Taliban militants (file photo)
Lawfare: Authoritarian regimes have their own dynamics and incentives, and efforts to influence them from outside must be informed by what makes sense in terms of their own overriding priority of regime as well as individual leadership survival and longevity. Asking an authoritarian regime to take actions that risk undermining—let alone toppling—it is, beyond a certain point, a fool’s errand. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: The Taliban have accused the residents of Behsud district in Maidan Wardak province of cooperating with Alipur, the former local commander, and have launched a large-scale attack on this district. In an interview, local sources said that the Taliban fighters have been present in Behsud district for the past three days. The Taliban have accused the local residents of concealing the weapons of commander Alipur in their houses. The claim however has been rejected by the residents. Click here to read more (external link).
Child getting polio drops (file photo)
Tolo News: Monday is World Polio Day, and even though polio has been declared eradicated worldwide, two positive cases of the virus have been recorded in Afghanistan since the beginning of the year. According to Sharaf Zaman, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), these positive cases were recently documented in Paktika and Kunar provinces. Click here to read more (external link).
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Joshua Mast
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
October 23, 2022
ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have sharply reacted to reports a U.S. military officer had forcibly taken a child away from an Afghan couple who arrived in the United States as refugees.
The couple filed a federal lawsuit against Marine Corps Attorney Major Joshua Mast and his wife last month, accusing them of allegedly abducting their baby girl, accusations Mast has denied. Mast argues that he and his wife are the child’s legal guardians.
The Taliban Foreign Ministry said Sunday it “considers this case as worrying, far from human dignity and an inhumane act, and will seriously pursue this issue with American authorities so that the said child is returned to her relatives.”
The baby, now 3-and-a-half years old, had been rescued in 2020, two years ago from the rubble of a U.S. military raid that killed her parents and five siblings.
She had gone to live with her cousin and his wife after spending months in a U.S. military hospital before they were flown to Washington by Mast along with tens of thousands of Afghans during the chaotic U.S.-led foreign troop withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
Court records say Mast, an active-duty Marine officer, took the baby from the couple five days after they arrived in the U.S. The couple hasn’t seen the child since.
The marine and his wife had adopted the child in a Virginia court, according to court documents.
“After they took her, our tears never stop,” the Afghan woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Associated Press. “Right now, we are just dead bodies. Our hearts are broken. We have no plans for a future without her. Food has no taste, and sleep gives us no rest,” she added.
The Taliban Foreign Ministry renewed its criticism of mass evacuation of Afghans, saying they were “inappropriately” taken out of the country by the United States and its allies. It went on to allege that many of the evacuees “are now kept in various camps in a state of legal limbo and deprived of basic human rights.”
The statement urged the host countries to safeguard the human and legal rights of Afghan refugees in line with international laws and through consular services.
The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021 when the U.S.-backed government in Kabul collapsed, and foreign forces withdrew after nearly 20 years of war with the then-Islamist insurgency.
The Taliban takeover prompted a chaotic evacuation by the United States and other Western allies of Afghans who feared retribution for siding with the international forces against the insurgency. The U.S. alone airlifted more than 120,000 people to safety.
Many of the evacuees were flown to third countries to be processed for resettlement in the U.S. but they have yet to be resettled and reportedly face housing issues as well challenges in sending their children back to school.
No country has yet formally recognized the Taliban government’s legitimacy, citing terrorism and concerns over human rights, particularly those of Afghan women and girls.
The radical group has placed restrictions on women, undermining their access to education and work. While public and private universities across Afghanistan are open to females, teenage girls are banned from attending secondary schools from grades seven to 12.
Thomas West, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, told VOA last week that his delegation held a fresh round of talks with the Taliban earlier this month in Qatar and renewed Washington’s concerns over human rights issues.
“I think both sides brought a constructive attitude to those talks. I think we are on our way to rebuilding trust,” West noted.
“I made very clear that it is my view that nothing would improve the Taliban standing domestically in Afghanistan or internationally more than were they to allow over a million girls who are currently denied secondary education, the fundamental right they have to pursue those studies, and also for women to work,” the U.S. envoy stressed.
The Taliban defend their rules for women, saying they are in line with Islamic injunctions and Afghan culture. They say arrangements are being made to enable secondary school girls to return to classes but insist their government will not do so under international pressure.
Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press.
8am: According to Jamiat-e-Islami, people and commanders in Badakhshan have resorted to armed struggle in order to get rid of oppression and defend their dignity. This party condemned the killing of prisoners and anti-Taliban commanders and called the battle of the NRF in Badakhshan as a struggle for justice. Click here to read more (external link).
