Taliban say ‘consensus’ achieved on formation of Afghan government

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Anas Haqqani

Press TV
September 1, 2021

The Taliban and other Afghan leaders have reached “consensus” on the formation of a new cabinet under the leadership of the group’s top spiritual leader, officials say, against the backdrop of the United States’ withdrawal of the last division of its forces.

Bilal Karimi, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, told media outlets on Wednesday that an announcement on the agreement could come in a few days.

The Taliban official said there had been consultations on forming an inclusive Afghan government within the Islamic Emirate’s leaders with the leaders from the previous government and other influential leaders, and that the talks had “officially ended.”

It is speculated that the Taliban supreme commander Haibatullah Akhundzada will be the top leader of any governing council.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of Akhundzada’s three deputies and the main public face of the Taliban, would likely take charge of the daily functioning of the government.

Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban leader, had earlier informed the press that the formation of a new government was in its final stages. “We have covered about 90 to 95 percent and we will announce the final outcome in the following few days.”

The last US military plane departed Hamid Karzai International Airport close to midnight local time (19:30 GMT) on Monday. Celebratory gunfire was heard across the Afghan capital afterward. The Taliban took complete control of the airport in the early hours of Tuesday.

Afghanistan’s Pajhwok news agency said on Wednesday that the Taliban had appointed senior veterans to the positions of finance, interior, and defense minister.

The Taliban are said to have already included Afghanistan’s former President Hamid Karzai and former peace negotiator Abdullah Abdullah in a 12-member council, which will govern Afghanistan during the transition period.

The government of Afghanistan rapidly collapsed on August 15 and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in the face of lightning advances of the Taliban.

The collapse of Kabul followed what has been criticized as a hasty withdrawal of American forces from the country, 20 years after they invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban.

The Taliban have called on Washington to stop evacuating skilled Afghans after the group’s takeover of the country.

Afghan Resistance Fighters In Panjshir Battle Taliban As Thousands Head To Borders

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 1, 2021

More clashes have been reported between the Taliban and resistance forces in an area northeast of Kabul where the militants have yet to seize power, as thousands of people looking to flee the country continue to head to Afghanistan’s borders after the withdrawal of U.S. forces put an end to a massive airlift.

The Taliban on September 1 called on the holdout bastion of the rugged Panjshir Valley to lay down their arms after renewed the resistance fighters said they had repulsed militant attacks.

At the Torkham crossing with Pakistan, a Pakistani official said that “a large number” of people are waiting on the Afghanistan side of the frontier for it to open.

Witnesses were quoted as saying that thousands of Afghans had also flocked to the Islam Qala border post with Iran.

Since the Western-backed government and Afghan Army collapsed under a lightning Taliban offensive, thousands of Afghans have fled their homes fearing a repeat of the Taliban’s brutal rule between 1996 and 2001.

The National Resistance Front (NRF), comprising anti-Taliban militia fighters and former Afghan security forces, has vowed to defend Panjshir Valley, 100 kilometers northeast of the capital, as the Islamist group sends more fighters to encircle it.

Former Defense Minister Bismillah Mohammadi said a renewed assault launched by the Taliban overnight was “defeated,” while claiming that 34 Taliban fighters were killed and 65 wounded in a second day of fighting after foreign troops left the country to meet an August 31 deadline for their withdrawal.

The United States and its allies evacuated more than 123,000 people out of Kabul since August 14, the day before the Taliban regained control of the country two decades after being removed from power by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

But tens of thousands of Afghans Afghans who had helped Western nations oust the militants during a 20-year war and others at risk remained behind.

Britain said on September 1 it was in talks with the Taliban to secure “safe passage” out of Afghanistan for a number of British nationals and Afghans who remain inside the country.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told an emergency session of a foreign affairs select committee on September 1 that intelligence assessments did not predict such a swift Afghan capitulation to the Taliban as foreign troops pulled out.

“The central assessment that we were operating to…is that the most likely, the central proposition was that, given the troop withdrawal by the end of August, you would see a steady deterioration from that point, and that it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year,” Raab said.

“That doesn’t mean we didn’t do contingency planning or game-out or test the other propositions. And just to be clear, that’s something that was widely shared — that view — amongst NATO allies,” Raab said.

In a resolution, the UN Security Council has urged the Taliban to allow safe passage for those seeking to leave Afghanistan.

