Highly suspicious: CNN interviewed Daesh terrorist before Kabul bombing

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Press TV
August 29, 2021

American broadcaster CNN aired an interview with a “senior” Daesh commander from a Kabul hotel two weeks before the Kabul airport bombing while the US-backed government was still in power in Afghanistan.

Shockingly, the Daesh commander told CNN reporter Clarissa Ward that the group was “laying low and waiting for its moment to strike,” but the broadcaster apparently did not share this vital information with US authorities or maybe it did and they simply ignored it.

Daesh struck the Kabul airport on Thursday, killing at least 180 people, mostly Afghan civilians and about a dozen US troops. The terrorist group claimed the responsibility for the attack.

The interview left observers and social media users wondering how the American media outlet gained access to the terrorist leader and protected his identity when the city was still under the control of the US-supported government, virtually under the control of US forces.

People questioned CNN’s motive behind the interview and its connection to the terrorist group, called Daesh-K, which was not known to anyone before Thursday’s deadly bombing.

The CNN reporter called the commander’s interview “eerily prophetic,” but social media users suggested that the statement was not a prophecy but a plot because the terrorist was speaking of what his group was about to carry out.

Some social media users said that CNN aided and abetted the Kabul attack by having advance knowledge of the possible bombing and apparently doing nothing to help prevent it.  They also wonder that how CNN did not lead American authorities to the terrorist commander.

One commentator called CNN’s explanation of the interview “quite fishy.”

“‘Let’s fly to this place and meet with this terror group K that most people haven’t heard of and understand their intentions,’ said nobody ever. Very fishy,” he tweeted. Another said, “CIA tweets CIA interview with CIA.”

Some commentators slammed CNN for airing the interview of a terrorist commander. “Who are they trying to protect, our people or the terrorist?” one observer asked. “These interviews seem odd to me as I think about the families of our fallen men and women.”

Meanwhile, the US military this week destroyed the final CIA base in Kabul, where the agency claimed it used to train Afghan forces in counterterrorism. But the real nature of the CIA’s activities in that sprawling outpost is shrouded in mystery.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the CIA outpost, called Eagle Base, outside the Kabul airport was destroyed on Thursday, as it is preparing to leave Afghanistan after implementing a policy of death and destruction in the country for twenty years

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Top Iranian general: US leaving Afghanistan with humiliating defeat

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A file photo of American soldiers at an unknown location in Afghanistan.

Press TV
August 29, 2021

Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri says the United States suffered a “humiliating defeat” in Afghanistan that led to its withdrawal after years of atrocities in the country.

He made the remarks on Sunday, two weeks after the Afghan government and military collapsed in the face of the Taliban’s swift advances on the ground, which many attribute to an irresponsible pullout of US-led foreign forces from the country.

Hundreds of people still await evacuation at Kabul’s international airport as a Tuesday deadline to withdraw all American troops approaches.

The recent developments have caused insecurity in Afghanistan, with the Daesh terrorist group conducting deadly bombing attacks.

“The criminal US deployed troops to the region under various pretexts, including the suspicious 9/11 attacks,” Baqeri said.

“The United States has not left the region in all these 42 years, and as time passes, it concocts more conspiracies and threats against the region.”

The general said what is happening in Afghanistan is a tragedy and the US is behind it.

“The United States occupied Afghanistan with a lot of killings, lootings and many other crimes, but left the country with a humiliating defeat. It left the oppressed people of this country in the throes of problems, troubles and turmoils without a clear future,” he said.

“Despite spending over $2,000 billion in Afghanistan, the US turned the Afghan national army into a useless and spineless force with a glamorous appearance and seemingly advanced equipment that, in their own words, was able to resist an insurgent group only for 11 days.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, Baqeri said that the development of defense power for the Islamic Iran is a definite and inevitable task for various reasons and necessities.

“The Islamic establishment is located in the most sensitive part of the world at a critical time. Over the past years, the most important conflicts and skirmished in the world have occurred in our region, and there is no clear prospect of seeing a period of calm and tranquility in the region,” he added.

Baqeri said although Iran’s defense budget is very low compared to those of other countries, the achievements of Iran’s armed forces are not comparable with their peers.

