration. Soon following the US Special Peace Envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad signed and hand over the text agreement to his counterpart, Mullah Ghani Bardar of Taliban in Doha, al-Qaeda praised the Taliban for their victory and called it a “Great Victory” against the United States that aim to pull back all troops within 14 months.

“Al Qaeda is already rising again ahead of the US withdrawal — and the absence of American troops will accelerate al Qaeda’s re-ascendance,” said Katherine Zimmerman of American Enterprise Institute. “The threat al Qaeda poses is the same that it posed on 9/11, though now the US has better defenses primed. But al Qaeda also has two decades more of experience, access to new technologies, more fighters, and more fronts on which to attack.”

Al Qaeda is Still the Enemy

The latest al-Qaeda attack happened in December 2019, inside the US soil. Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, was radicalized in 2015 and opened fire on his host US naval base, killing three people in Florida. Alshamrani was a member of the Royal Saudi Air Force.  Although the al-Qaeda branch of Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack, it is believed that the senior leadership of al-Qaeda who remains in Afghanistan leads the global network of al-Qaeda.

McKenzie has warned that al-Qaeda “want to inspire—they want to direct if they can. Today, they’re limited to inspiring action. That is radicalization, typically via cyber or other means of people in Western countries that are then motivated to go out and conduct lone-wolf attacks of something like that.”

In one episode of radicalization efforts, al-Qaeda attempted to exploit civil unrest in the United States over racism. Following the death of George Floyd and widespread street protests in the states, al-Qaeda issued an English-Language version of their magazine, saying that “not even the Democrats can help you but we can.”

Assessing the Situation Realistically

At the time of President Trump whose “America First” campaign has become “Trump First”, bringing back home troops from Afghanistan is an election promise that Trump wished to fulfill before the November election. Many fear such a withdrawal within such a short period of time will lead to a full crisis for the United States and the rest of the world.

The US withdrawal “will make the Taliban and al-Qaeda arrogant,” said Mansoor, who witnessed the results of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. “Within a short time, al-Qaeda will recruit and threatens Arabic and western countries. The US and NATO will be forced to fight back terrorists in their own cities.”

L'articolo Why the Break up of Al-Qaeda and Taliban is So Messy proviene da InsideOver.

Few Afghans have been safe from the ongoing fighting across the country. The violence has been brutal and often close to home. The war has destroyed hospitals, schools, mosques, wedding halls, and other public places. Yet the cycle of violence continues.

The dream of peace is distant as ever in a country where violence is a means to win the war through gaining leverage over negotiations. With the derailed peace talks villages are once again under siege, improvised explosives devices continue taking lives and widespread combat breaks apart mothers who wait for their sons to come home from the frontline. The Afghan people are trapped inside the fire.

Militants Stage Gruesome Hospital Massacre

One tragic episode of violence that impacted a young mother is indicative of the horrible effects of this war on families. Ms. Zamira Hussaini, a 32-year old, gave birth to her sixth child on May 5 in a Doctors without Borders hospital in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul. The family named the newborn Hadia — which means Gift in English. Hadia was born into the carnage of a ruthless war.

The doctors told Hussaini that Hadia had breathing trouble and Hadia was kept in the ward. Hussaini stayed with Hadia and visited her home once to take shower four days after giving birth. She then went back to her Hadia who was due to be discharged on May 12.

“There is a suicide bombing and I want to come home,” Hussaini told her eldest daughter over the phone on that morning of May 12. “Whatever happens to me, please do not cry.”

‘I Was Crying, and I Was Feeling Alone’

Hussaini’s wheelchair-bound husband Sayed Qurban Hussaini called back two minutes later, but she did not pick the phone. Hussaini went in his wheelchair to go look for her.

A local community elder stopped Mr. Hussaini on the street and told him that it was too late to save her from the violence. Meanwhile Hadi — Ms Hussaini’s 16-year old son — rushed out onto the streets, wandering into each hospital to find his mother.

“I was crying, and I was feeling alone,” Hadi said, “I was hoping that my mother might have been wounded” and he could still find her alive. That evening as Hadi dialed the phone number of his mother again, a doctor picked up the phone and told him to come collect the dead body of his mother tomorrow. The young baby Hadia had survived. The news broke Hadi’s heart and the hearts of his entire family.

Three militants had attacked the hospital and thrown a hand-grenade inside the maternity ward. They shot everyone in the hospital including newborns, new mothers, unarmed guards, and nurses. Ms. Hussaini was killed along with 23 others including two newborns, three women with unborn babies, and 16 women.

The Afghan government blamed the Taliban for the massacre. The United States blamed the Islamic State for it. The Taliban denied the claims, and no other group claimed responsibility for the massacre of newborns and new mothers.

Ghani’s Reaction

President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan ordered the Afghan forces to go back offensives against the Taliban, leaving their previous “active defense” gestures. In response, the Taliban said they were ready for renewed war. The violence surged across the country against the wishes of people who were expecting less violence with the US-Taliban deal.

The United States signed a deal with the Taliban on February 29 in a bid to open the door for negations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The process stalled over prison release, with the Taliban demanding the release of 5,000 prisoners and the government refusing to do so. The Taliban waged war.

Eid Ceasefire?

Amid ruthless violence, the Taliban announced a three-day ceasefire on the occasion of Eid-Fitr. The Afghan government, as well as neighboring countries and other countries, welcomed the move. The government announced the release of 2,000 prisoners of the Taliban in a bid to keep the ceasefire and take the process to the next level of direct negotiations.

The ceasefire seems to an empty promise now for the people who have even recently lost countless loved ones to the war. The war takes the lives of people like Ms. Hussaini who leaves behind a broken family. Losing Ms. Hussaini to the shooting has been devastating for her family, as her husband Mr. Hussaini is disabled and she was the breadwinner of the family. Ms. Hussaini was the hope of her family living in a poor neighborhood of Kabul.

Born in a remote village of Daikuni province, they married at 16. Mr. Hussaini left home for Iran to work, just like thousands of Afghans do in desperation. Mr. Hussaini did day laboring and once was digging a well where he fell down, suffered a serious injury and lost the ability to walk.

‘I Never Thought My Life Would Reach This Point’

“I never thought my life would reach to this point, who can think?” said Mr. Hussaini. “Everyone wants to have a good life and wishes to build the best life for his children.”

Crippled, Mr. Hussaini returned home to find out that he needed to relocate from Daikundi to Kabul in search of hope and work. Once the family settled in Kabul, the struggle had began. Ms. Hussaini stepped in and took responsibility.

Ms. Hussaini used to work as a home cleaner and tried to make ends meet for her family. She borrowed money from relatives to carry on. The family’s condition deteriorated so much that they were on the edge of selling off one of their daughters.

The Hussaini family is just one of the thousands of families who had reached the point of selling their loved one for the survival of other family members. In Afghanistan, 54 percent of the population lives under the poverty line and 12.5 million Afghans are severely food insecure, according to the World Food Program.

The Mirage of Hope

Then the Hussaini family was offered a golden opportunity: The International Committee of Red Cross helped the couple to learn new skills and set up a small business. Mr. Hussaini learned to repair smartphones and mobile phones. Ms. Hussaini learned to tailor and set up a shop one year ago close to her house.

“Every responsibility was on her shoulders,” explained Hadi. “She used to go to work in the early morning and return home late in the evening. She always told us to study and not to work.”

With revenue from her shop Ms. Hussaini fed six people, including her husband and five children. She also took on two interns. One was Hawa, a 29-year old girl who was hit by an explosion in the civil war that took place between 1992 to 1996 in Kabul. Ms. Hussaini offered her a chance to learn a skill and build trust in herself, as many other disabled women in the country face discrimination.

Ms. Hussaini was the hope of her family and she was close to lifting her family out of poverty. In the blink of an eye, Ms. Hussaini was taken away and her death left her family back in poverty struggling desperately to survive.

‘I Remember Her Every Moment … She Was My Everything’

“I feel like I am orphan now,” said Mr. Hussaini. “When I wake up in the morning and I can’t believe it. I remember her every moment. How she was hit? What happened to her at the last moment? How much she suffered. She was my everything.”

The family now faces an uncertain future, so does the country. President Ashraf Ghani and former chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah brokered a power-sharing deal to end months-long bitter over the result of the 2019 presidential election. With the deal, both of them share 50 percent of the power and Abdullah Abdullah takes over a high council of peace, a body to make peace with the Taliban.

The deal raised hope for moving the country toward a broader deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But the year-long negotiation between the U.S. and the Taliban shows a complicated process lies ahead of a country that has been burring in the war for 40 years now.

The Empty Promises of Afghan Politicians

“In Afghanistan, such things [peace] are meaningless,” said Mr. Hussaini. “They [politicians] say whatever they like to say on TV, but when they go away from the TV screens, they forget what they said in front of the TV.”

The decisions made by the Afghan government and the Taliban and others shape the future of millions of children including those the late Ms. Hussaini. Hadi is old enough to understand that he lost his mother. Four other children are too young to understand they lost their mother to the war and young Hadia will grow up in deep poverty and instability.

One of the other surviving is 14 years old. One is 9 years old. One is 4 years old. Mr. Hussaini is caught between grieving and thinking of the future of his children. The prospect of his repairing phones does not seem promising, though he says he will try his very hardest to make sure his children will study. “It is very, very, very, very hard,” he said.

The eldest child, Hadi who is 16-years old, seems to be one option for the family to rely on for survival. As many other Afghan families rely on child labor for survival, the family of Hussaini lacks other options than sending Hadi onto the street to sell gum or cigarettes to strangers.

The youngest child, Hadia survived the war, but not poverty. When relatives of Mr. Hussaini received Hadia from the hospital, a couple who had been unable to have a baby for 18 years quickly reached out to Mr. Hussaini and requested adoption.

“They wrote a paper that Hadia belongs to them,” said Mr. Hussaini. “After this, I have no right to demand her back.”

L'articolo In Afghanistan War Breaks Families One by One   proviene da InsideOver.

Yousuf Khan Aryobe was a doctor at Child Health Hospital in the Afghan capital of Kabul. He received a woman who coughed in front of him and went away in late March 2020.  As she showed symptoms of COVID-19, Dr. Aryobe feared she might have had contracted the infectious virus.

“I did not like her cough,” Dr. Aryobe told his brother when he returned home in the night. Two days later, Aryobe fell ill and went to test his blood at a private laboratory in Kabul, as the testing for the coronavirus was limited. Aryobe was diagnosed with typhoid fever, and he wrote a prescription for himself for drugs to treat typhoid.

