Pentagon
8am: The Pentagon has rejected CNN reports that US forces fired on civilians at Kabul airport, saying its investigation has found no definitive evidence that anyone was killed by gunfire in the Kabul airport attack. Click here to read more (external link).
Katherine Gypson
VOA News
February 9, 2022
WASHINGTON — Six months after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, lawmakers have few good options for sending aid to prop up the struggling Afghan economy without enabling the Taliban.
In the almost 20 years the U.S. was involved in Afghanistan, the country depended on foreign aid for more than half its economy. But the U.S. froze most of the country’s $9.4 billion in currency reserves last August to isolate the Taliban after they took control.
“There is frankly moral hazard in putting billions into Afghanistan right now,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said in a congressional hearing Wednesday. “We can do our best to route it around the Taliban, but there is no doubt that the partial effect of aid is to save the Taliban from itself. That is deeply distasteful.”
The United Nations issued an appeal to the international community last month for its largest-ever aid ask, saying $4.4 billion was needed as “a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe looms.” According to estimates by the World Food Program, only 2% of Afghans will have enough to eat this winter.
“Six months ago, Afghanistan was a poor country, a very poor country,” David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, told lawmakers. “Today, Afghanistan is a starving country, not just a poor country. The reason — I’m very sorry to report — the proximate cause of this starvation crisis is the international economic policy, which has been adopted since August and which has cut off financial flows not just to the public sector but in the private sector, in Afghanistan, as well.”
Miliband testified that his staff could confirm media reports that Afghans are selling organs to buy enough to eat amid a fall in currency prices that has dropped the value by at least one-quarter.
Top lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee acknowledged that the Afghan people are suffering because of the United States’ concerns about enabling the Taliban’s repressive policies. But many warned of the dangers of sending aid.
“We of course must continue to be vigilant in our efforts to deny the Taliban any resources — financial or otherwise — they can use to conduct further acts of terror,” said Republican Senator Todd Young. “The worst-case scenario involved would be if humanitarian aid were diverted from legitimate recipients towards the Taliban and (their) partners and terror.”
The heads of nongovernmental organizations acknowledged the difficulty of easing some U.S. sanctions based on negotiations with the Taliban.
“The (U.S.) Treasury cannot feasibly list every permitted sector in the Afghan economy. Instead, U.S. officials must forbid what is not allowed — for example, arms trafficking,” said Graeme Smith, a consultant with the International Crisis Group.
“Unfortunately, many of these steps require cooperation with the Taliban. That is hard, and it is distasteful, especially as the Taliban continue to flout human rights standards. Months of talks between the Taliban and Western officials have not resulted in much progress when the impasse is partly the Taliban’s fault. They have resisted reasonable demands such as allowing education for girls of all ages. However, the U.S. is also pushing unrealistic goals, such as an inclusive government.”
Smith and Miliband told lawmakers the U.S. could take several steps to ease the humanitarian crisis, including releasing $1.2 billion in the World Bank-managed Afghan Reconstruction Fund to directly pay the salaries of Afghans, clarifying the application of U.S. sanctions in the private sector of Afghanistan’s economy, and releasing private assets while keeping Afghan government assets frozen.
But easing those restrictions could be a tough political argument to U.S. lawmakers weighing the cost of the U.S. effort to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan in trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost.
Democratic Senator Jean Shaheen said Wednesday, “We need to provide humanitarian assistance to ensure that the people of Afghanistan, the families in Afghanistan, are not starving. And I understand that that means to some extent, we’ve got to thread the needle. But I really reject the premise that we should enshrine with the Taliban their restrictive relationships with their citizens.”
The Biden administration pledged last month to donate an additional $308 million in humanitarian aid to address the crisis.
Taliban’s Baradar (left) and Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi (right). File photo.
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
February 9, 2022
ISLAMABAD — Observers saw the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan last year as a strategic victory for neighboring Pakistan after years of frosty relations between Islamabad and the Western-backed government in Kabul that collapsed last August. Security concerns along the two nations’ border have since complicated the picture.
Many Pakistanis celebrated the Taliban’s return to power, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, who declared that Afghans had broken the “shackles of slavery.”
Some Pakistanis also welcomed a perceived blow to archrival India, which had close ties with the former Afghan government.
In the weeks that followed, Pakistan launched a diplomatic effort urging the international community to engage with the Taliban, help ease Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis and prevent it from descending into chaos again. For the first time, Pakistan even allowed India to transport humanitarian aid to Kabul through Pakistani territory.
In December, foreign ministers of the 56 nations belonging to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, along with Taliban and U.S. delegates, gathered in Islamabad. The meeting focused on Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis.