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Taliban Close to Formation of Cabinet, Announcement of New Government

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Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada

Tahir Khan
Ayesha Tanzeem
VOA News
August 29, 2021

KABUL/ISLAMABAD – A senior Taliban leader confirmed to VOA on condition of anonymity that the group is in the final stages of announcing a new Cabinet that was expected to include all members of its current Rahbari Shura, or leadership council.

Taliban supreme commander Hibatullah Akhundzada is holding the consultations in Kandahar, the city known as the birthplace of the Taliban, along with his deputies Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of Haqqani network, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and the head of Taliban military commission.

“Currently, the Taliban leadership is consulting with different ethnic groups, political parties and within the Islamic Emirate about forming a government that has to be accepted both inside and outside Afghanistan and to be recognized,” Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, another senior Taliban leader said in a televised address Saturday.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told VOA the process was “near completion.”

“The leadership has assigned deputy chief Sirajuddin Haqqani and the other deputy chief Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob to finalize names for the cabinet,” the senior Taliban leader said. The final approval of the names would come from Akhundzada himself.

He said the Cabinet could have more than 26 members and might include people other than leadership council members.

The Rahbari Shura is the most important decision-making body for the Taliban and is headed by Akhundzada himself, who is called Ameer ul Momineen, or leader of the faithful.

While the Taliban claim the government will be inclusive, their spokesman said sharing power was not the group’s priority for now.

“There is no agreement with any political leader to induct him in the government,” Mujahid Said. “I want to make it clear that this is not our focus to share government with others.”

He said the group was seeking opinions of “known faces, ulema, former Mujahideen leaders” on the new system of governance.

The shura held its first formal meeting in Kabul after the takeover of the city in the Presidential Palace on August 21. Haqqani and Yaqoob jointly presided over it. Since then, shura members and other senior officials have been holding informal meetings almost daily.

“The shura has in principle decided that if the United States and other invaders complete their withdrawal by August 31, the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban name for their government] will announce the Cabinet,” the senior leader said.  “The Amir ul Momineen is of the opinion that if a government is announced in the presence of the American forces it will raise many questions.”

He said the shura has also floated the idea that the announcement of the Cabinet should come from Akhundzada himself in a nationally televised address.

“If Amir ul Momineen does not want to appear in public, he could nominate a confidant and senior leader to make the announcement,” he added.

The shura was also of the view that the cabinet should be announced in the first week of September and the name of the new Taliban government should be Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, but that decision required approval from Akhundzada.

The Taliban leader said they intended to keep the national army intact and include their own fighters into the institution. Decisions on the national flag and constitution were to be made by the new cabinet.

In their internal consultations, the Taliban were also discussing the possibility of making either Sirajuddin Haqqani or Mullah Yaqoob the “Raees ul Wazara,” a position equivalent to a prime minister.  During the Taliban’s last government in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, Mullah Mohammad Rabbani, held this post as the head of the ruling shura of ministers.

Shura members are also discussing the possibility that if Haqqani becomes prime minister, Yaqoob could be defense minister, since he currently heads the military commission of Taliban.

Other than the formation of government, the leader said internal discussions were heavily focused on security in the capital, Kabul.

Two explosions, at least one of them a suicide bomber, outside Kabul’s airport last week killed at least 170 people including 13 American service members guarding the airport. The Islamic State Khorasan, the regional branch of IS, took responsibility for the attack.

Since the attack the Taliban have increased their security around the airport and set up checkpoints on roads leading to the airport.