Dr. Aryobe’s Worsening Condition

The health condition of Aryobe did not improve and he visited a designated health facility for COVID-19 to test for the virus. The initial screening showed Aryobe had a normal temperature and healthcare workers denied him a test. But Aryobe showed his identity card proving he was a physician and insisted on a test.

The healthcare workers took his blood sample and said that the result would come back within 24 to 48 hours. They promised him that they would send an ambulance for Aryobe if he tested positive. Neither the test result came, nor the ambulance. After nine days of waiting, Aryobe’s health deteriorated and he went again to follow up.

The healthcare workers had issued the results in a paper sheet and had dropped it in front of the hospital. “If he had received his test result on time, he would have quarantined himself and would eat a lot of fruits to boost his immune system,” said Aryobe’s brother Bahtarian Paktiyawal Aryobe. “All the nine days, he [Dr. Aryobe] was thinking of being infected by typhoid fever.”

Mass Infection

During those days of waiting, Dr. Aryobe did not quarantine himself, and the virus infected his entire extended family members of 33. Three of them did not survive: Aryobe himself as well as one sister, and one brother died of the virus. The family was left on its own to battle with the virus, said Mr. Paktiawal.

Even as the virus hit Afghanistan slowly, the country’s past failures took their toll: a raging war, dysfunctional institutions, and a majority-uneducated population. For 18 years, the country enjoyed international money and international assistance to build functional institutions that could have save lives of Afghans like Aryobe from the virus.

“The government of Afghanistan is a weak government that crumbles with corruption. In the meantime, the war created additional troubles for the government,” said Mohammad Naser Timory, head of Advocacy at Integrity Watch Afghanistan. “But the healthcare system has problems that it should have addressed them before this virus. The corruption and incompetence should have been too addressed in the past.”

Afghanistan’s Institutional Weakness

Although the government attracted international aid, Afghanistan lacks national wide effective institutions to handle the pandemic that is increasingly becoming a catastrophe. The pandemic reveals the government’s inability to prioritize, manage the catastrophe, and coordinate an effective response. On the other hand, the Taliban’s refusal for a ceasefire also sucked resources.

“From day one, there was no effective preparation” to fight COVID-19, said Dr. Baz Mohammad Shirzad, former advisor to Afghan Public Healthy Ministry. “Each institution was given a goal [of fighting COVID-19] without a plan. Budgets were allocated for each province, but this budget was without a plan. Two or three governors spent the money effective, while others just spent them however they liked.”

Default Policy: Herd Immunity

The embattled Afghanistan unofficially adopted herd immunity policy, leaving people to get infected and develop immunity to the virus. The government imposed lockdown in several provinces and began testing, but lack of widespread testing, trust in the government, and remors and economic hardship drove people to defy the orders. The battled government was reluctant to force the lockdown.

As of May 26, Afghanistan recorded 11,831 positive cases, 220 deads, 1,128 recovered from the virus. The country–home to 35 million people–tested a total of 32,870 samples for the virus. 35.99 percent of the samples were positve in the country, while that rate is 12 percent in the world. The fatetly rate is 1.86 percent. The real figures could be higher than the offcials records, according to experts.

“When the coronavirus was announced a global emergency [on 31 January 2020], it meant that the virus was coming to every country [including Afghanistan],” said Dr. Shirzad. “The public health ministry had three months to take basic preparation like designating quarantine places, purchase of protective gears, hiring of additional healthcare workers” and to prepare for testing.

Afghan Politicians Still Fighting Over 2019 Election

Instead of massive preparation for the pandemic, Afghanistan’s political leadership was fighting over the results of the 2019 presidential election. As the country recorded its first positive case of the coronavirus in late February, President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah took the oath of presidency just a thin wall away from each other.

Ghani and Abdullah negotiated a power-sharing deal for months and finally signed a deal in May after three months of bitters. The coronavirus, however, was not negotiable and the virus spread slowly in every coroner of the country. The Afghan big cities turned into hotspots of the coronavirus after arrival of thousands of returnees from Iran, the epicenter of the virus in the Middle East.

The Advantage of Rural Living for Slowing Down COVID-19

With 75 percent of the Afghan population live in rural areas and 46 percent of them are younger than 15, the community transmission of the virus was slow. The villages are distant from each other, provinces are less connected and cities lack modern transportation systems that could help to spread the virus fast like in the developed world.

“In developed world, everything is interconnected, and the virus spread fast,” said Norullah Navayee, a researcher at National Centre of Public Research in Kabul. “Here in Afghanistan, the virus can spread only within a small community” there was little chance the virus spread fast, as social structure are not interconnected nationally, but only locally.

The spread of the virus was further slowed down by lockdown. The community transmission of the virus was recorded in late March and the Afghan government imposed lockdown in early April in different provinces of the country. But lack of widespread testing and isolating the patients of COVID-19 missed the opportunity of the slow spread of the virus.

One Lab for an Entire Nation

For the first months, there was only one laboratory for testing. The Public Health Ministry set up new testing centers for the coronavirus in different provinces of the country. The ministry opened up a testing center for Herat province, the initial hotspot, after opening up a testing center in Nangahar, a province with less COVID-19 patients than Herat. Elsewhere in Balkh province, one testing center was opened to serve the northern region of the country. A total of 10 testing centers were ultimately opened.

The new testing centers did not lead to a widespread testing. With the country relied on international aid packages that included testing kites, many Afghans were unable to test for the coronavirus. At most, each testing center was able only 100 to 200 samples in the early stages. At least twice, the testing center in Herat province stopped testing due to shortage of equipment.

“We needed to have 10,000 testing at least every day,” said Dr. Shirzad.  Even the limited testing centers were marred with irregularities and people had to wait even as long as two weeks to have results. In some province, that limited testing was not available at all.

In central Daikundi province, where thousands Afghans returned from Iran and were suspected of coronavirus, people had to wait for at least two weeks to have test results, said Ali Akbar Jamshidi who represents Daikundi at the Afghan parliament. When patients received the test results, they would often have recovered or died of the coronavirus, Jamshidi added.

In northern Faryab province, where as many as 23,000 Afghans had returned from Iran, there was not testing available in early April. Mohammad Naim Musamam, director of Faryab Health Department, was told that the testing center in Balkh province did not have testing kites and that should not take blood samples for testing.

With 25 suspected cases in Faryab hospital, “If they are positive and we release them then one person can infect an entire district and village. If we keep them, two positive cases can infect the 23 others,” said Musamam in early April.

Turned Down for Tests

In northern Kunduz province, healthcare workers of the provincial hospital wrote an open-letter to Ghani and complained over the process of testing. 40 to 50 patients have come for testing, but they are denied of testing, just because they do not a written order from a powerful official in the province, read the letter.

In Kabul, the Health Ministry randomly selected 500 people who did not show symptoms of the coronavirus. The Ministry tested them for the coronavirus. Out of them, 156 people tested positive for the virus. The random study suggested that a high percentage of Kabul population — six million people — were infected by the virus.

“We have increased the testing capacity from 200 to 2,000 every day,” said Wahidullah Majruh, deputy for Afghan Health Ministry. “But we may receive 10 to 20 thousands samples every day.  Do not call me. Our collageus 24 hours per day, but delay in release of test results are inviable.”

With lack of widespread testing, the mainly uneducated Afghans — burden by the economic pressure — were unable to see the virus in themselves and in their community. In 2017, 64 percent of the people over the age of 15 were unable to read and write. The uneducated people could not understand the pandemic, said experts.

Conspiracies Abound

The rumors spread faster than the virus. One rumor said that the virus was not real, but only an excuse for the Afghan government to attract international aid.  Hasht e Subh Daily, an independent national newspaper, conducted a poll in Herat, the initial epicenter of the virus in Afghanistan. The newspaper randomly questioned 100 people, including educated and government employees, about whether they have heard of the rumor.

94 percent of them said they had heard of the rumor. 20 percent of the surveyed people believed that many healthy people were quarantined in return of cash to fake the real positive cases of the coronavirus, so the government would receive additional international aid. 20 percent of them said that the government showed the positive cases of COVID-19 higher than actual cases.

“The public trust could help a lot at this time,” said Naser Timory of Integrity Watch Afghanistan. “Many countries faced challenges, but people trusted the political leadership and the institutions. We did not have such a trust. The people did not trust the government so the president or the minister would instruct them and the people would have followed [the public health advice],” Timory added.

When the novel coronavirus hit Kabul in late March, a rumor spread: A new-born baby told his parents that the cure for the virus was drinking two cups of black tea at the midnight. Friends were calling each other to spread the cure. Another rumor spread: COVID-19 does not infect true Muslims.

In Herat, Mullah Insari held Friday prays despite the government imposed lock down. Mr. Insari preached to his followers that the coronavirus was a means for the infield world to close down mosques. He said that true Muslims were immune to the coronavirus, while the positive cases were rising and the testing centers were facing shortage of equipment to show the positive cases.

The social and religious hardcore lifestyle of Afghans turned the coronavirus into a stigma. Even when a person was infected, he feared rejection by society in case of acknowledgment. The director of Kabul Health Department Khushal Nabizada said that the people did not report deaths suspected of the coronavirus.

Afghanistan’s Poor and Food Insecure Suffer

The rumors coupled with the economic pressure of lockdown in cities weighted heavy on the shoulders of people to stay at their homes. Even if they wanted to stay in their homes, many were unable to afford the lockdown in a bid to save themselves from the coronavirus. Fifty-four percent the population lives under the poverty line and 12.5 million Afghans were severely food insecure, according to World Food Program.

“People are at risk of losing their livelihoods,” said Elisabeth Koek, Protection Specialist of NRC in Afghanistan. “Our biggest concern is that government and other actors enforced measures to protect people might actually cause them further economic hardship. That is a primary concern across the country.”

Starvation Risk Rises

With lockdown, thousands of people lost their jobs, went down the line of poverty and more people become food insecure. Save the Children reported that seven million children were at risk of starvation. The UN included Afghanistan among countries in the world that were at risk of famine. Meanwhile, the price of food items, such wheat flour and cooking oil has risen up to 23%.

“If I stay at home, we got into fight with the family members who are asking food,” said a 45-year old father of six children, who was a day-laborer in Kabul. “If I stay at home, I die [of starvation], If I come out to work, I die of [the coronavirus.] Either way, there is dying.”

In Daikundi province of Afghanistan, the market faced shortage of food supply, given the lockdown of big cities and surge of prices, said Mr. Jamshidi from the province. The people were largely unable to buy food items. “This crisis [hunger] is more severe,” said MP Jamshidi.