Despite such efforts, tensions have sometimes flared between Islamabad and Kabul, to the surprise of many in the region. Pakistan has complained of cross-border terrorist threats originating in Afghanistan since the Taliban came to power.
The Pakistani offshoot of the Afghan Taliban, known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or the Pakistani Taliban, has intensified attacks inside Pakistan from bases across the Afghan border, killing dozens of security forces in recent months.
On Sunday, heavy gunfire from inside Afghanistan targeted a northwestern Pakistani border post, killing five soldiers. The TTP took responsibility.
“Pakistan’s principal concern at this juncture is terrorism emanating from Afghan soil, of which it has been a victim in the last many years,” said Raoof Hasan, a special assistant to Khan.
“We are interacting closely with the Afghan authorities for formulating a coordinated and effective approach. We can’t afford to remain a hostage of these terrorist forces,” Hasan told VOA.
Pakistani security officials say that following the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from Afghanistan, TTP insurgents apparently enjoy greater operational freedom and mobility in the country.
U.S. drone attacks and Afghan military operations had killed dozens of TTP militants over the years. Earlier this month, the United Nations estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 Pakistani Taliban are in Afghanistan.
Historical tensions
Pakistani officials believe the Afghan Taliban have turned a blind eye to TTP activities since returning to power. Further inflaming tensions, the Afghan Taliban tried to stop Pakistani troops from erecting a security fence along the roughly 2,600-kilometer common border to deter terrorist infiltration.
Afghanistan has never accepted the border demarcation with Pakistan drawn up by 19th-century British colonial rulers. The border controversy has been an emotional issue for Afghans and a source of mutual tension irrespective of who is in power in Kabul.
But analysts say the Taliban, often branded as close allies of Pakistan, are taking a visibly hostile approach in a bid to win praise from Afghan nationalists and enhance their domestic legitimacy.
In video comments on Twitter, a Taliban Defense Ministry spokesman said that “Pakistan has no right to fence the border and divide [ethnic] Pashtuns living on either side of the border.”
The Taliban reject allegations that their territory is being used against Pakistan and have repeatedly pledged to disallow terrorist groups from launching attacks against other countries from Afghan soil.
While U.S. and former Afghan government leaders accused the Pakistani military of covertly supporting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the TTP — designated a global terrorist group by the U.S. and United Nations — provided recruits and safe havens on Pakistani soil for the Afghan Taliban.
Afghan Taliban rulers now appear to be returning the favor by refusing to evict TTP leaders from Afghan soil or crack down on their activities, as Pakistan has requested.
Instead, the Taliban advised interlocutors in Islamabad to engage in peace talks with the extremist group. The Afghan Taliban mediated a 30-day truce between the TTP and the Pakistani government in November as a “confidence-building measure” for reconciliation talks.
But the process fell apart in early December, and the TTP has resumed deadly attacks on Pakistani forces.
The Afghan Taliban told Pakistan that the TTP fought alongside them for 20 years in Afghanistan, Pakistani Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Pakistani lawmakers when discussing Kabul’s hands-off approach to the TTP.
This has reportedly compelled Pakistan to retaliate covertly against TTP leaders in Afghanistan, including targeting them with drone attacks. Several key members of the group have been killed in Afghan border provinces in recent weeks, but there have been no claims of responsibility.
The TTP has taken credit for killing thousands of people in Pakistan, including security forces, in suicide bombings and other attacks over several years.
Even so, officials in Islamabad note that the Taliban have only recently returned to power after two decades and face serious governance and financial challenges.
“It was a natural expectation that there would be a considerable reduction in incidents of violence in Pakistan undertaken by [Afghan-based] groups such as TTP,” said a senior Pakistani official who has taken part in recent bilateral meetings with Taliban leaders in Kabul. The official wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.
“But this is not happening, and it means that those groups continue to receive support and funding from somewhere. That is a cause of serious worry for Pakistan,” he said. “We are having a very frank engagement with them on this issue. They are aware of the troublemakers in Afghanistan, but they also tell us it would require time, patience and understanding to deal with this issue.”
Test case
Pakistani officials say they have told the Taliban government that Islamabad will extend diplomatic recognition only after other nations do so. In their view, how Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers deal with the TTP will serve as a test case for their counterterrorism pledges to the broader international community.
Pakistan and China are encouraging the Taliban to forge an international counterterrorism framework to ensure terrorist groups do not have operational freedom in Afghanistan, diplomatic sources privy to the discussions told VOA.