Rashid Khan
Ariana: Star spinner Rashid Khan said Afghanistan would bounce back from their opening loss to England at the Twenty20 World Cup in Perth on Saturday after having shown “promising talent” in the five-wicket defeat. Afghanistan will next play New Zealand on Wednesday in Melbourne. Click here to read more (external link).
Other Sports News
8am: Sources on Sunday, October 23, speaking to Hasht-e Subh said that the Taliban has issued a letter to all faculties of Herat University, ordering all the girls to attend university with the sharia dress code defined by the Taliban which is a long dress with black and navy colors. Click here to read more (external link).
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Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri
Jamestown Foundation: The most significant question that arose in the wake of his death concerned the origin of the drone that killed him. It certainly was not from inside Afghanistan. But was it from neighboring Pakistan or some other country? And would Pakistan allow the U.S to use its airspace for a strike on al-Zawahiri in Kabul? Click here to read more (external link).
Michael Hughes
AOPNEWS
October 22, 2022
James Gordon Meek, an ABC reporter and Emmy-winning producer, has not been heard from since the FBI raided his home on April 27, according to The Rolling Stone, and his disappearance might be related to potentially explosive information he possessed on the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The 52-year-old journalist was a combat embed with U.S. and Afghan Special Forces, a former counterterrorism adviser, and ex-investigator for the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee. He broke several stories over the course of a decade that often undermined the Pentagon narratives about the situation in Afghanistan and military operations in other countries.
The FBI during the raid, witnessed by neighbors, allegedly found classified information on his computer, the report said, although his lawyer denied the accusations and Meek has yet to be charged with any crime.
An FBI official told the newszine that it was “conducting court-authorized law-enforcement activity,” but cannot comment further “due to an ongoing investigation.” The neighbors said they never saw Meek, so it is uncertain if he was even arrested.
“Independent observers believe the raid is among the first – and quite possibly, the first – to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration,” Rolling Stone’s Tatiana Siegel wrote in the piece published earlier this week.
An ABC representative told the news outlet that Meek “resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months.” One co-worker said Meek just “fell off the face of the Earth.” Another person who worked with Meek on a documentary said the situation was unnerving.
“I’m just gonna deadbolt my door,” Meek’s former associate was quoted as saying.
A day before his disappearance, Meek tweeted about legislation calling on Congress to “honor its promise” to get all Afghans who assisted U.S. forces out of the Taliban-run country. His very last tweet was quite cryptic, simply stating “Facts” with a retweet about the U.S. spying on Russia’s military since 2014 (which is like the scene in Casablanca wherein gambling is “discovered” occurring in a casino).
Shortly before he vanished, Meek was working on a book as a co-author entitled, Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan. The book was about how a group of Afghan vets helped rescue 500 people from Kabul in the three days before the IS-K suicide bombing.
However, the book, a bestseller, was published in August with only Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret, listed as the author, which is quite surprising given Meek’s apparent excitement about the project.
“Meek even featured a picture of the soon-to-publish book in his bio on social media and frequently tweeted about his involvement. But post-April 27, the book-jacket photo disappeared from his bio, and Simon & Schuster has scrubbed his name from all press materials,” the report said.
The rescue mission all started when an Afghan named Nezam, a member of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos, reached out for help. The book is critical of senior leaders, including military chief Mark Milley, for not being prepared. In a recent interview about the book, Mann slammed the way US Special Operations Command handled the entire situation. For example, Mann said it was “egregious” that the U.S. had not a single Special Forces team on the ground in the several months leading up to the exit.
“That’s not on the teams; that’s on senior leadership. It was wholesale abandonment of our Afghan partners,” Mann told the Christian Science Monitor in an article published on October 12.
But, as far as this author knows, Mann has yet to be disappeared.
What is strange about the rollout of the book is that an early version had Meek playing a key role in the adventure. According to the report, the first sentence of the jacket before he went missing said: “In April, ABC News correspondent James Gordon Meek got an urgent call from a Special Forces operator serving overseas.” Now, the first sentence says: “In April, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas.”
As far as his former co-author, Mann told The Rolling Stone he was not sure what happened to Meek.
“He contacted me in the spring, and was really distraught, and told me that he had some serious personal issues going on and that he needed to withdraw from the project,” Mann said. “As a guy who’s a combat veteran who has seen that kind of strain – I don’t know what it was – I honored it. And he went on his way, and I continued on the project.”
However, the report also said Meek’s background was often “shrouded in mystery” with some peers speculating he was in the military at some point, especially given his “vast knowledge” on national security issues.
It is impossible to say how, when or if more light will be shed on Meek’s enigmatic real-life thriller, given documents pertaining to the case remain sealed, according to the report.
“Now, Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus. And no one can say for certain if law-enforcement officers actually removed him from the building,” wrote Siegel. “And thus, a riddle was born.”