WASHINGTON: All US troops will leave Afghanistan by Sept 11 and the withdrawal will start before May 1, a deadline set in the US-Taliban agreement signed last year, a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday.
“We will begin an orderly drawdown of the remaining forces before May 1 and plan to have all US troops out of the country before the 20th anniversary of 9/11,” the official said. The US still has some 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.
At a hurriedly called virtual conference, the official also said that US President Joe Biden would formally announce the pullout schedule on Wednesday (today).
The proposed schedule is seen as a “mid-way” between meeting the May 1 deadline, set in the agreement US and Taliban negotiators finalised in Doha last February, and completely ignoring it.
President Biden had said soon after entering the White House that it would be difficult to pull all the troops out by May 1, as required in the agreement. Policymakers in Washington hope that the decision to begin the withdrawal before May 1 would be seen by the Taliban as indicating the Biden administration’s determination to respect the agreement signed by their predecessors.
The official who briefed the media said the president had concluded that “the best path forward to advance American interests is to end the war in Afghanistan after 20 years” and address “the global threat picture as it exists today, not as it was two decades ago”.
He said the objective behind sending troops to Afghanistan was to ensure that the country was not used as a safe haven for launching 9/11-like attacks on the United States and its allies.
“We believe we achieved that objective some years ago. We judged the threat against the homeland now emanating from Afghanistan to be at a level that we can address it, without a persistent military footprint in the country and without remaining at war with the Taliban,” the official said.
The US and Nato officials had previously said the Taliban had failed to live up to commitments to reduce violence they made in the February 2020 agreement and that was why the withdrawal was delayed. They also expressed the fear that a total US withdrawal could cause the collapse of the Afghan government in Kabul.
At Tuesday’s briefing, the senior administration official said that the United States would “remain deeply engaged with the government of Afghanistan” and would also remain “committed to the Afghan people who have made extraordinary sacrifices” during this conflict.
“We will stand behind the diplomatic process, and we will use our full toolkit to ensure the future that the Afghan people are seeking has the best chance of coming about,” he said.
The official said the Taliban have also been warned not to attack withdrawing troops. “We have told the Taliban in no uncertain terms that any attacks on US troops, as we undergo a safe and orderly withdrawal, will be met with a forceful response,” he said.
“At this point we have discussed the drawdown with our Nato allies and operational partners. We will remain in lockstep with them as we undergo this operation.”
Explaining why the Biden administration also concluded that withdrawal was the best option, the official said: “We have long known that military force would not solve Afghanistan’s internal political challenges; would not end Afghanistan’s internal conflict. And so, we are ending our military operations while we focus our efforts on supporting diplomatically.”
The official said the decision followed an extensive review of the US Afghan policy and “what emerged was a clear-eyed assessment of the best path forward”.
The review, he said, concluded that “there is no military solution to the problems plaguing Afghanistan and we will focus our efforts on supporting the ongoing peace process”.
Supporting the process required “putting the full weight of our government behind diplomatic efforts to reach a peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government”.
He said the United States realised the importance of the US- and Nato-led peace efforts “but what we will not do is use our troops as bargaining chips in that process”.
Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2021
Afghanistan’s war ending on 9/11
We must laud Biden’s urge to end this war because he sees its continuation as a drag on real issues
Express Tribune
The writer is a political analyst. Email: imran.jan@gmail.com. Twitter @Imran_Jan
President Joe Biden has announced that America’s longest war would be brought to an end on September 11, 2021 — the 20th anniversary of what started the war. But what caused 9/11 has been open for debate. Steve Coll argues that the events of 1979 led up to 9/11. Lawrence Wright believes the fire was ignited back in 1948 when Sayyid Qutb started seeing sexual filth in American society as a student in Colorado. Qutb’s writings, especially his book, Milestones, created a generation of Takfiri jihadists. A more intellectually intriguing argument is put forth by Tariq Ali. He says the roots of 9/11 could be traced all the way to 1916 and 1917. The Sykes-Picot happened in 1916 creating a feeling of humiliation among Muslims, followed by the Russian Revolution bringing the Bolsheviks to power.
Both outcomes interacted with each other through the decades. The Western society, especially the United States, used the Jihadist mindset of radical Muslims to counter what had come out of the Russian Revolution (communism).