Volunteers Rally Together to Help

In response, many volunteer groups organized online fundraising to collect money for distribution food packages among poor families. Landlords waive rents for households and shops, helping them to survive the pandemic. Tailors made facemasks for needy people and hospitals. The government did its own response.

The Afghan government negotiated with neighboring countries to keep borders open for the flow of goods to avoid a food crisis. “Keeping borders open and partially controlling the food price” is a good sign of the government works, said Timory of Integrity Watch Afghanistan.

The government once distributed wheat for poor people, and then set up a new response: distribution of breads for people to avoid mass starvation crisis. Through local representatives, the government issued cards for poor people who could receive breads free from their local bakery. But the measure had their critics and problems.

In Ghor province, dozens of people gathered in front of local government compound in early May to protest over the unfair distribution and shortage of distribution of breads for people. The protestors threw stones to the compound, and in return the police opened fire on them and killed five people and one local reporter.

“Can you feed poor people with bread?” asked Dr. Shirzad, former advisor to the health ministry. “There should be food aid packages and distribute them for people so they could survive the pandemic. For their own corruption, they ignored health of people, as people make crowds in front of bakers to receive their free breads” possibly further spreading the coronavirus.

Government Mulls Food Aid

One government official said that that they were mulling over making food packages for people that could help them to survive the lockdown and avoid starvation.  But as the two-month long initial lockdown dragged on marred with irregulations and with lack of widespread testing, people began breaking the lockdown and social distance measures.

In Balkh and in Nangarhar provinces, local officials opened their capitals and people rushed to markets looking for jobs and shopping to celebrate Eid al-Fitr. In Kabul shopping malls were packed with buyers and the city was crowded again. Streets had traffic jams.

Mayor of Kabul Mohammad Yougub Haidary officially scheduled reopening of private business and city within different timeline of a day. For example, barbershops are allowed to work from 2 P.M. to 8 P.M., while many barbershops were opened all days before this announcement. Haidary appealed to the public to avoid the usual Eid celebration.

The director of Kabul Health Department Khushal Nabizada said that a usual Eid celebration could lead to “mass suicide.” The usual Eid celebration involves mass gathering in Mosques as well as visiting each house of relatives. “We do not have the time to count the suspected deaths,” said Nabizada after people celebrate Eid in Kabul without considering public health advice.

The people generally broke the lockdown and health officials appealed to them to observe public health advisories such as wearing a facemask and social distance as well as washing hands. With the widespread poverty, Afghans were unable to afford to buy facemask and soups in a bid to protect themselves. Such failures could become a catastrophe, warned the Health Ministry.

Deputy of Afghan Health Minister Wahidullah Majruh said in a press conference that breaking the lockdown failed their strategy to buy more time for the healthcare system to handle the pandemic. “The situation was under control and the spread of the virus was delayed, but people broke the quarantine,” said Dr. Majruh in a personal memo on a Facebook post. “For the sake of your own health, please observe public health advice. Otherwise, the streets will be filled with dead bodies.”

But the Afghan security forces, including the police, were largely seen reluctant to enforce lockdown, as the Afghan forces are already battled across the country by the Taliban group. Refusal of the Taliban to announce a ceasefire hold back Afghan forces from enforcing lockdowns that could save lives from the virus.

COVID-19 Ceasefire a No-Go

UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierres called for global humanitarian ceasefire to combat COVID-19, including in Afghanistan. Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Yousef A. Al-Othaimeen appealed to Afghan leaders to unite for beating COVID-19. Despite the calls for a humanitarian ceasefire, the Taliban mostly have continued to wage war on Afghanistan.

Nonetheless, the Taliban announced a brief three day pause in attacking Afghan forces on the occasion of Eid-Fitre. In response, the Afghan government welcomed the move and announced to hold fire during the Eid celebration. But largely, the war dragged on and the pause of violence was a short-lived dream of peace, which has been delayed for years.

With the US-Taliban deal, under which the Taliban orally had promised 80 per cent reduction in violence, the Taliban focused on Afghan villages and remote areas. The next steps of the peace process moved slowly, as the Taliban demanded release of 5,000 prisoners and the government refused to release them at once but within a timetable.

‘The War is the Mother of All Miseries’

“The war is the mother of all miseries,” said Dr. Shirzad. “Due to the war, Afghanistan still record polio cases, people don’t have access to healthcare services. People were deprived of social welfare. The country still lack asphalt roads” so people could drive fast to access health facilities in the rural areas of the country.

Among many ruthless attacks, one attack took the war to a new level. On May 12, three militants attacked 100-bed hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul and opened fire on maternity ward of Doctors without Borders. The militants killed 24 people, including two newborn babies, six women with their unborn babies and several other new mothers.

“The attack deeply concerned the Health Ministry and white suit wearers [doctors] and the people,” said Wahidullah Majruh, a deputy for Afghan Health Minister in a press conference the day after the attack in Kabul. “Such incidents threaten health facilities, suck our resources, and kill trust and motivation.”

Following the attack, Mr. Ghani announced offensives against the Taliban, blaming the group for the attack. The United States, however, blamed the Islamic State for the attack. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. The violence further surged across the country and one clinic was bombed in Northern Kunduz province.

The Interior Ministry of Afghanistan claimed that the Taliban were in their spring offensive—the usual offensive attacks of the Taliban after winter rest. Against the expectation of many Afghans that the US-Taliban deal brings less causalities,  The United Nations Mission to Afghanistan documented that the civilian casualties of the war in April 2020 was higher than in  April 2019.

Violence and Instability Makes Population More Exposed to Coronavirus

The surge of violence leaves a mass population in rural areas vulnerable to the coronavirus. The raging war makes it harder for healthcare services provider to reach people who live in conflict areas and put Afghan forces and Taliban fighters at risk of infection by the virus, said experts. The war sucks the major resources, financially and human resources, though the government allocated its non-military resources to fight the virus.

“The government of Afghanistan mobilized all resources and partial army resources to fight the coronavirus,” said Timory of Integrity Watch of Afghanistan. “The government provided budget for each province and offered each governor special authority that can help small procurement in each province.”

When the coronavirus hit Afghanistan, the government allocated nearly eighty million USD—the national budget—for containing the virus. The government distributed different amount of money to each province for purchase new equipment, promoting public health advices and designating new hospitals as well as hiring staff for the hospitals.

While the government claimed that the distribution was made based on need and urgency in each province, a local newspaper found that distribution was not based on urgency. Farah and Nimruz provinces, two neighboring provinces to Iran from where many Afghans returned, received around 400,000 USD but Badghshan province in the north—far from Iran—received three times more than Nimruz.

“The problem is in the root of the government,” said MP Jamshidi from Daikundi province. “Distribution of resources is based on ethnicity and language in the country. If a province has a good lobbying team inside the government, it will receive aid. If a province does not have a lobbying team, the province will remain deprived of resources.”

Budget Debate

Distribution of the budget was marred with concerns of corruption. The endemic corruption within the government undermined the US efforts to build national institutions and weakened good governance in the country. Many feared that the corruption also undermines the efforts to contain the pandemic that threatens a full crisis.

Timory said that the National Procurement Agency published a report on big contracts related to the efforts for containing the virus. “A big issue is transparency,” said Timory, adding “they have not released details of each purchase, such as the how many items were purchased and how much the items cost.”

One item with its cost was leaked to the social media pages. A government letter showed that one thermos was purchased at $65.26 USD, while its price in public market is around $10 USD. In Daikundi province, MP Jamishidi said that the government allocated nearly $400,000 USD for fighting the virus, but there was no clue where and how the budget was spent.

The budget aimed to strengthen the fragile healthcare system. But in Kunduz, Herat and Takhar provinces, healthcare workers protested over unpaid salaries. Fifty staff of provincial designated hospital for the virus in Herat stopped working after three months of work without payment and demanded their salaries.

The missteps put the country’s healthcare system at the brink of disaster. According to the WHO, in 2018, only a total of 3,135 health facilities were functional for nearly 35 million Afghans and 20 percent of Afghans have no access to medical services at all. The country has seen increasing rates of preventable diseases such as diarrhea and respiratory infections.

“The Afghan healthcare system is not ready to manage this crisis and it was not even prepared to battle such a crisis,” said Timory, adding that “even before the corona crisis, the healthcare system was facing problems to provide health services for people.”

Afghan Doctors are Dying

Within Afghan hospitals, the virus is spreading, killing doctors. Lack of medical protocols on how doctors treat patients and lack of equipment for doctors potentially has led to infection and even dead of doctors and nurses in Kabul and elsewhere. The unprepared hospitals turned into hotspots. One doctor of a private hospital in Kabul died of the virus and the hospital was closed down.

According to official records, as much as 10 percent of healthcare workers in early May made the total of positive cases of the virus in the country. In Kunduz, 60 percent of healthcare workers of the provincial were infected by the coronavirus and continue working and living in the community, said a letter signed by a group of the healthcare workers in the province.

Many healthcare workers of Kabul hospitals show symptoms of the coronavirus and went to quarantine, Khushal Nabizada, head of Health Department in Kabul, wrote in a Facebook post. “As of now [mid May], there are not enough healthcare workers to treat patients.”

The fragile healthcare system provide only passive health services for COVID-19 patients, as major of positive cases of the virus were those who visited the hospital, said Shirzad, former advisor to Afghan Health Ministry. For 80 percent of visitors to state-hospitals, the healthcare workers test them and instruct them to quarantine themselves in homes. “The services are not provided properly,” said Shirzad.

How Long Will it Take Afghanistan to Contain COVID-19?

Shirzad explained that it will take 18 months to two years for Afghanistan to contain the virus. One way is that the world develop a vaccine and distribute to Afghans; another way is that 60 to 70 Afghans will be infected, leaving people to develop immunity to the virus and those who have existence health conditions may not survive the pandemic, Dr. Shirzad said.

The failures of the people and the institutions led to adapting a herd immunity policy that hit families such as the Aryobes, the doctor in Kabul who died of contracting the virus in early April. The entire extended family members of Aryobe had symptoms of the virus, but the testing remained unavailable. One of them was Bahtarian Paktiyawal Aryobe.

After Afghan-Japan Hospital, a designated facility for the virus, denied him testing, Paktiyawal recorded a video in front of the hospital and posted it on the social media pages, appealing to the government. The video went viral on social media pages, but still he was not quarantined in the hospital. Paktiyawal again recorded a video and posted it online.

The leadership of the health ministry came across the video and reached out to Paktiyawal. The family was quarantined for four days in a different designated area for COVID-19 patients. Paktiyawal was hardly breathing and his fever was extremely high by that point. He and his family eventually recovered, but they did not ever receive their test results.