Below is a list of members of Taliban’s Rahbari shura, expected to be included in their Cabinet when it is announced.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the political office in Qatar’s capital Doha

Sheikh Abdul Hakeem, head of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha

Sher Abbas Stanekzai, deputy of the negotiation team in Doha

Sadar Ibrahim, former chief of the military commission

Abdul Qayyum Zakir, former chief of the military commission

Mullah Fazil, former deputy defense minister

Abdul Manan Akhund, brother of Taliban founder Mullah Omar

Maulvi Noor Muhammad Saqib, former Taliban chief justice

Amir Khan Muttaqi, former information minister

Abdul Salam Hanafi, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha

Qari Deen Muhammad, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha

Lateef Mansoor, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha

Sheikh Qasim, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha

Muhammad Zahid  Ahmadzai, former Taliban diplomat in Pakistan

Maulvi Abdul Kabeer, former governor, Nangarhar province

Sheikh Abdul Hakim Sharee, an influential cleric

Noorulah Noori, former Guantanamo Bay detainee

Abdur Rahman

Mullah Gul agha

Ameer Haqqani

Mullah Mohammad Hasan

Sheihkh Sharif

Faizullah Khan

Taj Mir

Hafiz Majeed

Veteran Afghan strongmen to form new front for talks with Taliban

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Dostum

Ariana: A band of veteran Afghan leaders, including two regional strongmen, are angling for talks with the Taliban and plan to meet within weeks to form a new front for holding negotiations on the country’s next government, a member of a group said. Khalid Noor, son of Atta Mohammad Noor, the once-powerful governor of northern Afghanistan’s Balkh province, said the group comprised of veteran ethnic Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum and others opposed to the Taliban’s takeover. Click here to read more (external link).

Taliban Accused Of Slaying Afghan Folk Singer

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 29 2021

The family of an Afghan folk singer and musician says he has been shot dead by a Taliban fighter in a mountain province north of Kabul.

The alleged slaying of Fawad Andarabi comes amid growing concerns that the hard-line Islamist group will return war-torn Afghanistan to the repressive rule it imposed when last in power from 1996-2001.

“Fawad Andarabi, a local artist, was dragged out of his home yesterday and killed by the Taliban in Kishnabad village of Andarab [district]. He was a famous folk singer in the valley. His son has confirmed the incident,” Afghan journalist Sami Mahdi tweeted on August 28.

“He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people,” his son Jawad told AP. “They shot him in the head on the farm.”

The son said that a local Taliban council promised to punish his father’s killer.

AP quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying that the militants will investigate the matter.

The Andarab Valley is located in Baghlan Province, some 100 kilometers north of Kabul.

The neighboring Panjshir remains the only Afghan province not under the control of the Taliban after its blitz offensive toppled the Western-backed government.

Karima Bennoune, the United Nations special rapporteur on cultural rights, wrote on Twitter that she had “grave concern” over the reports of Andarabi’s killing.

“We call on governments to demand the Taliban respect the #humanrights of #artists,” she said.

Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, also decried the killing, saying on Twitter: “There is mounting evidence that the Taliban of 2021 is the same as the intolerant, violent, repressive Taliban of 2001. 20 years later. Nothing has changed on that front.”

Along with his tweet, Mahdi posted a video showing Andarabi singing and playing the ghichak, a bowed lute.

“There is no country in the world like my homeland, a proud nation,” he sang. “Our beautiful valley, our great-grandparents’ homeland.”

With reporting by AP

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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Afghans See More Checkpoints as Taliban Widen Airport Security Cordon

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Jamie Dettmer
VOA News
August 29, 2021

The Taliban have widened a security cordon around Kabul airport, at American request, but the move means Afghans heading for the last evacuation flights encounter more checkpoints.

Moreover, witnesses say the Taliban guards are becoming more aggressive, especially with women, as the clock ticks down to Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden’s deadline for the American airlift to end.

“They don’t spare women,” a 20-year-old student told VOA in a phone call from Kabul, where she is in hiding, too fearful to make a second attempt to leave the country.

“They won’t spare us just because we are women,” said Hamdiya, describing what she, her mother and younger sister endured at multiple Taliban checkpoints.

“One Taliban held a gun to my head,” she said. “We were told we are infidels because we want to go to the United States,” she continued. “I said I wasn’t an infidel and he said he was going to shoot me,” she added.

Hamdiya has worked for both the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and for a German nongovernmental organization.

On Thursday she, her mother and sister made it to the airport just as a suicide bomber struck, leaving 13 U.S. service personnel dead and at least 170 Afghans.

“I was running and I accidentally tripped over a head, and it had no body. I can’t get rid of that image” she said.