A U.N. terrorism monitoring report released last week said the Taliban had failed to take “steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist fighters in the country.”
The report added: “On the contrary, terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom [in Afghanistan] than at any time in recent history.”
The Taliban Foreign Ministry rejected the U.N. findings, saying, “Afghanistan is witnessing exemplary security since the Islamic Emirate regained full sovereignty over the country.” Islamic Emirate is the official name of the Taliban government.
Pakistan was one of three countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to recognize the Taliban government in the late 1990s.
Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia program at the Washington-based Wilson Center, said Islamabad had received a “rude awakening” from the cross-border attacks from Taliban-held Afghanistan.
“These attacks, coupled with the Taliban’s desire to be sure that Afghans don’t perceive the group to be doing Pakistan’s bidding, have generated tensions. But at the end of the day, the relationship will endure,” Kugelman said.
“The Taliban is Pakistan’s ticket to influence and access in Afghanistan. And Pakistan is a critical diplomatic backer of the Taliban. In effect, despite tensions, both sides need each other, and that means we shouldn’t expect a rupture.”
In a report released this month, the International Crisis Group said Pakistan faces difficult challenges in shaping policy toward the Taliban in Afghanistan, but it predicted Islamabad would maintain close ties with the regime.
In doing so, Pakistan has an opportunity to do some good, according to the ICG.
“It should use those ties carefully, to nudge the Taliban toward compromises on governance, including on respect for basic rights and adherence to counterterrorism commitments that might win them greater favor abroad and help ease Afghanistan’s humanitarian tragedy,” the ICG report said.
Taliban leader Mullah Baradar with Pakistan’s ISI Chief Faiz Hameed
The Guardian (UK): Five Pakistani soldiers killed as Taliban-led Afghanistan resists cooperation with Islamabad “In the beginning, Pakistani authorities believed the Taliban would serve Pakistan’s interests and [not] allow militants to use its soil against Pakistan. But it does not seem to be the case any more,” he said, adding that the extremists were emboldened by the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan and aspired to do the same in Pakistan. Click here to read more (external link).
ISIS trainees
Ariana: Lieutenant General Michael Kurilla, US President Joe Biden’s pick to be commander of Central Command, warned al-Qaeda and ISIS were “reconstituting” in a wide-ranging Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday. “One of the challenges is the threat to the homeland from al-Qaeda and ISIS. They are reconstituting. The Taliban (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) has not renounced al-Qaeda…CENTCOM chief While they have aspirations to attack the homeland, they do not have the capability yet. Additionally, we have the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan,” Kurilla told the Senate Armed Services Committee, Reuters reported. Click here to read more (external link).
8am: Officials at Covid-19 treatment Hospitals in Parwan, Kapisa, and Panjshir report the outbreak of a new variant of coronavirus (Omicron) in these provinces. According to them, 70 to 85% of the residents of these provinces are infected with Omicron. Click here to read more (external link).
Related
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
February 9, 2022
A Taliban delegation is due to meet with the Red Cross and Swiss and European officials in Geneva for talks on aid amid a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.
The weeklong conference marks the second time that representatives of Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government have taken part in humanitarian talks hosted by a European country.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry insisted that the delegation’s presence in Switzerland does not constitute recognition of the Taliban-led government.
The Taliban-led government last month sent a 15-member delegation to Oslo for similar closed-door talks with Western diplomats.
International assistance has virtually come to a halt despite a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Afghanistan since the Taliban came to power in August.
Geneva Call, a foundation that works to protect civilians during conflict, is hosting the closed-door conference, which runs through February 11. The conference is aimed at enhancing the delivery of humanitarian assistance in the country, Geneva Call said in a statement.
“The country is facing a complex emergency due to past overlapping armed conflicts, COVID-19 and its socioeconomic consequences, and extreme weather,” the nongovernmental organization said. “Today, 23 million Afghan people are at risk of malnutrition and 97 percent of the population lives under the poverty level.”
Geneva Call also said the conference would facilitate the discussion on improving compliance with “humanitarian norms,” but its statement does not mention the treatment of women and girls under the Islamist group’s rule.
Geneva Call invited the Taliban to the conference “to discuss the status of humanitarian assistance, the protection of civilians, respect of health care, and the issue of land mines and explosive remnants of war.”
Representatives from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s Peace and Human Rights Division, and the ministry’s Asia and Pacific Division are due to meet the delegation during the conference, according to AFP.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also said it would hold talks with the delegation.
At the conclusion of the Oslo talks on January 26, the international community linked humanitarian aid to the Taliban’s respect for human rights, particularly the rights of girls, women, and ethnic minorities.