“I came back from death,” said Paktiyawal. “if they spent the budget properly, our fellow citizens would not have so much trouble.”

L'articolo How Afghanistan Was Forced to Use Herd Immunity to Fight COVID-19 proviene da InsideOver.

Islamdeen Bahaduri woke up, washed his face and began his morning routine. He ran for an hour and then returned back to his home in the Barchi neighborhood of Kabul, the Afghan capital. Bahaduri ate breakfast and went to accept his certification for completing his TOEFL iBT preparation course and then walked home for lunch. Bahaduri’s passion was for shoot boxing, in which he had won an international gold medal and after lunch he went to practice shoot boxing in a nearby sports club.

The next day on March 6, Bahaduri went to to attend a gathering in Kabul. The 21-year-old and winner of 26 medals was thinking about opening a new sports club in memory of his fellow athlete and friend who had been killed in an attack in the past, Mohammad Baqir.

Suddenly two militants opened fire on the crowd.

A friend of Bahaduri’s called his brother Mahram Ali Bahaduri to ask about Islamdeen after hearing of the attack, so Mahram called Islamdeen. Islamdeen’s phone rang without an answer. Mahram called again, and this time someone else picked up the phone and told him that Islamdeen had been killed. Mahram fell on the ground and his uncles helped him to regain consciousness.

Bahaduri’s Brother: ‘This Attack Will Be Forgotten’

In the United States, Bahaduri’s other brother commented on the awful situation.

“There is a new thing happening and previous incidents are forgotten,” said Jumakhan Buhaduri, who was in Washington D.C. where he learned about the death of his brother from social media pages. “We do not know who the perpetrators are. There is no ending the impunity and people do not know who their enemy is.”

“I am a peaceful man and nobody should be miserable,” said Jumakhan. “But peace will not heal my wounds from losing my brother. This attack will be forgotten, like other attacks and their victims. He was our hope.”

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting on civilians which came amid US-led peace efforts to end the long Afghan war. Hundreds of people had gathered to commemorate slain Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari in a large venue in the western part of Kabul on Friday, March 6 where top Afghan politicians, including Abdullah Abdullah and senior leaders of the Hazara Shiite ethnic group were present.

Twenty days later, one Islamic State militant dressed in a local police uniform killed a Muslim guard at a Sikh temple in Kabul. The militant begin shooting at civilians trapped inside the temple complex, also using grenades. He besieged the temple and took Afghan Sikhs hostage while exchanging fire with Afghan security forces for six hours. The militant killed 25 people in that attack.

Islamic State’s Bloody Campaign in Afghanistan

The two attacks on minority groups by the Islamic State were part of larger efforts by the terrorist group to establish a branch of the Islamic State of Sham and Iraq in Afghanistan. Since its emergence in 2015, the group gained various territories and terrorized the country with their brutal attacks on civilians. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for two recent high-level attacks. On April 9, a vehicle was parked near the Bagram airfield and five rockets hit the large US base. Last month in March, President Ashraf Ghani was taking his oath of office when three rockets hit nearby. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for both attacks.

Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security said in a statement that his agents later captured the leader of Islamic State in Afghanistan whose name is Abdullah Orakzai, also known as Aslam Farooqi, along with 19 other members of the group. Orakzai became the first leader to be arrested, unlike other leaders of the group that were killed in airstrikes and raids.

The Afghan Government had formally announced the defeat of the Islamic State in November 2019. The US as well as the Taliban also announced the group was destroyed.

But the reality on the ground was far different than the official story.

Emergence of the Islamic State in Afghanistan

In 2010, a number of militants from Pakistan’s Orakzai, North Wzisristan and Khyber tribal groups arrived into the eastern Nangarhar area of Afghanistan. Their numbers increased over the years in Nangarhar and Pakistan’s army attacked them in their homes, pushing them out with their families.

The new wave of the militants known as refugees arrived in October 2014 and March 2015. The Afghan Government welcomed them and the intelligence agency opened connections with them as a small-scale tit-for-tat against Pakistan’s strategic support for the Taliban group inside Afghanistan.

With the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham in 2014, the trouble with the Islamic State started also started to intensify in Afghanistan. Tahreki Taliban Pakistan’s leader died in November of 2013 and the militants were divided over who should succeed him. They split into small groups, forming the ideal situation for the rise of another, stronger group: the Islamic State.

In October 2014, Pakistani national Hafiz Saeed Khan was chosen to lead Islamic State in Khorasan, which is the old name for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia. The leadership council of the Islamic State was made up of former Tahrik-e Taliban Pakistani commanders. Factions of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tehrik-e-Khilafat, Jandullah, and the Bajour faction of Pakistani group’s also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

“Khorasan is an important base and place for the Islamic State in Asia overall, which includes Iran, India, Bangladehs, Central Asia and Xian chin of China,” explains Davood Azami, a researcher focused on extremism. “There has been a long attempt to build a Waliat since the British colonization of India.”

ISIS Afghanistan Announces its Official Formation in January, 2015

ISIS officially announced their expansion in Afghanistan in January 2015. The Islamic State was appealing for youths in region where they were unhappy with the existing groups, like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the official government. ISIS represented the so-called caliphate for youths that wanted to build one in the world.

With the ultimate aim of replacing all other existing extremist groups, the Islamic State recruited from lower and middle class youths in the country and in the region. Many fighters joined the Islamic State in Afghanistan and from Gulf countries, Central Asia, Chechnya, Europe, and the sub-continent of India and Pakistan.

“We came here expecting an Islamic life, and life under Islamic law,” said Sonia Sebastian, an Indian woman who had joined the Islamic State and was interrogated by Indian security agents in Kabul after surrounding to Afghan forces. “Many things were not up to our expectations.”

ISIS’ Afghan Recruiting Efforts

The Islamic State aimed to recruit students from Afghan universities, institutions that were vulnerable to exploitation. Ramin Kamangar, a researcher at the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies in Kabul, conducted research that found half of 373 surveyed students at three universities in Herat, Kabul, and Nangarhar universities supported an Islamic Caliphate as a political system.

Many of the students were entranced by propaganda from the Islamic State. Lecturers at Kabul University, for example, were responsible for the recruitment of fighters among students. The first step was encouraging them to become Salafi, a strict branch of Sunni Islam. The students were sent to strongholds in Nangarhar province for training and then the students would become fighters of the Islamic State.

The Islamic State built a complex network of supporters and strongholds in the country within three years. Hussain Ehsani, who co-authored a research on Islamic State for Afghan Institute of Strategic Studies, said that the Islamic State had three sub divisions in the eastern swathes, in the north, and in the west of Afghanistan.

“The Islamic State has very complex sponsors,” said Ehsani, who has interviewed policymakers, security agents and Islamic State fighters for his research. “It is unclear which non-state actor or which state supports the Islamic State in Afghanistan.”

How Does Afghanistan’s ISIS Get Their Funding?

Pakistan’s intelligence Agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has been accused of funding the Islamic State and supplying the group in the country. The Afghan Government has also made such claims.

ISIS has been largely self-reliant. The majority of their financial support comes from smuggling, mining, and taxation from locals. The group also enjoyed control over the Khyber Pass border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, controlling the flow of mines like talc and timber resources, according to Ehani’s book, “Islamic State Wilyat Khorasan.”

Haris, owner of a shop in a luxuries shopping mall in the heart of Kabul, used to fundraise from European and gulf countries in the name of helping poor Afghans, according to a statement by Afghanistan’s intelligence agency. In reality, Haris worked for the Islamic State with nine others in Kabul, running small shops to financially and logistically support the group.

Ruthless Attacks on Afghan Civilians

With fighters from all different parts of the world, the Islamic State in Afghanistan waged war to establish a caliphate similar to what they believed it had been in the time of the Prophet Mohammad, following the hardline doctrine of Salafism. The group primarily targeted soft targets and minorities, mainly Shiite Muslims that they consider to be blasphemous infidels.

The Islamic State conducted many of the most brutal attacks in the country even by the standards of the long Afghan war. The militants bullied villagers, executed farmers, displaced thousands of people, and attacked soft-targets that were not heavily protected but were crowded, such as in mosques, educational centers, sports clubs, and even wedding halls.

Their attacks happened across Asia, from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and Pakistan. Islamic State fighters killed dozens of Afghan forces, Taliban fighters, and Pakistani forces. Reportedly the Bangladesh bombing was even traced back to the Islamic State in Afghanistan as well as the attack on Sri Lanka.

In a propaganda video, Afghanistan’s Islamic State put 10 male prisoners on a green hill of eastern Nangarhar province and placed land mines under them. As the men kneel down, the explosives went off and they were killed instantly. The graphic video sent shockwaves across the country in August 2015.

Kidnappings and Executions

Militants of the Islamic State in Afghanistan kidnapped civilians multiple times and then executed them. In November 2015, the Islamic State kidnapped seven Hazara civilians, including a nine-year old girl and then cut their throats with metal wire in the southern Zabul province of Afghanistan.

The Islamic State conducted their first high profile attack on the Afghan capital of Kabul in July 2016, which is when they first emerged as a serious enemy of the nation. As Hazara Shiite protesters marched in Kabul, two Islamic State suicide bombers detonated in their midst, killing 80 civilians and wounding more than 400 others.

Attacks on civilian gatherings, mostly the Shiite Muslim minority, became routine for the Islamic State. Mosques have been their favorite spot to hit because they have little security and yield high causalities. In October 2017, an Islamic State suicide bomber entered a Shiite mosque in Kabul, killing 56 worshipers and 55 wounded others.

“Zakria, 14-year old, was killed,” said Barat Ali Khaleqi, whose brother was killed in the October, 2017 suicide bombing. “The attacks cripple the society and these attacks are on all of people, not only one person.”

In August 2018, students were at an education center in Kabul to prepare for a university entrance exam when an ISIS suicide bomber entered the center and blew up the entire building. The bombing fatally tore apart 48 teenage students and wounded 67 others in a blink of eye.

“In Afghanistan, there is nothing safe. Losing our talented youths disappoints me,” said Mohammad Rezai, 18-year student who lost his peers in the bombing on the education center. “I don’t see a bright future. Everything is disappointing. These attacks stole our hope. I don’t feel safe at any gathering.”

Two other attacks claimed by the Islamic State made it extremely clear that no public gathering was safe. In September 2018, one suicide bomber detonated his vest at a wrestling club packed with young athletes and one car bomb torn apart an emergency team, killing 26 people and 91 others, including two journalists.