We must laud Biden’s urge to end this war because he sees its continuation as a drag on real issues such as climate change, the pandemic, and the eroding US influence globally. But while those issues especially climate change are quite real and it is commendable that the Biden administration wants to redirect American energy and resources toward them, it would not be a walk in the park. I’m hopeful that the Taliban would agree to this slight delay in withdrawal in the upcoming meeting in Turkey.
When I first arrived in America, it was about a week after Shah Rukh Khan was detained at the New Jersey airport suspecting him to be a terrorist due to his last name. In those days, international news was the news. People in America knew about Peshawar, Afghanistan, and the ISI headquarters more than they knew about the local Walmart because grim descriptions of the former places along with horrid pictures were ever present on the pages of The New York Times and TIME magazine. Today, international news has been relegated to some sort of intergalactic space where no news outlet catches it much.
Every time I turn on Pakistani news channels, there is the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) or other local news. Even talk show anchors in their show promos claim to be focused on domestic issues. I do realise Aristotle’s dictum that all politics is local but there is no politics in Pakistan without global politics. Every time I turn on CNN, FOX or MSNBC; the news is only national. Even the lens with which the Afghanistan war is viewed is domestic and it’s disgusting. The NYT reported this week that “nearly 2,400 American troops have died in Afghanistan in a conflict that has cost about $2 trillion.” Not a word about the Afghan and Pakistani deaths or how much it cost them. Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran, said that “words cannot adequately express how huge this is for troops and military families, who have weathered deployment after deployment, with no end in sight, for the better part of two decades.” Nothing about the people who lived under that occupation, not for the better part of those two decades but rather the entire two decades.
Turning the attention of a nation that is high on local, toward global threats that require both global and domestic awareness would be hard. Asking a nation that only hears about stimulus checks and George Floyd to cut down on beef and gasoline consumption or else risk being drowned is too much. While Trump would have loved this showmanship of ending the war on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the topic wouldn’t trend on American social media because international news is out of fashion in America today.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2021.
[Dawn News]
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden warned the Taliban on Wednesday he would hold them accountable on Afghanistan after the US exit and pressed nations, including Pakistan, to play supportive roles.
“We will hold the Taliban accountable for its commitment not to allow any terrorists to threaten the US or its allies from Afghan soil. The Afghan government has made that commitment to us as well,” Biden said in a speech announcing the complete pullout of US troops before Sept 11.
“We will ask other countries in the region to support Afghanistan, especially Pakistan, as well as Russia, China, India and Turkey.”
Notably not naming Iran, Biden said that the countries in the region “have a significant stake in the stable future” of Afghanistan.
Earlier, Chief of the Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, in a telephonic conversation with US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, said that Pakistan would always support an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process based on consensus of all stakeholders.
During the conversation matters of mutual interest, regional security situation including latest developments in the the Afghan peace process and bilateral cooperation in various fields came under discussion, said an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) media release.
The US dignitary acknowledged Pakistan’s continuous efforts for peace and stability in the region and pledged to enhance relations between the two countries.
Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2021
[Dawn News]
The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) envoy to Washington confirmed the Gulf state is mediating between India and Pakistan to help the nuclear-armed rivals reach a “healthy and functional” relationship.
Top intelligence officers from India and Pakistan held secret talks in Dubai in January in a new effort to calm military tension over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, people with knowledge of the matter had told Reuters.
Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba said in a virtual discussion with Stanford University's Hoover Institution on Wednesday that the UAE played a role “in bringing Kashmir escalation down and created a ceasefire, hopefully ultimately leading to restoring diplomats and getting the relationship back to a healthy level”.
Read: India and Pakistan are losing out on potential public diplomacy efforts by restricting exchange and access
“They might not sort of become best friends but at least we want to get it to a level where it's functional, where it's operational, where they are speaking to each other,” he said.
Ties between India and Pakistan have been frozen since a suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in occupied Kashmir in 2019 was blamed on Pakistan, leading to India sending warplanes to Pakistan.
Later that year, India's prime minister withdrew the occupied region's autonomy in order to tighten his grip over the territory, provoking outrage in Pakistan and the downgrading of diplomatic ties and suspension of bilateral trade.
