NOTE: This may be my
longest post ever on this subject, but the information needs to be put out and
in a format in one place that is easy to see the whole picture. Enjoy.
Very startling, yet also predicted Taliban action as seen in this story from the Washington Post.
This is a very serious development and the Taliban trademark seems to be on full display, that is: To spread mass fear without any legal justice and then show public executions (beheadings).
That sounds gross, I know, but
that’s how the Taliban has acted in the past – and there is no reason to
believe they have changed their M.O.
“Taliban hunting for ‘collaborators’ in
major cities, threat assessment prepared for United Nations warns”
The Taliban has stepped up its hunt for former Afghan security
officials and people who may have worked with U.S. or NATO forces, according to
a confidential threat assessment prepared for the UN and seen by The Washington
Post.
Highlights from the
Article and the UN Report:
The militants are going
house to house, setting up checkpoints, and threatening to arrest or kill even relatives
of “collaborators.”
The document, produced
by the Norwegian Center
for Global Analyses (U.N.-linked intelligence support center), describes an
empowered Taliban eager to seek out and interrogate and punish those affiliated
with the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
At particular risk are
people who were in central positions in military, police, and investigative
units (according to the analysis, despite a Taliban pledge this week to grant amnesty to former officials).
Separately, a German broadcaster said Taliban fighters killed a relative of one of its journalists — an ominous signal that the Taliban was not following through on pledges to avoid retribution and to respect the media.
They are using the West’s focus on evacuating foreign
nationals to “search unrestrained for Afghan targets inside the cities.”
At the same time, the group is screening for individuals
outside the Kabul airport, where thousands of Afghans have gathered in recent
days in the hopes of fleeing the country.
The assessment also warns
of a “worst case scenario” in which the militants close down Kabul and other cities
to conduct mass arrests and public executions.
Already, the relative of the journalist was killed by Taliban fighters going house to house in western Afghanistan to hunt for the reporter (according to Deutsche Welle (DW). The journalist now works in Germany. Other family members were able to flee from the fighters.
DW’s director
general, Peter Limburg, said: “The killing of a close relative of one of
our editors by the Taliban in Herat yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and
testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in
Afghanistan find themselves. It is evident that the Taliban are already
carrying out organized searches for journalists, both in Kabul and in the
provinces. We are running out of time!”
The
full WaPo story continues here. Related updates follow:
My 2 Cents: Pretty depressing but at the same time NOT unexpected by those who know and have tracked Taliban ugliness in the past.
I fear the worst
is yet to come … a key question: What is the UN (with growing world-wide
condemnation) prepared to do as body?
Nations of the free world
must unite and be prepared to act and if it comes to that drastic step: To move in and wipe out the Taliban once and for all.
I don’t advocate WWIII not one bit, but if the Taliban goes on a massive murdering spree (genocide) then the UN and nations must stand together and work to stop it.
We shall see, but
these early signs are not promising – in short: the Taliban cannot be trusted
in any shape, form, or fashion.
Related to that is the AP story on the Trump-Taliban Doha Agreement - full AP story details here with this headline:
“Was Biden handcuffed by Trump’s Taliban deal in Doha?”
Introduction and Key Part: As Trump’s administration signed
a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, he optimistically proclaimed: “We
think we’ll be successful in the end.” Mike Pompeo asserted that the
administration was: “Seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation.”
Now Eighteen months later, President Joe Biden is pointing to the agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, as he tries to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan in a blitz.
He says it bound him to withdraw
U.S. troops, setting the stage for the chaos engulfing the country. But Biden can go only so far in claiming
the agreement boxed him in.
It had an escape clause:
The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed.
They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete
pullout from May to September.
But, renegotiating, though, would have been difficult. Biden would have had little leverage.
Biden, like Trump, wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Pulling out of the agreement might have forced Biden to send thousands more back in.
Now what? Basically here we are in a Trump agreed to mess — agree with that or not — it is factual - and facts matter.
Also, related to this constant-moving story is this
from NBC News with this headline – it underscores the mess in
Afghanistan:
“U.S. envoy's years of
peace negotiations go up in flames in Afghanistan. What went wrong?”
Analysis: The U.S. lost any leverage with the Taliban once it made clear it
was eager to pull out American troops, experts say.
All that is based on the Trump-Taliban Doha Agreement –
believe it not – it is factually true.
Highlights from NBC News here: A year and a half since U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad brokered a peace agreement between the United States and Taliban leaders, there is no peace in Afghanistan.
Instead of negotiating a
power-sharing deal with the Afghan government, the Taliban have unleashed a
military onslaught to take power by force, seizing on the withdrawal of U.S.
troops as their moment of opportunity.
As Afghanistan plunged into chaos in recent days, with civilians
flooding into Kabul, the capital, to escape the advancing Taliban, Khalilzad made a last-ditch
bid to try to stop the bloodletting. But as he conferred with diplomats from
Russia, China, and other world powers in Doha, Qatar, this week, the Taliban
seized more territory and overran the cities of Herat in the west and Kandahar in
the south.
In Washington, the Pentagon announced plans to deploy 3,000 troops to Kabul airport to oversee the evacuation of dozens of staff from the U.S. Embassy. At the talks in Doha, officials issued a statement urging an end to attacks on cities and “reiterated that they will not recognize any government in Afghanistan that is imposed through the use of military force.”
But as the
Taliban’s military campaign builds momentum, some foreign governments may
choose to accept the new reality on the ground and reach their own separate
accommodation with the group, experts and former U.S. officials said. Taliban
delegations recently paid visits to Russia, China and Iran, where they were
given respectful receptions from senior officials.
Thanks for stopping by.
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