In August 2019 an Islamic State militant walked into a packed wedding hall in Kabul carrying a sports bag. The suicide bomber approached the men’s reception area of the wedding hall as the celebration was reaching its peak. The blast killed 83 civilians and wounded 160 others that included both Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Fighting Back Against the Islamic State in Afghanistan

The atrocities of the Islamic State eventually contributed to their own fall over the years. Davood Azami, author of Countering the Islamic State in Asia, said that the horrific tactics used by the Islamic State made locals stand up against them.

“Takfir and Salafi ideology [of the Islamic State] was against Hanifi and Sunni religious and practices that are widely followed in Afghanistan,” said Azami. “They [Islamic State] did not understand the culture of local people. Daesh (ISIS) destroyed shrines of local people in Ghazni province and other provinces.”

Locals near ISIS strongholds were armed and fought back the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan. The local forces, made up of farmers and elderly people who had mostly lost family members to the Islamic State’s attacks, were part of larger undeclared joint-operations of US air power, Taliban fighters, and the Afghan Government in a combined thrust against ISIS.

The United States conducted its first airstrike against the Islamic State in July 2015. The airstrikes aimed to kill senior leaders of the militant group, paving the way for junior militants to occupy their leaders’ places. The Islamic State had to choose a new leader sometimes within three to six months as their leaders were being repeatedly killed in American airstrikes.

MoAB

“The Islamic State is leader orientated, rather than strategically coordinated group,” said Hussain Ehsani who has studied the Islamic State in Iraq and in Afghanistan closely. “If there is a comprehensive strategy, their fighters would follow the strategy regardless of leaders.”

In April 2017, the U.S. Air Force dropped the “mother of all bombs”—the most powerful conventional bomb in the American arsenal—on complex caves used by the Islamic State located in the entrance to the Mamand Valley in the Asadkhel area of Achin district of Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. It killed a number of IS militants.

The US conducted such airstrikes by relying on operatives on the ground, mostly CIA agents and US Special Forces that coordinated attacks on the Islamic State hideouts. The US helped Afghan forces to battle the Islamic State, but they also provided “very limited support” to the Taliban in fighting the Islamic State.

After the Taliban’s initial failure to broker a deal with the Islamic State during the group’s emergence in 2014 and 2015, the Taliban also waged war on the Islamic State. First the Taliban asked ISIS leave the area in 2014, but the militants opened a new branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan. The Taliban sent a message to the Islamic State headquarters in Iraq, demanding that they leave the jihad in the country to them but the group dismissed the Taliban’s demands.

“The Islamic State was the first group that challenged the Taliban, both militarily and ideologically,” said Azami. The Taliban supported “uprisings” against the Islamic State in July 2015 in their strongholds in eastern Nangarhar and fought ISIS over resources, such as mining, recruitment, as well as preventing an increase of their own unhappy fighters who had joined ISIS.

Ongoing Taliban Clashes with ISIS

The Taliban clashed with the ISIS across the country, not only in eastern Nangarhar province. In the northern Jawzjan province, in the western Herat and Ghor province, in the southern Zabul province, and elsewhere, the Taliban waged a bloody war to wipe out ISIS. Both the Islamic State and the Taliban suffered significant casualties in the mountains and they regrouped in swathes of the country where they enjoyed shelter from the eyes of US airstrikes and Afghan forces.

The main battlefield has been the eastern Nangarhar province. The Taliban battled ISIS fighters in mountains, mobilizing their Red Unit and their foot soldiers from other provinces, while the Afghan Government and their pro-uprising forces battled ISIS from low-ground areas.

The Islamic State gained increased attention from the Afghan Government in the summer of 2015. The Government supported local forces known as public uprising forces against ISIS and paid agents to collect information for battling ISIS in the country, while continuing to fight the Taliban on the larger scale.

US-Afghan Joint Ops Against Afghan ISIS

The US and the Afghan Government joint operation launched a number of strikes in the last four years to target the ISIS strongholds. US Special Forces and Afghan Commandos launched operations of targeted killings as well as coordinated airstrikes. On April 27, 2017, 50 US Army rangers and 40 Afghan commandos raided the compound of IS leader Sheikh Abdul Hasib, killing him and several other leaders of the militant group.

Adding on to these kind of operations against ISIS strongholds, the Afghan intelligence agency operated on cells of support and recruitment for the Islamic State in the country. The agency killed and destroyed several cells in Kabul, arrested university lecturers and students, and cut financial support to the group.

“The weakness of these anti-ISKP forces [government, tribal and Taleban] was coupled with the vitality of two pro-ISKP forces: small militant groups lacking fixed loyalties and the Salafi militants fighting in the ranks of the insurgency,” Borhan Osman, a former researcher for Afghanistan Analyst Network, wrote in September 2017.

The different operations by US forces, the Afghan Government and the Taliban reached an important phase in November 2019. The three operations led to the overall defeat of the Islamic State in the country, as all of them claimed credit for the defeat of the group in their stronghold of the Nangarhar province.

The Islamic State in Afghanistan broke into pieces. With many ISIS fighters killed, others escaped into deep mountains, and some surrendered to the Afghan Government. The defeat of the group in their initial stronghold did not mean the end of the group in the country that has been burning in war for 40 years.

“With a vast recruitment pool on both sides of the border [Afghanistan and Pakistan], it is hard to defeat [them] militarily without addressing the reasons for the emergence of ISKP in the first place,” said Borhan Osman, head of the Crisis Group for Afghanistan. “You can’t just kill them to death.”

Looking Ahead

Afghanistan and Pakistan have been an ideal place for extremist groups for decades and will likely continue to be so for years to come. The US-Taliban deal signed in February 2020 signaled a way for negotiations to end the long insurgency in the country, but it can serve as a reason for the regrouping of extremist groups. Atiqullah Amirkhil, an Afghan Army General, said that there is a possibility radical Taliban fighters who are not pleased with the prospect of peace could join the Islamic State in the country.

“If the government and the Taliban unite against the Islamic State and all forces cooperate with each other, Daesh [Islamic State] will be wiped out. If the deal leads to such a scenario, the peace is worthwhile,” said Amirkhil. “If nobody fights the Islamic State, it will remain in the coming years.”

Even the United States agreed to pull troops out of the country per deal with the Taliban, the US has established a network of Special Operations forces that will fight the Islamic State. The Afghan Government and the Taliban both vow to fight the extremist group, but in an absence of a strong state, the Islamic State may continue claim the lives of civilians, using complex underground cells and without holding territories.

“I am concerned with continuation of such attacks” said Sima Samar, member of UN High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation, referring to March 6 ISIS attack in Kabul. “Two persons who are willing to kill themselves [suicide attack], they can do it at any gatherings.”

The March 6 massacre is a prime example of how the Islamic State might survive despite losing territories in eastern Afghanistan. It can continue waging war on civilians to claim lives of those who are considered infields by them, like Islamdeen, the 21-year-old who was killed in the March 6 shooting in Kabul.

Born in a poor family, Islamdeen grew up weaving carpets to survive poverty. When he was only 9-years-old, he started exercising without the knowledge of his family. He asked his local club to waive one month of fees so he could do training. When he come the gold medal in 2018 his neighbors found out in surprise that he had been exercising and training secretly for years.

“Islamdeen was one of few who excelled in different fields of sports, gymnastics, shoot boxing, MMA, Free Fight, Muay Thai,” said Jumakhan Bahaduri, the 27-year old brother of Islamdeen. “He was known was Tiger Killer. Before even fighting, many athletes would give up to him. He had a statement: ‘I am fighting to bring smiles to face of Afghans.’”

Islamdeen was fighting against the odds. He had secured many offers to participate abroad, but the Government did not support him and he could not go there to compete for championships. Islamdeen found his way from poverty to be a champion, only to be killed instantly in a shooting by the Islamic State.

“His dream was the success of Afghanistan on the international stage,” said Islamdeen’s elder brother Mahrim Ali. “When Islam was alive, I felt like there was a mountain behind us.”

L'articolo The Rise and Fall of the Islamic State in Afghanistan proviene da InsideOver.

Gurnam Singh and his Sikh community recently held a religious gathering to pray for those overcoming the coronavirus in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan. Children, women, and men of the minority religious group in the Muslim-dominated country were praying for health and wellbeing for others in their small temple on Wednesday, March 26 when tragedy struck.

Six-Hour Siege of Sikh Temple in Afghanistan’s Capital

When the ceremony reached its momentum, an Islamic State militant dressed in a local police uniform killed a Muslim guard and entered the temple brandishing a weapon. The militant began shooting at civilians trapped inside the temple complex and also tossed grenades into the crowd of worshipers. He took Afghan Sikhs hostage while exchanging fire with the Afghan security forces.

The six-hour-long siege killed 25 members of Afghanistan’s Sikh community. Gurnam Singh lost five family members in the vicious massacre.

“It is possible that this attack leads us all [Sikhs and Hindus] to leave Afghanistan,” said Gurnam Singh, the head of temples of Sikhs and Hindus in the country. Singh added that since last year’s attack, 150 members of these communities had left the country.

The Islamic State in Afghanistan — known as the Islamic State of Khorasan Province — is a violently extremist Sunni Salafist Islamic group that has repeatedly attacked minority groups in Afghanistan including Shiite Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus.

In a recent example from July of 2018, Hindus and Sikhs were traveling to a gathering attended by President Ashraf Ghani in the eastern city of Jalalabad, the capital of the Nangahar province. An Islamic State bomber struck a vehicle belonging to Hindus and Sikhs, killing 17 of them, including their candidate for the Afghan parliamentary election.

Afghanistan’s Sikhs and Hindus Have Now Been Reduced to Mere Hundreds

The recent Islamic State attacks in Kabul were a major blow to Afghanistan’s small community of Sikhs and Hindus. The community reached a peak of 200,000 members in the 1980s, but has been reduced to thousands and eventually hundreds because of internecine war.

The Sikh and Hindu communities were in Afghanistan long before the majority of Afghans converted to Islam during the 7^th to 10^th centuries, although the narratives on how Hindus and Sikhs survived in the intervening time vary.

One narrative says that indigenous Afghans pushed back against converting to Islam and followed Hinduism for centuries. Many Afghans converted to Sikhism around 1520 when its founder Guru Nanak traveled to Kabul.

Sikhs and Hindus were a significant part of the trading community in Afghanistan for years until war broke out in the 1980s and 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet-backed Afghan communist government in 1992, civil war broke out and pushed many Sikhs and Hindus out of the country due to discrimination.