Her mother was injured in the bombing, which an affiliate of the Islamic State group has claimed as its attack. Hamdiya said she, her mother and sister are all too terrified to make another bid to reach the airport and she has been trying to find any Western assistance to help them navigate the Taliban checkpoints, to no avail. She said women not accompanied by male relatives are encountering special hostility from Taliban gunmen.

“Sometimes I wish I were a man,” she said. “I am failing. It is very painful,” she added.

The final opportunities to leave are likely slipping away from Hamdiya.

The U.S. State Department Saturday urged American citizens and others to leave the vicinity of Kabul’s airport immediately due to fears of another terror attack. Taliban forces sealed the airport off Saturday to most Afghans hoping for evacuation, The Associated Press reported.

Even before then, other Afghans trying to reach the airport told VOA that Taliban guards often were only allowing a maximum of two members per family to cross checkpoints, now increasingly manned by uniformed Taliban fighters with Humvees and night-vision goggles seized from Afghan security forces.

Afghans who have been at the airport painted a grim picture of Taliban fighters firing rounds into the air.

The Taliban claim they have to disperse crowds, but several Afghans told VOA that they believed the episodic shooting was intimidatory and being done just to scare them. The Taliban also Saturday fired canisters of colored smoke around parts of the airport, adding to the confusion and mounting fear, Afghan civilians said.

NATO’s European members have now ended their airlift, with some governments urging Afghans eligible for evacuation now to shelter in place.

Britain ended its evacuation mission Saturday with the final British troops and diplomatic staff arriving at RAF Brize Norton, a British air force base in southeastern England, Sunday morning, drawing to a close Britain’s 20-year deployment in Afghanistan.

The two-week mission to rescue British nationals and Afghan allies was Britain’s largest evacuation mission since World War II. In all, Britain evacuated 15,000 people. In a video posted on Twitter Sunday British Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised the soldiers involved.

“U.K. troops and officials have worked around the clock to a remorseless deadline in harrowing conditions,” he said.

“They have expended all the patience and care and thought they possess to help people in fear for their lives,” he added, “They’ve seen at firsthand barbaric terrorist attacks on the queues of people they were trying to comfort, as well as on our American friends. They didn’t flinch. They kept calm. They got on with the job.”

Johnson and his ministers, however, are coming under vitriolic criticism for the airlift, with claims that the British government was too slow to get the evacuation mounted in earnest. A former head of the British army, General Richard Dannatt, said the mission should have been started much earlier in the year.

“We should have done better, we could have done better. It absolutely behooves us to find out why the government didn’t spark up faster,” he told The Times newspaper.

Hundreds of Afghans have been heading to the country’s land borders but are being charged thousands of dollars by smugglers and drivers, according to Western NGOs.

The Tajikistan and Uzbekistan borders are currently officially closed. Making for the frontier with Pakistan is highly risky for Afghans who have worked with NATO forces or Western governments as to get to the border they must travel deep into Taliban heartlands. Moreover, most border smugglers are connected with the militant Islamist movement, say private security advisers exploring overland routes to get Afghans out of the country.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.

U.S. Drone Strike Hits Vehicle Heading To Kabul Airport

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US MQ-9 Reaper drone (file photo)

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 29, 2021

The United States has carried out a drone strike in Kabul on a vehicle carrying Islamic State militants, military officials said on August 29.

The officials said the drone strike hit the vehicle, which was heading for the airport with suicide bombers inside. The U.S. said it believes it was a successful strike and that the intended target was hit.

“U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon air strike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat” to the airport, said Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.

“Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material,” he said, adding that there were “no indications at this time” of civilian casualties.

There have been reports of an explosion at a house near the airport, but it wasn’t clear if the two explosions were connected.

An Afghan police chief said the attack killed a child, according to the Associated Press. Rashid, the Kabul police chief who goes by one name, said the rocket struck Kabul’s Khuwja Bughra neighborhood in the afternoon.

Reports of the explosion circulated on social media showed black smoke rising from a building that appeared to be a home and people on the roof attempting to douse flames using buckets of water.

A Health Ministry source confirmed to the BBC that an explosion had taken place, saying it was a rocket that hit a house.