The militants have promised to allow Afghans to leave and return to the country, but many remain in doubt about the hard-line Islamist group’s intentions.

Meanwhile, the administrative vacuum accompanying the Taliban’s takeover has left foreign donors unsure of how to respond to warnings of a looming humanitarian crisis in the war-torn country.

The Taliban has yet to name a new government or reveal how it intends to govern, unlike in 1996, when a leadership council was formed within hours of taking the capital.

The foreign minister of neighboring Pakistan, which has close ties to the Taliban, said on August 31 that he expected Afghanistan to have a new “consensus government” within days.

The Islamist militia focused on keeping banks, hospitals and government machinery running after the final withdrawal of U.S. forces on Monday brought an end to a massive airlift of Afghans who had helped Western nations during the 20-year war.

As the world watches to see if the Taliban lives up to its promises of a more tolerant and open brand of rule compared with their first stint in power, and with foreign donors unsure how to respond to a looming humanitarian crisis, the group said its leader Mullah Hibatullah had wrapped up a three-day consultative meeting with tribal and religious elders in the southern city of Kandahar.

Meanwhile, the Taliban prepared to stage a parade in Kandahar showcasing Humvees and other military hardware they captured during their takeover of Afghanistan, AFP reported.

The Taliban has declared an amnesty for all Afghans who worked with foreign forces during the war that ousted it from power, said it was in talks with “all factions” to reach an agreement on a future government, and repeatedly promised a more tolerant and open brand of rule compared with their first stint in power.

However, many reports have said summary executions and house to house searches for those who worked with international groups or the previous government are occurring across the country.

The Taliban declared victory in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, with fighters streaming into Kabul airport on August 31.

A Qatari aircraft reportedly landed in Kabul carrying a “technical team” to discuss the resumption of operations at the airport, which U.S. officials have said is in bad condition.

“While no final agreement has been reached regarding providing technical assistance, Qatar’s technical team has initiated this discussion based on the other sides’ request,” AFP quoted a source with knowledge of the matter as saying.

The goal was to resume flights for both humanitarian aid and to provide freedom of movement, including the resumption of evacuation efforts, the source said.

Meanwhile, a senior board member of the Afghan central bank urged the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund to take steps to provide the Taliban-led government some access to Afghanistan’s reserves, telling Reuters that the country risks an “inevitable economic and humanitarian crisis.”

In Slovenia, European Council President Charles Michel said on September 1 that the 27-member bloc should take action to be better prepared for evacuations of its citizens in situations such as occurred in Afghanistan.

“In my view, we do not need another such geopolitical event to grasp that the EU must strive for greater decision-making autonomy and greater capacity for action in the world,” he told a forum ahead of an EU defense ministers’ meeting.

The president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, at the same forum criticized EU members’ failure to take in significant numbers of Afghans fleeing that country.

“We have seen countries outside the EU come forward to welcome Afghan asylum seekers, but we have not seen a single member state do the same,” Sassoli said.

This story includes reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents on the ground in Afghanistan. Their names are being withheld for their protection.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, the BBC, and dpa

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Iran’s president says US must be held accountable for rights abuses, ‘dormant catastrophe’ in Afghanistan

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Raeisi

Press TV
September 1, 2021

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi says the US must be held accountable for gross human rights violations in war-stricken Afghanistan, where a considerable number of women and children bore the brunt of the US occupation.

Speaking at a weekly cabinet session on Wednesday, Raeisi said what happened in Afghanistan over the past two decades is an obvious manifestation of blatant human rights abuses and violations, citing the high number of women and children maimed or injured during the US occupation of the country.

“If we only take into consideration the number of women and children who have been killed, injured or maimed in Afghanistan over these past [twenty] years, we will see what a dormant catastrophe had been going on in this country,” he added.

He said the war in Afghanistan attests to the fact that US military presence in different parts of the world has never contributed to security, but undermined peace, stability and security.

“Instead of being held accountable in the courts of the world public opinion for such a record [in human rights violations] and [inhumane] actions, Americans are busy creating a poisonous atmosphere against other countries under various pretexts,” the Iranian president noted.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Raeisi said the promotion of interaction and trade exchanges with neighbors was among the top priorities of his administration and added that the most active government diplomacy should be with Iran’s neighbors.

“We should make every effort to increase trade and economic cooperation with the neighbors because there are good grounds for strengthening these relations and increasing Iran’s share of regional exchanges,” the president said.