Under Taliban governance from 1996 to 2001, Hindus and Sikhs were required to wear yellow armbands and mark their homes and businesses in a bid to publicly identify them and separate them from Muslims.

Growing Discrimination and Intolerance

In 2001, U.S.-led coalition forces toppled the Taliban government, but the situation for Sikhs and Hindus did not improve significantly. President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan approved a decree to grant one seat for a representative of the Hindu and Sikh communities in the Afghan parliament. But instead the country’s Sikhs and Hindus were mostly reduced to running small herbal medicine shops.

“Life in this land is very hard,” said 28-year Sardar Emrik Singh who was born in Kabul. “We don’t have only two or one problems, but we face every kind of problem. We don’t have another choice but to leave.”

The discrimination against the Sikh and Hindu communities has been deeply rooted in Afghanistan’s war-torn society. As of 2020, not a single member of the community attends Afghan universities. A survey published by the Porsesh Research & Studies Organization (PRSO), a Kabul-based think tank, said that 34.9% of Afghanistan’s Sikh and Hindu communities face discrimination and bullying at schools.

A large number of Hindus and Sikhs attend school in their own temples where they largely learn about their religious practices, not the Afghan educational curriculum.

“Even ordinary people do not let us live in peace,” said Singh, who is a herbal medicine shopper in Kabul. “They come to our shops and beat us.” Singh explained that many Sikhs and Hindus used to live in their own homes in different neighborhoods of the capital, but now four to six families live in one home.

The Ongoing Plunder of Sikh and Hindu Communities

“Now we live in only two neighborhoods,” said Singh, who is a Sikh. “[Sikhs and Hindus] don’t have their independent houses. We used to have our own homes, but we have lost them. People [Afghan Muslims] took them by force.”

Since Afghanistan’s civil war broke out in 1992, Sikhs and Hindus have lost many of their properties, money, and treasure. The state stole their safety. The PRSO survey said that 96.8% of Sikhs and Hindus expressed fear over the safety of their families who live in urban areas of the country.

With their different dresses and lifestyles, Sikhs and Hindus have been victim to widespread kidnapping, extortion, and banditry in Afghanistan. As many as 50% of Afghans overall have had their money or property stolen in 2018, according to a survey by Gallup, an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C.

Atrocities Against Sikhs and Hindus: ‘We Have Been Torn Apart’

In February 2020, unknown people entered the house of a Sikh woman in the Karte-Parwan neighborhood of Kabul at midnight. The body of the woman was torn apart, her head was cut off, and her money and jewelry were stolen.

In March 2019, a young Sikh shopkeeper in Kabul disappeared. His family found his torn-apart corpse buried in a Muslim graveyard. The police failed to identify him and buried him, claiming they had already arrested the alleged murderers.

In December 2016, Nirmohan Singh, the head of the Sikh community in the northern Kunduz province, was on his way to a shop in Kunduz that came under gunfire and lost his life. It is believed that many other killings remain unreported. The killings shocked the tiny community as did the brazen attack recently in Kabul.

“We are innocent people,” said Tejinder Singh, an Afghan Sikh. “We suffer. This community has been torn apart. How long will this situation drag on? We have been torn apart.”

Aber Shayagan contributed reporting to this article. 

L'articolo Recent Attacks Highlight Atrocities Against Sikhs and Hindus proviene da InsideOver.

Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province has been a flashpoint of conflict since Americans first walked in in 1951. The province became known as “Little America” and since 2001 the US government poured in millions of dollars and deployed thousands of soldiers to fight the Taliban. American forces withdrew once in 2014 but were then sent back to the province in 2017.

The United States recently withdrew troops from Helmand province’s Bost airfield as part of the recent peace deal, aiming to make peace with the Taliban who they have been fighting for 18 years. The troop draw down is part of a complicated and ambiguous deal between the U.S. and the Taliban. Critics say that the deal will inevitably lead to a bloody war in Afghanistan, while advocates claim the deal is the best chance for peace.

In front of a long poster reading “Agreement Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” Afghan-born American veteran diplomat, Zalmay Khalilzad signed a four-part deal with Abdul Ghani Baradar, deputy of the Taliban in Doha, Qatar on February 29. The deal includes U.S. troop withdrawal, Taliban’s ties with Al-Qaeda and other groups, the release of prisoners, intra-Afghan talks, and eventually a ceasefire.

Gradual U.S. Troop Withdrawal

In Afghanistan, 12,000 U.S. troops are on duty to assist and train along with thousands of NATO forces. The United States had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and withdrew the majority of them in 2014, but others have remained under the NATO-Resolute Support mission for Afghan forces.

The U.S. and the Taliban have agreed over gradual U.S. troop withdrawal over 14 months. Within 135 days, the United States will cut down 5,000 troops and if conditions are met the rest of them will leave by 14 months. During the gradual U.S. troop withdrawal, the Taliban talks with the government and U.S. to protect the Afghan government against Taliban attacks.

The U.S.-Taliban deal includes secret portions that define precisely when and how the U.S. troop will withdraw from Afghanistan. The United States will share information with the Taliban about U.S. troops’ locations in the country and how they would withdraw.

“All of this was done—seemingly—to create an environment in which the Taliban felt the U.S. was operating clearly and in good faith,” said John. R. Allen, President of the Brookings Institution. “Yet, the Taliban, in turn, have been obligated to very little that can be measured in any meaningful sense.”

The Taliban vows to adhere to the agreement. Suhail Shaheen, a political spokesperson for the Taliban, said in a tweet that the Taliban will implement all parts of the agreement one after another to prevent the suffering of war and urged the other side to do the same.

The Taliban’s Pledges to Oppose Terrorist Groups

In return for the U.S. troop withdrawal from the country, the Taliban pledges to block groups that threaten U.S. interests and its allies from entering Afghanistan. The U.S.-Taliban states that the Taliban will not allow “any group or individual, including al-Qaeda,” to use the country for launching attacks on U.S. interests or its allies.

In 2001, Al-Qaeda orchestrated attacks on New York’s World Trade Towers and killed 2,600 people, an attack that pushed the U.S. to demand from the Taliban to hand over Al-Qa’eda leader Bin Laden. The Taliban refused the hand over and the U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban-led government in November 2001.

Bin Laden was killed in 2011 in a U.S. forces raid in Peshawar, Pakistan, but supporters of the group have remained in the country. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed, “For the first time, [the Taliban] have announced that they’re prepared to break with their historical ally al-Qaeda.”

According to the U.S.-Taliban deal text, the Taliban are not required to denounce Al-Qaeda, but only ban groups that threaten U.S. interests and allies. For their part, the senior leaders of Al-Qaeda issued a statement on U.S.-Taliban deal, praising the Taliban’s “great victory” over the U.S. and its allies.

“The Taliban could not assure its followers’ abandonment of their terrorist guests even if they wanted,” said former CIA official Doug London, who studies the Taliban. “Many of these groups are inextricably tied through marriage, tribal ties, and military interdependence.”

For the Taliban, these groups are overstated and spoilers of peace. Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy of the leader of the Taliban, claimed that “Reports about foreign groups in Afghanistan are politically motivated exaggerations by the warmongering players on all sides of the war.” The Taliban has also vowed to eliminate the Islamic State from Afghanistan.

In addition to this ambiguity of who is a threat to the U.S. and its allies, Sirajuddin Haqqani’s network, known as the Haqqani Network, is the U.S. designated terrorist group that has conducted some of the most bloody suicide bombings in Afghan cities, especially in Kabul. However, the U.S.-Taliban deal text does not mention the Haqqani Network, which is a military branch of the Taliban group.

Release of Taliban fighters from Afghan Prisons

The U.S.-Taliban deal draws a timetable for the start of intra-Afghans that included that the Afghan government and the Taliban. The Taliban promised to open talks with the Afghan government, and the militants say the agreement requires the release of 5,000 their fighters before the talks begin.

“The United States is committed to starting immediately to work with all relevant sides on a plan to expeditiously release combat and political prisoners,” read the U.S.-Taliban deal. “Up to five thousand (5,000) prisoners of …the Taliban and up to one thousand (1,000) prisoners of the other side will be released by March 10, 2020, the first day of intra-Afghan negotiations.”

The release of Taliban fighters has derailed the next step in intra-Afghan peace talks. The Taliban have conditioned the release of 5,000 of their fighters for the beginning of talks with the government, while the Afghan government demands guarantee that the released fighters will not join the battlefield to wage war against the government forces.

After taking the oath of the presidency, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan issued a decree to release 1,500 Taliban fighters as gesture of goodwill. If the fighters do not join the battlefield, and violence is reduced, the government would release the rest within five months.

The Taliban rejected the conditional release of their fighters and demanded the immediate release of them. On the other hand, the Afghan government said that due to many protests over the release of fighters and lack of guarantee release of the fighters would be postponed.

“The United States… is left trying to manage expectations and compel compliance by both sides,” said Elizabeth Threlkeld, a fellow at Stimson Center’s South Asia Program and former U.S. Foreign Service officer in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Complicated Talks between Afghans

The release of prisoners is just one part of the complicated talks between the Afghans. Four-decades of the Afghan conflict, ethnic belongings, weak central government, and tribal differences complicate the peace process that aims at ending the longest war in US history.

Afghanistan’s 2019 presidential election was marred by many problems: 1.8 million Afghans out of 9 million voted, the election body was accused of favoring one candidate, and results were delayed for five months. When Ashraf Ghani named as the winner, his rival Abdullah Abdullah, disputed the results in February 2020.

The afternoon of March 09 in Kabul of Afghanistan witnessed what became a historical moment: Ghani and Abdullah appeared among two gatherings just a thin wall away from each and swore on the Qur’an that they would run Afghanistan. Ashraf Ghani claims the election is over and calls for inclusion, while Abdullah Abdullah calls for termination of election results and the formation of an inclusive government.

The March 10 scheduled talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban passed, and the Afghan government negotiates with politicians to form a negation team for talks with the Taliban. The negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban aimed at finding a solution for decades of conflict.

Some Afghan politicians including Abdullah fought the Taliban when first the group emerged. Other younger Afghans, including Hamdullah Mohib who is national security advisor to Ghani, are Western-educated technocrats and reject the Taliban ideology.

“An argument incessantly voiced in favor of a US-Taliban agreement is that it would provide for direct negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government,” said William Maley, Professor of Diplomacy at the Australian National Australia. “Although the agreement itself makes no mention of ‘the Afghan government’, merely of ‘Afghan sides.”

The talks focus on the constitutions, political system of the country, freedom of speech and women and minority rights. Some Afghans fear that they will lose freedom and other achievement made in the past two decades, while others argue in favor of a deal that could initially end the long war that have killed and wounded over 100,000 Afghan civilians in only the last two decades of insurgency.