No country has recognized the Taliban-led government, largely because of its lack of attention to these issues.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister and leader of the delegation that went to Oslo, told AFP in an interview last week that the group feels it is inching closer toward international recognition.
“We have come closer to that goal,” he said, urging Washington to unlock $9.5 billion in Afghan Central Bank assets to help ease the humanitarian crisis.
With reporting by AFP
Farhad Darya
Akmal Dawi
VOA News
February 8, 2022
Farhad Darya, a well-known Afghan singer, and his wife Sultana say they cannot just watch as millions of people in Afghanistan face the threat of starvation this winter. From their home in Virginia, the two launched an emergency appeal on GoFundMe to solicit funds and provide food to some of the most vulnerable Afghans.
Donors responded generously, raising more than $31,000. But the Afghan American couple are still unable to get the money to anyone who needs it.
GoFundMe, the site where the Daryas raised the money, says it no longer releases funds directly to individuals in Afghanistan because the country is now controlled by the Taliban. The recently announced policy, GoFundMe says, is to ensure the platform is “acting in compliance with all laws and regulations, protecting fundraiser organizers and donors.”
The United States has imposed strict economic and financial sanctions on Taliban entities including Afghanistan’s state-run central bank, but U.S. officials have exempted humanitarian-only operations in the country from sanctions.
Treasury Department officials have met with representatives of non-profit organizations to reassure them they won’t be penalized for doing humanitarian work. Last week, Under Secretary of Treasury Brian Nelson spoke with NGO leaders to highlight a new list of Frequently Asked Questions “designed to provide clarity and further facilitate humanitarian aid and commercial activity in Afghanistan.”
That has not yet led to policy changes at GoFundMe, which currently has dozens of funding appeals still active on the platform, with calls for urgent funding to save lives and reduce suffering in Afghanistan.
Russell Bergeron, a resident of Missouri, has raised $965 to support teachers at a private school in Kabul.
“Our funds have been frozen for no reason,” said Bergeron. “The donations we have begun to accumulate are being held stagnant while the students and teachers we are trying to help fall further away from staying afloat.”
If funds remain blocked, Bergeron warned, the school he wants to support in Kabul might be closed soon.
The United Nations has warned that millions of Afghans face starvation this winter, and the Daryas understand the urgency.
“We need to save lives and we have no time to waste,” Farhad Darya told VOA. “People need food, medicine and shelter right at this moment.”
Trust First
GoFundMe says it understands fundraisers intend to help those in need in Afghanistan, but it cannot sidestep U.S. laws and regulations.
Before funds can be transferred, Afghanistan funding campaign organizers must be verified by GoFundMe’s Trust & Safety team.
The process is expected to protect both the organizers and donors of an appeal, and to ensure compliance with U.S. government laws and financial regulations, the platform told VOA.
For the organizers to be considered as verified, they should first identify their targeted recipients and any relationships with them and specify how the funds will be used.
Until these facts are established, the funds will remain at GoFundMe accounts.
But the platform’s users call these procedures stringent and inhibiting.
“It takes GoFundMe weeks to respond to an email,” said Darya, adding that there were concerns the platform could be holding the funds and charging interest fees.
“We’re calling for emergency funding,” he said. “It’s a matter of saving lives and reducing human sufferings, and this needs to be recognized by GoFundMe.”
Work with NGOs
Although transfer of funds by individuals is restricted, GoFundMe does allow campaigners to raise funds for verified NGOs like Doctors Without Borders as well as U.N. agencies.
Individual campaigners say such an approach does not meet their fundraising objectives.
“NGOs have their own priorities and policies and charge administrative and operational fees. We transfer 100 percent of the funds and make no charges,” said Darya. “Individuals sometimes raise funding for a particular individual in urgent need and shouldn’t be restricted.”
GoFundMe says it has raised more than $15 billion for various causes since 2010. The platform’s most generous crowdfunding response in 2021 was for Ashley Safiyya, the mother of eight-week-old Azaylia Diamond Cain, who was undergoing advanced chemotherapy for AML Leukemia. More than $2 million was raised for the treatment of little Cain, who died in April 2021 at only eight months old.
Taliban leader Mullah Baradar with Pakistan’s ISI Chief Faiz Hameed
Raza Khan via Al Jazeera: In recent months, however, signs have emerged of cracks in the otherwise amicable relations between the two. Disagreements over the demarcation of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and Afghan Taliban support for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have caused tensions. If no resolution is reached on these issues, this could cause a rift in relations with significant consequences for both Pakistan’s national security and regional stability. Click here to read more (external link).