The remarks come two days after the last American troops and diplomats departed Afghanistan, which once again fell under the Taliban’s rule.

Together with its allies, the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to eliminate the Taliban; however, not only did the Americans fail to achieve that goal, they set the stage for Daesh, the world’s most notorious terror group, to gain a foothold in the country.

A day after the departure of the last troops from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden hailed what he called the “extraordinary success” of the evacuation of Kabul in a speech in which he offered no apologies for either his decision to end the war or the way in which his administration executed that mission.

He instead strongly defended his decision to end America’s two-decade war in Afghanistan and blamed his predecessor Donald Trump for negotiating a bad deal with the Taliban.

The US’s longest war cost over $2 trillion, claimed thousands of lives and culminated in a takeover by the very militant group that the United States had sought to remove.

Meanwhile, United Nations officials have warned about a humanitarian catastrophe in war-battered Afghanistan, as the US completed its withdrawal.

Afghanistan’s tragedy “will still be a daily reality for millions of Afghans,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grand said in a statement, adding, “We must not turn away. A far greater humanitarian crisis is just beginning.”

According to Isabelle Moussard Carlsen, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan, half the country is in need of aid, and half the children are malnourished after “decades of conflict and drought.”

The population is “very vulnerable” and does not have access to food, water, education and health care, she said.

“The situation on the ground today is really of a humanitarian catastrophe that is looming,” she added.

The UN’s Children Agency UNICEF has also predicted that if the current trend continues, one million under-fives in Afghanistan will face severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition.

The aid organization Save the Children says nearly 33,000 children were killed or maimed during 20 years of US war and occupation in Afghanistan.

According to the organization, an estimated 32,945 children had lost their lives over the two decades of war, but the number does not include the children who died due to hunger, poverty, and disease.

“What remains after 20 years is a generation of children whose entire lives have been blighted by the misery and impact of war,” it said.

“The magnitude of human suffering of the past two decades is beyond comprehension,” it added.

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Complicated Jihadist Dynamics Pose Challenge for the Taliban

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Jamie Dettmer
VOA News
September 1, 2021

Buoyed by the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Taliban commanders say they are confident they can defeat the Islamic State terror affiliate, which claimed responsibility for last month’s suicide bombing at Kabul airport, killing more than a dozen U.S. military personnel and at least 170 Afghans.

Pausing between a string of firefights between the Taliban and the Islamic State-Khorasan Province group last week in west Kabul, a Taliban commander boasted to Western reporters that Afghanistan’s new rulers will finish off their rivals much as they forced NATO to withdraw from the country.

Some analysts predict the fight between the Taliban and IS-Khorasan – also known as ISIS-K – will pitch a pair of ruthless and battle-hardened groups of militants in a jihadi fratricide which will likely see no mercy given.

Even before U.S. forces withdrew this week, the Taliban executed some senior IS-Khorasan commanders imprisoned by the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani, including shooting dead its former top leader Mawlawi Ziya ul-Haq.

The executions were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Khorasan was a sixth-century Islamic region spanning parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as parts of Central Asia.

Complicating factor 

IS-Khorasan has the potential to cause Afghanistan’s new rulers plenty to worry about, complicating their efforts to consolidate power and establish a national government, in the view of Western military officials and independent counter-terrorism analysts. “The Taliban faces its own threat from ISIS-K,” argues Anthony Cordesman in a commentary Tuesday for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research institution.

His CSIS colleague Seth Jones, a former adviser to the commanding general of U.S. Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan, says IS-Khorasan now has “a lot of opportunity for resurgence.” He notes the affiliate’s fortunes had been declining recently thanks to the U.S. and Afghan forces conducting “pretty persistent strikes” on the group. He estimates their numbers had fallen from around 6,000 to 2,000.

IS-Khorasan first appeared in Afghanistan in late 2014, comprising Pakistani militants who crossed into Afghanistan to escape a Pakistani army offensive. The group has carried out dozens of deadly attacks and suicide bombings over the past few years and been blamed for some of the worst recent atrocities, involving girls’ schools, hospitals and a maternity ward, where their fighters reportedly shot dead pregnant women and slaughtered nurses.

The Kabul airport blast last week underlined its capacity for violence.