Low Level of Violence across Afghanistan

A key topic of talks between Afghans would be a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire. Initially, the Afghan government, which was excluded from talks between the U.S. and the Taliban, pushed to make a ceasefire part of the U.S.-Taliban deal. The Taliban refused to announce ceasefire, but the U.S. and the Taliban agreed over the reduction in violence.

For seven days between 22 and 28 February, both sides, including the Afghan government, reduced violence to exhibit the ability for commanding the war-torn fighters. After the United State signed the deal with the Taliban, U.S. military officials were expected a low level of violence in Afghanistan. The level of violence, however, has remained publicly unannounced.

The Taliban group surged the level of violence against Afghan security forces. The Taliban announced their fighters would attack Afghan forces, not U.S. forces. The level of violence was so high that U.S. forces conduct airstrikes against Taliban positions in southern Helmand province on March 4, 2020.

The level of violence dropped, but not very much. Since the U.S.-Taliban deal, the Taliban group have conducted a daily basis of 10 to 20 attacks against Afghan forces, according to the Afghan government. The attacks have killed a daily of five to ten Afghan forces that included civilians.

Top U.S. commander for the Middle East Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie told the House Armed Services Committee of U.S. Congress that the level of Taliban hostilities was higher than allowed in the plan and he would recommend against the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan if violence continues.

“The Taliban need to keep their part of the bargain, and they are continuing attacks,” said Gen. McKenzie on March 10 to the U.S. Congress. “They are not directed against coalition forces, they are not occurring in city centers, they are occurring at isolated checkpoints. But those attacks are occurring, and they’re not consistent with a movement toward a negotiated settlement, and they’re not consistent with the undertaking they made.”

In an attempt to build international consensus for the U.S-Taliban deal, which has been approved by the U.N., the U.S. and Russia released a joint statement on March 06. The statement urged all sides to decrease the level of violence in a bid to “create an environment conducive to intra-Afghan negotiations.”

For now, the war drags on in Afghanistan.

L'articolo U.S.-Taliban Deal: a Real Chance for Peace or Just War by Another Name? proviene da InsideOver.

Karim Khalili, the head of Afghanistan’s high peace council, was delivering a speech on peace in a gathering when gunfire erupted on Friday, March 6 at midday in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The ensuing shooting killed 32 civilians and wounded 81 others, terrorizing the western neighborhood of Kabul for hours until the Afghan forces gun downed the militants.

ISIS Claims Responsibility for Attack

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting on civilians which comes amid peace efforts to end the long Afghan war. The attack place just as the United States made a deal with the Taliban a week ago and a meeting between the Afghan government and the Taliban was scheduled for March 10. The slaughter of civilians raised concerns over the continuation of violence even as the West makes peace with the Taliban.

“What is this kind of peace that everyday people are killed,” said Mohammad Hussain, an 18-year-old who was born after the beginning of the war in 2001. “I am numbed and shocked. I have seen dead bodies. With such an attack, there will be no peace.”

What Happened During the Assault?

Hundreds of people had gathered to commemorate slain Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari who was killed by the Taliban in 1995 in a large venue in the western part of Kabul on Friday, March 6 where top Afghan politicians, including Abdullah Abdullah and senior leaders of Hazara Shiites ethnic group, were present. Militants of the Islamic State, which has been waging attacks on Afghanistan’s Shiites since 2014, opened fire on the crowds.

After the initial bullet fires, top politicians escaped the scene unharmed, but ordinary people were stuck.  People rushed to exit through a small emergency door and the crowded in one place. Armed with machine guns, hand grenades, and rocket-propelled grenades, the two Islamic state militants took position in a nearby residential building and fired nonstop for nearly an hour from above on the civilians, including women and children.

“I was entering the venue when gunfire erupted,” said eyewitness Mohammad Hussain. “Only ordinary people are hurt. I carried many wounded and dead bodies to a nearby hospital.”

At least four hospitals close to the area were packed with dead bodies and wounded people. Ambulances after one another were delivering dead bodies to their houses which they had left in the morning. One photo circulated on social media pages showed a disabled person was left behind in the fire ground while others had escaped the scene as gunfire continued.

Six Hour Firefight Between Militants and Afghan Special Forces

The two militants exchanged fire with the Afghan special forces for six hours. British forces under the NATO-Resolute Support mission were seen in the area and helped the Afghan forces to battle the militants in a residential building where students were living downstairs.  With assistance from the U.S. forces and advice, the elite forces eliminated the attackers in the dusk of Kabul.

“In Afghanistan, there is disorder and widespread conflict, and Afghan forces lack cooperation among themselves,” said Atiqullah Amirkhil, a retired Afghan army general. “In a city of 7 million populated, there is zero-order and the Taliban and Daesh [another name of the Islamic State] are present.”

The attack received widespread condemnation from the United States, European Union, United Nations, and many other countries. German envoy to Afghanistan Marks Purtzal tweeted that “attacks like these are a serious blow to peace efforts.”

United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan [UNAMA] said in a statement that its “human rights team has documented several previous attacks deliberately carried out against these communities.” Since the emergence of the Islamic State in Afghanistan in 2014, Hazara Shiites ethnic has been repeatedly attacked by the Sunni extremist group of the Islamic State of Khorasan Branch.

“There is conflict over power among Afghan politicians and there is no sympathy and consensus,” said Amirkhil, referring to the political dispute between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani over the election. Afghanistan held presidential election in September 2019, but its dispute has longed until now. After the Afghan election body named Ashraf Ghani winner of the election, Abdullah Abdullah declared his own victory.

Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah had planned to inaugurate their victory on February 27, but the United States had requested from Ashraf Ghani to postpone his inauguration. The United States signed a deal with the Taliban on February 29, laying a timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal and beginning for talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

The Taliban says the group is ready to talk with the Afghan government if their 5,000 imprisoned fighters are released, while the Afghan government has so far refused to release the Taliban fighters from state-run prisons. Meanwhile, Ghani and Abdullah planned to their celebrate victory on Monday 9 March.

The days are counting down as Abdullah and Ghani contests over the election results, but the rivals did show solidarity in the shooting in Kabul. Ashraf Ghani phoned his rival Abdullah Abdullah and called the shooting “crime against humanity.” A day after the shooting, however, senior organizers of the event called for a comprehensive investigation into the shooting.

“Terrorists are trained and exploited in a cultural context,” Mohammad Amin Ahmadi, head of a private university in Kabul, said in a social media post. “The clear sign of the cultural problem is that such attacks do not create massive sympathy with each other and condemnation of such attacks.”

L'articolo Islamic State Slaughters Civilians in Kabul Amid Hope for Peace proviene da InsideOver.

Three Afghan teenagers laugh and play on the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan capital, with rainy clouds in the sky. A 5-year old boy tries to fly a kite. They focus hard on the game, as their future is shaped by a U.S.-Taliban deal 1,000 miles away to the west in Doha, Qatar.

The US-Taliban Deal: Hope and Skepticism

The United States struck a deal with the Taliban group to end the longest war in American history. After 18-years of fighting the Taliban and pouring in millions of aid, the U.S. signed a deal with the Taliban to open the way for ending the 40-year long war in Afghanistan. The deal raised hope as much as it raised skepticism.

“When peace comes, we go to school without fear, and live a normal life,” said Nazer Hussain Mahdawai, 15-year 10^th grader in Kabul. “But if peace doesn’t come, we go back to destruction and a decade of war.”

Under the deal, the United States withdraws troops on condition of the Taliban’s promises to cut ties with terrorist groups and not harbor anyone who poses a threat to the U.S. It is also the beginning of intra-Afghan dialogs whose top agenda is a permanent ceasefire.

‘Making Peace With the U.S. Shows a Big Ideological Shift of the Taliban’

“For an insurgent group that called their political rivals infields and shot at them,” said Hafiz Mansoor who witnessed the rise of the Taliban in 1994 from his office in Kabul as a junior reporter. “Making peace with the U.S. shows a big ideological shift of the Taliban group.”

The deal goes a hard way to find its place to both sides and eventually implementation. The U.S. attempted to sell the deal to the Afghan government, first by announcing a seven-day reduction in violence and then issuing a joint-declaration in support of the Afghan government. President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, U.S. defense secretary Mark Esper, NATO-General Secretary John Stoltenberg appeared in a conference and released a statement to support the Afghan government.

The Taliban, however, is not clear how sold off the agreement to their fighters: a deal or a victory. The Taliban leadership might explain every part of the agreement, from the withdrawal of U.S. troops to future talks and making comparisons on issues such as women’s rights and power-sharing, to their hardline fighters and justify their 18-year long insurgency.

The first promise to their fighter of the release of the Taliban prisoners seems to be halt. According to the U.S.-Taliban deal, the Afghan government release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1000 Afghan forces release by the Taliban before March 10. President Ashraf Ghani said that the government had no commitment to release the Taliban prisoners.

“I think we are going to fire fewer bullets,” said Hafiz Mansoor, a former member of Afghanistan’s parliament. “The issue is that there will be long and big ideological conversations among the Taliban’s chains of command.”

During the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001, a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law was implemented and women were banned from working and education. Some fear that a return of the Taliban to the power risks throwing away the gains of 18 years of U.S. and Afghan efforts to build a liberal democratic political system.  The Taliban now vows to allow women to work and receive education under Islamic law.

The U.S.-Taliban deal is seen as a first step toward negotiating an agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban that could eventually end the insurgency as a whole. After signing the agreement, Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada issued a statement : “We are ready for a rational and just solution. Come, let us find a solution to our problems in light of the religious and national values of our people.”

“By signing a deal with America, the Taliban accepts the responsibility of the presence of American forces and accepts the destruction in the last 19-years,” said Mansoor. The United States toppled the Taliban regime in 2001 after the Al-Qaeda group attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, killing 2,977 people. The U.S. deployed nearly a million soldiers in Afghanistan over the course of the war.

Obama’s Planned Withdrawal and Trump’s Attempt at a Deal

Mansoor said that pro-government and the Afghan government always wanted to talk with the Taliban, but the group refused to talk. The U.S.-Taliban deal is a turning point in the last 18 years, Mansoor added. In 2011, President Barack Obama ordered operations inside Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden. After the operation, Obama announced a timeline for the U.S. troop withdrawal.

When President Donald Trump took office, he initially announced offensive operations to destroy the Taliban. After months, however, the results did not satisfy him.  Trump had promised to end American’s forever wars on the campaign trail and he appointed Zalmay Khalilzad to enter direct talks with the Taliban in July 2018.