Otaiba also said that Pakistan should play a helpful role in Afghanistan, where the United States plans to start withdrawing US troops on May 1 to end America's longest war.
The Emirati official voiced concern that an abrupt US withdrawal would constitute “reverse progress” by serving the interests of “the more illiberal forces” in Afghanistan.
“The question is if the three parties (the US, Taliban and Afghan government) can reach an agreement that they can all live with,” Otaiba said.
“It's hard for us to see a way to stabilise Afghanistan without Pakistan playing a helpful role,” he added.
Turkey is due to host a peace summit for Afghanistan from April 24 to May 4 meant to jump-start efforts to end the war and sketch out a possible political settlement.
[Dawn News]
The United States on Thursday imposed a broad array of sanctions on Russia to punish it for alleged interference in the 2020 US election, cyber-hacking, bullying Ukraine and other “malign” acts.
The measures blacklisted Russian companies, expelled Russian diplomats and placed limits on the Russian sovereign debt market. More penalties could come, although Washington did not want to escalate matters, the Biden administration said.
Moscow reacted angrily, saying this dangerously raised the temperature between the two countries. It summoned the US ambassador for what it said would be a tough conversation.
Among the actions, President Joe Biden issued an executive order authorising the US government to sanction any sector of the Russian economy and used it to restrict Russia's ability to issue sovereign debt to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2020 US election, an allegation Russia denies.
Biden barred US financial institutions from taking part in the primary market for rouble-denominated Russian sovereign bonds from June 14. US banks have been barred from taking part in the primary market for non-rouble sovereign bonds since 2019.
The US Treasury also blacklisted 32 entities and individuals which it said had carried out Russian government-directed attempts to influence the 2020 US presidential election and other “acts of disinformation and interference”.
In concert with the European Union, Britain, Australia and Canada, the Treasury also sanctioned eight individuals associated with Russia's ongoing occupation and repression in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman said Moscow would respond to the sanctions in the near future.
Russia denies meddling in US elections and orchestrating a cyber hack that used US tech company SolarWinds Corp SWI.N to penetrate US government networks. It also denies using a nerve agent to poison Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
It has brushed off allegations that it put bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.
“We have repeatedly warned the United States about the consequences of their hostile steps which dangerously raise the temperature of confrontation between our two countries,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
She said that although Biden had spoken to President Vladimir Putin about his interest in normalising relations, his administration's actions testified to the opposite.
The ministry had summoned the US ambassador, she said, adding: “It's not going to be a pleasant meeting for him.”
The White House said it was expelling 10 Russian diplomats in Washington DC, including representatives of the Russian intelligence services and for the first time, formally named the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) as the perpetrator of the SolarWinds Corp hack.
The US government plans a new executive order to help strengthen its cybersecurity, a US official told reporters, suggesting it could include such elements as encryption and multifactor authentication.
US intelligence agencies have “low to moderate” confidence in their assessment that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan, a senior US official told reporters in a conference call.
“Given the sensitivity of this matter, which involves the safety and well-being of our forces, it is being handled through diplomatic, military and intelligence channels,” the White House said. US officials said some of their response to Russian actions would be “unseen”, a hint they would involve US spy agencies.
Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, described the sanctions as “proportionate measures to defend American interests in response to harmful Russian actions”.
“His (Biden's) goal is to provide a significant and credible response but not to escalate the situation,” Sullivan told CNN. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner said the sanctions were a “good first step” to showing that such actions were not acceptable.
“The scale and scope of this hack are beyond any that we've seen before, and [the sanctions] should make clear that we will hold Russia and other adversaries accountable for committing this kind of malicious cyber activity against American targets,” he said in a statement.
The actions initially sent the Russian rouble down more than two per cent against the dollar and to a more than five-month low against the euro before clawing back some losses.
Timothy Ash of Bluebay Asset Management said the rouble looked like it was enjoying a relief rally.
“Market rallying as they are realising this is pretty soft in reality. No oligarchs. US institutions cannot buy Russian sovereign debt in primary issuance but can get their Russian bank friends to buy it for them in primary, give them a fee, and then buy it in the secondary,” he said.
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