The group’s founder, Abdul Rauf Aliza, was a provincial-level Taliban commander before falling out with the Taliban leadership in 2014. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike in February 2015. IS-Khorasan’s current leader, Shahab al-Muhajir, is also a former mid-level Taliban commander, who also worked for al-Qaida and is suspected by some Western security officials of still enjoying close ties with the leaders of the Haqqani network, a major Taliban faction currently in charge of security in the Afghan capital.

Those suspected ties prompted Michael Pregent, a former U.S. intelligence officer and now an analyst at the Hudson Institute, a U.S.-based research group, to suggest last week that elements of the Taliban likely colluded in the Kabul airport bombing. “If it was ISIS-K, they passed through Haqqani security, because they have command and control of Kabul, and they have an intelligence apparatus.” He added the bomber also managed to navigate “multiple Taliban checkpoints in order to hit Americans.”

Whether a full-fledged affiliate of ISIS or not, Shahab al-Muhajir is seen as being highly ambitious and the core leadership seems eager now to expand to Afghanistan. Jihadist chat rooms — pro-Islamic State ones as well as al-Qaida-dominated forums — are full of discussions about how the focus should now switch from Syria to Afghanistan.

A U.N. report last year reported that al-Muhajir was seeking to swell IS-Khorasan’s ranks with disaffected Taliban fighters and other militants. He is likely to take advantage of any missteps by the Taliban and local disputes among Taliban commanders.

If Taliban leaders are serious about moderating their imposition of Sharia and to be less oppressive than when they ruled in the 1990s — as their top leaders have suggested publicly — then they run the risk of defections to IS-Khorasan, suspect some NGO workers.

The chief of party of a European NGO told VOA this week that she has noticed clear geographical differences across the country when it comes to how the Taliban is ruling.

“In the South, we have not yet received approval for male and females to work. They have told us our men can resume work, but not our females,” she said. She asked not to be named in this article and for her NGO to remain unidentified.

With the country facing catastrophic food shortages, mass unemployment, and collapsing health and education systems, according to U.N. officials, IS-Khorasan will have plenty of disaffection to exploit.

Some Western security officials also say Afghanistan, with its mixture of ethnic minorities, around 14 in all, is a natural location for Islamic State, which has been adept in Syria and Iraq at exploiting sectarian divides. Many of IS-Khorasan attacks have targeted Afghanistan’s Shi’ite Hazara minority, they note.

Female Journalists Are Disappearing From Afghanistan’s Media Landscape, Group Warns

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 1, 2021

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is calling on the Taliban leadership to provide immediate guarantees for the freedom and safety of female journalists in Afghanistan, where it said hundreds of them have been forced to stay home since the hard-line Islamist group took control of the country more than two weeks ago.

Amid “incidents involving Afghan women journalists since the Taliban takeover on 15 August and orders to respect Islamic laws,” an RSF investigation has established that fewer than 100 women journalists are still formally working at privately owned radio and television stations in the capital, Kabul, compared to 700 last year, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog said in a statement on August 31.

Meanwhile, “most women journalists have been forced to stop working in the provinces, where almost all privately owned media outlets ceased operating as the Taliban forces advanced,” the group said.

Outside the capital, RSF said a handful of women journalists “are still more or less managing to work from home,” while in 2020 they were more than 1,700 of them working for media outlets in the three provinces of Kabul, Herat, and Balkh.

RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said women journalists “must be able to resume working without being harassed as soon as possible, because it is their most basic right, because it is essential for their livelihood, and also because their absence from the media landscape would have the effect of silencing all Afghan women.”

Since the Western-backed government and Afghan Army collapsed under a lightning Taliban offensive, the Taliban has sought to portray a more moderate image than when it ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

However, there is growing evidence that the reality on the ground is different to the rhetoric coming from Taliban leaders and spokesmen, with many reports saying summary executions and house-to-house searches for those who worked with international groups or the previous government are occurring across the country.

According to RSF, female reporters with privately owned television channels such as TOLOnews, Ariana News, Kabul News, Shamshad TV, and Khurshid TV started being harassed soon after the Taliban took control of Kabul.

Nahid Bashardost of the independent news agency Pajhwok was beaten by Taliban militants while doing a report near Kabul airport on August 25.

Other female journalists said that Taliban guards stationed outside their media outlets had prevented them from going out to cover stories.

RSF cited a woman journalist working for a radio station in the southeastern province of Ghazni as saying that members of the Islamist group visited the station and warned: “You are a privately owned radio station. You can continue, but without any woman’s voice and without music.”