“U.S. negotiators have evidently been authorized to go further in what they could agree with [the] Taliban than in past,” Laurel Miller, ex-acting U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan said in a tweet. “Because of political unsustainability of what the US has been doing in Afghanistan, the choices predictably have become withdraw with a deal that creates an imperfect chance for peace or withdraw with no deal and no regard for the chaos that probably would follow.”

The U.S. reached on the verge of a deal in September 2019, but Trump called off talks only after a Taliban-car bomb killed one American and 11 others in Kabul. Amid a new push for peace, U.S. diplomats and Taliban representatives agreed on a seven-day reduction in violence to test both sides’ willingness to peace negotiations and to test the Taliban’s ability to command the long chain of their fighters. The week-long partial truce held.

Abdul Ghani Baradar, who signed the deal with the United States on behalf of the Taliban, pointed out the importance of future relationship of Afghanistan. Earlier, a Taliban deputy wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times where he said the group would welcome future support and aid, “The support of the international community will be crucial to stabilizing and developing Afghanistan.”

“There will be a discussion among Mullahs of the Taliban” around the ideology of the Taliban, said former MP Mansoor. “[Taliban] fighters brag with the commanders: you pushed us to fight against America, now you make peace?”

For 18-years, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda group operated shoulder-to-shoulder, just as the United States forces fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Afghan security forces against the Taliban. Based on the deal, the Taliban are now supposed to abandon their mentors.

‘You Were Saying That We Will Not Be Friends With Infidels, Now You Sign a Deal?’

“The Taliban now must draw line between national interests and the [hardline] Islamic interests of Pakistan and Palestine,” said Mansoor. “The soldiers now ask from their commanders: you were talking about Jihad until doomsday, but why did you stop? You were saying that we will not be friends with infidels, now you sign a deal?”

For the Taliban, the deal might be seen as a victory. In the residential area of Doha, a small group of Taliban leaders walked out of their residential places carrying small flags of their regime. Abas Stanktizka, the chief negotiator of the Taliban, congratulated his team on the deal and called it a “victory with the help of Allah.”

“The deal creates hope,” said Mansoor. “But we have to wait and see what happens among the Taliban over the deal.”

L'articolo US-Taliban deal: A Conversation Among Taliban Fighters proviene da InsideOver.

In the 18-year-long Afghan war, the United States and the Taliban along with the Afghan government will finally hold their fire for seven days as a test. The test period — step one of a ceasefire — from 22 to 28 February, is a condition for a peace deal scheduled to be signed by the United States and the Taliban on February 29.

The Test Period and Afghanistan’s Political Turmoil

As the seven days begin counting down, the United Nations released the report on the human cost of the war, listing more than 100,000 killed and wounded Afghan civilians. The U.S. and the Taliban are one step away from a deal, but the political dispute over the Afghan election results complicates the chances of bringing the 18-year old year insurgency to an end.

Ashraf Ghani was declared the winner of the 2019 presidential election by the country’s election commissions, but his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, declared his own victory, calling Ghani’s re-election as a coup against democracy. American peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the man behind the seven-day reduction of violence, is now busy talking between Afghan politics’ camps, specifically Abdullah and Ghani.

Pompeo: ‘A Significant and Nationwide Reduction in Violence’

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced formally the reduction of violence, from February 22 to February 28. “U.S. negotiators in Doha have come to an understanding with the Taliban on a significant and nationwide reduction in violence across Afghanistan,” Secretary Pompeo said in a statement. “Upon a successful implementation of this understanding, signing of the U.S.-Taliban agreement is expected to move forward. We are preparing for the signing to take place on February 29.”

In negotiations between the U.S. diplomats and the Taliban representative, the Afghan government and the U.S. demanded a comprehensive ceasefire, but the Taliban came up with reduction of violence—close to ceasefire. The week-long reduction of violence is a test for the Taliban and also for the Afghan government to demonstrate command within their fighters.

“This is a critical test of the Taliban’s willingness and ability to reduce violence, and contribute to peace in good faith,” said NATO-Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “This could pave the way for negotiations among Afghans, sustainable peace, and ensuring the country is never again a safe haven for terrorists.”

The Taliban’s Perspective on the Test Period

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed the start of reduction of violence period from midnight Saturday local time. Small firefights might still happen, however, as it was not a ceasefire, said Mujahid. The Taliban issued a decree to their fighters: “entering enemy’s territory is strongly prohibited.”

For his part, Ghani ordered Afghan security forces to follow the given instruction. “As commander-in-chief, I announce the security and defense forces adhere to the instruction during the reduction of violence week… and to act to defend themselves and people.”

The reduction of violence includes U.S. forces, Taliban fighters, and the Afghan government forces. During this period, the Taliban will not conduct suicide and car-bomb attacks inside Afghan cities, will not target highways and will not storm provincial and Afghan security forces headquarters or locations.

The Afghan government forces will not advance to areas under the control of the Taliban. The United States air power will stop flying to attack the Taliban positions, but support the Afghan security forces if the Taliban breaks the reduction of violence terms. As of Saturday, the first day of the test period, small security incidents were reported across the country.

Afghans Celebrate the Test Period

In Paktia, Paktika, Nangarhar and other Afghan provinces, people took on the street to celebrate the reduction of violence. In Kabul, the militarized Afghan capital where suicide bombing had reduced significantly since November 2019, security checkpoints were relaxed.

“It is absolutely imperative for all parties to seize the moment to stop the fighting,” said UN envoy to Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto. “As peace is long overdue; civilian lives must be protected and efforts for peace are underway.”

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) jointly with the U.N. Human rights Commission released their annual report on the civilian casualties in the Afghan war.  3, 403 civilians killed and 6,989 others were wounded in 2019, according to the report. Anti-government forces, including the Taliban, were 49% responsible for the casualties, while pro-government forces were responsible for 43%.

Hope for Ending the War

With the 2019 annual report, the record-high levels of civilian casualties surpassed 100,000, the U.N. said in a statement. Nothing more than civilian causalities reflects long-suffering of Afghans’ need for peace and this seven day reduction of violence gives them hope for ending the war. The next step toward a lasting peace is the beginning of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

But the political unrest in Kabul over the election threatens a full crisis. Abdullah’s camp just replaced governor for the northern Afghan Sar e Pul Province without the approval of Ghani. Reportedly Governors of Jawzjan and Panjshir provinces announced they will also no longer obey Ghani’s orders although InsideOver was unable to confirm their statements.

“[UNAMA] is extremely concerned by the events that are going to replace government officials,” said UNAMA in a statement. “Resorting to force or any other unlawful means at the very time that efforts are ongoing to realize a reduction in violence – with the expectation that it can lead to the start of an intra-Afghan negotiations on peace – jeopardizes the population’s hope for peace.”

L'articolo For Seven Days the Long Afghan War Reduces Violence proviene da InsideOver.

Ashraf Ghani was declared the winner of the 2019 Afghan presidential election, securing a second-round win after months-long of dispute and fraud accusation. Opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah called the results “coup against democracy” and announced his own victory. The dispute threatens to unleash a full political crisis just as the United States and the Taliban move to sign a peace deal and establish a lasting Afghan ceasefire.

What Happened With Afghanistan’s Election?

The long-delayed Afghan presidential election was held in September 2019 amid diplomatic efforts by the United States to end the 18-years long insurgency in Afghanistan. The election initially was marred with uncertainty by the months-long negotiations between the U.S. diplomats and Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar.

The U.S. announced a conditional agreement with the Taliban in early February 2020, before the election results were released on Tuesday. A U.S.-Taliban deal is expected to open the way for the beginning of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban over the future of the country that has been beset by war for 40 years now. Now, the new round of political disputes over the election risks the fragile process.

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission announced current President Ashraf Ghani winner of the Sept. 2019 presidential election, after five months of bitter dispute. According to the commission, Ashraf Ghani won 50.64 percent of the 1.8 million votes cast in the election while Abdullah Abdullah won 39.52 percent of the votes.

‘This Will Make it Even More Difficult to Claim Legitimacy’

“[The results] split the Afghan political class at a time when they need to coalesce for peace talks,” said Omar Samad, former advisor to Abdullah Abdullah. “This will make it even more difficult to claim legitimacy as 50.6% is far from a mandate to build consensus or lead negotiations.”

Hours after the announcement in a televised address to his supporters, Ghani appeared to celebrate the victory. “This is a victory for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. This is a victory of the people’s wishes,” said 70-year old Ghani, going on to congratulate his running mates.

Abdullah Abdullah: ‘We are the Winner’

At the end of the narrow road of the presidential palace in Kabul, Abdullah Abdullah appeared among his supporters to declare his own victory. “We call on all our compatriots who believe in democracy and fairness to stand with us,” said Abdullah Abdullah. “We are the winner of the elections based on transparent and biometric votes. We will now form an inclusive government.”

Another candidate, Rahmatullah Nabil who served as chief of Afghan Intelligence Agency, said in a social media post that Tuesday “was the day of the death of democracy in Afghanistan.”  Nabil, Abdullah, and other candidates’ teams dispute 300,000 votes out of a low turnout of 1.8 million votes and called for a fair audit. Among the votes, 100,000 ballots were registered in the system either before or after voting hours. Abullah’s team claims that the votes were registered in the system to second winning for Ashraf Ghani.

The election commission has attribution the registration of the votes out of voting hours to human errors related to setting the time and date of devices that kept the votes. One of the seven commissioners of the election, however, did not approve the final results of the election.

‘We Will Declare a Parallel Government’

In recent days when the United States and the Taliban were preparing for signing a deal, the election results were wrapping up. “Even if they put a knife on my throat, even if they hang me, I will not accept an announcement based on fraud,” said Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful warlord who supports Abdullah Abdullah. “We will declare a parallel government.”

The Taliban group rejected the results of the election, saying that “it is also in conflict with the contents of the ongoing peace process while keeping in mind the current sensitive circumstances of the Afghan issue.” A U.S.-Taliban deal is expected to go into effect in the next week.

The Taliban has called for a seven-day test period during which both sides, including the United States, will hold their fire. If the test period works and the United States signs a deal with the Taliban—under which the U.S. cut troops from 13,000 to 8,000—then the Taliban begins talks with the Afghan government.

The most crucial parts of making peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban still lie ahead. Opposition accuses Ghani of centralizing the process. The dispute over the election adds to the bitter squall of the politicians over power-sharing and talks with the Taliban.

L'articolo Ashran Ghani Named Winner of Afghan Election proviene da InsideOver.