The explosion occurred as U.S. forces were in the final phase of pulling out of Kabul. Just over 1,000 civilians remained at the airport on August 29 to be flown out before the troops finally leave, a Western security official told Reuters.

U.S. President Joe Biden has said he will stick by his deadline to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by August 31, ending two decades of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan that began shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The situation at the airport has been tense since one of the airport’s outer gates was the scene of a suicide bombing three days ago claimed by the militant group Islamic State-Khorosan that killed scores of people, including 13 members of the U.S. military.

The U.S. military said it carried out a drone strike in eastern Nangarhar Province two days after the suicide bombing. The retaliatory strike killed a planner and a facilitator of the attack, the Pentagon said.

Biden said on August 28 that the situation on the ground in Afghanistan “continues to be extremely dangerous” and the threat of terrorist attacks on the airport in Kabul “remains high.”

Biden said that he met with his national-security team and commanders in the field and was informed that an attack “is highly likely in the next 24-36 hours.”

Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, AP, CNN, AFP, and the BBC

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.

Taliban Agreement to Let Afghans Leave Is ‘Positive,’ US Says

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Stankezai (left) and Zalmay Khalilzad (right)

Ayaz Gul
VOA News
August 28, 2021

ISLAMABAD – The United States on Saturday hailed the Taliban’s commitment that no one will be prevented from traveling out of Afghanistan after August 31, the deadline President Joe Biden has set for all U.S. and NATO troops to exit the country.

Zalmay Khalilzad, special U.S. envoy for Afghan peace, made the remarks a day after a central Taliban leader in a televised address said that Afghans with valid documents and passports would be free to travel to the country of their choice — by air or by land — beyond the deadline.

“The statement is positive. We, our allies, and the international community will hold them to these commitments,” Khalilzad wrote on Twitter.

Friday’s address by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, deputy head of the Taliban’s Qatar-based political commission, was aimed at easing fears his Islamist movement might not permit safe passage for Americans, for third-country nationals, and for Afghans who worked with foreign forces in the country past August 31.

“Let the foreign forces withdraw first … and then our compatriots — whether they have worked with the Americans or otherwise — may leave the country if they want and for whatever reason there may be. All airports, particularly Kabul airport, will be open for their travel,” Stanikzai said.

Thousands of people, including journalists, former government officials and civil society activists, have struggled to get on the last flights leaving the Afghan capital’s beleaguered international airport before the deadline for the Western evacuation operation.

Suicide bomber

On Thursday, a suicide bomber blew himself up on the perimeter of Kabul’s airport, killing about 170 people, including 13 U.S. service members. An Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for the carnage.

The scramble to leave the country stemmed from fears the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul would see the imposition of their strict version of Islamic laws in Afghanistan, which the fundamentalist group had enforced during its rule from 1996 to 2001.

The Taliban at the time barred women from leaving their homes without a male relative, barred girls from receiving an education, and banned music, among other controversial measures, leading to international isolation of Afghanistan.

The Islamist group has now promised to institute what it says will be an “inclusive Islamic government” in Kabul, saying the arrangement respects human rights, particularly the rights of women to study and work.

In his Friday speech, Stanikzai urged Afghans to unite to rebuild their war-ravaged country, saying trained and educated people also should come back to join the effort.

The Taliban seized control of the national capital on August 15, capping a weeklong military campaign that brought 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces under the group’s control in the face of a dramatic collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and its security forces.

The Islamist group is under pressure from the U.S. and neighboring countries to live up to public pledges that it would include all Afghans in the way it runs the country and would respect human rights to avoid Afghanistan’s international isolation.

The Taliban instructed female public health workers Friday to return to their regular duties, and they have allowed female television presenters to broadcast news as usual.

The governor of the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, which is known as the Taliban’s birthplace, earlier in the week told a gathering of Islamic clerics that men would not be forced to grow beards and people would not be forced to stop listening to music.

Critics have doubts

Domestic and foreign critics, however, remain skeptical about whether the Islamist group will deliver on its pledges.

“I think I should be really clear here: There’s no rush to recognition of any sort by the United States or any international partners we have talked to,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Friday when asked if the Taliban were asking Washington for recognition.