In Kabul, a member of the Taliban replaced a female anchor at state-owned Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) while another female anchor was denied entry to the building.

“RTA employed 140 women journalists until mid-August. Now, none of them dares to go back to work at the state TV channels, which are now under Taliban control,” RSF said.

Meanwhile, executives and editors at privately owned media outlets that have not already decided to stop operating said that, under pressure, they have advised their women journalists to stay at home.

Afghanistan was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index published in April.

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Afghan Central Banker Tells Reuters Limited Access To Reserves Should Be Allowed

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 1, 2021

A senior board member of Afghanistan’s central bank has told Reuters that the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund should take steps to provide the Taliban-led government limited access to the country’s reserves as the country lurches toward a possible economic disaster.

Shah Mehrabi, an economics professor at Montgomery College in Maryland and a member of the bank’s board since 2002, told Reuters in a telephone interview on September 1 that Afghanistan faces an “inevitable economic and humanitarian crisis” if its international reserves estimated at almost $10 billion remain frozen by President Joe Biden’s administration.

“If the international community wants to prevent an economic collapse, one way would be to allow Afghanistan to gain limited and monitored access to its reserves,” he said, noting the opinion came as a central bank board member and was not a statement from the Taliban militants who now rule almost all of the country.

Most of the reserves are held in the United States and not at the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) in Kabul.

The Taliban took over Afghanistan with astonishing speed, culminating with the fall of Kabul on August 14. The United States and its allies evacuated more than 123,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans out of the country before an August 31 deadline for foreign troops to withdraw from the country, leaving the Taliban to return to power two decades after being removed by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Mehrabi said the United States should allow the new Afghan government to access a limited amount of the money each month. The disbursements, maybe in the range of of $100 million to $125 million at the beginning, would be monitored by an independent auditor, he added.

“Having no access will choke off the Afghan economy, and directly hurt the Afghan people, with families pushed further into poverty,” Mehrabi said.

On August 31, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres warned of a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” in Afghanistan as he urged countries to provide emergency funding for the war-torn nation.

Based on reporting by Reuters

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

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Turkish Officials Say Deportation Centers Packed With Afghan Refugees

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Heather Murdock
VOA News
August 31, 2021

VAN, TURKEY / TURKISH BORDER WITH IRAN – Under a small bridge more than 100 kilometers from the Turkish border with Iran, a small group of boys and young men waits quietly for a smuggler.

They are unwashed, exhausted and hungry. Most of them are under 18, and they are all from Afghanistan. When the Taliban began taking over their towns and villages, they fled their homes with almost nothing. Currently, after more than two months of travel, they have even less.

“I brought shampoo, soap, money, my phone and a watch,” says Saboon Afghan, 24, the oldest in the group and its de facto leader. “I used up some and the rest was stolen. Now, I just have these clothes and an empty bag.”

The young men and boys are hiding because they fear they will be arrested and sent back across the border to Iran if they are caught. A few say this trip is their second attempt and only the youngest among them — at 12 years old — is likely to be seen as a true refugee — at least this is what they expect.

At a deportation center in Van the day before, officials conducted a tour of the facility for journalists, demonstrating efforts to provide humane treatment, even as they worked to reduce the number of refugees in Turkey.

They are not currently deporting refugees to Afghanistan for humanitarian and logistical reasons, says Cuma Omurcu, the general director of the refugee office for Van Province. He also states unequivocally they are not deporting people to Iran.

But under the bridge, the young men and boys are doubtful, saying if they are caught, they expect to be arrested and held in a deportation center, or sent back to Iran, regardless of any official policy.

“We were walking openly on the streets for an hour when the police arrested us last time,” says Zaki Wassim, 17, from Kabul, explaining what happened when he tried to enter Turkey from Iran about a month ago. “The next evening, they took us in a bus to the border and shouted, ‘Don’t come back to Turkey.'”

Influx angers some Turks 

Earlier this month, the Taliban swept into Kabul after taking over vast swaths of Afghanistan in a matter of days. Since then, mass evacuations have left the Kabul airport in chaos, and Islamic State suicide bombers have killed at least 170 people and 13 U.S. service members.

The country is on edge, waiting to find out what will happen now that the United States has met its self-declared August 31 deadline to pull out of Afghanistan completely.

Turkish officials also are waiting to see what happens next, saying it may be weeks or months before they can resume deportations. Turkey currently has 25 deportation centers, all filled to capacity with mostly Afghan refugees, and it plans to build eight more.

“We cannot send them back because of human rights issues,” says Omurcu. “But if things go well, we will resume normal deportations.”

Many Turkish people are angered by the influx of Afghan refugees, saying their country is being damaged economically and socially by the crisis. Turkey already hosts more than 4 million refugees and asylum-seekers, more than any other country in the world, including 3.6 million Syrian refugees.

During the tour, officials express sympathy for the detainees, showing playrooms for children, Turkish language classes, and a line of young men picking up what appears to be a healthy meal. They also express sympathy for the angered Turkish nationals, who want refugees out of their country.

“Illegal entries are out of control in Turkey,” Omurcu continues. “It is too much.”

Asylum claims 

The process for becoming a legal refugee in Turkey involves applying for asylum via government officials. In most countries, the U.N. refugee agency, the UNHCR, processes the claims, but Turkey relieved the agency of that responsibility in 2018.

Under the bridge, the boys do not seem to know much about the process, saying first they were driven from their homes by crushing poverty. Later, they explain the poverty was a result of war and violence. Both the United Nations and Turkey are clear: fleeing violence and danger can make you eligible for refugee status. Fleeing poverty does not, even if the two are intertwined.

At the deportation center, some refugees point out that no one plans to become a refugee, so it is reasonable that some people do not know how to organize their tragic stories in order to fit into a legal definition.

Soraya, 19, was in her third semester at a university when she ran from her home in western Afghanistan. She was studying physics and chemistry, hoping one day to become a doctor.

When the Taliban took over her town, she and her sister fled with her nieces and nephews. Besides the violence of the war, they feared they would be in danger, just for being educated women.

And while she hopes Turkey will help her find a safe place to live, outside of the detention camp, she doesn’t see it as Turkey’s responsibility.

“This is my request for the whole world,” she says. “Please pave the way for us. We escaped the battles ourselves. Now we need help.”

Mohammad Mahdi Sultani contributed to this report.

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Biden Says Era-Ending Afghan Withdrawal ‘Best For America,’ But U.S. ‘Far From Done’

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Joe Biden

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 31, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden said in a televised speech on August 31 summing up recent actions in Afghanistan that his choice was “leaving or escalating” that country and he takes “responsibility” for his decision.

The withdrawal, Biden said, is also “about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”

“We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan,” the U.S. president said a day after the withdrawal was announced as complete. “This is the right decision. A wise decision. And the best decision for America.”

The United States and its allies evacuated more than 123,000 foreigners and at-risk Afghans out of Kabul after August 14, the day before the Taliban seized Kabul two decades after being removed from power by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The capture of Kabul by the militants followed four months of rapid victories that left the hard-line ultraconservative militant group in control of most of the country after the withdrawal of U.S.-led international troops officially began on May 1.

“I was not going to extend this forever war,” Biden said from the White House State Dining Room. “And I was not going to extend a forever exit.”

He said continued participation in Afghan conflict was not in the “vital national interest” of the United States.

“I simply do not believe that the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan,” he said.

Biden said his priority is to ensure that Afghanistan can never be used to launch another attack on the United States, a reference to the 9/11 attacks overseen by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan two decades ago.

The last Air Force airlift took off from Kabul airport shortly before midnight on August 30, the eve of Biden’s self-imposed deadline for the U.S. troop pullout.

Just hours after the last U.S. military plane took off, reports of fighting emerged on August 31 from the one part of Afghanistan not under Taliban control: the Panjshir Province 100 kilometers northeast of the capital, long a pocket of resistance to the militants.

But Biden also signaled in the speech that “we are far from done.”

Speaking with reports of at least 100 more Americans still in Afghanistan despite the declaration that the U.S. withdrawal is complete, Biden said, “For those remaining Americans, there is no deadline. We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out.”

He said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was leading diplomatic efforts to guarantee safe passage for any U.S. or foreign national, or Afghan partner, who wanted to leave since the August 15 takeover by the Taliban.

“The Taliban has made public commitments, broadcast on television and radio across Afghanistan, on safe passage for anyone wanting to leave, including those who worked alongside Americans,” Biden said. “We don’t take them by their word alone, but by their actions, and we have leverage to make sure those commitments are met.”

Biden also had a message for the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) militants who claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed at least 180 people, including 13 U.S. soldiers, on August 26.

“We are not done with you,” Biden said.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP

Copyright (c) 2021. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

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